I found this little gem on a thread that was asking about how to make your players die on the inside. I thought that it had even better use as hate fuel to make them despise the BBEG and to want to end them to the point that it is actually affecting them (not just their characters). I have expounded upon it to really evoke the feelings from it.
[spoiler=warning:graphic material]
QuoteHave a cute little girl join up with the party for whatever reason. Perhaps she's lost, perhaps something else. Make sure that you describe in exacting detail her features, from her little cloak that her grandma made for her right up to her cute as a button giggle. Anyhow, whatever the case the party ends up taking her on. Every night that they stay camping out on the road make a secret roll for the watchman on duty to see if he stays awake. If he does, great. If not, the next morning the group wakes up.
The watchman quickly realizes that he dozed off, just in time to view a grizzly scene. The little girls body is nailed to a tree by her hands and feet, completely naked. It is obvious that she was slashed and burned and bled out for hours before she died, the only reason she made no sounds that could of alerted the group appears to be because the first thing the assailant did was knock her out long enough to sew her mouth shut. The party can see the residual relief in her remaining eye, almost as if she welcomed death gladly when it finally came.
Drawn on the ground beneath her feet is a symbol the group quickly recognizes as the mark of an enemy they have been hunting for some time. Next to the symbol is a small strip of parchment, it says simply "Your vigilance is laughable, I was able to merrily have my way with your little runt while you did nothing but snore. Next time perhaps I will have my way with one of you.".
If that doesn't drive your players to want to rip out the BBEGs still beating heart and beat him with it till it stops beating, than said players have no soul. So then to the point at hand, do you have any gems stashed away for evoking real feelings in your players? Not only rage and hate. Fear, paranoia, joy, and anything else is fine too. The idea behind them is mainly to enmesh your players deeper in your game.
are you kidding?
I'm still ducking flung erasers in the Igbarians for what I did to their first incarnation as the Grey Legion. When they let loose the Antroo Vampyre, I had it track them back to Igbar instead of kikll them on the spot...it let them think they had gotten away (it was a little weakenned at the time). But the grouip kept catching glimpses of something out of the corner of their eye of somthing trailing them.
It took 5 of the group PC's, who are now Uncompyre's under it's sway. I took their characters and made them part of the enemy.
Years earlier, Pious Pilfer, a character of one of the earlier players, was running a keep in wilderness territory. The Keep was named Jared's keep, named after Pious' dog, a white snowhound.
Morator and Yero (in the employ of Heliopolis) kidneaped the dog, and Pious and his friends tried to rescue it. I won't bore anyone with too many details, except they went to the Giantclan Silverworth's main hall. Pious first knew he was on the right track when he found one of the paws of his dog nailed to the huge outside door. [spoiler=ugg] they found other pieces later on. to create emotion, sometimes you have to make evil really evil. [/spoiler]
You want to see enraged? Don't fuck with the PC's dog.
It is also important to create value in the PC's relationships, and not to telegraph this. One of my earliest PCs, Palimar Devensheld, runs the Alternative school of Magic in Igbar. This is a character who played off and on through years of gametime, whose character has gained and lost many times. He is married to Samria, and they have a child, Salimar Samriadaughter.
Salimar, his child, was kidnapped when she was 2. Palimar and his allies went through many travails before they found she had been actually taken to the House of Earth. They finally got her back...but due to the time diffferential, she was 14 years old and barely knew them when she returned. She had gone through her own hell and was very ungrateful and blaming to her parents for leaving her there for so long, and worse, the missed much of her childhood and such. This is not so much a story of blinding hate as creating relationships and real emotion. Which is the key here. Creating real emotion, which = immersion, one of the 3 major goals.
[spoiler=Samria] The alt school of magic is one big intertwining soap opera. Really created by a PC, it has been a major part of Igbar for almost 7 game years (and 24 real years).
Salimar Earthward Samriadaughter is an NPC that comes and goes, and barely escaped the Antroo Vampyre when that creature took the stronghold of the Grey Legion. She is missing right now.
This has made Samria totally turn away from Palimar, and Samria is actually screwing around with Cyriel (Cabana Boy, we call him) of the New Legion. Palimar is never in town, as he is actually looking for Salimar.[/spoiler]
God, I could go on for hours. There have been noble last stands allowing the rest of the party escape ( a mute artist/knight of the Order of Stenron named Nighttimer comes to mind), marriages and relationships involving PCs, incredible friendships...again, it is not horror or anger that is acting by itself, it is emotional immersion. A GM has to be the leader here, he must feel for and with the PCs and NPCs. The actions of the NPCs should spring fully formed from the GM's meld with that NPCs person.
Well, before I forget I am at work, I am going to mention the stalwart Steel Isle group, and their run-in with the Witches of Vexcherilli Swamp. An NPC named Toden lost his arm in the battle with a were, and I can tell you that the PC's have a slow-burning fire burning right now on that one...
In response to Nomadic, I'm not sure if I would feel comfortable playing in a game that involves the violation and grisly murder of little girls.
Just saying.
Quote from: TheMeanestGuestIn response to Nomadic, I'm not sure if I would feel comfortable playing in a game that involves the violation and grisly murder of little girls.
Just saying.
Don't you play MAID? :p
Lots of people have been killed in very grisly ways in the game I'm running, but none of them have had any real attachment for the PCs... the Weapon Master's entire family has vanished, presumed dead, but he was only close to them in theory, as they had spent very little in-game time together, so although the character presumably felt their loss quite acutely, the player was quite detached.
