RE: [DL] Campaign Post (Very Long)

["Jeff Yates" <jyates@primaryfunction.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-deadlands@gamerz.net 
> [mailto:owner-deadlands@gamerz.net] On Behalf Of Ben Rasmussen
> Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2002 1:59 PM
> To: deadlands@gamerz.net
> Subject: Re: [DL] Campaign Post (Very Long)
> 
> 
> From: "Marguerite Frey" <natasha_corey@yahoo.com>
> > --- Jeff Yates <jyates@primaryfunction.com> wrote:
> > > Perhaps my choice of words wasn't so hot.  ... But a
> > > posse that is feeling the horror you want to build
> > > should look at you sideways an awful lot.
> >
> > > Or maybe this is shorter -- I've scared my posse,
> > > and you've got to trust the Marshal to be fair, or
> > > it's not scary.  Yeah, "mistrust" was the wrong
> > > word.
> >
> > Ah... that makes a lot more sense.  As my Marshall
> > puts it, "I don't kill the players.  I give them the
> > chance to kill themselves."  Boy do we seem to take
> > him up on that an awful lot.
> >
> > My initial reaction was to what I (mistakenly)
> > intrepreted as the "killer GM."
> 
> I don't even give my players a chance to kill themselves, 
> they make their own!
> 
> I could start the adventure in a featureless 20X20 room with 
> no doors and the PC's all buck naked and they'd still end up 
> wanted by the local law, hunted by evil, and set on fire.
> 
> Yet, stick them in a death trap that has no solution and 
> sudently they're all friggin' MacGyver!
> 

The entire group I play with is like that.  We rotate games and GMs, and
no matter what system or GM, the party/posse will be totally stymied by
a simple pit or cliffside.  But put us up against an army of undead or a
dragon (maze or otherwise) and we kick butt.  Put a large box marked
INSTANT DEATH on the side, scatter a handful of very dead corpses around
it to emphasize the point, and we'll lose two characters to it.  Put a
pit on a trail/hallway, fully lit, and the first two characters will
fall in.  "Roll a Spot/Cognition Check."  "What do I need?"  "Just don't
go bust!"  "I got a 1."  <sigh>  "You fall in the pit. Who's next?"  "I
attempt to leap over the pit." "But there's someone in front of you."
"I push him to the side and continue my leap."  "You're kidding, right?"
"Nope.  Let me roll a ... Erm, I got a 1." <sigh>  "How about the guy
climbing out, what did you roll for Climb?"  "Rolled pretty good, so I
should be about 20' up."  "Great, which side did you climb?"  "Well, the
same side that everyone else is on.  I don't want to be alone!"  "Wait,
you could actually be across the pit, but don't want to?"  "Yeah."
<sigh> "Both of you roll dice to see if you avoid each other as one
climbs up and the other falls in."  "We got 1s."  "You both fall to the
bottom." <sigh>

Jeff "Paraphrasing the heck out of an hour of trying to defeat a pit" Y.