[Rq-rules] Re: Question about multicast

[David Smart]

>From: Simon Phipp <soltakss at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Jan 13, 2006 3:46 AM
>To: rq-rules at crashbox.com
>Subject: [Rq-rules] Re: Question about multicast
>
>I've just checked my email to find 4 RQ-Rules Digests in one day.

Yeah! Ain't it great?

<snip>
>Fred Vogel:
>
>> What do you  mean punish them?  I never thought that RPG's were the GM vs. 
>> the players.  As a GM i simply don't care what the players do.  
>
>How naive, how quaint :-)

LOL! My problem is I occasionally feel a little bad when my players end up in very deep kimchi.

Of course, if it's by their own actions, c'est la guerre. I just build the kimchi bucket and hand it to them.

>Everyone knows that a roleplaying game is a battle between the GM and those
>nasty players who need taking down a peg or two. When the poor GM has had a
>bad day at work, or his wife is nagging at him, or his life is crap, what
>better way to have fun than to persecute the players at his weekly
>roleplaying game.
>
>I thought that's what they were for.

Hehheh. And, at the end of the day, they're for beating the crap out of a GM who behaves in such a fashion. We had only one person in our group who did such things as a player and he was moved out out of the group rather quickly.

>But, there are times when player tactics can totally ruin a game's enjoyment.
>In the RQ campaign we played in years ago, they banned the Vision (RQ2)
>spell. When we used RQ3, I allowed them to use Visin, Project Vision etc, so
>one session they cast a long-extension Project Vision and scouted out a
>castle, room by room. After 4 hours of mapping out the castle, I asked them
>if they were enjoying the session. To a man, they said "No" and they never
>again used Project Vision in that way, but it was their choice.

Exactly. One of the reasons I'm a member of this list is to read posts to help me find such "holes" in the rules. That's also why I told Fred about this list. He's really helped me improve both my GMing skills and my house rules, as has the rest of my player group.

Because of their feedback and willingness to play thoughtfully (including pushing the envelope on some rules), I've found that I'm forced to put more effort ahead of time into adventure and world background. The side effect of this is I do less spur-of-the-moment adventure generation but learn more about medieval societies, mapping software (CC2 Pro rules!), and my campaign has taken on a life of its own for me. I can actually play my long-term NPCs as if they're _my_ characters, increasing my enjoyment of the game.

Amazing what an old dog can learn.

<snip>...I've played in games where they have banned Vision/Project
>Vision, another where they banned Invisibility. I tend not to ban spells, but
>sometimes I make it clear that I don't want them used, or I make the spells
>hard to get hold of.

And that's why I really enjoy hearing the different opinions on this list of how spells work, regardless of whether we're talking RQIII or Sandy Petersen's (sp?) rules. I've drafted my own spells lists, including a list of "lost" spells, and have made them available to my friends. I prefer to discuss spell effects with the group and, with that feedback in mind, then modify the spell descriptions to what I hope will provide the best balance for both PCs and NPCs as well as providing enough concise detail to minimize GM judgement calls. Less for me to remember and mroe playing time for all of us.

By the way, I also am a member of DUPATDUO school of thought (i.e. "Do Unto PCs As They Do Undo Others"). It does tend to turn my campaigns into a bit of an arms race but out-thinking hostile NPCs is one of the joys of roleplaying (IMO).

>In RQ2 there was a spell called Detection Blank, which was available to
>everyone, in RQ3 I think it is a cult specific spell. It blocked detect
>spells up to its own pointage, so someone with Detection Blank 4 would block
>Detect spells backed to 4 MPs/POW.
>
>Would this show up using Mystic Vision? Would you need Mystic Vision 5 to get
>through it?

I have two sorcery spells similar to this in my campaign. One is blocks detection spells but not the various magical vision spells, which can detect the blocking spell's magical energy. The second spell _does_ hide its aura from magical visions spells that are affected.

>Also, does Countermagic stop Detect spells? After all, they are magical.
>SOmeone I played with used to play that they were blocked but the caster knew
>they had been stopped.

On this one, I hold to "no". Countermagic, in my mind, is a defensive spell tailored to engage incoming hostile spells. By "hostile", I mean the incoming spell is intended to cause harm in some way.

>Ashley Munday:
>
>> I'm always very wary when people wheel out the whole
>> "game balance" argument. There's no such thing as game
>> balance in an RPG - let's face it, the GM can
>> liquidate the adventurers REAL easy without their
>> players being able to do a damned thing about it.
>
>Can we? Thanks.

Yep. It's called shutting down a campaign and never seeing the players again.

<snip>Let them do it once and congratulate them, let them do it again and say
>nothing, the third time, point out that NPCs could do it, the fourth time let
>NPCs do it better, then perhaps there won;t be a fifth time.

What?!? You actually warn your players the third time? Awfully decent of you, Simon.

My players are starting to learn that the worst outcome of any combat is not the wounds or spent magic points or broken weapons/armor. It's finding evidence afterwards that someone unknown was watching the whole time.

David