The one instance of real emotional involvement has, oddly, come from a mercenary the PCs took prisoner. The Weapon Master and an Executioner who joined up for that one session brutally killed the merc's partner in front of him, so he really despised the PCs. However, for some reason, be it his hopeless plight, his broken Common, or his (apparently) humorous name, the Thief became dead set on winning him over to their side... of course this did not work, and the poor guy escaped the first time he was left to his own devices, and will return, having speed-levelled, to exact revenge for his mate's murder... bwahahaha... but yeah, the point is, for some reason I haven't quite fathomed, the Thief's player developed an almost instant attachment to the character.
Quote from: Rorschach FritosDon't you play MAID? :p
I don't play maid.
Quote from: NomadicIf that doesn't drive your players to want to rip out the BBEGs still beating heart and beat him with it till it stops beating, than said players have no soul.
Or they've gone numb from having disturbing imagery shoved down their throats by everyone from a method-describing-GM to the guy who writes those TV crime dramas.
I stopped hating the people who do that sort of thing after a while. They're so common I feel like the disturbing imagery is a part of nature, like a plague. I can't hate nature. I can only either avoid it or embrace it.
I think the de-sensitizing of people is well under way. I live in America, and it seems like we are suckers for this sort of thing. Just look at that whole slew of Saw movies, Final Destination etc. I think the term was torture-porn.
Personally, I don't think I would use anything of this sort in a game. At least not the murder/rape of children. That's a little over the top. Your trying to invoke a certain emotion from the players...get a little creative.
What I would like to see is a return to the days of Hitchcock Presents or Twilight Zone. (on TV and in Gaming , especially video games, it all went down-hill from mortal Kombat)
But I suppose it is ultimately up to what the gaming group feels comfortable with.
Quote from: SarisaBut I suppose it is ultimately up to what the gaming group feels comfortable with.
Most certainly, I'd never use something like that on TMG. I'd totally whip it out on a group of vreegs though, complete with exacting detail. The point isn't the details of the way she was murdered. The point is that all the details combined with here view as something pure causes the group utter revulsion and hate towards the person that did it to her. But again it depends on the group in question as to whether you should pull out something like that.
As to what SCMP said, I'm not a DM that throws stuff like this at people all the time, in fact I only rarely do so. Which is why even my most desensitized players generally get some shock and anger out of it, it wasn't expected at all and so it lets some of their buried revulsion shine through. What I do do is use alot of emotion evoking stuff in general to help them forget that it's just a game, which is a great way to nurture roleplay.
Something I did actually do one time was that a pc died who hadn't wanted to die. It was a really epic death (all him, I just went along with everything and added some extra touches) but he wanted to keep using his character since he liked roleplaying his attitude. It was that attitude that got the group so attached to his character and there was much anger and sadness when he passed. So I talked with him about it in private and we made a plan. In the end the group ended up continuing on with their quest through the dungeon to find the source of power that was corrupting the land above. They found it, they also found a skeleton holding a fancy sword. The warrior of the bunch thought "sweet a better sword" and picked it up without a thought. And then it spoke to him. It had been an ancestral blade owned by the "skeleton". I just modified the story a bit so that at the owners death the soul had fled. When the PC died his soul and had been drawn to the available space and bonded with it, having not wanted to yet leave the mortal realm. Anyhow when they figured out what happened they were ecstatic, one of them actually whooped in real life, it was pretty awesome. They did finally destroy the power source and had quite a few other adventures. The final one culminated with the PC sword and his wielder staying behind to hold off a load of abominations attempting to reach the surface world while the rest of the group collapsed the entrance behind them. I told in exacting details their final moments and last stand. The group wanted a statue erected because of that and so I put one in the local town square. Now that was awesome.
Please keep this thread on topic and do not reply or respond to events that happened earlier today in this thread.
Thanks
- The O.C.
That whole scene in the OP probably isn't something I'd do in one of my games for a handful of reasons.
1) When my players get close with NPCs, they don't have any special fondness for the helpless peasant family or what have you. Odds are, they'd find someone else to dump the little girl on before going back to risking life and limb on an hourly basis.
2) It doesn't make sense to keep a little girl with the party. They put her at risk by keeping her around.
3) The mechanical basis for this is save-or-die. And you wouldn't likely roll it at all under normal circumstances. And the PCs can make no decisions that will affect the outcome. Sure it's random... except for the part where you keep rolling until they fail. (even normal save or die effects can be avoided by not confronting the monster/wizard/trap, whereas players have to sleep) I know we're supposed to be "taking them out of the game," but the whole meaningful decisions affecting the outcome of events is a huge part of why I'm playing an RPG and not reading a book.
So yeah... I play rough, and I'm not above putting beloved NPCs at risk (or killing them off)... I just really really don't think this is the way to go about it.
I'm of two minds. I kind of see the merit of the OP, but I also kind of agree with beejaz. And as TMG indicates, you have to be careful with the type of players and the type of game you want.
You pull the stunt in the OP, it will forever color the rest of the campaign. No one will ever see it as the same again. So be sure your players want a change in that direction before you risk screwing up something good.
Of course, horror and things that are pulled out of the PCs control are always things you have to be careful about. If done right though they are some of the most effective tools you can use to drive roleplay. But horror isn't the focus of the thread, just an example. Do any of you have any other tools you've found for evoking feelings of fear, joy, paranoia, etc in your players themselves?
