Your Suspension of Disbelief: SHATTERED!
- Thread starter Fauchard1520
- Start date
pming
Legend
Hiya!
If by that you mean how do they find out they have a time limit...well, I don't. They infer it based on information that they gather from sources/surroundings/clues/etc. It's usually fairly blatant, as most stupid minions are minions because they are stupid, they usually blurt out something specific "You'll never succeed! The Master of the Dead sees all! His flock is everywhere! And when the full moon rises, so shall his reign of this land!". Sometimes it not *quite* so obvious...like "You fools have no idea what's in store for you and your pathetic little town, do you? By the time you realize what's going on, it will be too late. Mark my words, your days are numbered!".
Now, sure, players hear this stuff all the time from bad guys...a lot of the time it's just blustering...but when it isn't, well, that's when things go bad. Very, very bad.
With all that said, I'd just like to point out that I don't really "design" my adventures around a 'time schedule', but I do have a set of 'check marks'..."bad-guy Milestones" if you will... that I use to see how close the bad guy is to doing whatever it was he was trying to do. As play progresses, these check marks get ticked off or scratched off (if the PC's prevent it from logically being completed). Enough crossed off check marks and the Players have effectively "won", even though they might not know it yet. It's usually at that point that the bad guy just wants revenge on them for screwing things up...so the story changes to that focus.
Bad guys in my campaign tend towards the "localized" to "almost far reaching" scale of things. I pretty much never have a "take over the world" or "destroy the world" adventures because I find them utterly unbelievable.. Why? Because Gods exist. If Tiamate was going to succeed in taking over the world and ripping part of it off into the 1st Circle of Hell...you can bet coppers to platinum that Bahaumat would personally step in to stop it. Now you have two god-like creatures battling on a Prime Material Plane. People start dying by the thousands...let me rephrase..."followers of other gods start dying by the thousands". A few other gods step in. Then the gods opposing THOSE gods step in. Before you know it...KA-BOOM! Enter a new Cataclysm for the world. So...gods, regardless of alignment, will "push only so far". It's not about "winning completely"....it's about "winning just enough", but not too much. Right up to the line, so to speak. Gods all have one thing in common: NONE of them want to be destroyed utterly...so they avoid direct confrontation with one another as much as possible; mutually assured destruction, but with Gods, not nukes.
So all those "Save the world" AP's? Dragon Queen, Abyss, most/many from Paizo for 3.x or PF? Yeah...not going to really "happen" in my campaigns. As a DM and as a Player, I find those adventures pointless; either you win, and nothing happens, or you loose, and nothing happens, or you win/loose and gods show up to fix everything, so nothing happens. Knock the "save the world" down to "save the country"...aaaahhhh....NOW the gods are NOT going to get involved...UNLESS a god personally intervenes. And no god would risk utter, total, and permanent annihilation by the retaliatory gods that would instantly arrive to force them off the Prime Material Plane. That is my reasoning as to why all the "good stuff" always happens on the Prime Material Plane; the gods of the multiverse can "push their agenda to the very edge of the razor-thin line". Meaning...they get the most bang for their buck there. That and they won't run into another god by accident.
^_^
Paul L. Ming
If by that you mean how do they find out they have a time limit...well, I don't. They infer it based on information that they gather from sources/surroundings/clues/etc. It's usually fairly blatant, as most stupid minions are minions because they are stupid, they usually blurt out something specific "You'll never succeed! The Master of the Dead sees all! His flock is everywhere! And when the full moon rises, so shall his reign of this land!". Sometimes it not *quite* so obvious...like "You fools have no idea what's in store for you and your pathetic little town, do you? By the time you realize what's going on, it will be too late. Mark my words, your days are numbered!".
Now, sure, players hear this stuff all the time from bad guys...a lot of the time it's just blustering...but when it isn't, well, that's when things go bad. Very, very bad.
With all that said, I'd just like to point out that I don't really "design" my adventures around a 'time schedule', but I do have a set of 'check marks'..."bad-guy Milestones" if you will... that I use to see how close the bad guy is to doing whatever it was he was trying to do. As play progresses, these check marks get ticked off or scratched off (if the PC's prevent it from logically being completed). Enough crossed off check marks and the Players have effectively "won", even though they might not know it yet. It's usually at that point that the bad guy just wants revenge on them for screwing things up...so the story changes to that focus.
Bad guys in my campaign tend towards the "localized" to "almost far reaching" scale of things. I pretty much never have a "take over the world" or "destroy the world" adventures because I find them utterly unbelievable.. Why? Because Gods exist. If Tiamate was going to succeed in taking over the world and ripping part of it off into the 1st Circle of Hell...you can bet coppers to platinum that Bahaumat would personally step in to stop it. Now you have two god-like creatures battling on a Prime Material Plane. People start dying by the thousands...let me rephrase..."followers of other gods start dying by the thousands". A few other gods step in. Then the gods opposing THOSE gods step in. Before you know it...KA-BOOM! Enter a new Cataclysm for the world. So...gods, regardless of alignment, will "push only so far". It's not about "winning completely"....it's about "winning just enough", but not too much. Right up to the line, so to speak. Gods all have one thing in common: NONE of them want to be destroyed utterly...so they avoid direct confrontation with one another as much as possible; mutually assured destruction, but with Gods, not nukes.
So all those "Save the world" AP's? Dragon Queen, Abyss, most/many from Paizo for 3.x or PF? Yeah...not going to really "happen" in my campaigns. As a DM and as a Player, I find those adventures pointless; either you win, and nothing happens, or you loose, and nothing happens, or you win/loose and gods show up to fix everything, so nothing happens. Knock the "save the world" down to "save the country"...aaaahhhh....NOW the gods are NOT going to get involved...UNLESS a god personally intervenes. And no god would risk utter, total, and permanent annihilation by the retaliatory gods that would instantly arrive to force them off the Prime Material Plane. That is my reasoning as to why all the "good stuff" always happens on the Prime Material Plane; the gods of the multiverse can "push their agenda to the very edge of the razor-thin line". Meaning...they get the most bang for their buck there. That and they won't run into another god by accident.
^_^
Paul L. Ming
Yeah, I always give my bear a keg, cos' his paws are a bit clumsy for a mug.
Immersion can be objectively measured (so not totally subjective) but I agree with the main goal.
If, by "immersion" you are referring to the dunking of something into a liquid, then yes, we can agree that immersion can be objectively measured.
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