as applied to "gritty" games

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Post originally by Ken Vinson at 2004-03-25 11:50:38
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>Why should four PC magical college students stand alone against Evil >Servant #4 when their professor mentor, the occult bookstore owner, >and the psychic police detective all have better abilities? >Shouldn't they just point their army of GMCs in the right direction >and let them do the work? Sadly, most localized campaigns in my >experience invariably end up with this problem after a few >adventures.


How do you handle the above problem. Your solutions later in the article didn't seem to address this particular complication precisely.

I've had this problem in a Dark Ages Vampire game relatively recently. The PC's have made allies amongst a few of the more powerful members a city's vampire population. The problem arises thusly: I set up relationships and plot hooks between some of the major NPC's of the city and the PC's get involved in some of them. This may be peculiar to Vampire's paradigm, but NPC's in high positions tend to be personally powerful. When the PC's become involved in a plot involving rivalry among two or more of the powerful NPC's, they gather the information necessary to figure out what's going on, but then just hand the information to their patron and expect them to sort things out. All of the above is, I think, logical and consistent; but it makes for rather unexciting conclusions to stories. One solution is, of course, to just not involve the PC's in stories directly involving the machinations of the more powerful denizens of the setting. However, getting involved in the machinations of elder vampires is part and parcel in vampire games. The other solution I've applied semi-successfully is to make sure there are lackeys and lieutenants of the major NPC's that can be more safely confronted in order to frustrate the plans of said major NPC. A complication to that solution is the plausibility of an elder vampire being content to let his/her plans get frustrated by a group of lesser vampires without taking direct action to punish the PC's impudence.

Anyway, I could go on but I think I've made my point. The point being soliciting the article author's, and other's, opinions on handling situations similiar to the one I've described above.

Cheers,
Ken Vinson

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Post originally by Archangel at 2004-03-25 13:57:32
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Kill the NPC so the players have to get off their arses.

Or have the NPC make the situation worse by cack-handedly messing up whatever it is they were meant to do: "Oh, I see. That was the spell for making the portal ~permanent~, not the one for ~closing~ it."

Make the NPC into a bad guy, either betraying the PCs or being the big bad all along (or "all along, nudge, nudge," if you can get away with it).

Have the NPC refuse flat out. "Daemons? Fuck that, I'm a Theology lecturer, not a bloody exorcist!"

Here's something that might tie into your example a bit better: make it so that the elder vampire ~can't~ get involved. Maybe his rival tried to assassinate him and he's now trying to regrow his heart, or fill that hole where his face used to be.

Perhaps make it so that the elder can't get visibly involved for purely political reasons. So, the baddy needs to be taken out? But he's got powerful allies not linked to his crime. The elder won't act to take out the baddy, but will do what he can to distract the baddy's allies from working out that the PCs dunnit.

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Post originally by Ken Vinson at 2004-03-25 14:14:06
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Thanks for the advice, Archangel. All of it sounds workable. Your suggestions have gone into the "Random GM'ing Strategies" text file. :)

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Post originally by Walt C at 2004-03-25 19:13:20
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Ken,

I caught your post as I was stepping out. I thought of a few answers, but Archangel beat me to the punch and did an excellent job.

Thanks, Archangel!

Walt

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Post originally by Chris Geisel at 2004-07-08 06:48:49
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Another way to approach this is by using the 'cold war' model. The powerful NPC vampires must exist in a state of balance, where no one faction has enough juice to defeat the others. They could have a detente in place similar to that of the USSR and the USA during the cold war. Wars by proxy are permissible, but neither faction is allowed to threaten certain vital interests without risking all out war--war that would result in mutual destruction.

The down side to this is that as the proxies, the PCs will be expendable (at least from the point of view of the larger powers). They are like the spies that sometimes turn up as anonymous corpses behind enemy lines, or are left to be captured in order to save face or otherwise defuse a political situation that is heading towards war.

The important thing is to make sure that the PCs become aware of the rules--otherwise it will seem unfair. This is the equivalent to 'the State Department and CIA will deny all knowledge of this mission if you are caught'. They must know that as long as they keep to the rules of engagement, their patron will do what he can to save them. However, if they expose themselves beyond the level of plausible deniability, or if they bungle an operation in such a way to risk war, they are going to be left to fend for themselves--and maybe even turned over to the bad guys as a way of making amends and restoring the detente.