The Game Master's Guide for the Promotion of Cruelty to PCs

[BradfordFerguson]

I left these comments on RPGNow.com, but I figured I would share them here too. (I'm so cruel!) The product Game Master's Guide for the Promotion of Cruelty to PCs by The Other Game Company is a PDF available for purchase on RPGNow.com.

Comments:

I really expected more from this product. I expected it to either be funny or to have some really vicious ideas to spring upon your players. I thought there would be a bunch of tips on making players very anxious and raising the stakes with mystery or paranoia. There were some cruel ideas, but none that made me jump out of my seat and cackle with insane glee. There is some humorous/goofy art, but the writing isn't funny. Why would a product with such a title take itself so seriously? There were some game mechanics that could either make your players tread very lightly or cause them to rebel and insist upon another DM, but nothing to really play with their minds.

For example, there is a collection of feats with drawbacks and the text suggests that you propose the feats to your players without including the drawback text. That would annoy most players. Or, causing the casting of magic to be a physically taxing event (ala Dragonlance), but this isn’t something you should spring on players in mid-campaign as the player playing the wizard would feel slighted.

Unfortunately, there was more that I disliked with this product than I liked (hence the low score). There is an adventure included at the end and it has virtually no plot to it, and it merely includes various aspects of the product. For instance, there is a spell thief in the adventure (a prestige class in the book), and she actually is supposed to whisper to the players, "I am a spell thief." That would be like Legolas walking up to the PCs and saying, "I'm a deep woods sniper."

Other aggravations include the poor editing. The credits use goofy phrases and it says, "brutal editing: Daniel Kullik." Unfortunately, in this case it isn't a joke or misnomer. Either Daniel didn't have enough time with the product, or he's inept. There was a grammatical or spelling error on nearly every page and they were fairly blatant.

Likes:
Some good ideas.
52 little tricks are good.

Dislikes:
Poor editing. Poor mechanics.
Most of the prestige classes are weak. The spells are too vicious. Most of the monsters are boring. The seeds and world building ideas are no good.

Score: 8 of 20 (or 2/5)

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Bradford Ferguson

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Containing some of the nastiest acts a GM could perpetrate during a game session, it describes in detail how one can go about manipulating and torturing PCs while staying entirely within the rules. You're the GM and you make the rules, but players get to know a GM's style after a while. This book will catch your players unaware.

Rather than put this book down, however, thinking that your players will become so frustrated that they'll give up and leave, remember that the element of surprise is one of the things they love about the game. They might become frustrated but any good GM will give in eventually – and that's when your players will smile and say "Why didn't I think of that?"

Table of content:
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Cruelty in Your Game
Chapter 3: Prestige Classes
Chapter 4: Really Mean Feats
Chapter 5: Magic
Chapter 6: Monsters
Chapter 7: Adventure and Campaign Seeds
Chapter 8: 52 Nasty Tricks to Play During a Campaign
Chapter 9: Hello, Cruel World (World-Building)
Chapter 10: Cool and Cruel - Stuff for the PCs
Chapter 11: A Cruel Adventure


Special Features:
- Two different layouts (screen (44 pages) and print (40 pages))
- TOGC's trademark cards for all spells and creatures featured in the main book.