Looking for a few good (er, I mean EVIL) Rat Bastards!

[Piratecat]

Copied over from Lord Nightshade's post on the temp boards!

Are you a nasty GM?

Do you allow your players to suffer the consequences of their choices? Do you make the choices hard for them?

Are you a master of the bait n' switch? Do you apply dramatic irony like a fine frosting on the cake of your campaign? Do the lips of your more sensitive players quiver as they learn the true meaning of “pathos”?

Can you design encounters using the a minimum of magic items, uber-monsters or “special things” and still make them challenging for mid to high level parties?

Then you just might have what it takes to be a Rat Bastard DM!!!

Yes, that's right the Rat Bastard's Club is starting another recruitment drive - and this time we are looking for specialists in the field of low magic and/or “low fantasy” campaign and encounter building.

If you are interested in sharing your ideas, and getting help with ideas from other creative and bastardly DMs - all you need do is post some examples of your great works. We are looking for three new members - so don't waste time. . .

Choices will be made within the next 48 hours!

What is the Rat Bastard's Club?

Imagine a place of evil glee, and the free exchange of ideas from some the imminent minds of the RPG community and industry. Need new ways to foil your players? Had a great idea you cannot use currently? Need help designing an adventure that is crucial to your over-arching plot? The Rat Bastards' Club is the place to be. This invitation only message board forum has been making players cry out in fear and horror for going on a year.

 

[Darkness]

Heh. Fresh blood is always in short supply at the RBC...

 

[Crothian]

THe fun of playing with the conscience of the party.

The NPC was named Jackson. He was helping the party by transporting them to a port City State on his boat. Jackson was affiliated with the crown nad the party liked him. When they got tho the city, Jackson tried to secretly make a deal with the people of the city to sell the party into slavery (he was paid to do this by the parties enimies). The group found out ands escaped into the wilderness. After months of traveling and adventuring and really working themselves into a great anger over this. They got back into civilization and found out Jackson told a different story of events. He said the aprty attacked the citizens of the town (which they did do killing inicents) and convinced the crown to put a price on their head to help the build an alliance with e city state.

At this point in time Jackson was also rewarded for seeking this alliance and given a prominate position in the goverenrment. He used this power to send many of the friends of the PCs who were in the army on dangerous missions and got them killed. The party hated him even more.

So, the day finally came when the aprty would be able to seek out their revenge. Jackson was having a secret meeting with someone. Jackson went with no gaurds to a remote area. THe group waiting in ambush. However, the meeting was set up by another one of Jackson's enemies. The Daughter of one of the people he sent to die set this up and attacked him with poison arrows. They paralyzed Jackson but kept him conscience and then she pulled out an acid dagger. The party came out and questioned her. She told them everything and her plans to torture him to death.

THe group was all good and did not condone torture. So, for the next 4 hours of game time the defended Jackson's actions so she would not torture and kill him. They wanted him brought to justice and to pay for his crimes. In the end they just killed him and left the body in the woods. But Having them hate and want the death of an NPC and then having them spend the whole adventure agrueing to save his life was priceless.

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I have been acused of being a Rat bastard a time or two.

Example 1: Stupid PC's jerk around in the first room of the dungeon for an hour, himin and hawin over the fire pit there and then wander over and just pop open the door to the next room. Not to dastardly right, the thing is they weren't being quite or snealing around at any point. The frost gaint had no problem hearing them, first guy through the door really got it. I crit on the gaints attack roll and maxed damage, poor thief!!! got split in two. Gues he should of tried some of those skills thieves are renowned for.

Example 2: i give each player some piece of info that will alow the pc's to figure out who and what the main villian for the adventure is. Again, pretty tame except on a gamble i gave the most inportant info to a player that is some what infamous for being difficult when the time comes for sharing info or making decisions. It worked out real well to, they got POed at me after going back and forth with theories, doing resurch, ect for hours. When they found out the final information was right there the whole time i thought they'd kill me and that unfortuate player. It was also a really easy night for me, tuns of role play, very little dm work and every time they asked for a hint i got to say: "The party has all the info they need to figure this out"

As for low magic i've gone both ways. The pc's generally like the low powered items they get from me becuase i always have a desript and thry to make the itrem as unique as possible. They generally hate me when they get powerful items from me becuase i've become somewhat infamous for adding flavor to these via strange drawbacks and command words that i hold them to. I think the worst was a shield that one player got through random chance, it was +5! So to balance things, well balanced in my mind anyway, as an added effect the shield became inmaterial if the attacker could not plainly see the shield, it was also non existant to ogres, rock gaints, and wolves three things the other guy that dmed these characters used habitualy.

I don't know if this qualifies me as a rat bastard dm, but it has been fun sharing this stuff anyway!

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Ooo! Oooo! Me! Me!

Rat-Bastardliness, eh? An example... let me see.

This is from just a couple of sessions ago in my game.

The party is heading to disrupt a Pazuzu-worshipping ceremony in a major city in my world... They've beaten the guards in the seedy tavern that stands over the accessway to the temple, and find themselves in a basement beneath the establishment.

