Re: [HOE] Stone 1, Posse 0 (Spoiler)

["Michael Maguire" <mikejmaguire@hotmail.com>]

Gotta love players, eh?

It's the eternal bane of many Marshals/GMS/DMs/Storytellers etc.:  introduce 
something really nasty as part of the story or for foreshadowing and you run 
the risk of someone with britches bigger than the state of Texas wanting to 
take a poke at it.

I've had to deal with two forms of this problem in my gaming day.

1)  "No!  We can take him!" - The players keep hurling themselves at the 
character or critter in question until he/she/it/they get so fed up with 
firing warning shots and b***h slapping the pcs around that you just have to 
give the players what they want...  a butt whuppin'.

2)  "No fair!  When did you become a "killer gm"?" - The every popular 
player (thankfully I've only had this type a couple times over the years) 
who believes there should be nothing in any game that he or she can't kill 
single handedly.  When it happens, they whine about how unfair it was and 
how the person running the game "rigged it" and was "out to get them".

I had one player who refused to play Call of Cthulhu (original) for that 
very reason.  He actually said, "What's the point, when half the stuff in 
the game is too tough to fight, even if you have a f****g machine gun.  I 
haven't seen him since I got into Deadlands, but I can imagine his opinion 
of Stone and the "if you stat it they will kill it" policy.

There is, of course, the occasional...

3)  "They killed it...  they actually killed it..." - in which despite your 
every expectation and analysis, the players somehow manage to use luck, 
ingenuity, or just plain unforseen effort to successfully do away with a 
baddie who you expected to be around for a long time.

For me personally, all there is to do then is aware the points, bow your 
head, tip your hat and give them their due credit.  Sometimes it means 
cutting the session short so you can mull over what to do about the 
situation, but I'm a firm believer that if your players manage to do the 
unthinkable they deserve full credit for it.

Even if you do find a way to bring back the nasty a few sessions later.  ;-)

Mac



----Original Message Follows----
From: Horace Black <horaceblack@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: hoe@gamerz.net
To: HOE list <hoe@gamerz.net>
Subject: [HOE] Stone 1, Posse 0 (Spoiler)
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 05:15:09 -0700 (PDT)


Spoiler space











   Well, they ran into Stone (or Mrs. Stone if your
nasty) last night and it was ugly.  This was due to
the fact the a new character had drawn Stone'e Hit
List from veteran o' the weird west.
   Stone quickly killed the cyborg that was on his hit
list then went after the rest of the posse.  Now to
show that I'm not a complete bastard if any of the
posse had attempted to flee that would have been ok
with Stone, because he got what he came for.
   Well, they decided to go at it with stone, next went
the witch, followed quickly by the psyker/martial
artist (a character thats been played for about 3
years) and then the other cyborg.
   The templar and the toxic shaman decided that
fleeing was the better part of valour.
   The whole battle took less than 3 rounds, which is
to say all night in real time.
                                Horace Black


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