Quote from: NomadicOf course, horror and things that are pulled out of the PCs control are always things you have to be careful about. If done right though they are some of the most effective tools you can use to drive roleplay. But horror isn't the focus of the thread, just an example. Do any of you have any other tools you've found for evoking feelings of fear, joy, paranoia, etc in your players themselves?
That was kind of my (obviously lost and poorly communicated) post above; that when the players experience honest emotion in tha game, you have achieved immersion. Which = WIN.
So then throwing this out there. As an antithesis to anger has anybody successfully managed to inspire elation in their players? If so, how?
My players did something horrible once... A bit of context though. This was a Reconquista style campaign that saw Humans, Dwarves and Elves beset by Tieflings who had swept up the peninsula and darn near conquered it. However, over the past hundred years, the Humans and Dwarves reconquered much of the land that had been lost. Much blood had been spilt by both sides and neither desired the other to live. A few sessions prior to this, the PC's bore witness to a Tiefling raid that butchered a caravan of '˜innocent' slave traders and their slaves (many of whom were elven children).
[spoiler= Really Mature/Gross content] [spoiler=Seriously] [spoiler=Very Seriously]The three PCs were polymorphed into Tieflings so they could gain entrance into a cave that housed a powerful magical Orb. Unfortunately, the Cave was deep in Tiefling controlled lands and there was no way to get in except by entering through the front gate. One of the PCs wore a ring (that he had picked up in a previous adventure), a ring that belonged to a Tiefling Duke. When the PCs walked up to the cave entrance, one of the guards recognized the ring, and began to prostrate. When asked why he was doing this, the Tiefling explained that the Duke was the ruler of these lands and that he (and he alone) had sole dominion over its people.
Knowing Tiefling customs, the PC in question demanded the guard stop prostrating and sing folk songs (a very common request (Tieflings love song)). Without question, the guard began to sing. The PC then commanded the other guard to kiss the first guard. After some hesitancy, the second guard gave the first a peck on the cheek. The PC posing as the Duke shook his head and said 'kiss [the first guard] as you kiss your wives. The second guard wavered but gave in to his lord's order and commenced with the kissing.
After a good 5 minutes of the players laughing hysterically, they commanded the second guard to cut out the tongue of the first Tiefling, then gather enough wood to start a fire with which to cook the tongue; once cooked, the tongue was to be fed to its original owner.
Famished from their lordly exploits, the PCs asked to go to the nearest Tiefling village; once there, they ordered all of the females to strip naked so that the Duke could create a new harem for himself and pass the remaining women onto his two companions (to do with as they pleased). Two of the PCs simply (ab)used the women to their pleasure. One, however, asked the first guard (from before) to point out his family. The PC then commanded, in the name of the Duke, that his family should have relations with one another while the tongue-less Tiefling watched helplessly. When the family was spent the PC ordered the tongue-less guard to gouge out the eyes of his family, then disembowel each in turn.
While this was going on, the first two PCs gathered all of the villagers into the town hall and ordered them to stay put no matter what. The PCs then lit the building on fire and listened as 50 tieflings cried out in horror, shock, hatred and pain. When all was said and done, only the tongue-less guard remained alive.
Just as the PCs were wrapping up their (for lack of a better word) unscrupulous activities in the village, a patrol of Tiefling soldiers chanced upon the ruined village. Horrified, they flung themselves against the unprepared PCs. Sheer numbers led the Tieflings to victory. It was revealed to the PCs (who's polymorph was dispelled by a mage) that one of the women in the village was chosen as the King's latest acquisition for his Harem. The cost of killing her would be great. The PCs were unceremoniously brought before the King and his whole Court; the King condemned each PC to 10,000 consecutive slow and painful deaths while wearing Dalcat Amulets (which paralyze the wearer and chain their souls to their bodies).
Each morning, the PCs would have a rope tied to their necks and then be dragged through the streets from the prison tower to the King's castle (about a quarter of a mile separated the two buildings). While being dragged the commonfolk were free to throw rocks at the helpless PCs. Once in the Royal Castle, the PCs would have their tongues cut out, then forced down their gullets just prior to being shoved into a dark pit filled with a hundred ravenous rats who slowly ate each PC while they were helpless to resist. When the sun finally set, the PCs would be levitated out of the pit and have their wounds stitched together by clerics, with the clear understanding that the whole process would begin again in the morning. [/spoiler] [/spoiler] [/spoiler]
Needless to say, this was the absolute low point of my DM career. My group is not normally like this (though in the past, they have slain orc and goblin children in cold blood), so I must admit I was fascinated to see my players, who had obviously been corrupted by absolute dominion over a people they hated with a passion, go to such depraved lengths for their jollies (and/or revenge).
To this day I'm still not sure the Players truly grasp what they did (or even if they care)'¦ So I suppose my overall point might be that my players allowed me to forget that this was a game . I felt for those Tieflings, even though they were all nameless and unimportant in the grand scheme of things, I felt for each and every one'¦ Which is why I probably handed down such a stiff sentence but that's a totally different topic.
EE,
First off, this shows that it can go both ways. The GM often must be able to feel the reality of his/her setting before the players can.
[ic=me, earlier]
There have been noble last stands allowing the rest of the party escape ( a mute artist/knight of the Order of Stenron named Nighttimer comes to mind), marriages and relationships involving PCs, incredible friendships...again, it is not horror or anger that is acting by itself, it is emotional immersion. A GM has to be the leader here, he must feel for and with the PCs and NPCs. The actions of the NPCs should spring fully formed from the GM's meld with that NPCs person. [/ic]
I also think that when you handed down the sentence you did, you were channelling the King pretty well. He had seen the actions of the PCs to his people, and had responded accordingly.
