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D&D Older Editions
Running player commentary on PCat's 4E Campaign - Paragon Tier
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<blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 5479383" data-attributes="member: 2"><p>In the real world, people are motivated by either logic, strong emotions, or a mixture of the two. Logic's easy to use when figuring out bad guy motivations. "I get more power by summoning my Dark God to conquer the world? SWEET!" "That powerful sorcerer will kill me if I don't poison this random merchant? I suppose I can do that." </p><p></p><p>Emotion, though, is trickier. It makes bad guys do irrational things in order to match their emotional state. I think it's a stronger tool in D&D mysteries because what's driving the bad guys isn't immediately obvious. If your bad guy is summoning his Dark God because it's the only way to gain vengeance against the lich who slew and animated his wife, your PCs have the opportunity of "defeating" the big bad guy by going off and gaining vengeance against <em>another</em> big bad guy. Hey, that even might convert the first one from an enemy into an ally. That's way more interesting to me.</p><p></p><p>Even better, you can use back story and emotional logic to justify almost any dumb mistake you make as a DM. When your players point out logical inconsistencies that exist because you screwed up, you raise one eyebrow mysteriously, say "that IS weird, isn't it?", and then scramble like hell behind the scenes to figure out why it'd be like that. It goes from a mistake to a new mystery for the group to discover. Just figure out what might make your bad guy act like that. When I make that work, all the plots actually snap into place for me with an audible *click.*</p><p></p><p>Then - and this is the important part - think about the consequences from a bad guy's emotional decision. If it were you, and you felt that way, what would you do to make sure you won and achieved your goals? What would you completely forget to do because you were focused on other tasks? Build that into the game; bad guys leave logical holes in their eeevil plans because they're blinded by emotional goals, and that's possibly something that the PCs can exploit in order to even the odds.</p><p></p><p>The reverse is also true. If you have a really logical bad guy, your PC bard can possibly rally the countryside with clever verse and brutally witty insults (*cough* skill challenge *cough*) to thwart him with emotion instead of logic.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Piratecat, post: 5479383, member: 2"] In the real world, people are motivated by either logic, strong emotions, or a mixture of the two. Logic's easy to use when figuring out bad guy motivations. "I get more power by summoning my Dark God to conquer the world? SWEET!" "That powerful sorcerer will kill me if I don't poison this random merchant? I suppose I can do that." Emotion, though, is trickier. It makes bad guys do irrational things in order to match their emotional state. I think it's a stronger tool in D&D mysteries because what's driving the bad guys isn't immediately obvious. If your bad guy is summoning his Dark God because it's the only way to gain vengeance against the lich who slew and animated his wife, your PCs have the opportunity of "defeating" the big bad guy by going off and gaining vengeance against [i]another[/i] big bad guy. Hey, that even might convert the first one from an enemy into an ally. That's way more interesting to me. Even better, you can use back story and emotional logic to justify almost any dumb mistake you make as a DM. When your players point out logical inconsistencies that exist because you screwed up, you raise one eyebrow mysteriously, say "that IS weird, isn't it?", and then scramble like hell behind the scenes to figure out why it'd be like that. It goes from a mistake to a new mystery for the group to discover. Just figure out what might make your bad guy act like that. When I make that work, all the plots actually snap into place for me with an audible *click.* Then - and this is the important part - think about the consequences from a bad guy's emotional decision. If it were you, and you felt that way, what would you do to make sure you won and achieved your goals? What would you completely forget to do because you were focused on other tasks? Build that into the game; bad guys leave logical holes in their eeevil plans because they're blinded by emotional goals, and that's possibly something that the PCs can exploit in order to even the odds. The reverse is also true. If you have a really logical bad guy, your PC bard can possibly rally the countryside with clever verse and brutally witty insults (*cough* skill challenge *cough*) to thwart him with emotion instead of logic. [/QUOTE]
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