Article: 6 Ways to Force Stuff on your Players
Most GMs would agree that forcing things on your players—no matter what those things are—is generally a bad idea. I’d be one of them. So, of course, the following article will outline some of the many ways you can force things on your party which they don’t actually want to happen to them. In polite gaming society this is generally frowned upon and called all kinds of bad names like “rail-roading, heavy-handedness, and being a ****”. With all this bad rap, and the fact all the players will hate you for it, it should come as no surprise that most GMs have lost the fine art of forcing random things on their players. That’s where this article comes in.
There are generally three basic ways to motivate your party of heroes to do things: greed, heroism, and forcing them into it.
An example of using greed would be to say that a great dragon is lairing in the area, but has a huge pile of treasure. Also, if you fight all the dragon’s minions you’re bound to get loads of xp which will make you more powerful. Did we mention the dragon also had a princess who the king wants to get back? Any time the party is fighting monsters or grabbing treasure, greed is probably their primary motivation. Yes, I know, that means basically all of the time.
An example of using heroism would be that there’s a poor lost peasant girl and the heroes immediately set out to go and save her. Most players will still do this kind of thing, if grudgingly. They often do so with the assumption that the GM will reward them well with xp and treasure for their ‘heroic’ acts. It could be said that even heroism has its roots in greed, but that’s a whole other debate. I like to believe that everyone has a heroic side which can be tapped into. It’s always my end aim with a campaign to train all players to function on a high level of heroism and not much of anything else.
An example of forcing them into it would be if the GM created what he figured was an awesome adventure and then skipped motivation completely and just told the players “You’re doing this quest, so there.” It’s quite possible he used much fancier words or situations, but that’s pretty much what it boils down to. Players hate this. Don’t do it. This article tells you how to.
There are so many uses for forcing people into things that it would probably be impossible to list them all. Some of the most common ones are: forcing them into the story or adventure (rail-roading), forcing them to give up treasure or magic items for no logical reason (heavy-handedness), and having people just arbitrarily die or lose against enemies without any dice rolls in combat (being a ****). In fact, the possibilities are probably endless. Abusing your ultimate power as GM, you can force your players to do almost anything you like until they end up hating you and quitting your games permanently or taking revenge by turning into whiny, power-gaming munchkins.
Good ways to Force People into Stuff
While I’m highly hesitant to use the word ‘good’ and ‘force people into stuff’ in the same sentence, if used correctly it can have some practical uses. Mainly this involves ‘encouraging’ your players to role-play more. Below is an example we can refer to as ‘the bush camp’.
GM: Your group of heroes have finished looting, destroying, pillaging, raiding, and demolishing all the dungeons in sight. You’ve already gotten all the babes, treasures, and magic items around and I’m pretty much stumped as to what to do with you next.
Bob: We go find more monsters to fight for xp.
Susan: I want another magic item. I use a spell to detect the nearest artifact.
Michael: I use my sword of ‘huge piles of gold’ detection.
Arnold: *Snoring*.
GM: Okay, but before you can do that, you all feel really tired. You’re way out in the bush, but you’ve been going for 724 hours straight so you’re incredibly fatigued now. You’ll have to make camp to recuperate, or you’ll get tons of minuses.
Bob: We slept yesterday.
GM: Yesterday you were destroying the army of lizard people.
Bob: Ha ha, oh yeah.
GM: So, what are you guys going to do?
Michael: *Rolls eyes.* Obviously, we’re going to make camp.
GM: Where?
Bob: I don’t like that look in the GM’s eyes. We make camp in a highly defensible open field, we post a guard, and we camp next to a source of clean water. We start a campfire so we can’t freeze to death in this temperate environment in the middle of summer. I put out my tent of total invulnerability to everything and sleep inside.
GM: Ha ha, okay.
At this point, the GM has several options. Outlined below are some of the many random things you could do to cause havoc with the party without actually giving them any treasure, having any NPCs show up, or allowing them to fight monsters and gain more experience points. Most of them involve personally taking control of people’s characters or having arbitrary and bad things happen to them. Have fun…while it lasts.