I have many of my own ideas what makes a good or bad setting, and a good or bad GM. One of the easiest tests for me is the interaction between pcs and oppponents. If every orc or lizardman the PC's fight is the same despicable, human hating, traditional Chaotic-evil, mindless thug...something is missing.
This, by the way, is the same as if every LG priest they run into is pure love stupid, unable to preceive the necessary cost-benefits of the world.
EE, I also like fact you brought up the acts of War, caps intentional. I very carefully and intentionally integrated some traditionally 'evil' races into the population of Celtricia, with the understandiong that once, these 'ogrillite' races were the soldiery of Darkness, but that millenia had passed, and orcs (orcash), Bugbears (gartier), and Ogres (Ograk) (as well as Gnollic and Goblins in some areas) could be found in town as well as holing up in old mines.
It changes things.
I've always liked the idea of using our games to explore racisim, propaganda, culturalism, and nationalism. There were and are 'humanist' (anti-humanoid) elements in Celtricia, as well as prgressive integrated groups. The game is as real and immersed as you make it.
Much as I normally like deep immersion games, I think it's important to realize that's not the only approach. Making your players forget it's a game is not necessarily always the goal of gaming. They may want a so-called Beer and Pretzels game and an emotional roller-coaster may not be fun for them. And really, fun is the reason to play games. Anything which is not fun, that's when you've really missed the boat.
Quote from: PhoenixMuch as I normally like deep immersion games, I think it's important to realize that's not the only approach. Making your players forget it's a game is not necessarily always the goal of gaming. They may want a so-called Beer and Pretzels game and an emotional roller-coaster may not be fun for them. And really, fun is the reason to play games. Anything which is not fun, that's when you've really missed the boat.
[ooc](Insert Capt Sobel voice from BoB episode 1 when someone tells him their group can climb over the barbed wire fence)
"Really, We play for fun?" [/ooc]
Phoenix, you may be responding to my overt zeal and absolutism, trying to provide a moderating influence. Fine, Normally I would not really care. I freely admit that once in a while, I need a modulating influence, and you are certainly good for that (amongst other things, of course).
But this is a setting design site, and a setting design thread. And while any asshole or middling-level GM can create a shallow campaign, one of the most difficult elements a GM and setting creator has to deal with is the creating of immersion, emotional and otherwise. I can agree that sometimes different levels of violence and depth fit different GM and different groups, but we're trying to pinpoint elemets of a really difficult-to-master design end-goal.
Immersion does not equal fun. Immersion does, to a large degree, equate to involvement and investiture.
Much love to Phoenix, BTW, for all the hard work on the CBG, and for all the refereeing you do.
Quote from: Elemental_ElfMy players did something horrible once... [...]
WTF?! I mean... seriously... come on! :huh:
If I had been the GM I'd have nonchalantly taken their character sheets, ripped them to pieces and told them to GTFO of my home (or pick up my stuff and leave). I'd seriously not bother wasting my time with freaks wanting to play out some perverted torture fantasies - and I'd tell that any player right into the face if he pulled such a stunt at my table.
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."--Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146I wouldn't have bothered with dishing out some sort of (in that situation absolutely irrelevant) ingame punishment - I'd have ended the campaign right there and refused to do any DMing for them again. Congratulations, your players have finally completed their long journey to the Dark Side (tm). *shudder*
You ask, why I would react that harshly to such ingame actions? Because stuff like this completely sucks the fun for me out of the game. While I'm not objected to run "Evil" campaigns (at least in theory, so far none of my players had the balls to try it...) I don't want to merely provide a stage for people to live out some wierd torture and maiming fantasies. Just as not every actor is comfortable or willing to impersonate a mass murderer, torturer, or rapist I am not comfortable with such characters in my campaign.
And because I know how much such actions/descriptions suck if you're not comfortable with them, I abstain from using them myself as the DM. Instead of describing in utter detail how a person was tortured to death I simply say "and you realize that the poor victim must have suffered through hours of pain and agony before finally succumbing to his wounds". That's imho enough to allow the players to get involved emotionally, without grossing them out.
Addendum:The situation described in the OP also throws up a very problematic situation: if the villain knows that the PCs oppose him, and he can get that close to them that easily, why the heck doesn't he simply kill them off? Why does he allow them to live any longer and possibly thwart any of his plans? The "stupid villain" trope strikes again?
Further, it would induce a feeling of complete powerlessness in the players, as they've just been given the proof that they are opposing a force that can readily and easily finish them off without breaking a sweat and there is nothing their characters can do about it. Why should they continue fighting their fight against this all powerful and (supposedly) all knowing villain?
As I said, I like deep immersion (most of the time).
But I've seen good games ruined by trying too hard to force players into it. Hence the advice, make sure you and the players both want something like that before getting into it.
And I don't think casual gaming is incompatible with good setting design--or good game design.
Quote from: Ra-TielFurther, it would induce a feeling of complete powerlessness in the players, as they've just been given the proof that they are opposing a force that can readily and easily finish them off without breaking a sweat and there is nothing their characters can do about it. Why should they continue fighting their fight against this all powerful and (supposedly) all knowing villain?
