Story Designing and GM Authority Help

[hopeless]

Okay another thought

You know I'm wondering what if you asked them to design 3 characters, one at 15th, one at say 3rd and the other at say 7th and then when they pass you copies and explanations for what they're carrying and why they're in charge then set up the first adventure and decide which of the three you'll involve since the 15th level are going to be the boss characters so shouldn't be involved initially but rather introduced at the end of the first adventure and then have the novice characters introduced as part of an initiation ceremony where the boss characters are involved so you can get them to decide what they're going to do.

Of course its not a case they get to run said 15th level characters at least not until you're ready but you can offset them by giving the lower level characters more missions as ordered by their bosses so they get a handle on whats going on, whats involved in being the bosses and then have them encounter their rivals or enemies as part of the adventure so they're prepared against what they "think" they're up against but if they try to running their bosses in these lower levers missions they get to find out their opposition is better prepared since their "underlings" aren't able to help them since they're stuck at those lower levels whilst their abilities have been sussed out by their adversaries.

I guess its a case of what ultimately they want from this, being in charge of a city means they don't have alot of time for adventures and usually that means retiring those characters the only times they should come out of hiding is when the events require them to...

Still wondering what characters' they'll be running and how many players will be involved?

 

[billd91]

You know I'm wondering what if you asked them to design 3 characters, one at 15th, one at say 3rd and the other at say 7th and then when they pass you copies and explanations for what they're carrying and why they're in charge then set up the first adventure and decide which of the three you'll involve since the 15th level are going to be the boss characters so shouldn't be involved initially but rather introduced at the end of the first adventure and then have the novice characters introduced as part of an initiation ceremony where the boss characters are involved so you can get them to decide what they're going to do.

We're doing something like this for a friend's campaign. We've all got 12th level characters re-establishing a war torn county in an empire. One of the 12th level PCs is the Count, the rest of us are other political movers like head priests of a temple, lead crusaders at the fort, etc. We also all have a 6th level character working for one of the other players' 12th level characters. And, finally, we have (or would have if we hadn't suffered a TPK) 2nd level characters as well.

The DM presents us with various things going on in the county and we ultimately decide which group of characters gets sent to deal with it. If we pick a group too low in level, they run the risk of being killed. If we send too high a level, we miss out on actually gaining XPs because the opposition is too weak as well as the time lost on more important county duties.

Something like this could work pretty well for a high level campaign in which PCs want to be leaders, make political deals, etc. And it gives the DM a variety of average party levels to work with.

 

[Dausuul]

Recently I got into a really troublesome issue with my gaming group. We played a large variety of indy and mainstream rpgs and it was always I who was the GM and the one who introduced new games. Some projects lasted years , some a couple of sessions, some failed at the first game and finally some didn't even pass the character creation segment.

Untill now I enjoyed playing the games I prepared but now players demand from me to designe the story to their liking or there will be no game at all. This demands feature things like: setting the starting power level, choosing the setting, designing their own equipment without me butting in and simmilar.

In conclusion I was made to designe a story for Pathfinder set in the Faerun's Dragon Coast about a 15th level party set on ruling the city with a potent guild of assasins.

When I asked them why are they doing this, they said it was because this way they will get the most of what they want to have rather than waiting for the occasion to earn it which may never come.

Please, give me some advice on how should I aproach them and somehow mend this situation. I don't want to lose this gaming group as this one was my first durring my career as a GM.

"Sorry, I don't want to run this campaign you've designed for me. If you really, really want to try out high-level play, I might be able to accommodate you, at least short-term. And if there are other specific things you want, we can talk about those too. But I have no interest in running a campaign you guys make up and shove in my hands. If you want it, one of you can run it and I'll step back and be a player. There's this guide for high-level wizard play that I've been wanting to try out... something about being Batman."

(A full-length 3.X/Pathfinder campaign starting at level 15? I shudder at the mere thought.)

 

[chubbyloremaster]

To be perfectly correct in starts at 20th level. The PCs can have an item for each equipment section on the body and 5 more. I was very stalwart in at least keeping the artifacts and intelligent items as GM only privelage bur yeah they all have +10 weapons, and armors with as much buffs as you can find there and due to the handyness of the srd my players don't need to rely on my book collection.

As I mentioned in my previous post they agreed to scrape the "evil for the sake of evil" idea for a story of my choice (Hurray) which would be your typical high fantasy adventure "Dark forces gather, old enemies prepare to finaly put an end to the heroes....".

Personally each of them loved the prologue I gave them.
There was the drow assassin who has a death sentence from Lolth for killing her newborn son followed up by a dashing escape from the Arach-Trinit

The second one is a human bard who acompanied his friend, a powerful priest, on a planar journey of discovery but they were tricked by the Faerie Queen to steal from Mephisto his favoured pitchfork In conclusion not only did the bards action lead to imprisoning of his friend in the Nine hells but also he made a mortal enemy from a powerful devil.

The third one and the fourth one are still being formed as I have little information about their background.

The problem I now encountered was not the amount of crunch I have to go trough to make the game challenging but that the PCs are concerned that they will be forced to participate in a very lifethreaening adventure. From their point, they just want to enjoy their powers using them on lesser beings which totally misses the point of the setting. In my opinion heroes should be HEROIC 90% of time. I know the dragons and other 20 level beings don't just hop here and there but everything less is, most of the time, childs play.