1. Hygiene: All players think their characters look awesome at all times. Using your ultimate power as the GM, you can mess with this perfect vision by saying they smell bad, have gas, look ugly, snore in their sleep, mumble about the treasure they stole from the rest of the party last week, or start sleepwalking to stab their buddies. The players will instantly object to this, but if you pull it off right the other players will think it’s so funny they might actually support you. Of course, things like snoring will keep the entire party awake all night so they can’t regain their spells, hit points, and so forth.
2. Health Problems: It is generally accepted that player characters are immune to all disease and all medical conditions short of dying from hit point loss. As GM, it’s your job to not only dispute this fact, but infer that payer characters catch far worse diseases and have health problems far more often than the average suicidal maniac. These health problems can include, but are not limited to: cuts, scrapes, sores, bruises, bad teeth (from magical candy), starving, dehydration, magical curses, debilitating diseases, and so forth. Generally, these minor health problems cannot be cured by potent magic such as Cure Massive Wounds or Cure Disease spells. They must be treated by conventional means like bashing the guy’s tooth out or sleeping it off when you can’t sleep because of the other guy snoring.
3. Supplies: The first thing any RPG player will do is to make sure his character is carrying far more supplies of all kinds than is humanly possible. The second thing he’ll do is find a bag of holding and then be able to justify why he can never run out of ammunition, food, or water ever again. Most GMs sadly accept this fact, but not you. It’s just when the snoring starts that you inform the party they have miraculously (and all at the same time) completely run out of all food, water, rope, and ammo. They’ll have to rough it now. Savvy players will often go hunting or drink from that stream beside their camp. This is when you have the stream contain hallucinogenic properties and have no ends of fun with the ‘hunting’.
4. Games/Stories: After the party has duct taped the one guy’s mouth, hunted down a stag, and is pretty tipsy from the stream; you should inform them they now must tell tales of their adventures and play games for the next 15 minutes under penalty of death and loss of vast amounts of experience points. Players often have fun talking about their own deeds, so this shouldn’t hurt as a means of killing time. If they take the ‘games’ too seriously that can also help with the ‘backstabbing each other’ ploy below.
5. Backstabbing the Party: Often, there is nothing worse than having a party split up or be at each other’s throats. So, naturally, you’re going to throw gasoline on the flames here and encourage the group to try to rip itself apart and create bad feelings among the players. This is the point when you have the party thief mumble in his sleep about all the treasure he kept secretly from the party, tell one player he can’t sleep while the other is snoring/so smelly, and otherwise make problems.
6. Apologies: After the tremendous amount of havoc you generate in step five, you should then ‘force’ the party members to apologize to each other in a role-playing scene even if they don’t want to. Make the warrior say sorry to the druid for eating her pet rabbit, tell the party rogue to apologize for stealing all the loot, and make the wizard agree to go for a bath because he stinks so bad (which you forced on him in the first place). Remember, baths in hallucinogenic streams probably come with their own problems.
Bob: Why is he laughing? I raise all my protective spells.
GM: You’re all starving to death and you’ve completely run out of all your supplies.
Michael: But I have a bag of holding and we were in the village last week.
GM: Does my sweater say GM or what?
Susan: Okay, I play a druid so I’ll go in the bush and gather food.
Bob: I get water from the stream. Ha, take that.
Michael: I’m with Susan.
GM: In the bush Susan finds a poor rabbit and nurses it back to health. It’s now her most loved pet. Michael, you want nothing in life more than to eat that rabbit. Bob, the stream is secretly magical and causes you to become cursed, diseased, and schizophrenic. When you all get back to camp after finding some hallucinogenic berries by accident you decide to tell stories of your adventures. If you don’t do it properly you’re all going to die from the poison berries and lose a lot of xp. This means you, Arnold.
Arnold: *Wakes up.* Okay, here goes…*tells story*.
Michael: I take the first watch.
GM: You fall asleep. Then Susan comes by and starts making out with you even though Susan’s Elf is Bob’s Halfling’s girlfriend.