I don't know, why should anybody even try to oppose some great evil? Frodo and Sam should of just turned tail and ran back to Rivendell, likewise for old Bilbo when faced with the horrors of mirkwood. What makes such a story of worthwhile is the fact that (keeping with the Tolkienian flow of things here) "Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something. That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for." Maybe the BBEG can finish you off, but you're going to give him hell before he does... because if you don't, more innocents will suffer, and you might just succeed no matter how small a chance you have.
You want to make your group do that, you make em angry at the bad guy and watch them surprise you. You might just end up crafting a legend with them, their epic struggle vs evil.
-----
Oh and as an aside I agree that immersion does not equal fun. It can create fun but if forced can ruin it, and the point of a game is to have fun. So like has been said, it depends on your players. Sometimes people just want to run a stupid good slashfest with beer and pizza for all. Those can be fun too.
Did anyone in the LotR-verse face Sauron personally? No. They'd have died. Lucky for them, Sauron was nailed to the floor and could only send proxies of varying degrees of defeatability.
See above, the mechanics behind this give the villain effective omnipotence. You roll in secret every night until someone fails = it happens regardless and you may as well not roll for it.
Also, see again how the PCs are idiots for taking a little girl on their trips, and how the villain's world apparently revolves around the PCs (which is kind of shallow villain motivation... something I think would break immersion.)
As for the ordering people to do things... I see a handful of problems... everyone recognised the ring, but no one recognised the noble's face? Additionally, unless it is magically enforced, most peoples' loyalty (even most fascists' loyalty) would break under these circumstances. A few would resist... and then the rest would get the hint that everyone wants these suddenly imperious bastards dead... and then nothing would stop them from killing the party. Absolute loyalty to a stranger in the absolute absence of an enforcement method to the point of staying in a burning building or killing family or what have you? Would break immersion for me. A few individuals might have that kind of loyalty, but not a whole town.
Out of time for the moment, but I've got my own stories to share when I get back later.
Quote from: beejazzSee above, the mechanics behind this give the villain effective omnipotence. You roll in secret every night until someone fails = it happens regardless and you may as well not roll for it.
Also, see again how the PCs are idiots for taking a little girl on their trips, and how the villain's world apparently revolves around the PCs (which is kind of shallow villain motivation... something I think would break immersion.)
[/quote]
See above about taking a little girl on their trips. Also, sorry I don't see how the villains world revolves around the PCs just because he decides to toy with them. That's like saying a cat's world revolves around some random mouse it is playing with. The mouse is certainly totally focused on the cat but the cat is probably only paying a little attention to the mouse. Hence you have both motivation of anger (which often creates immersion) and a way to justify them being able to defeat this "cat" despite his obvious abilities (his lack of attention drawn from his pride in his abilities).
Quote from: Nomadic[...] It just becomes more likely if the PCs are lazy or think they can protect her. [...]
in the PCs own campsite[/i], why on earth do you think the players would think they'd have a chance to notice another PC being killed at night? :huh:
A possible dialog between the players and the GM after such an event is imho much more likely to go like
[ooc]"Oh fine, the BBEG can walk right up into our camp and kill the girl without Mr "I don't need to sleep and have Perception +29" Elven Ranger here even noticing it? Great, how are we supposed to protect us from such an enemy? Why don't you just CdG everyone as we apparently can't do anything against it anyway!"[/ooc]
rather than
[ooc]"That was really immersive. We'll surely kill that bastard!"[/ooc]
;)
Also, depending on the game system you may even be outright breaking several rules that would have allowed the PCs to intervene or at least notice/react to the intrusion of their campsite. I really don't think that it's a good idea to undermine the players' trust in the rules in such a way as it may lead to frustration and resignation ("we can't do anything about it, Plot ex Machina"). If the players fail to set up a nightwatch or neglect their protection in a hostile environment and additionally rolled extremely bad for their Perception checks and the assassin abducted the girl, killed her, and later returned the body, then it's a whole different story because then it played out in accordance to the rules and wasn't superimposed on the PCs. But the situation as described in the OP does not add to the game, quite the contrary imho.
Quote from: Ra-Tiel...snip...
Let's please get back on topic. We can argue semantics all day about this but it is getting more and more off topic. The OP was a quickly thought up example and tearing it apart for loopholes is a bit silly. :P
I find the idea of immersion quite a complex one. In the game I run, I would say that the players certainly care about their characters, certain NPCs, events in the world, et cetera. I think that is one level of immersion.
However, at the same time, during sessions there are often off-topic interjections, out-of-character jokes, and the like. Technically, this would, I suppose, be indicative of a lack of immersion.
However, I'm more inclined to think that, in our case, anyway, it's simply that the immersion is a little more abstracted than it might otherwise be.
I'm not quite sure what I've actually ended up saying with this post, now, but hey, it's nearly half past two, and my eyes are a little heavy, I'm sure I'm allowed to not quite make sense :)
I suppose my general (if vague) point is, what exactly is it we're talking about when it comes to immersion? How much does immersion and, as it might be thought of, "true" or "hardcore" roleplaying need to overlap? I suppose, in my example, I'm saying not too much...
I don't think the point is entirely semantic. When you start talking about deliberately provoking the players' emotions, it is really easy to miscalculate, to misjudge your group, or otherwise seriously err-- to profound negative effect.
[spoiler=this time it is just semantics though]The thread title is a little strange; obviously "just a game" is exactly what it is. What we're aiming to do, in this thread, is to draw people further into an imaginary world, not to encourage them to commit fully to a "real" one.
