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Hearing stories like these always make me jealous. The people I can kinda get to play, would quit out on the first combat encounter :/ . I've managed to run a semi-decent call of cthulhu campaign with them, and a free style pick your adventure. We're trying again soon™️but I'm going to assume it won't live long past the first session
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@retoor yeeah, you get it. It's kind of like improvisational acting guided by a narrator that's in on the joke. Anything can happen you just need to...
~ I M A G I N E ~
@BordedDev I wrote a simplified, stripped-down ruleset for this very reason lmao. Character creation is just "pick three verbs" and then your starting equipment is mostly just for fashion. The verbs are just to define what the character can do at level 1, so we ban certain things like flying for instance, but beyond that there's not much more complexity.
Then for combat, attacks don't miss unless the target explicitly casts evade. Yeah. A bad roll just gets you lowest damage, so things are always moving. -
@Liebranca Not sure how much it'll help, since making the characters isn't so much the problem. Another one will constantly try to derail the campaign, e.g. when joining a running campaign (has only been one-or-two sessions with brand-new players), I tell him he can play whatever, just don't try to leave the town, and (it's soon going to be under attack be tieflings). Guess what he rocks up with, a tiefling with flying, and the first thing he tries to do is get everyone to leave the town... (ah and when they were still in the town and we broke up for the evening, he was going to fly to his church, I think he was playing a paladin) Guess which level 1 characters are now stuck in hell.
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@BordedDev Well, the simplification extends to all aspects of the game, I just used character creation to give you an idea of to which degree ;>
Honestly, I think the most important aspect is not so much in which story I want to tell... like yeah, I get that preparing a campaign means the story can't derail much, but hear me out... sometimes you just hafta let things happen.
But I have this in the ruleset too! Players can fuck up a given number of times, and when they do, there's an ex machina. And I make it *abundantly* clear, that it __is__, in fact, an ex machina that prevented them from meeting a gruesome end. Bonus points if you describe how terrible their deaths could've been in macabre detail.
The point is, if they don't learn to pay attention and wind up dying anyway, it's always later on. As in, I give everyone room for failure and adapt the story accordingly. So there's still consequences but they're not immediate and fatal. -
@Liebranca The "story" was for the new people to explore the (mega)city, used town accidentally, and I wouldn't have minded if they wanted to explore outside of it. It's that *he* (as the more experienced player) specifically did the things I asked him not to do. Story wise, it also wasn't possible to "walk" out either, e.g. for instance, the gates were closed with an inner parameter around the walls. They managed to get some good roles and luck, and got the info from some books in the dungeons (since mr. tiefling got himself arrested, since he's a tiefling and tieflings appear to be sieging the city) that there was a sewer that they could use as an exit. When they got there, I tried to describe at as dull as possible, but no, he had to convince to go track out into the empty planes.
And yes, as far as I remember I asked him to stop, and if he went lone-wolf it would have been easier to deal with. He got saved by the others in the dungeon just in time... -
@BordedDev But that's just the way the game plays out, people want to do crazy shit in imaginary worlds. It's kinda the whole point. You gotta let them have their fun.
A couple fucking brutal, merciless dungeon moments.
So first, we were having a chill kind of session. Throwing lots of jokes and shit, and I rolled with it. The baddie for the day, I felt inspired, and named him Fawq El-Fuqer, which yes, is very unfortunate.
Anyway, we avoid his goons and reach his impenetrable fortress of chronic masturbation, and it goes as well as you think. The rogue says hey, we gotta get him with his pants down (pause) literally. The cleric is skeptical at first, but she comes around to it.
And so we do it. I spin this tale of a man who's got a schedule tighter than his fucking asshole. El-Fuqer meticulously plans his shits, he makes it a whole ritual, even gives it a special name: Mud O'Clock.
We wait for his alarm to ring, and spring into action while he's taking a fat stinking fucking dump. The warrior kicks down the bathroom door and corners El-Fuqer while he's on the shitter, demanding satisfaction for their past romantic involment that's been strongly been hinted at, you see, she said Fuck the Fucker and I, that's history. And that's enough for a subplot if you ask me.
So where was I? Ah, yes, the rogue bursts in through the window shouting out "Mud O'Clock MOTHER FUCKER!!" and we immortalize the moment in the finest silks. The wizard then does a little Bane impression for some reason and a multitude of loud 'plops' are heard as El-Fuqer evacuates the entire content of his putrid guts.
He gets roughed up a little, you know nothing like interrogating someone after they nearly shit themselves to death. We reveal some oooh so unexpected plot twist about a portal to goddamn hell and it's like well, crap, we gotta do something about that. So the wizard and the rogue leave to give the warrior and El-Fuqer some, ehem, space to settle their score.
What followed was the most unexpected, most brilliant part of the whole session. She didn't just execute him in a brutal, gruesome manner, no, she went full fucking throttle. Forced El-Fuqer to eat his own cock and balls while sewing his ass shut, then had a bowl of bull testicle salad to drop a montanious fecal cake of biblical proportions upon his face.
Believe it or not, we made it into an emotional moment. Because everyone was shocked by how brutal the affair was. Warrior had a mental breakdown like, uuuh, I'm becoming the monsters I swore to fight ooh no. She starting shaking and crap, ran away and hid in an alley to weep, it begins raining and it's getting very dramatic, so I cook up some spirit of sorrow that goes in and helps her face her fears and shit through the power of friendship or whatever.
Moving on to second moment, this is shorter but I like it best. The cleric and another two extras went to an old shrine to try and prove the wizard wrong about his denial of prophecy. Thing is, they did the ritual wrong. And I'm usually very forgiving but I was feeling nasty after the whole sowing of the asshole thing. So I'm like, uh, I gave you fools VERY PRECISE instructions on how to perform this ritual, and you just did some wacky prayers to the moon nonsense, that's idolatry in-universe and out-of-universe too (depending on who you ask).
So I said fuck it, you guys had it coming. I whip out immortal ten-thousand year old elder sorceress bitch guardian of the holy sphincter, and it gets real pretty fucking quick. She's got sanctified heavy plate armor, blue fire torches coming out they fucking pauldrons, argent greatsword of anal judgement plus infinity, all the juiciest shit.
Anyway, the sorc descends from the sky in a pillar of azure flames and is like yo, drop that idolatrous shit right now or I'm gonna kill you all. They mistake her for angel or some shit, and are like hey chill, we're the good guys. But the sorc doesn't give a shit, and she says shut the fuck up or I'll send you to the Night Eternal, bitch.
I dunno why but the cleric and the other two extras don't get it, so they insist with the whole heyyyy we are not idolaters, we're your friends, we are questing for the mandinga mandango mcguffango. So she bisects one, breaks the neck of another, and decapitates the fucking cleric. It was awesome.
So what did we learn? idk, don't plan your dumps and don't pray to the fucking moon if you're standing on hallowed ground. *****
rant
sowing of the asshole