Rat Bastard Reccomendations

[Thornir Alekeg]

Here's how I saw things: The compass was, in and of itself, a fabulous treasure. The PCs knew this: they could sell it for quite a lot to a crew willing to gamble with their lives for even more than they had paid. They also knew the compass was cursed, and it took a life every time it led a "crew" (in this case the party) to a treasure.

I'm confused. Is the compass itself the only "fabulous treasure" it would lead people to? Its only value is to be sold to someone else? In that case where would the legend of leading to fabulous treasure ever come about? If it cannot lead you to found treasure, it has no inherent value to anyone. Or was the compass an intelligent object that somehow read the minds of the party from a distance and knew that the party planned on selling it, therefore it was, for the party, leading them to a fabulous treasure just be being found? If the latter, then it seems to me that your knowledge of the party's intent may have affected the outcome.

I wasn't planning on letting them get their hands on the compass without triggering the curse if I could help it. And the players gave me the opportunity to stop them. To me it seemed as if the players had decided that as long as they did not deliberately subject themselves to the curse, it couldn't hurt them. That seems to me like deciding that you can take all of the dragon's treasure and it can't do anything about it if you just refuse to roll initiative. Or maybe a better comparison would be finding a pressure plate in a hallway, and figuring there's no way it could possibly go if you walk across it without making a deliberate attempt to trigger it...

And there is the crux of the matter right there. Why did you have no intention of letting them get their hands on it without triggering the curse?

• Because you wanted them to refuse to take the compass and have the regrets of not knowing if it would have been worth it? Always a bad idea to have a preconceived notion of what the players should do in these kinds of situations and not be open to ideas that defeat the challenge.
• Because you wanted to inflict the curse upon them? That isn't rat bastard DMing, it is just bad DMing. As DM you have the power to inflict any kind of curse you want at any time for any reason, it just isn't a good idea if you want to have an enjoyable game.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Getting back to the title of the thread: I can think of a few rat-bastardly ways to have used the situation in the original thread:

1. The party sells the compass. The buyer uses the compass, sacrificing one of their own people, and the compass leads the buyer to the party's own treasure stash.
2. The party sells the compass. Later on the party hears of how somebody discovered a fabulous treasure - way more than the party got for the sale, and how the person used a fraction of the money to pay the Temple to raise his poor deceased brother. (why didn't we think of that!)
3. The party sells the compass. The buyer uses it and the powerful family of the person sacrificed hunts down all those they hold responsible, including the party who sold the compass.
4. The party sells the compass. A loved one of one of the party members falls in with the buyer and ends up being the person sacrificed when used.

 

[kaomera]

For you, "The compass will lead you to a great treasure," was a specific semantic clue to the trap that is the curse. From the players' point of view, it's simply a description of the compasses function. How are the players supposed to realize that the compass itself is the "great treasure"? After all, from the standpoint of an adventurer, a compass that only leads to itself is next to useless.

Well, I got that idea from the players, actually. I had considered the idea that the PCs might sell the compass, and had a value based on normal (3.5) guidelines for the worth of such an item, including the fact that it was cursed. But the players pointed out that there had to be a crew ruthless or greedy enough that a (say) 2 in 30 chance of dying was worth doubling their money (or 3 in 30 for triple, etc.). I actually hadn't really considered that a "crew" was liable to include a lot more bodies than the party! I agreed that the compass ought to be worth as much as any treasure it would lead them to (because I knew that it might come back to bite them), and worked up a new value.

Now, at this point I would have liked to have had a good way to let the players know that their plan was not foolproof. But just coming out and saying it seemed wrong - it would almost certainly have led to play stopping until they could find and plug the loophole, and if they hadn't gotten it right I would have felt compelled to tell them that, no, it still might not work, because otherwise I would have been lying by omission, IMO. I dunno, maybe I could have said something like: "Just so you know, out-of-character, your plan might not be as foolproof as you seem to think - but that's all I'm going to say on the matter and you're on your own from this point on." Dunno, that still seems kind of lame.