I once ran a campaign where the heroes at one point ,after some serious character drama, wanting to look for some change in their life, traveled to a city on a different continent and played "family". I have nothing against character development but it went on and on. 1 eight hour session , two , tree. At the fourth I started bugging them to get their assess where they are needed and they in return started making excuses on how much they had planned for children, dates, holidays. On the fifth session I stormed their holiday house and killed them all with their families in the mafia style. No last stand. just plain old murdere. It must sound very awful but I don't like when someone just pissess on the story without even flushing.

 

[S'mon]

This is all going to end in tears, I can see it.

 

[DragonLancer]

Interesting let's assume that you were planning such a game how would you handle it?

What level limit would you impose?

Probably 9th or 10th. I certainly wouldn't want to run such a campaign with 15th level characters. It would get boring or unweildy too quickly, and I could see such a game just falling apart at those levels.

Would you have them use npc character levels at all say if it was to explain why they were where they are?

What magical equipment would you tolerate?

Say they could have a suit of magical armour say no more than +3-+4 in total, perhaps a magical shield if they can use it, one or more magical weapons, would you use the limitations present in the pathfinder core rules or have your own method of what would be allowed?

Standard PC classes. I wouldn't force anyone to take an NPC class. As for equipment I'd say to use the level GP limit in the Pathfinder rules though as DM I'd get final approval.

Most importantly if you had to devise a storyline for this setting how would you start?

Impossible to say just now. In this case I'd want time to sit down and plan out a rough timeline of events, plots, NPC's and sideplots.

 

[Dausuul]

To be perfectly correct in starts at 20th level. The PCs can have an item for each equipment section on the body and 5 more. I was very stalwart in at least keeping the artifacts and intelligent items as GM only privelage bur yeah they all have +10 weapons, and armors with as much buffs as you can find there and due to the handyness of the srd my players don't need to rely on my book collection.

*boggles*

...All I can say is, better you than me, dude.

The problem I now encountered was not the amount of crunch I have to go trough to make the game challenging but that the PCs are concerned that they will be forced to participate in a very lifethreaening adventure. From their point, they just want to enjoy their powers using them on lesser beings which totally misses the point of the setting. In my opinion heroes should be HEROIC 90% of time. I know the dragons and other 20 level beings don't just hop here and there but everything less is, most of the time, childs play.

If I were you, I'd let them beat up on weaker creatures a lot. Throw bazillions of weaker creatures at them at once, so they get to feel awesome and cool while still having to work a bit for their victories. Then you can pitch a tough scary fight their way every so often.

You'll probably want to avoid having too much serious combat in any case. Everything I've heard about high-level 3.X play indicates that the only way to make it work is to go heavy on the plot and light on the hack. My own (limited) experiences bear this out. Hack at those levels is just too crazy to sustain a lot of it.

I once ran a campaign where the heroes at one point ,after some serious character drama, wanting to look for some change in their life, traveled to a city on a different continent and played "family". I have nothing against character development but it went on and on. 1 eight hour session , two , tree. At the fourth I started bugging them to get their assess where they are needed and they in return started making excuses on how much they had planned for children, dates, holidays. On the fifth session I stormed their holiday house and killed them all with their families in the mafia style. No last stand. just plain old murdere. It must sound very awful but I don't like when someone just pissess on the story without even flushing.

This is one of those "players not even slightly on the same page as the DM" situations.

While I hesitate to analyze your group's dynamics based on a forum post, it does seem as if your players are much less into high-octane, death-or-glory adventuring than you are, and that's causing problems. Their desire to play super-high-level characters fighting lowbie foes may be because they're tired of fearing for their lives and see this as a way to avoid that. Meanwhile, you get bored with their "playing house" tendencies and want some blood and guts.

I think you really need to sit down with your players and work out where everybody's priorities are. You may be able to work out a compromise with enough adrenaline to satisfy you and enough low-key character stuff to satisfy them. You might also find them more amenable to your style of DMing if you stepped out of the DM chair and let someone else take the helm for a while before you start your next campaign.

 

[chubbyloremaster]

*boggles*
While I hesitate to analyze your group's dynamics based on a forum post, it does seem as if your players are much less into high-octane, death-or-glory adventuring than you are, and that's causing problems. Their desire to play super-high-level characters fighting lowbie foes may be because they're tired of fearing for their lives and see this as a way to avoid that. Meanwhile, you get bored with their "playing house" tendencies and want some blood and guts.

To be clear I played a wide variety of roleplays, mostly indy and when we agree on something I try to stick to the genre. What irks me about them is that in D&D they don't want to do anything D&Dish and when I proposed a school BESM drama they just turned craven as if they didn't played this game in other settings. Its just like a crazy fanfic of two very different genres of rpg. I am planing a "A Song Of Ice And Fire" rpg in winter and Im worried that it will turn out like some Dungeon Crawling mix of "Lets kill someone , take their stuff and sell it for profit".

They were very specific on why they want to play that way. They want to fell awesome, somewhat simmilar to the exalted characters. I would play some exalted but they like pathfinder and Faerun and dislike the system of exalted and that you are unable to be prepared for everything.