Yup. Like that.

Okay now, get off the high horse-ride machine and grow up.


You may crave that. I don't. In fact I want nothing of it. So go get your elitist "grit" notions out of my face, before two large trolls remove you from my presence.

And what of those characters/players who refuse to compromise? Then you essentially punish them endlessly for playing a character the way they want as opposed to they way you want them to. Compromise should be the easy way out, not the only way out.

I don't know if I would say that. "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Depending on what you have to compromise to get it, sometimes achieving your goal could be worse then giving up the opportunity. If a runner had the chance for the Big Payout that lets him escape the shadows and live out his days wealthy and secure, but had to betray his team and his family to get it, it might be something that haunts him for the rest of his life (Hey, even Shadowrunners have things they just won't do).

Personally, I'd be interested to be a player in a campaign like that, but I don't think I would run one like that unless the players wanted that.

Exactly! And that was the point of 2bits post, you put them in that position.

On the flip side, if you don't give it all up and you let yourself be scum of the street forever more, you either didn't really want that goal, or you'll be forever asking "what if I'd just done that one last thing? I wouldn't have to be eating dog food now and picking fleas out of my hair. I wouldn't have this bothersome rash around my genitals and I wouldn't have to drink puddle water.'

It was a mullet, right?

Nope. A gang leader's sister's waist-length hair.

Shaving a woman's long hair in order to shame her? That's awfully retro.

Then again, I've seen it in Japanese women's pro wrestling.

Nope. Revenge.

See, someone added hair remover to the shampoo the other gang leader's woman used on her long precious hair. Ergo, vengeance must be exacted.

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe another chance will come up. Maybe you'll be in the gutter for the rest of your life. While you're fighting for that second chance, you'll be wondering 'what if'. But no matter what, it won't come up without sacrifice, and the greater the goal, the more the sacrifice.

Don't be ridiculous. Dogfight was the single best short story ever written. If you aren't willing to torture your girlfriend and steal self-respect from cripples to win a video game, you might as well not even play.

Shadowrun being a game, if my character is stuck in the gutter too long, I'll just say, "This game really blows. See ya."

It was a great story, but I would hate for the GM to try to cram my character into a role from a story. I'm not into characters who give in to their weakness and then whine about it. My characters are more decisive. Either they are good people who don't betray their core principles (which still leaves plenty of room for moral ambiguity, hypocrisy, etc.), or they are amoral people who do the wrong thing, then just shrug it off. That's the trouble of trying to force a genre mood onto a game. It's great to have a distopian setting, as long as you realize that not every player is going to be an angsty loser. Well, okay, maybe they will be. But their characters might not always be.

Bearing in mind that I disagree very much with enforcing sacrifices on the players the obvious tack to take would be how increasing enlightenment and power separates the magician from his fellow man.

As one attempts to seek greater spiritual knowledge it is all too easy for someone to care less and less about the "mundane" world around them. Examples would be losing interest in friends, lovers as nothing compares to the spiritual masturbation that is advanced meditation and initiation. This is a real trap that people can fall into.

As ones world becomes increasingly filled with mysticism, symbolism and Great Truths™, it is quite possible to see the "mundane" world as having less significance. Who cares if Tony Blair and Bush are figureheading a return to totalitarianism - it's part of the great rolling wheel of karma and the physical world is mere gross matter anyhow. People may be miserable, but its their own inability or willingness to escape the illusion of matter and there's nothing you need do for them.

As one places one's value increasingly on the invisible, one's dedication to social norms becomes increasinly weaker. When your astral form is a beacon for all to see, what do your clothes, or your worldly goods or hygiene matter? The archetype we're familiar with is the madman, the hermit or the beggar with the gift of prophecy. Picture your hermetic mage, out of his head on Qabballah, finally having reached grade 10th initiate, lying in a gutter in a state of bliss. He has so dedicated himself to the pursuit of magic that all other considerations are long forgotten. Having finally purged himself of concern for comfort, security, social respect, he is magic. With a thought he can conjure riches or make people love him. In achieving total mastery, there is nothing he needs or desires any longer. Changing his name to Oroborus, he projects from his body and disappears up his own astral sphincter never to be heard of again.

Because the price of spiritual advancement is so personal, it requires pretty intense role-playing to capture it. You could hint at it in game by having loved ones grow increasingly distant, play up the length of time that it takes to initiate, or the flatness of the world after the metaplanes. After all, karma represents something vital and if you're meditating or questing all the time, you're not not investing it in those you care about.

But if you inflict this on your players (and why aren't you playing Mage or Vampire, anyway), then you must complete the circle and bring them back at the end. The purpose of the magician's quest is not to remain with the godhead for ever more, but to return to the world and bring back a little of the light she has found. Jesus returns from the wilderness, Zarathustra comes down from the mountain and Mohammed finishes talking with the archangel and is kind enough to pass on the Cliff's Notes for the rest of us. Divinity is the final trap of the spiritual quest and every body should have a chance to overcome that and realise the significance of the mundane world around us.