But in the end, the point is that is doesn't really matter whether or not you think their plan is clever. That they think it's clever is enough.

It's not really your job circumvent the players' plan based on its cleverness. It's up to you to decide how difficult it should be for that plan to succeed (there should always be at least some minimal chance to succeed, no matter how difficult or dangerous that chance is), what the logical (and sometimes devious) consequences of success or failure are, and to perhaps give some mildly obvious hints of the possible dangers and consequences (if it seems reasonable that the PCs could figure such things out for themselves).

There was a great chance for their plan to succeed - I really couldn't come up with any contrivance that would lead to a situation where I could foil it. But luck and just a tiny bit of overconfidence on the players' part led me there anyway. There was no way I could have led the PCs to split up, or to end up in the cavern with no light source on my own. But significant parts of those circumstances did come from the players doing well...

If they had fought the mad sea-witch instead of making a clever guess and trying to parley, there wouldn't even have been a compass, as it was a detail I added when they asked what the pirates they where hunting where doing on the island. And if they hadn't all but massacred the pirate leaders (and only the leaders) before they even had a chance to act, the rest of the pirates wouldn't have run screaming deeper into the caves - and even then the party could have stopped to loot the bodies, retrieve their packs and baggage, etc.

Letting the PCs get the compass under those circumstances seemed to me completely arbitrary. It seemed to short-circuit the game's internal consistency, and would have ruined my fun, at least in the short-term. I should have let them get it, anyway. I've thought about the possibility of cheating and just not letting them find it ("Oh, one of the pirates you killed knew where it is, but otherwise tough luck.") but that wouldn't really have been more fun for me, and the players would have thought it was lame, I'm sure. And there was the possibility of rewinding things to before the fighter grabbed the compass, but that didn't even come up - everyone would have thought it was lame, so why bother.

I think the only good out would have been to have let them get the compass and just not even mentioned that they maybe shouldn't have. Letting them have it and pointing out that I could have screwed them wouldn't have been fun for anyone, IMO. But I seriously thought that once the players figured out what exactly had happened it would have seemed as reasonable to them as it did to me. (And I didn't actually expect any of the PCs to die before the players realized they they where under the curse, because the caves themselves really shouldn't have been that dangerous, IMO.)

I'm confused. Is the compass itself the only "fabulous treasure" it would lead people to?

See above. The compass worked as advertised, and the players where aware that it was worth as much as any treasure it could lead to because they came up with the idea, and I replied that "Well, then I guess the compass is a pretty fabulous treasure itself then, huh?"

I knew they didn't get that clue. If they had they would have stopped and figured out exactly what it meant, if they could get around it anyway, and how. I had a week to think on all this, and I decided that a) they would probably get the compass without invoking the curse because, really, they're adventurers. Half their job is finding treasure and they weren't likely to be in a situation where they wouldn't be able to find it without it's help. And b) if they did actually find themselves in that situation I didn't want to go easy on them because that would mean that the only reason that they had won was because I had made them win.

Now, I was the DM - I could have totally changed things around and decided that the compass simply wasn't capable of leading them to itself. I could have actually have dealt with that - making those kinds of decisions is part of my job when I DM, IMO. But I felt like I had dropped too many hints, and I really didn't want to end up with the players figuring it out and realizing that they only won because I made them win, that they basically never had a real chance to affect the course of the game. I played in an LFG game a while ago where, after refusing to let us run away and basically forcing us into the final encounter we fought several monsters that took 40+ hp to get bloodied, and then just dropped on the next piddly hit. We won, but it wasn't actually fun, in fact it kind of sucked.

So I had every expectation that the PCs would end up searching the caves in a methodical fashion, and I wasn't even going to play it all out and try to bore them into quitting. They would have just flat out found the compass, sold it off with minimal complications (I foresaw an attempted double-cross that was completely unlikely to succeed), and never had to worry about it again.

