Show us your Rat Bastardry!

[Umbran]

Perhaps the RBDM is an endangered species. After all, some might feel that mathematically balanced encounters have made it impossible to truly challenge and surprise a party.......or has it?

'Cause, as you know, GMs are bound by law to use mathematically balanced encounters, and would never, ever consider throwing something overpowered at the players, even when the DMG explicitly tells them to. 'Cause, GMs are really all sheep to the expectations of edition warriors.

(That was my sarcastic voice)

 

[Nytmare]

When I ran the Banewarrens, one of the twists I added was that as the story progressed, and each new series of vaults were opened, a series of increasingly horrible cataclysms befell the city and surrounding area. Things started small, and prior to understanding what was going on, they perceived the goal as "open as many vaults as possible and loot all the magic items". Before things got too bad, they figured things out and realized that they were mostly at fault for all the horrible events that had befallen the city. That changed their focus to protecting the vaults and making sure that nothing else was opened and that no more banes escaped. This, of course, was another ball they dropped and both the bad guys as well as the misunderstood and ignorant good guys opened another set of vaults which brought a torrential storm, earthquake, tsunami, the collapse of the underpinings of faith in the holy, paladin-filled city all this was happening in, and the death of the key political figures that were keeping the screaming for blood, righteously indignant military figures in check.

Also, to fix all the problems, and seal things back up they were preeeeeeetty sure that they were going to have to go in even deeper into the warrens to find a MacGuffin. Not 100% sure mind you, they weren't really able to tell if the information was good, or if it was just misinformation the bad guys had been able to feed them to trick them into opening more vaults.

Man, I miss that campaign.

 

[Gilladian]

As a DM, I often don't KNOW if I was a rat-bastard! I write what I think will be fun adventures. My PCs go on them, and they're spending the whole time wailing about how dangerous, how tricky and complex, how seemingly horrific, said adventures are. But they pass through them almost unscathed, coming out the other side alive, and with new and prized treasures. Was my adventure really scary and threatening and complex, or are my players just whiny (although definitely they had fun)? I really don't know! So I don't consider myself a rat-bastard DM at all, but I think my players might...

 

[Ketherian]

I'm with Gilladian on this one.

I try to challenge the party; and they seem to enjoy it - but how do you know if you're a rat-bastard or not?

I made the family of one PC force him to get married to a wife of their choice (it was not a love-match and benefited both families far more than the PC) and he said I was a rat-bastard for it. But it had very little effect on how the story went. Some PC made it very clear they would never get married, others argued more with their families over it -- but in the end, not much.

Currently, I have a bunch of arsonists starting fires every few days. The next game (tomorrow) opens with the Peonian church on fire and one PC trapped inside with the local priest and an NPC the party recently saved from the hangman. The PC went there willingly, and the fire was already planned to happen; so I didn't exactly plan for it to happen this way--but I will make full use of it.

 

[steenan]

This topic made me realize why I fell in love with Dungeon World.

Because this game not only allows me to be a RBGM, it actively encourages it. Each time a player rolls dice, I have to be ready to introduce some complication or unforeseen consequence. And when they roll poorly, I am required to have the consequences bite them in the ass.

Like, the mage who decides that "drawing unwelcome attention" won't really hurt - and gives a mind flayer a perfect means for tracking the party.
Or, the fighter who slays a dark priest to save a girl, only to discover that cultist's blood is good enough to finish the summoning ritual.
Or, the rogue who tries to channel the power of the ritual, in hope that he will be in control.

A lot of "what could go wrong?" moments in a single session.

 

[Rune]

Well, I was really just looking for folk to share some examples of rat bastardry--you know, for inspiration.

But, since the topic came up:

Three ways to use Rat Bastardry in your DMing:

• Give the PCs the rope, then let them hang themselves. This is my personal favorite: I try to constantly arrange situations so that the PCs are tempted to do things that could have dire consequences.
  