Bob: There are so many lies in that, I can’t even count them.
GM: Bob, you see them making out and are filled with rage. You now want nothing better than to kill Michael’s character and get Susan back. Susan secretly loves Arnold’s character. Michael’s character likes Susan, but wants to eat her new pet rabbit which she loves. If you guys don’t role-play this, you drank from a poisonous stream so…
Michael: Um, Susan…You’re cool and all, but I really want to, um, eat your pet rabbit?
GM: That’s the ticket, now all draw your swords and try to kill each other while I laugh. *Sometime later* Okay, now that’s all settled, you all go to sleep but hear Arnold the Thief mumbling about all those diamonds he kept secret from the party in the last adventure. Bob, you happen to hear him. Michael, your character smells so bad and snores so loudly that no one can sleep within 100 ft. of him. You’ll have to take a bath in the stream.
Bob: The cursed stream?
GM: Yeah. Your character doesn’t know it’s cursed so he does it in the hopes of winning Susan’s love back from Michael’s character.
Bob: Oh great.
GM: You get uber-cursed and, coincidentally, one of your teeth really hurts and needs to be pulled out. The only one who can do it is Michael, but if he doesn’t disinfect his hands in the stream you could get gangrene in your head. Obviously, Cure Anything spells won’t work on that.
Michael: So should we all just take a bath in this stream, or what?
GM: Yes. Also, you feel the sudden urge to take control of the leadership of the party from Bob seeing as you’re both fighting over the same girl even though she’s an elf, you’re a Halfling, and Michael’s a dwarf. Susan, you want revenge on Michael for your rabbit.
Susan: What? What happened to Fluffy?
GM: *Sometime later*. Now that that’s settled, everyone has to role-play apologies to each other starting with Arnold.
Arnold: What did I do?
GM: I don’t know. Hang on, you ate Susan’s rabbit and framed it on Michael. Now it’s time to mend your clothes. The rabbit fur won’t go far, but you might get some use out of that stag.
Most GMs would agree that forcing things on your players—no matter what those things are—is generally a bad idea. I’d be one of them. So, of course, the following article will outline some of the many ways you can force things on your party which they don’t actually want to happen to them. In polite gaming society this is generally frowned upon and called all kinds of bad names like “rail-roading, heavy-handedness, and being a ****”. With all this bad rap, and the fact all the players will hate you for it, it should come as no surprise that most GMs have lost the fine art of forcing random things on their players. That’s where this article comes in.
There are generally three basic ways to motivate your party of heroes to do things: greed, heroism, and forcing them into it.
An example of using greed would be to say that a great dragon is lairing in the area, but has a huge pile of treasure. Also, if you fight all the dragon’s minions you’re bound to get loads of xp which will make you more powerful. Did we mention the dragon also had a princess who the king wants to get back? Any time the party is fighting monsters or grabbing treasure, greed is probably their primary motivation. Yes, I know, that means basically all of the time.
An example of using heroism would be that there’s a poor lost peasant girl and the heroes immediately set out to go and save her. Most players will still do this kind of thing, if grudgingly. They often do so with the assumption that the GM will reward them well with xp and treasure for their ‘heroic’ acts. It could be said that even heroism has its roots in greed, but that’s a whole other debate. I like to believe that everyone has a heroic side which can be tapped into. It’s always my end aim with a campaign to train all players to function on a high level of heroism and not much of anything else.
An example of forcing them into it would be if the GM created what he figured was an awesome adventure and then skipped motivation completely and just told the players “You’re doing this quest, so there.” It’s quite possible he used much fancier words or situations, but that’s pretty much what it boils down to. Players hate this. Don’t do it. This article tells you how to.
Uses of Forcing them into It
There are so many uses for forcing people into things that it would probably be impossible to list them all. Some of the most common ones are: forcing them into the story or adventure (rail-roading), forcing them to give up treasure or magic items for no logical reason (heavy-handedness), and having people just arbitrarily die or lose against enemies without any dice rolls in combat (being a ****). In fact, the possibilities are probably endless. Abusing your ultimate power as GM, you can force your players to do almost anything you like until they end up hating you and quitting your games permanently or taking revenge by turning into whiny, power-gaming munchkins.