This thing was serious bad news for the crew of a sea-going vessel, but anyone greedy enough to grab for it wasn't likely to realize that until it was too late. The ship would hit a storm after they recovered the first treasure, and the crew would have been trying to outrun it or sail through it at some pretty hefty penalties. Sure, those penalties would have ended as soon as the first crewmember drowned, but chances where they where pretty much gonners by that point anyway...

 

[MarkB]

This is a classic example of player expectation vs. DM expectation. As far as the players are concerned, the only way a compass can lead them anywhere is by pointing a direction with its needle, so avoiding the curse of a cursed compass is a simple matter of never following where that needle points.

As far as you were concerned, the curse was an active, intelligent, malignant force that could manifest itself in forms such as blinking lights leading a person to the compass itself.

Without more information, the players have no means of making the leap from their interpretation to yours, and no reason to try. Some form of clue, such as a tale of some similar curse in which those who'd tried to circumvent it were caught out when it manifested in an unexpected manner, would have gone a long way towards helping them make that leap.

To some extent, you can try and blame this sort of misconception on the players for making the wrong assumptions and not asking the right questions, but the fact is that the players are always acting on incomplete information, both compared to you and compared to their characters, and if they don't make some reasonable assumptions from the information they're given, the game will never get anywhere, because they'll be having to constantly ask for more information and second-guess everything they're told.

About the worst thing you can do is use that information barrier to lay "gotcha" traps for them of the "well, you didn't ask" kind, because in the end, you'll just make them too paranoid to take anything you tell them at face value - everything will be questioned, assessed and evaluated from the assumption that it's some form of trap, trick or misinformation, and you'll never get any real gaming done.

 

[ggroy]

About the worst thing you can do is use that information barrier to lay "gotcha" traps for them of the "well, you didn't ask" kind, because in the end, you'll just make them too paranoid to take anything you tell them at face value - everything will be questioned, assessed and evaluated from the assumption that it's some form of trap, trick or misinformation, and you'll never get any real gaming done.

I know one guy who DMs all his games exactly in this manner. More than half of a game session is typically wasted on the players asking hundreds of questions, for which just about all of his answers are "you don't notice anything". Even asking the right question and him replying with long elaborate answers, he gives zero XP for it.

Due to so much time wasted on asking hundreds of questions per session, it takes at least a year of weekly sessions to level up in this guy's game.

And he wonders why there's so much player turnover in his games.

 

[Merkuri]

I've only DM'd one mini-campaign, so I don't know if I'd qualify for the title of RBDM, but when I read the premise of your post (that the compass leads to incredible treasure at the cost of a life, then the player's plan to sell it) this is what I thought would happen, and what I would have done:

If the players find the compass and enact their plan to "safely" sell it for a lot of money I'd let them do so. It would really be a LOT of money, but some NPC (perhaps the one who bought it from them, or a crew member) would comment on the sum of money they got and call it a "fabulous treasure" in and of itself. Hopefully at that moment one of the players will gasp and realize what they've done. And THAT would activate the curse.

Of course, then I probably would have given them a chance to try to reverse the curse before it killed anybody, with PCs coming incredibly close to death several times in the process. That probably would've involved losing the money (not spending it) and/or getting back the compass and destroying it.


Honestly, like others have said, the idea that the compass led them to treasure when they didn't have possession of the compass feels like there's no choice in the matter. Curses the players walk straight into willingly and only realize what they've done later are much more satisfying than ones that affect them when they have no choice (or when they feel they had no choice - because the players' perception matters).

 

[kaomera]

As far as you were concerned, the curse was an active, intelligent, malignant force that could manifest itself in forms such as blinking lights leading a person to the compass itself.

I'll admit that I may have played the curse as too close to "intelligent", which it wasn't. But it definitely was a malignant force. It didn't act on any source of information or make choices or lay plans, it just acted against those that fell within it's parameters.