It is a minor distinction, but I think it's a telling one; we run into problems if we forget which world is real and which is the story-- such as by offering (in the name of "realism") graphic or gruesome tidbits to a group who finds them distasteful.[/spoiler]
I've found that an effective way to "draw people in" (without buckets of red-dyed corn syrup from the props department) is to create a mystery.
Now, creating a situation that's as baffling to the players as it is to their characters has its own pitfalls, certainly. (That's probably a topic for another thread.) But spin a tangled-enough web, such that the players are wondering aloud (and quite OOC-ly, too!) about whether the mysterious Man In Grey can be trusted, whether the helpless-seeming noble is the schemer at the center of the web, or where the callous guardsman's loyalties lie, and they'll be up and alert at the gaming table. There seems to be little middle-ground, in a certain type of mystery game, between frenetically shouting whodunit theories and being fast asleep (and any competent narrator can shift that dynamic in the desired direction).
Players are good at jumping to conclusions, filling in crazy theories after the fact. As a GM, I often find it best suits my purposes to let their wildest, craziest conclusions be correct, even if it means shifting parts of the story they weren't yet aware of to make it so. When their theories are borne out over the course of the game's exciting conclusion, they'll think they're geniuses for figuring out your bizarre scheme, and they'll think you're a genius for concocting it to begin with. Everybody wins.
By way of example, I ran a game a year or so ago where, after a few sessions of running afoul of various cultist minions (often disguised) amid random townfolk, the players discovered evidence that the villain they tracked, whose identity they still didn't quite know, could steal faces. Like, literally, I steal your face and afterwards I can perfectly disguise myself to look like you, and you also have no face anymore, the front of your head is just blank.
Take a moment to consider just how creepy that actually is.
So the players discover that their enemy can steal faces, and can potentially look like anyone. They wrack their brains, going over the last few sessions of material, searching their memories for every NPC that I might have cleverly planted weeks ago that might be the shapeshifting face-stealer in disguise. They suspect the innocent noblewoman (correctly), the ascetic monk (incorrectly), the pregnant refugee on the train (absurdly)... on and on down the list. Their paranoia knew no bounds!
So I let them be correct, and inflated the conspiracy to much grander proportions than I had originally planned.
When they finally defeated the foul creature, and it begged for its unnatural life before them, it shifted through various guises during its supplication-- most of the ones they'd suspected, and a few they hadn't, for good measure. Mostly because I wanted to confirm their suspicions without just telling them, OOC, that they'd been correct; not at all because I expected them to grant mercy to this villain after all the mayhem it had caused (they didn't).
Quote from: Luminous CrayonI don't think the point is entirely semantic. When you start talking about deliberately provoking the players' emotions, it is really easy to miscalculate, to misjudge your group, or otherwise seriously err-- to profound negative effect.
[spoiler=this time it is just semantics though]The thread title is a little strange; obviously "just a game" is exactly what it is. What we're aiming to do, in this thread, is to draw people further into an imaginary world, not to encourage them to commit fully to a "real" one.
It is a minor distinction, but I think it's a telling one; we run into problems if we forget which world is real and which is the story-- such as by offering (in the name of "realism") graphic or gruesome tidbits to a group who finds them distasteful.[/spoiler]
I've found that an effective way to "draw people in" (without buckets of red-dyed corn syrup from the props department) is to create a mystery.
Now, creating a situation that's as baffling to the players as it is to their characters has its own pitfalls, certainly. (That's probably a topic for another thread.) But spin a tangled-enough web, such that the players are wondering aloud (and quite OOC-ly, too!) about whether the mysterious Man In Grey can be trusted, whether the helpless-seeming noble is the schemer at the center of the web, or where the callous guardsman's loyalties lie, and they'll be up and alert at the gaming table. There seems to be little middle-ground, in a certain type of mystery game, between frenetically shouting whodunit theories and being fast asleep (and any competent narrator can shift that dynamic in the desired direction).
Players are good at jumping to conclusions, filling in crazy theories after the fact. As a GM, I often find it best suits my purposes to let their wildest, craziest conclusions be correct, even if it means shifting parts of the story they weren't yet aware of to make it so. When their theories are borne out over the course of the game's exciting conclusion, they'll think they're geniuses for figuring out your bizarre scheme, and they'll think you're a genius for concocting it to begin with. Everybody wins.
By way of example, I ran a game a year or so ago where, after a few sessions of running afoul of various cultist minions (often disguised) amid random townfolk, the players discovered evidence that the villain they tracked, whose identity they still didn't quite know, could steal faces. Like, literally, I steal your face and afterwards I can perfectly disguise myself to look like you, and you also have no face anymore, the front of your head is just blank.
Take a moment to consider just how creepy that actually is.
So the players discover that their enemy can steal faces, and can potentially look like anyone. They wrack their brains, going over the last few sessions of material, searching their memories for every NPC that I might have cleverly planted weeks ago that might be the shapeshifting face-stealer in disguise. They suspect the innocent noblewoman (correctly), the ascetic monk (incorrectly), the pregnant refugee on the train (absurdly)... on and on down the list. Their paranoia knew no bounds!
So I let them be correct, and inflated the conspiracy to much grander proportions than I had originally planned.