Good ways to Force People into Stuff
While I’m highly hesitant to use the word ‘good’ and ‘force people into stuff’ in the same sentence, if used correctly it can have some practical uses. Mainly this involves ‘encouraging’ your players to role-play more. Below is an example we can refer to as ‘the bush camp’.
GM: Your group of heroes have finished looting, destroying, pillaging, raiding, and demolishing all the dungeons in sight. You’ve already gotten all the babes, treasures, and magic items around and I’m pretty much stumped as to what to do with you next.
Bob: We go find more monsters to fight for xp.
Susan: I want another magic item. I use a spell to detect the nearest artifact.
Michael: I use my sword of ‘huge piles of gold’ detection.
Arnold: *Snoring*.
GM: Okay, but before you can do that, you all feel really tired. You’re way out in the bush, but you’ve been going for 724 hours straight so you’re incredibly fatigued now. You’ll have to make camp to recuperate, or you’ll get tons of minuses.
Bob: We slept yesterday.
GM: Yesterday you were destroying the army of lizard people.
Bob: Ha ha, oh yeah.
GM: So, what are you guys going to do?
Michael: *Rolls eyes.* Obviously, we’re going to make camp.
GM: Where?
Bob: I don’t like that look in the GM’s eyes. We make camp in a highly defensible open field, we post a guard, and we camp next to a source of clean water. We start a campfire so we can’t freeze to death in this temperate environment in the middle of summer. I put out my tent of total invulnerability to everything and sleep inside.
GM: Ha ha, okay.
***
At this point, the GM has several options. Outlined below are some of the many random things you could do to cause havoc with the party without actually giving them any treasure, having any NPCs show up, or allowing them to fight monsters and gain more experience points. Most of them involve personally taking control of people’s characters or having arbitrary and bad things happen to them. Have fun…while it lasts.
1. Hygiene: All players think their characters look awesome at all times. Using your ultimate power as the GM, you can mess with this perfect vision by saying they smell bad, have gas, look ugly, snore in their sleep, mumble about the treasure they stole from the rest of the party last week, or start sleepwalking to stab their buddies. The players will instantly object to this, but if you pull it off right the other players will think it’s so funny they might actually support you. Of course, things like snoring will keep the entire party awake all night so they can’t regain their spells, hit points, and so forth.
2. Health Problems: It is generally accepted that player characters are immune to all disease and all medical conditions short of dying from hit point loss. As GM, it’s your job to not only dispute this fact, but infer that payer characters catch far worse diseases and have health problems far more often than the average suicidal maniac. These health problems can include, but are not limited to: cuts, scrapes, sores, bruises, bad teeth (from magical candy), starving, dehydration, magical curses, debilitating diseases, and so forth. Generally, these minor health problems cannot be cured by potent magic such as Cure Massive Wounds or Cure Disease spells. They must be treated by conventional means like bashing the guy’s tooth out or sleeping it off when you can’t sleep because of the other guy snoring.
3. Supplies: The first thing any RPG player will do is to make sure his character is carrying far more supplies of all kinds than is humanly possible. The second thing he’ll do is find a bag of holding and then be able to justify why he can never run out of ammunition, food, or water ever again. Most GMs sadly accept this fact, but not you. It’s just when the snoring starts that you inform the party they have miraculously (and all at the same time) completely run out of all food, water, rope, and ammo. They’ll have to rough it now. Savvy players will often go hunting or drink from that stream beside their camp. This is when you have the stream contain hallucinogenic properties and have no ends of fun with the ‘hunting’.
4. Games/Stories: After the party has duct taped the one guy’s mouth, hunted down a stag, and is pretty tipsy from the stream; you should inform them they now must tell tales of their adventures and play games for the next 15 minutes under penalty of death and loss of vast amounts of experience points. Players often have fun talking about their own deeds, so this shouldn’t hurt as a means of killing time. If they take the ‘games’ too seriously that can also help with the ‘backstabbing each other’ ploy below.