The door they need to go through is an ordinary wooden door, and the priest can detect magic from something on the other side of the door; The rogue can find no traps.

The rogue opens the door just a little bit...

The door had been set up so that anyone opening it would cause a string to untie, which then loosened a heavy steel weight, which then smashed into a bucket of steel marbles sitting atop a common kitchen stool, which is then knocked over, causing the marbles to scatter across the floor until they crossed the pentagram holding a Ghour Demon in check...

That's right; it was a Rube Goldberg Demon Trap!

Quite effective; they didn't open the door all the way, but if they had it would have been a comedy as they tried to scoop up/impede/neutralize the marbles before they broke the pentagram... as it was, they waited long enough for the thing to be freed, grimacing as I described the sounds the trap made as it went through its convolutions...

Other rat-bastardliness:

• Pitting the hapless PC's against Drow Vampires (with different powers from Ron Poirier's Vampiricon rules) that could use haste and improved invisibility in combat...
• Enslaving them as gladiators (and making the gnome bunk with a minotaur)
• Replacing one of them with a doppleganger, and having the player of the PC run the doppleganger to mislead the party, leading to two party members getting thrown out a castle window - twice! Yes, it was the same window each time.

Hows that?

 

[JacktheRabbit]

My opening session with my new group had a fun event.


The setting was simple enough. Small wood plank bridge over what appears to be a bottomless pit in a small dungeon they were exploring. The party is a dwarf barbarian cleric and a elven ranger druid.

The dwarf decides to cross the bridge first. If it can hold him then it can easily hold the elf. I tell him he needs to make to DC5 reflex checks to cross without slipping on the wet wood. Yep he blows the second one with a 1. Then he has to make a DC8 to safely fall onto the bridge. Yep, he rolls another 1.

So now the dwarf has one had wrapped in the ropes hanging below the bridge. The elf ranger walks out carefully to try to help him.

Nothing really rat bastard like right? Not yet. You see the dwarf loved all of his gear. He loved ALL of his gear.

As the elf crawls to the dwarf I say one simple phrase to the elf.

"You quickly realize that you won't be able to pull the dwarf up at all with all that gear on him."

The dwarfs player looks over at the elfs player in horror as the elf pulls a dagger and cuts the straps of the dwarfs backpack and both players watch it plummet down into the dark void.

 

[DM with a vengence]

How about this.

My party is currently playing RttToEE, and about 11 of them (huge party) are smashing their way through the moathouse. They advance across the top of the dungeon level to the diamond shape room, where they decide to bunk down for the night, leaving their commanded ghouls as guards.

Meanwhile, the gnoll commander finds out everybody has been slaughtered and gathers up the priests, who sneak over and recommand the ghouls. The halfling pyromancer hears them and launches a fireball into the next room, frying the human cleric and slightly burning the rest. The ghouls rush in and parlyze him, followed closely by the gnoll ranger and cleric. The party fares surprisingly well due to its two monks and two elves, but they all (11 PCs, average level 4) get thrashed by the ghouls and gnoll, who tie up the live ones and drag them off to the torture room.

While all this is going on, a Human cleric of the Naga goddess, who is currently adventuring alone to Nulb, recieves a vision from his god (hey, you gotta toy with them a little before you kill them) that his friends are in trouble at the moathouse. He goes off, and sneaks into the dungeon to find the gnolls torturing the party with red hot pokers, he fires a crossbow and cast sanctuary on himself. A desparate melee occures, where several members of the party manage to free themselves only to be smashed to pieces by the gnolls. The cleric attempts to eat the gnoll cleric unholy symbol, and recieves a vision of Tharizdun offering him power.

In character creation he decided that due to the three aspected nature of his goddes, in a stressful situation he had a chance to go CE, N, or LG. He goes CE and ends up joining the cult after a slight case of lead poisoning from the paint on the unholy symbol. Everybody else gets tortured to death, and Tharizdun is released from his extra-dimensional prison.

Oerth gets eaten, and there was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth and rolling of d6s.

 

[Rune]

My players seem to think that I'm a rat bastard, so here goes:

All of these are from the campaign linked to in my sig, because my memory is fuzzy.

• Have you ever led the PCs deep into a dense, rotted forest where they have to march single file and get clawed up by the tight webbing of branches? Have you ever had them run like crazy out of said forest while it burns down around them? Try it. It's great fun!
  
• Have you ever made unreasonably realistic spider minis for a game (huge-sized) out of colored pipe cleaners and cotton balls and used them to represent a whole city crawling with them for your level 3 characters? And then pulled out the colossal mother spider with the lovingly crafted egg-sac just when the players were beginning to doubt your sanity? Try it. It's great fun!
  
• Have you ever frightened your players so badly that they could not sleep the night of your game with a single zombie (admittedly, one with a template which allowed it to come back to (un)life over and over again) that never even hit them once? This is done solely through use of atmosphere-building horror techniques and the limiting of undead present in the campaign to...well, just the zombie, so far. Try it. It's great fun!

That's all I've got for now. Maybe some other time, I will relate Cthulhu goodies, such as using yourself as an NPC who has terrible things happen to it. Terrible.