When they finally defeated the foul creature, and it begged for its unnatural life before them, it shifted through various guises during its supplication-- most of the ones they'd suspected, and a few they hadn't, for good measure. Mostly because I wanted to confirm their suspicions without just telling them, OOC, that they'd been correct; not at all because I expected them to grant mercy to this villain after all the mayhem it had caused (they didn't).
Now that is an awesome example. The mystery evokes a feeling of paranoia in the players and the reveal gives them a sense of pride. Great tie together those two.
Quote from: beejazzDid anyone in the LotR-verse face Sauron personally? No. They'd have died. Lucky for them, Sauron was nailed to the floor and could only send proxies of varying degrees of defeatability.
I misspoke... yeah... in LOTR it's all proxy battles. Mental battles with a weakened foe whose only *direct* weapons are despair, temptation, and surveillance are on the level of proxy battles IMO.
Quote from: beejazzSee above, the mechanics behind this give the villain effective omnipotence. You roll in secret every night until someone fails = it happens regardless and you may as well not roll for it.
There are a handful of problems that remain.
1) Making up a new way to fail as the situation demands: You would never roll to stay awake under normal circumstances. Feels metagamey and immersion breaking.
2) Critical fail rules for the villain are at least a step in the right direction... away from perfect knowledge of whether or not he's detected.
3) What is a little girl doing out in this wilderness.
4) The villain stalked the PCs into the woods to mess with them. I get the cat and mouse bit... but this cat is in the walls. It's lots of focus and energy spent on something ostensibly unimportant. When it comes to villains, I find it much more natural to assume that the enmity arises from the villain pursuing schemes unrelated to the PCs that the PCs get in the way of for some reason or another.
If I tried this particular *brand* of trying to impact the players, I would not roll to stay awake unless I had established that precedent. If there was no watch for some reason, I would allow rolls to wake up during the event. No roll necessary once things get underway, just a chance for the foe to get a surprise round. Then there would be a hungry bear (or owlbear) instead of a stalker villain. If you're working suddenly, the moment of panic might be the better way to go than the plot device in hopes of a vendetta.
What I'm saying is that if I pulled this on my players, I think the girl and the villain come across as shallow plot-device characters. And to bring this back around to the original topic, I am of the opinion that if you want to have an emotional impact the quick fix pales in comparison to the slow buildup.
In my last campaign, fairly early on, the party left the dungeon being chased by a horde of ghouls that had recently been released (not so much chased as the ghouls come out in droves at sunset). They took shelter in the home of a family of peasant farmers. Then the ghouls came demanding the urn the party had taken from the dungeon (the urn was the thing that "released" the ghouls when it was stolen). Anyway, I had intended for some hide-and-seeking in the fields against some uncountable horde of ghouls when the players went for the quick fix and burned the fields down. A handful of family members died and the NPC farmer family had no food nor way of making money. I played up the sob story a tiny bit, and out of guilt, some of the kinder members of the party actually took these guys back to town and set them up with a bakery. Innit cool?
Fast forward to much later when the blackhand gang (working for the rich Merton Blaggart who has teamed up with the Barber Isenbecker in the hopes that the latter will bring his dead girlfriend back to life) is posing as the clergy of a new faith and distributing bread and soup in the midst of a famine. The PCs find out that the bread and soup are tainted with stuff that will turn those who eat it into more ghouls... and it's being made by the family of farmers (who have no idea what they're doing... but the "Path of Light" provides grain, money, and that weird grey stuff they call a "nutritional supplement"). The revulsion of the players as they watched one of the young men of the family munching on a loaf of bread was palpable. And then the party had to attack a bunch of benevolent clergy working a soup kitchen in front of a mass of starving people... fun times. They got a little overzealous maybe... not killing townfolk (they would not have hesitated to do that earlier in the campaign) but actually successfully kidnapping the rich Blaggart.
I'll type up more little stories later if anyone's interested, but yeah. IME it's all about the buildup. In this particular example, they knew that Blaggart wanted Ms. Fairweather... they investigated Ms. Fairweather's murder. They saw Isenbecker's corpse hanging from the rafters and met him when he came back from the grave (he scared them so much it took the events of the above anecdote to convince them to confront him). They helped Blaggart become wealthy by fixing illegal gladiatorial matches. The final plotline had many characters the PCs had befriended initially being either hurt or manipulated by the villain, and because the PCs had helped establish the situation by their own peculiar combination of successes and failures they felt more involved and more responsible than they would have if I had rushed it.
Quote from: NomadicLet's please get back on topic. We can argue semantics all day about this but it is getting more and more off topic. The OP was a quickly thought up example and tearing it apart for loopholes is a bit silly. :P
I don't think it's entirely semantics of a quick example.
The temptation to take away some (or all) of the PCs rules-given power to pull off a certain situation is very real for the DM. In your example it was denying the PCs any Perception checks to prevent the murderer of the girl, in another example it may be delaying initiative checks by one round to make sure the PCs can't prevent the killing of innocents/trap activation/etc, while in yet another example it may be denying the PCs any Insight checks to find out the noble's lying to them.
While doing such a thing may be an easy and quick way to set up a certain situation, it's a dangerous pitfall that often comes back to bite you later.
Quote from: Ra-TielQuote from: NomadicLet's please get back on topic. We can argue semantics all day about this but it is getting more and more off topic. The OP was a quickly thought up example and tearing it apart for loopholes is a bit silly. :P
I don't think it's entirely semantics of a quick example.