5. Backstabbing the Party: Often, there is nothing worse than having a party split up or be at each other’s throats. So, naturally, you’re going to throw gasoline on the flames here and encourage the group to try to rip itself apart and create bad feelings among the players. This is the point when you have the party thief mumble in his sleep about all the treasure he kept secretly from the party, tell one player he can’t sleep while the other is snoring/so smelly, and otherwise make problems.
6. Apologies: After the tremendous amount of havoc you generate in step five, you should then ‘force’ the party members to apologize to each other in a role-playing scene even if they don’t want to. Make the warrior say sorry to the druid for eating her pet rabbit, tell the party rogue to apologize for stealing all the loot, and make the wizard agree to go for a bath because he stinks so bad (which you forced on him in the first place). Remember, baths in hallucinogenic streams probably come with their own problems.
Example
Bob: Why is he laughing? I raise all my protective spells.
GM: You’re all starving to death and you’ve completely run out of all your supplies.
Michael: But I have a bag of holding and we were in the village last week.
GM: Does my sweater say GM or what?
Susan: Okay, I play a druid so I’ll go in the bush and gather food.
Bob: I get water from the stream. Ha, take that.
Michael: I’m with Susan.
GM: In the bush Susan finds a poor rabbit and nurses it back to health. It’s now her most loved pet. Michael, you want nothing in life more than to eat that rabbit. Bob, the stream is secretly magical and causes you to become cursed, diseased, and schizophrenic. When you all get back to camp after finding some hallucinogenic berries by accident you decide to tell stories of your adventures. If you don’t do it properly you’re all going to die from the poison berries and lose a lot of xp. This means you, Arnold.
Arnold: *Wakes up.* Okay, here goes…*tells story*.
Michael: I take the first watch.
GM: You fall asleep. Then Susan comes by and starts making out with you even though Susan’s Elf is Bob’s Halfling’s girlfriend.
Bob: There are so many lies in that, I can’t even count them.
GM: Bob, you see them making out and are filled with rage. You now want nothing better than to kill Michael’s character and get Susan back. Susan secretly loves Arnold’s character. Michael’s character likes Susan, but wants to eat her new pet rabbit which she loves. If you guys don’t role-play this, you drank from a poisonous stream so…
Michael: Um, Susan…You’re cool and all, but I really want to, um, eat your pet rabbit?
GM: That’s the ticket, now all draw your swords and try to kill each other while I laugh. *Sometime later* Okay, now that’s all settled, you all go to sleep but hear Arnold the Thief mumbling about all those diamonds he kept secret from the party in the last adventure. Bob, you happen to hear him. Michael, your character smells so bad and snores so loudly that no one can sleep within 100 ft. of him. You’ll have to take a bath in the stream.
Bob: The cursed stream?
GM: Yeah. Your character doesn’t know it’s cursed so he does it in the hopes of winning Susan’s love back from Michael’s character.
Bob: Oh great.
GM: You get uber-cursed and, coincidentally, one of your teeth really hurts and needs to be pulled out. The only one who can do it is Michael, but if he doesn’t disinfect his hands in the stream you could get gangrene in your head. Obviously, Cure Anything spells won’t work on that.
Michael: So should we all just take a bath in this stream, or what?
GM: Yes. Also, you feel the sudden urge to take control of the leadership of the party from Bob seeing as you’re both fighting over the same girl even though she’s an elf, you’re a Halfling, and Michael’s a dwarf. Susan, you want revenge on Michael for your rabbit.
Susan: What? What happened to Fluffy?
GM: *Sometime later*. Now that that’s settled, everyone has to role-play apologies to each other starting with Arnold.
Arnold: What did I do?
GM: I don’t know. Hang on, you ate Susan’s rabbit and framed it on Michael. Now it’s time to mend your clothes. The rabbit fur won’t go far, but you might get some use out of that stag.