 

[Wolfspirit]

I hope these put me into consideration, but if nothing else, have fun being evil >)

Note: If you're someone that I'm DMing for, you should NOT be reading this thread. Duh.

1. Conscription. Nothing is as fun as putting the PCs in the point where they either have to kill/subdue a conscription officer that's just doing his job or end up as footman fodder.

2. Hobgoblin Shieldbearers. Best used in tight corners; a 5-10 foot hall does nicely. Hobgoblin with a towershield blocks people up with full cover, while one behind him uses a weapon with reach (polarms etc) and another one with a ranged weapon knocks out any spell casters or ranged attackers.

3. Where's the Switch. To spice up a pit trap, put an obvious (DC 5-10) "trigger" in front of an obvious pit trap. Then have the actual disarm trigger cleverly hidden on the walls. So when it appears that they disarmed the trap, they fall in. Oh, yeah, caltrops or broken glass at the bottom are a must.

4. Ale! Put some manner of traps on a few of the ale kegs in a dungeon. It never fails that PCs drop their guard when it comes to ale. Doubles at a way to keep random people (that aren't invading PCs) from tapping into the stores.

5. Next session, when a group of undead orcs comes to chip the paladin's sword! When PCs break rule #1 (never give the dm ideas. Heh) and give you ideas, at least threaten to use them. And sometimes go ahead and do it, to keep them on their toes.

6. 'D' is for... Say something to the order of "You've defeated the kobolds, but you hear something menacing approaching... " Start flipping through the 'D' section of the Monster's Manual, "Hmm, Devil, Demon..." and then hit your head and exclaim that "Dog is under Animals"

7. Haven't you seen Braveheart? If there's a chokepoint in a non-flamible area that is to be defended, have oil mixed with the area in front of it (with the dirt or whatever). Let's see an invading mage make concentration checks when his clothings caught fire.

8. You're the most charming evil man I've ever met! If an evil npc has a good charisma, use it. Laugh at their jokes, be civilized, be friendly. I've gotten a group to reccomend a very very evil mage be set free after they've captured him for being a cooperative nice man. And he only had to sell out his friends and be a decent human being. Heh. Heh.

9. It slices, it dices! Throw a large number of caltrops or glass shards at someone, then cast wind wall. This can also be a choke point strategy (the pcs THOUGHT the glass was just an alarm mechanism). On the subject of wind wall, it can also be used to disrupt enemy formations by placing it through them (especially if they're still in a double breasted column).

10. Illusions for dummies. If used sparingly, illusions can be really fun, and make a mid level group (before true sight spells or whatnot) soil their armor at something that's not there. For instance, if the group is fighting kobolds, the little guys can regroup or retreat to a different area, and have a big red scaly surprise waiting for the pcs. Bonus points if the kobolds use a fire ball spell from the area of the mouth, but just the sight of an unexpected and unprepared for dragon will cause the party to go into a retreat.

Honorable mention: Congradulations, you now have a +3 sword... I suggest you start running. So you're doing a low magic setting, and actually give the pcs some nice magic loot. Have fun as people start attacking the pcs for their loot.

(Final evil experience I thought I'd share) In one of the campaigns I've been DMing, I'd worked it out with one player that the frog that the gnome worshiped actually was a representation of a real diety. Of course, the rest of the party hated the frog, and made constant jokes about killing it, even the party paladin. Despite the many hints that were dropped, they never got it, even to the point where we've put the campaign on hold. I don't know what they'd do if they found out

 

[Aaron L]

Does Call of Cthulhu count for low magic/fantasy? Delta Green specifically.

For several years my players have formed a relationship with one Stephen Alzsis, who may or may not be Someone Else. They have gotten to the point that they will drop by the establishment that he frequents (Club Apocalypse) to trade information or services for tips and secrets. This is all very much to my amusement as Stephen has quite blatantly screwed them over several times in the past, but they come back for more.

At one point 3 of the PC's; Special Agent Wang Chung Lee (FBI), Special Agent Pete Skinner (FBI), and Alexander McIntyre (sometime CIA), contacted Mr. Alzsis about information on a group that was trying to kill the parents of Agent Lee. He met with them and agreed to help, if they would perform a service for him. A certain senator was annoying a "friend" of his, and he would trade his information if this senator was "dealt with". The PC's agreed, as some of Alzsis' previous tips had led to them "dealing with" cultists and assorted unfortunates who were in positions of power. Only Agent Skinner had any misgivings, and Agent Lee quietly planned to off him at the slightest sign of backing out.

The PC's went to the hotel that the senator was staying at for a secret "meeting." They sneaked in to find the senator watching television. Agent Lee crept up behind him, put his hand over the senators mouth, and shot him through the head with a silenced pistol. They then searched through the hotel room. They were quite dismayed when they found no occult artifacts, no mythos tomes, nothing even remotely vile. They had just killed an innocent man. Agent Lee wasn't even fazed, but the other two were quite disturbed and all the players just kind of looked at me. Agent Lee is currently on his way to becoming quite a cult sorcerer.

I couldn't believe I got them to do that.


Don't know if that counts, but I just had to share it.