By Ross Payton and Tom Church
Synopsis: Sometimes a game just screws up because of trivial issues. Shopping for magic items, chasing red herrings, and arguing about guns. Why does this happen? How can it be fixed? We take a look at these quirks in gaming and provide a few solutions. Also, a letter from Tom and a few shout outs. We end with two gaming anecdotes, one from each of us. Find out who Ernie Hudson is and why every detail is important in sketching a map for a gun fight.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:12 — 23.6MB)
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Dear Ross and Tom:
I refuse to call this a fan letter. As a writer and cast member for RPPR, I am much more than your simple level one fan. I’m so fucking epic one of my characters once slaughtered one of Ross’s armies before anyone else crossed the battlefield. To this end, I’m not interested in the namby-pamby, let’s all sit around the campfire and sing kumbaya while we clean our bloody swords bullshit of role playing. It’s not that I’m against working as a team, but the idea that a group should always work together for the greater good is really cliché. You guys have done a good job in the last few shows talking about the best ways to keep a game running smoothly and how to deal with annoying players. Now, why not talk about something interesting? Why not talk about PC to PC violence? What happens when one PC really hates another PC? What happens when a PC methodically plots to kill another PC? And does? (What happens when Tom’s character flips the fuck out and gets a TPK?)
I think this is a valuable gaming topic to talk about. If PCs are supposed to have a complex psychology and moral value system, as opposed to just being numbers on paper, then chances are occasionally—hell, frequently—PCs will clash. Personally, I’ve never been opposed to pointing my crossbow, Tommy Gun, or Abrams Tank at another PC. In the Future Perfect scenario, I introduced one PC—who was playing with the group for the first time—to the game by drawing a gun on her and later helped convince Ernie Hudson to step through the portal for the good of the group. In Detwiler’s “Music in a Darkened Room,†I unceremoniously shot Jason’s character three times after he became possessed by the house. But possibly the most memorable moment of PC on PC violence that I facilitated happened in a Mage game a few years ago. My cabal was performing a ceremony when another PC—an unawakened cop, who again was playing with the group for the first time—broke in. My character reached through the tapestry and wrenched the PC’s shotgun from him and would have shot him with it if the storyteller had not stepped in. I felt this was completely justified given my character’s psychology and the situation he found himself in.
Like I said, I think this would be a good topic to discuss in the show and maybe share some of your experiences with PC on PC violence both as GMs and PCs.
patrick seth williams
–aka AB3’s DeviantBoy
I felt it was worth pointing out that Ernie Hudson is an actor… you might remember him as Sergeant Albrecht from The Crow or more memorably as Winston Zeddmore from Ghostbusters.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001368/