Re: [DL] You have to pay to play

[Brett Dixon <balance@tubas.net>]

On Wednesday, December 4, 2002, at 01:29  PM, Allan Seyberth wrote:

> Quoting Janne Matti Oskari Vuorenmaa <jvuorenm@cc.hut.fi>:
>
>>>> All it takes to get inside is a piece of your soul.
>>> This one's got my vote.
>>> I can just hear the gunslinger now.  "I'm not going in there!  You 
>>> go in
>>> there! Yer the huckster!"
>>
>> I vote for the babies. Babies are gooood.. in the evil kind of way.
>
> And what group of heroes is actually going to go for this price?  Or 
> the
> sacrifice of a blessed, or the soul of a loved one?

The way this adventure is being sprung, it's the second of four fetch 
quests (my term for the sterotypical "go get the widget so we can save 
the world or something") but the posse doesn't exactly know what 
they're looking for, except it's a 'doll in the shape of the betrayer.' 
As such, they'll know they need to get in because of some clues they've 
been given earlier.

This is, in my opinion, the best adventure I've written. I may try to 
make a more generic variant after it's written and send it in for the 
epitaph if I can make it work on it's own. As is, some aprts rely on 
the fact that I have in my posse a gambler (learning the way of the 
Huckster) and a Blood Mage (Who'd merrily kill for occult tomes... He 
may learn a lot here, if you catch my drift). The rest of the posse 
includes a Saloon Gal, a Mad Scientist, a soldier, and a shootist.

As you say, certain goals are just too harsh, and I encourage an 
admittedly laid-back sense of morality in my game. Basically, heroic 
types and the better role-players get more 'breaks' from the marshall 
than their less moral counterparts. I think requiring something truly 
evil like babies, or the sacrifice of a blessed or loved one, would be 
over the top.

> That just isn't a heroic thing to do.  Any posse I've ran would have 
> sat there
> and said "screw it" and tried to find a way around it.  At least 
> that's what
> happened whenever I put a moral dilemma in front of them.  But I're 
> never
> railroaded them into being forced into doing something so blatantly 
> out of
> character.

Again, I agree. My posse has a grey hat or two (The Blood Mage, mostly, 
and a few have some nasty stuff in their background, but I consider 
current actions the basis for heroism, not the past...) but requiring 
something like this.... I'm going to have enough trouble in a few 
months when the HoE Posse gets to a certain part of Unity. (If you 
don't know... you don't want to!)

Anyway, thank you all for your suggestions. I think I'm leaning towards 
some variation of the 'stolen memory' theme. The idea of treating it 
kind of like the rule in _Book O' The Dead_ for memory blanks is 
intriguing.... I tell my players that the price is one memory of 
perfect happiness, they step through the door... and every character 
gets a nice new hindrance to use later.

Thanks to everyone for your help...