The temptation to take away some (or all) of the PCs rules-given power to pull off a certain situation is very real for the DM. In your example it was denying the PCs any Perception checks to prevent the murderer of the girl, in another example it may be delaying initiative checks by one round to make sure the PCs can't prevent the killing of innocents/trap activation/etc, while in yet another example it may be denying the PCs any Insight checks to find out the noble's lying to them.
While doing such a thing may be an easy and quick way to set up a certain situation, it's a dangerous pitfall that often comes back to bite you later.
Stop that you. The OP was an exploration of the effects of anger in regards to immersion not the focus of the thread itself. The focus of the thread is "How do you immerse players in your setting through the evocation of real feelings/what are your thoughts on doing so?"
Just want to say, I agree so much with LC about mystery. I think it's my favourite, and possibly the best, way of creating immersion and player involvement. Speaking also from my (infrequent) experiences as a player rather than a GM, I can honestly say I LOVE not knowing what the fuck is going on (although obviously, it does help to eventually find out)
Quote from: KindlingJust want to say, I agree so much with LC about mystery. I think it's my favourite, and possibly the best, way of creating immersion and player involvement. Speaking also from my (infrequent) experiences as a player rather than a GM, I can honestly say I LOVE not knowing what the fuck is going on (although obviously, it does help to eventually find out)
Tying this together, I will put it on the table that perhaps curiousity and the dicovery urge are strong player emotions as well.
One thing about mystery and curiousity, you need patience and versimilitude.
Any mystery where answers are force-fed loses the players, and also the story must really hang together.
And they have to figure it out for themselves.For instance, my Igbarians (finally, after 2 yrs of waiting) bothered to search some old documents and ask some oldsters about what tombs wer actually in the Sunken boneyard they have been battling undead in for over 2 FRIGGIN YEARS of real time. They found out that the deepest tomb, the one that abutts an older wall of the city, is actually the tomb of the Steel Libram, a place where people were dissapearing from before the Undead Curse, and where they had actually fought a greater wraith in the attic.
You could see the lightbulbs on top of their heads go on, the moment of, "AH-HA" was that strong.
Now, I could have gotten frustrated any time in the last year or so and slipped them the info. But that would have cheated the players and the campaign of that whole , "AH-HA" moment. The players were on an intellectual, totally immersed high for the rest of the session.
But to make this happen, all the facts have to hang together, and the GM has to have patience.
or, as Kindling says,
[blockquote=Kindling]I can honestly say I LOVE not knowing what the fuck is going on (although obviously, it does help to eventually find out)[/blockquote]
Yes that AHA! moment as you put it is a wonderful way to get your players excited (and patting themselves on the back for finally figuring it out... heck if you give them a chance to use that new knowledge to achieve something they couldn't before they'll probably start dancing :P ).
Betrayal and choices are my favirote tools for immersion. By choices I mean difficult choices. Does the one child your swore to protect really mean more then the thousand other people living in the town. I love it when the PCs disagree, and then they fight in game. I don't mean becoming mortal enemies, but something like the below.
I was running a campaign where drow were secretly invading the town and dragging away strong young men to use as slaves, and children to raise as strong slaves. There was a swashbuckling rogue who was fighting the drow wholeheartedly because he was a slave once and thought freedom the most important value. There was the knight who followed the law above all else, and swore to stop this injustice and evil if it was the death of him. Then there was the orc barbarian and the wizard.
The group had taken a drow male prisoner and told him they would let him free if he told where the drow were coming from. The drow happily agreed to this, and told them that there was a well in the cellar of the tavern that his group had found an opening through and was continuing to come through. Even after keeping his share of the deal, the drow was not released because the knight refused to let him go. He brought the helpless dark elf to the court to be executioned. This angered the guy playing the rogue in real life, and in the game his character reacted the same way.
Earlier on in this game, the rogue, barbarian and wizard had sworn to protect one family's child from the drow. This child was kidnapped by them, and the PCs were in the process of pursuing the drow into the Underdark to save the child, despite threats of an oncoming invasion against the city. However, the knight insisted that they stay and the thousand people living there were more important then any one individual. Angered, the rogue yelled at him in game, saying that his idea of 'justice' was inhumane and emotionless. The PCs ended up in a short duel of blades and insults. It was awesome. The players were so into it, and the story and conflict created by the PCs along that I had not even planned on was beautiful.
Also, my remark about betrayal in the first bit. Have an NPC befriend the PCs then betray them in the most coldhearted way possible. They will want to rip his heart out.
Quote from: SurvivormanHave an NPC befriend the PCs then betray them in the most coldhearted way possible. They will want to rip his heart out.
I recall a game I read about one time where the PCs traveling companion and good friend was actually the BBEG the whole time. It was a deliciously evil thing for the DM to pull.
Quote from: NomadicQuote from: SurvivormanHave an NPC befriend the PCs then betray them in the most coldhearted way possible. They will want to rip his heart out.
I recall a game I read about one time where the PCs traveling companion and good friend was actually the BBEG the whole time. It was a deliciously evil thing for the DM to pull.
I actually did that once or twice. [note] Pious is run by Grak's Player. [/note]
Pious Pilfer was captured by Morator, Yellow Robe Rank in the Collegium Arcana, along with his dog. (I've mentined the Dog before...) He imprisoned them in the bowels of the lair of the Gianclan Silverworth. Then he went out to Stenron, and tried to join Chunk's resuce attempt. I never expected him to get away with it, I was just playing Morator as being the sneaky bastard he is.
I never expected him to get all the way inside and then be able to backstab three PCs.