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 What are you favourite sneaky tactics against your, Evil GMs are Us |
 Jul 23 2004, 11:19 PM
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#26
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Moving Target  Group: Members Posts: 260 Joined: 20-March 04 From: That really good state. Yeah, you know the one... Member No.: 6,177  |
That sounds just like the kind of underhanded bullshit my gm would pull. I kinda like the idea... :D |
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Jul 24 2004, 04:11 AM
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#27
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 120 Joined: 3-May 04 Member No.: 6,298 |
If they had gotten paid, why did they bother actually giving the Karma to the free spirit? This isn't an attack on your idea, I'm just curious. Anyways, if they haven't fulfilled all the terms of their contract, I don't see how you can claim the adventure was over. I understand you call this metagaming and rules lawyering, but that's exactly what you're doing. Karma is a metagame concept, not an in-game concept. Just because players can give up Karma to increase the power of spirits doesn't make it an in-game concept. Consider, if Karma is an in-game concept, and not just a way to allow for some level of control over the progression of PCs. Then that means that everyone, including NPCs really has Karma. In addition, as given in the rules, Karma is the only way to improve skills. In that case, no one would be able to improve their skills in anything without being an adventurer. Karma exists to limit the amount of gain that PCs can get from training. Otherwise, players would just train constantly and the game would become unmanagable. Karma is a metagame tool to balance the game. Any scenario which results in Karma being used in-game is metagaming.
There's an entire game mechanic devoted to designing new characters. That doesn't mean it would be appropriate for an NPC to tell players that if they die, they have to make their next character a Troll. Would you consider it acceptable for the spirit to tell players that they have to burn their Karma Pool in order to get a success? Giving good Karma to spirits should be roleplayed just like increasing stats/skills is. Good Karma is used for this purpose to limit the PC's ability to arbitrarily increase the power of spirits. It is an attempt at game balancing.
So they're bitter about what you did and the only reason they didn't "kick your ass" was because you bribed them. That's not exactly a selling point. Stealing something from the players simply because you can, because you're the GM, isn't good GMing. Being smarter than your players is good. Abusing the fact that you decide the rules isn't. If you made it clear to them, before the start of the mission, that Karma is considered a real, in-game item, equivalent to credits, so that the characters themselves know how much Karma they have and how they got it, then what you did is fair. The GM is the final arbiter of the rules. That's the way it has to be. But it works much better if you address nonconvential rule interpretations before you hang players with them.
There are no rules in the game for one entity to determine the amount of Karma that another has. It's not listed as something you can learn about under astral perception, or anywhere else. Show me, using book rules, how the spirit knows how much Karma someone has, and you'll have convinced me.
That assumes that Karma is an in-game concept, which the book never claims. It makes much more sense to treat it as a metagame concept. From page 242 of the core rulebook: "Karma measures the experience characters gain when they go out on an adventure." Karma is not imprinted memories. Karma is not spiritual energy. The only thing the characters acquired was the experience, which there are no rules for spirits taking. Show me anywhere where it says spirits can take experiences. When spending Karma to help free spirits, the rules say nothing about that character losing his experiences. |
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Jul 24 2004, 05:35 AM
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#28
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Target Group: Members Posts: 27 Joined: 15-May 02 From: Cincinnati Member No.: 2,741 |
Yeah, nowhere in the process of donating Karma does a character lose their experience, but they do lose the Karma. I think the idea is that losing Karma has to be felt somehow. If a character were to be drained of Karma I would expect him to somehow feel it, I don't know if I'd go with memories fading, I probably go for something more along the lines of the character feeling emotionally drained.
All in all I think its a good idea. My groups never did legwork on their Johnsons and the characters were compensated quite well for the Karma. I think I would allow the ad-hoc awards for making the group laugh and stuff like that stick, since those seem more of an out of character award, but any of the Karma awards that were earned from the run I would consider open game. and really I think the point was to show the runners they should be at least mildly interested in who's hiring them and for what ulterior motives. I've had groups bring chaos to cities and not bat and eye when they find out they were behind it, but taking some Karma, that would stop them up and make them take an interest. Plus its probably one of those runs that even now 7 years after it happened they still talk about. All because the Johnson was a free spirit. |
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Jul 24 2004, 06:17 AM
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#29
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Target Group: Members Posts: 81 Joined: 13-July 04 Member No.: 6,475 |
the thing is if they had a mage they could have easily got some payback if they had bothered to try to find out the freespirit/johnsons true name after he so indiscreetly revealed himself to be a freespirit, or better yet find out his true name and reveal it to every magician the runners know that would make him sweat. :)
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Jul 24 2004, 11:03 AM
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#30
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,401 Joined: 23-February 04 From: Honolulu, HI Member No.: 6,099 |
Its certainly tough not to go overboard on being sneaky. Offhand I can think of a bunch of different ways that would result in Total-Party-Kills that are pretty much unavoidable, and well within rules and even on a not too expensive budget.
Not sure how fun it would be to the players and their characters I subject it to though. The original poster's hitman idea was nice though. Sometimes in order to make a story point, and prevent playerchars from saving the day, you need to hit your npc target with a cocktail of lethal stuff beyond the typical bullets or magicblasts. Radioactive poisons lacing bullets do the trick :P |
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Jul 24 2004, 01:37 PM
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#31
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Deus Absconditus Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,742 Joined: 1-September 03 From: Downtown Seattle, UCAS Member No.: 5,566 |
Part the first:
Answer: listen to a whole lotta James Brown. Everyone knows that one! Part the second: So, supposing I'm playing 9/10ths of my PCs, and I sign that spirit's contract... sure, well and good, supposing I'm dumb enough to sign some kind of physical contract anyway. Verbal? That's much more common, I can run with that. So I do the run and some free spirit thing pays me asstons of money and then says, "Okay, time to cough up all those tricks and finesses on your skills, spells, general MO that you learned during that run," I ICly say, "Say what?" And he says, "You know - part of your aura. Like... life energy, or soul, or thing that makes you a sentient being capable of learning." What's my response? What's the sane response? "No." Spirit says, "But the contract says..." "Uh uh, spirit boy, I'm a professional criminal. I break ten contracts before breakfast. Hell, sometimes I use 'em for toilet paper, just for laughs." If he says, "It's magically binding, you HAVE to..." I say, "Pop-pop, take two in the head/I cut off your limbs/I lightning bolt you to crisps/any other thing that may or may not kill said spirit." I mean, honestly. Your players didn't just straight up kill the thing? Nobody I play with makes characters that would stand for being jerked around like that by a Johnson, and I don't think the shadows would miss a johnson that A) steals 'life energy' or B) jerks a team around that hard and tries to hold them to a magically binding contract. The shadows don't like that kind of heavy-handed authority for a reason - they're give and take. |
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Jul 24 2004, 06:03 PM
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#32
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,408 Joined: 31-January 04 From: Reston VA, USA Member No.: 6,046 |
I agree with Dragonslayer on this. Also, since the PCs earned a butt-load of cash on this run that they wouldn't have gotten if it had been a normal run, they could always just trade it in using the Cash for Karma rule and get their enough Karma to leave them satisfied. It does seem a little odd that they were offered 5 times as much money as normal and they weren't the least bit suspicious that their Johnson might plan to screw them over somehow. Ultimately, it boils down to the question:
For me, it's fun to try and think my way through the elaborate plot twists that a GM can come up with, and I'd appreciate something this devious as a challenge.
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