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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5706966" data-attributes="member: 177">Let me get this straight...You know your enemy makes golems, and you know the sword can be used to power one.&nbsp; After you kill her, you find one more golem, deactivated, but with her still-beating heart in it, in the treasure room rather than in a lab. And you claim you had &quot;no way of knowing&quot;?&nbsp; I'll accept that they were caught up in the moment, but I think you telegraphed that pretty well.&nbsp; What more did they want, a neon sign blinking, &quot;Don't plunge the golem-powering sword into the heart of the inactive golem, it may not do what you think it will!&quot; I mean, really?Anyway, I don't think I've run a session with quite such a poor response to an unexpected event, but I played through one that nearly ended a campaign...The game, White Wolf's Mage: the Ascension.&nbsp; Setup: Half the party is trapped in a paradox realm, but don't know it.&nbsp; The realm is structured to be the best of all possible worlds, where everything starts going right for the characters.&nbsp; Where the GM screwed up: The screwup is twofold.&nbsp; Part 1 - The GM designed this with pre-determined exit conditions.&nbsp; One is that the PCs simply realize that, hey, this world is too perfect, and that they must be trapped in a realm.&nbsp; The other is a ritual in which the PCs make blood sacrifice a large number of the &quot;people&quot; in the realm.Part 2 - the GM does not realize that the party has a character capable of locating and breaking into the realm, and thus voiding the first escape route, and allows said character to do so.&nbsp; The second is that he doesn't realize that the players will utterly refuse the latter option.&nbsp; The GM thinks, &quot;Hey, these are only constructs of the realm, they don't have real souls, the party won't mind killing them any more than they'd mind breaking toasters.&quot;&nbsp; We players, on the other hand, feel that the mass murder is symbolic enough to not be acceptable to our characters.We run through fully 11 other ways that, given the rules and our powers, we should be able to break out of the realm.&nbsp; The GM says no to *all* of them, expecting that when we have run through all the options, we will just accept his.&nbsp; We finally ask, &quot;Okay, GM, really, there's only that one way out, its an absolute?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp; He says, yeah.We say, &quot;Well, then, time for us to create new characters.&quot;He sits and looks at us, stunned.We eventually made it clear to him that none of us find his one remaining route to be something our characters would be willing to do, and we hand-waved another mode of escape.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 5706966, member: 177"] Let me get this straight... You know your enemy makes golems, and you know the sword can be used to power one. After you kill her, you find one more golem, deactivated, but with her still-beating heart in it, in the treasure room rather than in a lab. And you claim you had "no way of knowing"? I'll accept that they were caught up in the moment, but I think you telegraphed that pretty well. What more did they want, a neon sign blinking, "Don't plunge the golem-powering sword into the heart of the inactive golem, it may not do what you think it will!" I mean, really? Anyway, I don't think I've run a session with quite such a poor response to an unexpected event, but I played through one that nearly ended a campaign... The game, White Wolf's Mage: the Ascension. [B]Setup:[/B] Half the party is trapped in a paradox realm, but don't know it. The realm is structured to be the best of all possible worlds, where everything starts going right for the characters. [B]Where the GM screwed up: [/B] The screwup is twofold. Part 1 - The GM designed this with pre-determined exit conditions. One is that the PCs simply realize that, hey, this world is too perfect, and that they must be trapped in a realm. The other is a ritual in which the PCs make blood sacrifice a large number of the "people" in the realm. Part 2 - the GM does not realize that the party has a character capable of locating and breaking into the realm, and thus voiding the first escape route, and allows said character to do so. The second is that he doesn't realize that the players will utterly refuse the latter option. The GM thinks, "Hey, these are only constructs of the realm, they don't have real souls, the party won't mind killing them any more than they'd mind breaking toasters." We players, on the other hand, feel that the mass murder is symbolic enough to not be acceptable to our characters. We run through fully 11 other ways that, given the rules and our powers, we should be able to break out of the realm. The GM says no to *all* of them, expecting that when we have run through all the options, we will just accept his. We finally ask, "Okay, GM, really, there's only that one way out, its an absolute?" He says, yeah. We say, "Well, then, time for us to create new characters." He sits and looks at us, stunned. We eventually made it clear to him that none of us find his one remaining route to be something our characters would be willing to do, and we hand-waved another mode of escape. [/QUOTE]

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