winey players

[ced1106]

The more crunchy bits -- such as levels -- the players have, the less control the DM has with the game. And the more similar your game is to another, the more likely the players will compare it, and say which one is "better".

Can you play a radically different campaign? I usually play low-level games to keep a lid on the goodies. Likewise, an entirely new game, such as Call of Cthulhu or (cough) Paranoia might be fun.


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

 

[NoOneofConsequence]

There might be an in campaign way to handle this issue. If the characters are walking sales reps for "Ye Olde Magic Shoppe" then they're probably going to draw some attention. They could be targetted as a source of treasure by other adventurers. After all, why go to an ancient huge red dragon's lair to get a vorpal sword when, with some careful planning, you could yoink it from the fighter who lives in the tavern down the road.

Remember that the players are heroes, but not necessarily the most powerful things around.

Have them be cased by rogues scouting for other parties (npc). Have both sensible and reckless attempts made to steal from the party.

The party may never actually lose their items, but it will give them a greater appreciation of the items that they have.

To paraphrase Ford Prefect (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) : "It's a tough universe out there! There's all sorts of people and things trying to do you; kill you; rip you off! If you want to survive you really need to know where your towel is! And your +5 vorpal, holy, lawful, frost mercurial greatsword!"

 

[Heathen Oracle]

I had this very same problem in a campagn about 2 years ago. there were 2 Dms, myself and another at alternating intervals during the month. He was the Santa in this case, I am not particular nor really stingy, I like to balance things.

The one thing I did that helped tremendously was, that I had them find a mystical shrine that teleports itself around every month (that way if they hear about it, they have time to travel to it), the only thing in the shrine was a sarcphagus with a rather recent runic inscription (not ancient).

It basically stated that by sacrificing a magic item to it (opening the lid and dropping it in) it would give in return (by opening the lid and reaching in after a shimmer or something).

Basically it was itself a portal created through worlds by a jokester entity, it would randomly give a magic item back (nearly always lesser than the one put in) .

It actually became addictive to all the players as they would save every magic item and travel all over to find this thing jsut to gamble with it. It was pretty funny all they had to go through to get to it and crappy magical items they would get in return. Mind you, you would have to have a decent one pop up once in awhile to keep them hooked. I only allowed the exchange of 3 items per month per player.

the possibilities were endless. We had a great deal of fun with it, only Magic items could be thrown in, mundane ones would jsut site there.


V Shane

 

[jdavis]

It's hard to control stuff like that when there are multiple DM's (almost everybody in our group DM's every once in a while). What we have is one person who is the main DM, anybody else running is the session DM, the main DM is in charge of the campaign in general. It's not really a set up thing, it's just understood, you don't do anything when you ar DMing to mess up the campaign. Another thing, if you are overmagic itemed then you throw off the encounters, you might want to adjust the CR (if somebody has 7 wishes, they can just wish they won the fight, that's a little over the top at 9th level). I always like to give magic items with a catch to the party, I had a +5 Holy Avenger in a adventure, the catch, it was inteligent and had a huge ego, the characters were only 6th level, after it tried to possess the Paladin in the group they were scared half to death of it, nobody in the party had more than a +1 weapon and the Paladin had this super +5 weapon but he was afraid to use it. They finally hid it at a church until the Paladin could master it. Made for some real good role playing.

 

[CTD]

Kill them. All of them. Just the characters though, you need the players alive so you can watched the stunned look on their face.

I suggest setting up a posse of cleric's with Harm spells. Be sure to grab that feat that lets you make touch attacks at range (something like 30'). Give them good dex scores and improved initiative.

Put a few meatsack fighters in front of the clerics to prevent anyone from getting into melee with the clerics.

Then attack.

Harm the players (all of them) and let the meatsacks give the finishing blow.

Once this is done have the cleric's drop the corpses in acid, and send whatever is left to the lower planes as food for Orcus.

Also cast Mord's Disjunction on the stack of magic items once they have been removed from the corpses. You'll need a wizard for this. Cast it repeatedly until all magics are gone. Then melt all metallic items into slag, which should be thrown into a volcano. Pour all potions into the sea. Everything else should be put to a grindstone and then salt some fields with it.

If, when you are finished, someone is not crying, you have failed.

Be sure to grin and do little dances while you are doing this. It'll add to the fun.

Note: I'm wearing my evil hat today. If you do not want to be evil it would be best to ignore my advice.

 

[Dark Dragon]

Let them face some really powerful evil dragon (and let the group know that there is no hope of escape...use dimensional anchor and the like to prevent teleportation). The dragon may let them live, if they hand over most of their magic items to him. (Worked fine IMC, some PCs had over 100 % excess items than appropriate for their levels from previous DMs)

If they start casting their wishes or other powerful (even defensive) spells, kill the casters. If the group manages somehow to get away, the dragon uses a scry spell or crystal ball and follows them with teleport...Don't let the party win!


Another way: Kill some PCs in a hard fight, force them to use their wish / magic items to get them back. Use as often as needed. And use Anitmagic Field also....


Best way, IMHO: use the wealth table in the DMG. Destroy, steal, disenchant excess magic items as often as possible until a proper level has been reached.

 

[jdavis]

We had the "powerful Dragon demands your magic items or your life" happen to us and it worked pretty well, it was frustrating as a player but it did make the game better in the long run, not to mention it gave us a NPC Dragon to hate and we constantly talked about going back and getting our stuff, we never got a chance to (TPK) but it stayed at the top of our list for a while. As far as wishes go, our main DM is very hard on people who make wishes, you have to word it exactly how you want or he will screw you over. We wished a dead party member back to life but didn't specify we wanted him back to exactly how he was before he died, so he came back as a baby, we were in the middle of a island and wished we were at the boat, so our boat appeared in the middle of the island, etc......wishes are very powerful, it's good to have them backfire if they are used too often.