As some Zen bloke once said:
"Before enlightement - fetching logs, carrying water. After enlightenment - fetching logs, carrying water."

No way they could have crammed groups and all tho good stuff into the core book in any sort of meaningful way. IMO it was more than good enough that they got Initiation itself moved into the core book. Wait a month for your Street Magic PDF, and if it isn't in there then sign me up for the innevitable Burn A Writer crusade.

No! Because all Kobolds are Evil! Says so right in the book.

Assuming that killing evil beings is a good thing, Paladins are still bound to fight honorably so they can't kill defenseless toddlers. If there were one in theparty he'd be struck down by his god instantly and ressurrected as a Death Knight by some evil deity. They do have Death Knights in 3.5?

But why you are killing evil creatures in the first place? Haven't you played Planescape: Torment? Don't you known that evil beings become petitioners in Balor once they die and are forced to serve as footsoldiers in the endless Blood War? Do you really want to add fuel to that? That's just evil. You should be killing Good beings so they can be eternally happy on one of the Upper Planes. That is the good, just, and morally right thing to do. Killing evil beings should cause an alignment penality.

Bringing Sacrifce back into magic is easy but it requires a houserule. By canon PCs aren't allowed to take that metamagic or the matching geas.

How It Really Happened: Characters kill kobold leaders and warriors, chain up the toddlers and other leftovers, return to the village as heros, and sell kobold slaves to farmers across the ocean. They then seek out other kobold "infestations" and build a slave trading empire, but are assassinated by the king, who then takes control of the trade through the South Greyhawk Tea Company.

It isn't so much a fight as taking out the trash.

What, they aren't able to swat unarmed mosquitoes either? It's stupid rulings like that, in combination with the idiocy of Alignment, that gives the Paladin class such a bad name.

Magic is, ultimately and inextricably, the essence of the Horrors. Anything done with it, anything at all, feeds and strengthens the Horrors and allows the tendrils of hate and fear and rage further into the mage. Immortal Elves can stand to Initiate repeatedly because of the amount of time they can spread their journey out over, but a double-digit Human initiate is on the short path to being a spree killer.

~J, totally not canon.

Thank you, Joseph Campbell.

The best part about that is that killing kobold toddlers will actually help the farmers level up and become better farmers.

Farmer Joe: Man, my apple trees just aren't doing well even though I fertilize them and everything. What's the matter, Farmer Mack? Yours always look great.

Farmer Mack: Well, see, I'm a level 3 farmer whereas you're only a level 1 farmer.

Farmer Joe: How do I become a level 3 farmer?

Farmer Mack: Kill about 30 kobold toddlers.

Farmer Joe: What?

Farmer Mack: Seriously. I killed a bunch and all my crops started doing better. I also have three times as many hit points as you now also.

As a player, I don't want to spend a year or two in a campaign that is an exercise in nihilistic futility (unless I know ahead of time that is what it is going to be). I play for escapist fantasy. Shadowrun, BattleTech, Star Wars RPG, Top Secret S.I. are all diversions to me that allow me to do something I simply can't in real life. HArd moral choices that ultimately are no win scenarios? I can see that everyday in real life.

Do I take the job in the new city and lose my girlfriend or stay in the dead end job I have now, but please her?
Do I give my life savings to my brother who is in trouble, knowing all the while he'll never pay it back?
Do I tell my best friend that his wife is cheating on him?

A campaign like you describe might be great for some people, but I want to play a game that is fun with a few challenges, not one that is designed right from the beginning for me to never be able to get ahead in.

Full Metal Jacket: The PCs wield M60 machineguns in one hand while feeding the belt with the other and stride through the cave blasting the kobold toddlers apart while saying GET SOME GET SOME GET SOME.

But the alignment system is a straightjacket. Asside from roleplaying fluff its primary purpose is to determine which magical items you can and cannot use and which classes you can and cannot be.

Thanks. I guess I still haven't managed to do everything in that game; usually I'd just go through the route of winning the game through high WIS since high WIS tended to give you the best dialogue options anyway.

well, yeah. what's the point of having an alignment system if it's not integrated into the game? that doesn't make it a straightjacket, though, any more than saying that you can't play a hermetic mage who summons nature spirits is a straightjacket. it's simply an aspect of the game.

Good ol' chaos! Taking a page from WHFRP, it might be fun to introduce minor insanities on magicians who have peered into the abyssal depths of magic. Perhaps a sojourn to the metaplanes is like an LSD trip; sometimes it's a dream, sometimes it's a nightmare. You could bless a player with spirit affinity and spirit bane for opposing elements. I like the idea that initiation opens the magician to being altered by it.