• Make sure they are faced with tough decisions. If all of their choices are bad, or too good, or have unwelcome consequences attached, your players might take a long time to decide because they're agonizing over a decision, but it'll never be because they don't care. It is important, however, that, whatever they do choose, it must actually matter within the context of the game.
  
• Don't pull punches. If you're going to put your PCs in a bad spot, by Golly, commit to it! Don't start feeling sorry for them part-way through and back-pedal! This does not mean you should go out of your way to be mean, or to kill off characters! Be fair! If the players can think of a way out (and they usually will, if you let them), good! That's the whole point!

So, that's a start. Anybody got anything else?

 

[Radiating Gnome]

So, had four players here in a session that just ended. They attacked a farmstead held by too many orcs, halforcs, war dogs, and other trouble -- which they would have spotted if they had scouted adequately.

The assault went bad very quickly. In the end, the fighter went down in the compound trying to buy the others time to escape. The wizard and the cleric fled off in one direction (into the haunted woods) while the thief took off in the other direction.

The Thief managed to evade pursuit. The wizard just ran as fast as he could into the woods, while the cleric tried to rely on his background as a guide and herbalist to help him cover his scent and evade the hunting dogs. He failed, was treed, and eventually captured by the orcs.

The Wizard, meanwhile, rand for hours until he was found and captured by enemy bandits.

The orc prisoners -- the cleric and the unconscious but still living fighter -- were questioned, beaten, and buried alive in a cave with a few half-starved goatherds.

So, the party is split 3 ways, and the only one free to act is the halfling thief.

It was a good day.

-rg

 

[Quickleaf]

I'm no RBDM, though I've had moments...

Kobolds that trapped their gelatinous cubes with contact explosives which detonated when the cubes were killed and collapsed into liquid goo.

 

[Seraphaguin]

Amateurs. Tears make regular appearances around my table. In one campaign, I broke every player's heart, slowly, between dreams and events, dying gods, and intense inner conflict- I had a cleric choose the party's NPC (The paladin)over her god AFTER he killed her(I had every player choked up that session), and I had more than half the party weep (in and out of character) upon defeating the villain responsible for all the woes of the campaign.

That was not unique for my campaign world. In another campaign, the party's most trusted ally (the same NPC from the previously mentioned campaign)sends them to defeat an enemy group bent on "liberating" their continent from humans who took it from them in a horrible genocidal war 60 years earlier. Of course, the party can't entirely disagree with their tragic villains, even falling in love with them. After a series of super emotional battles, taking down their enemies one by one, the party learns their dear friend was the employer of said villains. Conflicted and angry, the party must kill him or be killed by him. Walking out of the final battle, the party's rogue stops, and tearful, asks "We won, right?"

And then, we have our horrible genocidal war. The Sundering swept the continent in a fairly short period of time. of 267 clans of elves, 41 survive. Nearly everything in the world the group spent more than 10 years(campaign after campaign) getting attached to is taken from them brutally. Their homes destroyed, NPCs they thought would be there always were slain in fashions everyone thought impossible, all their hard work destroyed by their neighbors. The entire campaign is heartbreak after heartbreak, and it starts with the sudden and inglorious murder of Elminster, who is slain and put on display because he covered the retreat of Khelben Arunsun and Laerel from Waterdeep.
After their escape (and not all of them escaped), they had the opportunity to see what was left. 10,000 years of history reduced to ash, and now they are to rebuild in a new land. After the Sundering was completed, my players of more than 10 years, tears in their eyes, turned to me and said "You bitch. That was beautiful... and heartbreaking, and we couldn't look away. You bitch." They took me out to dinner at a 5 star restaurant, got me drunk, and reminisced for hours.
At the end of the night, I grinned to all of the. "Hey guys, guess what." after a lengthy pause they responded. "what?"
"I'm not done yet."

 

[Gilladian]

The next campaign I run is going to be DW. I started a game online, and we'll get back to it soon, but I'm also going to run a face-to-face game of Dungeon World later this summer, I hope. It seems like such a great game!