Without more information, the players have no means of making the leap from their interpretation to yours, and no reason to try. Some form of clue, such as a tale of some similar curse in which those who'd tried to circumvent it were caught out when it manifested in an unexpected manner, would have gone a long way towards helping them make that leap.

Yes, exactly. And I admit that I screwed up - it would have been better to change the facts behind the screen and let the players get away with their supposed cleverness. But the other side of players wasting time on questions is players who never ask anything, except maybe "What happens next?" There was more information available, it just never got to the players.

I think I could have spun this up as something where I would have gotten responses bemoaning how awful my players where, but that's not actually how it happened. I would have had to bring up a lot of stuff that, since the players didn't know it, was basically irrelevant. Information I keep behind the screen and don't get to share isn't really even much fun for me.

What I'd like to figure out (if there even really is a solution that would allow for it) is how I could have passed that information along without ruining it's import in the process. I gave a brief description of the "compass" when it was found, from which the player in question reasonably decided that, yes, this was a magic item that could be described that way. It was a crystal on a short chain with a small mote of light spinning rapidly around it (it had appeared to be blinking because lying on the floor of the chamber the light had passed behind the crystal as it spun). He didn't realize (or didn't think it important) that the spinning light indicated that the item was active. No-one decided that this "needle" was spinning wildly because it was pointing at itself...

Failing that, how do I spot instances where it's going to be better to sidestep possible consequences and just let the PCs win? I don't mind giving them stuff so much (oh, I might have still grumbled a little to myself) but I absolutely don't want it to feel to the players like a handout. I didn't want the players to realize what had happened afterwords and feel robbed of the significance of their actions.

If I had stopped the fighter's player when he had his character grab for the compass, and insisted that he sit through a detailed description of the "compass" and the "blinking light", just the fact that I was busting out "boxed text" would have given him pause. I really don't think he would have grabbed it at that point, regardless. Maybe that would have been better than just letting min grab it, but I think probably not. Having the compass activate on it's own was probably just too "clever" for my own good.

If the players find the compass and enact their plan to "safely" sell it for a lot of money I'd let them do so. It would really be a LOT of money, but some NPC (perhaps the one who bought it from them, or a crew member) would comment on the sum of money they got and call it a "fabulous treasure" in and of itself. Hopefully at that moment one of the players will gasp and realize what they've done. And THAT would activate the curse.

Of course, then I probably would have given them a chance to try to reverse the curse before it killed anybody, with PCs coming incredibly close to death several times in the process. That probably would've involved losing the money (not spending it) and/or getting back the compass and destroying it.

But the players already knew the compass was a fabulous treasure - they came up with that idea themselves. They thought themselves very clever to have figured out how to get the fabulous treasure without activating the curse... And that just (still) strikes me as the height of hubris. Pretty much every story I've read / seen regarding a curse, someone tries to sidestep it and ends up walking right into it.

And the players should have had a chance to get rid of the curse before anyone died. Like I said, they shouldn't have even been able to get into a situation where the curse could activate. But being PCs they of course did exactly that... The one thing that I can point to as being really, seriously, messed up about this was that I just don't know how the PCs would have gotten the compass if they had realized the danger and dropped it. It's led them to itself at that point, and they know it - how do the work themselves out from under that? Maybe that's the "clue" I'm looking for, the hint that I should just shut the whole thing down and hand them what they want.

 

[Bullgrit]

But the other side of players wasting time on questions is players who never ask anything, except maybe "What happens next?" There was more information available, it just never got to the players.

Yeah, I've had these kinds of Players. They never notice or think about clues and plots. They get a unique, ornate, obviously special magic item, and they just stash it in their backpack and move on. When they go to sell it, they are excited to get twice the value over what they expected for it, but they never think twice about why they got so much for it.

I've encountered Players like that. *sigh*

Bullgrit