What Would You Do: The Halfling Problem

[Samnell]

Re: Mafia

It would seem to me that the Halfling Mafia would be able to produce or hire assasins as needed. Taking out the city's leadership (or whoever is behind the whole thing) seems the easiest answer.

I'm not sure what kind of resources the Mafia has. I've normally assumed a lot as befitting the name. From what the DM has shown us, not so much.

Personally, I'd tell the two players who don't want to support you to kiss my Why would anyone want to play with people like that? Sure it's roleplaying, but I play with people that I like and trust, not people that are going to turn on you in the middle of an adventure.

I like to play with PCs (I don't have any problem with the players) that my PC can trust and like too. The ostensible party leader might have hid Forrester from a half-orc hunting for the bounty, but he's also peppered him with anti-halfling jibes. Makes it a bit hard to see where his real loyalties lie.

The gnome rogue is worse. Not because of the PC, but because of the player. He has never played a character that came across as at all trustworthy. They're uniformly self-interested and secretive in the extreme. He once created a PC who's goal in life was to collect a bounty on my PC. He's played a character who finished another PC down in the negatives after a fight so he could collect that PC's stuff. Despite the insistance that this time around we all play good, friendly PCs he thought buying healing potions was more important than telling the other PCs that we halflings had been kidnapped and were almost surely going to be killed.

Every player deserves the chance to succeed. No one would play if they always die before third level. Ok, I'm getting off my soapbox now (clunk!)

I agree. One of these days I'm going to ask why he doesn't just forbid levelling past fifth instead of making us start from scratch after every death. My next PC's going to rape the system and start out with some kind of template or high ECL race. Apparently these are allowed, but class levels beyond first are tabboo.

 

[Samnell]

Re: ?'s

What I'm wondering is do you feel like if you do come up with a plan, anyone of the above mentioned or all, will your DM let it happen?

I really don't know.

 

[Fade]

Three words: Pre-emptive strike.

 

[Wikidogre]

Man, that is a shame! Fellow Pc's that need to be convinced to put a stop a situation like that WoW! I you would need to convince, than now is the time you sink to thier level.

1. Invest in stilts.
2. Steal important items to them, and sell them.
3. Find a high level Wizard.
4. While they are sleeping pay him to polymorph them into Halflings.
5. Tell them that not only ill you turn them in, that you placed a letter intent with a close friend or contact, and that if they do not help you rid the realm of this threat against your kind, and well thier kind now, that, thier information and where abouts will be turned into local Bounty Hunters.

OK maybe a little devious, but F*Them, that is silly, the well being of thier companions, friends, party members should be a very high priority.

sorry if i seem a little vengful, but i am a product of a similar situation. Except i was an Elf, Drow, and my own party members turned me in to save thier own A@@'s, because my character had the knowledge of where a valueble artifact of Lloth was, and would not give it up willingly. But man when 1 pc realized what he had done, and helped me escape.....who-doggy, everyone of the others were left with unmarked graves!

On a serious note though, you have obviously voiced your displeasure for the situation, if the other pc's dont see the importance of helping thier companion, and putting a stop to such an issue, than new pc's or even campain are in order.

 

[Reynard]

I am going to assume that you are having some fun with this (because if you aren't, the simple asnwer is to bail).

I suggest getting proactive. Determine which PCs are on your side and use their strengths to your advantage. Stop running. Make your way to the leadership that is inspiring this slaughter and (attempt to) take them out. Plan carefully, butdon't hold back.

One of three things will happen:

1) Everybody dies. that's okay. It was an unwinnable campaign anyway.

2) You win. Your plan and stance wowed your DM and he allowed it to work, thus changing the game world forever and putting your PCs on the map. Congrats.

3) You fail, but not catastophically. In this case, your D is telling you "Yes, but not yet" and he wants you to do some other stuff (find the widget, decode the secret, whatever) before you defeat this great evil. If nothing else, it will force him to point you in the right direction to what will allow you to win.

I suppose there is another possibilty, which si that only the halflings die (again). In this case, I would take it as a prejudice of the DM against the race and would avoid playing one in the future. Maybe the whole halfling holocaust thing will die down without halfling PCs.

 

[Hammerhead]

Challenge their moral code. Make them feel bad about themselves, for being such pricks. It's essentially "With me or against me" kind of thing. But where "me" is thousands of innocent lives.

 

[Voneth]

My suggestion, next character should NOT be a halfing.

Try making an interesting Half-Orc instead.

 

[randcortin]

Yeah, he makes an interesting Half-Orc, with an interesting background about how he was always misunderstood as a child, and maybe set up some half-orc organization that Keith, the DM, can exploit for his personal enjoyment, and then he reveals there's a bounty on Half-Orcs since it was a half-orc who busted Milo and his crew out of the town shield (which doesn't let anything but lawful good pass without saying the secret word and opening a hole in the shield), and then half-orcs will be hunted, etc.

This is how Keith is. He takes any background or story you give him and twists it until it bites you in the ass. Hard. I'm sure that there will be some conflict in Ket among my PC's family, where I will be urging them to at the very least not kill the halflings, which would put them on the wrong side of the killing spree, endangering them and the rest of the village for supporting the halflings, or at the very least get run out of town when they follow Gaspar's urgings not to kill the halflings, or makes his family turn on him for supporting the halflings, making him an outcast of his family. Keith is very good at torturing the storyline until it screams. That's why I don't make character backgrounds for my characters: I'm not about to give him ammunition to use against my characters if I don't have to. That I have any background at all is the result of a name generator and a die roll to see whose family was having the wedding, from which the bride was snatched, and we had to go rescue her, and then she didn't want to marry the groom, etc.

Samnell has to care about his characters and give them a rich background in order to have fun playing them, and that's the worst thing you can do, is to give the DM ideas.

 

[Samnell]

Samnell has to care about his characters and give them a rich background in order to have fun playing them, and that's the worst thing you can do, is to give the DM ideas.

Odd, aren't I?

 

[reapersaurus]

you guys (in the game) DO realize how whacked your DM sounds?

Why doesn't Keith get on these boards and have him explain his side of the story, because frankly there's not much point in talking about someone that whacked.