Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 4494264" data-attributes="member: 7177">Well, I do have a <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/juergen-hubert/" target="_blank">blog</a>.(And I'm also willing to take tokens of appreciations in the form of <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/reputation.php?p=4493682" target="_blank">experience points</a>...   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ) My general attitude towards GMing is that I allow the PCs almost complete freedom of action (within the limits of their actual physical/magical competence). They can try pretty much anything.But almost all of their actions have consequences. Unfolding events in the campaign depend to a very large degree on their choices, moral or otherwise. And these consequences can be for good or ill.Which has incidentally led to a lot of Angst in my current Exalted campaign. But the only way to emphasize that the PCs do have the power to change the world... is to give them the power to change the world. And the players seem to love that aspect of the campaign.Well, the appearance of an adventuring party including a dwarf in a goblin or orc dungeon might give them pause. And these adventurers probably have a bunch of fresh wounds signifying that they have been in a fight recently. And if they try to shadow the other group for a bit, they could hear them saying things like: "Did you see how I chopped the head of that orc right off? And how far it rolled?" And if nothing else works, I'd allow them to make a skill roll to identify these people.But if they still jump to conclusions, I'd let them slaughter the other party. And then, when they return to civilization, they will hear that this party has indeed been fairly heroic, and set out to slaughter the local orcish menace (alternatively, if they think that these people have been paid by the orcs, they would have to assume that the orcs still kept some treasure for themselves, and proceed deeper into the dungeon. And then, of course, they would find all those killed orcs and triggered/disabled traps). So sooner or later, they would figure out that they have slaughtered decent, hard-working good folks because they jumped to conclusions.Whoops.So what do they do now? Confess their crimes, try to make some sort of penance in secret, or just shrug and proceed to spend their spoils?Any of these responses will tell me something about their characters... which in turn gives me further hooks for role-playing opportunities. Which is part of what role-playing games are supposed to be about.Oh, I assume that there are always some other adventurers around in the world. It's just that most of them die or retire young, and only few of them survive to high level.Being civilized means that you carry civilization within you, and don't just put your values away once you leave town. Actions in dungeons have consequences as well - not necessarily for the PCs themselves, but for someone in the campaign world. Make sure that the players understand that.That's not necessarily true. They could turn into ghosts a few nights later. Or perhaps some relative tracks their bodies down, and raises them. This doesn't mean it has to happen immediately after their first such act, but sooner or later it could happen to them as well.Personally, I'm against hitting player characters with the moral consequences of their actions immediately after the fact. That smacks of railroading - "do as I tell you, or I will punish you!". No, such consequences should take a while to simmer so that they will hit the PCs at the most inconvenient moment sometime down the road.This will have the same intended effect (teaching the PCs that their moral transgressions have repercussions), but it also shows them that they can make real, meaningful choices.</blockquote>

Verification