We played yesterday again some more Gamma World. The players continued on with the ongoing adventure of trying to figure out why robots were being produced that would come down to the walls of the village and explode, or try to shot a rocket at the village wall, then explode.
Sara, Mike and Sue’s daughter came by to give this game a shot. Maybe she was placating her parents. Maybe she was desperate for some human interaction after her long stint in Inbredland. I am not sure. When I teased her that she was “from Inbredland”, she became very defensive, giving mixed messages. Her face was full of rage and hatred, due to the comment, but her hands were telling me I was number one. There is something going on in that family, with needing to reinforce other people by telling them that they are number one. By chance, I pull up Facebook this morning, and find that I posted a picture of Mike last year to the day where he was telling me that I was number one.
So given this start of the Blog, I am going to discuss some things that happened in the last week. I had a kind of a shitty week. I am going to spend some time venting.
I play Pathfinder on Thursdays. The DM, Daron is a pretty good DM, however, he wants to run a linear campaign, and doesn’t deal well with someone thinking off his rails. If your character doesn’t fall in line with his linear campaign, bad things happen, or ridiculous things happen.
The fish bone lock story is an example. The first few sessions of that game were a railroad. We had to follow his railroad, so that we could get from where we started to where he wanted us to end up. As a group of first level characters, we were captured and put into a boat to be sold into a life of slavery. Now we got our asses handed to us in the combat. That makes sense. If a group of slavers were going to capture a half dozen first level characters, they wouldn’t throw a few goblins at us. We went against a much more capable group of bad guys and were captured. Well, knocked unconscious and then captured and put into cells in a slaving ship. While on the ship, sailing to who knows where, I found a fish bone. My character was a rogue. I tried to use the fish bone to pick the lock on the cell. I rolled a natural 20, and had a +10 on my lockpick skills, but a -2 because of improvised tools. So on a normal lock, I rolled an effective 28, but Daron decided that the DC on the check was 30. Now, my guess at the time was that he didn’t want to deal with a character exploring the ship, so he just raised the DC too high for me to achieve. Meh. It would have been a more satisfying substory if he would have allowed me to make the check, explore the bowels of the ship then get discovered, clonked on the head and put back into the cell, tied up, gagged etc.
This has been a pretty consistent thing. My characters in the campaign are not built for combat. They are built to be interesting to play. My current character is a gnome witch with an attitude (me, playing a character with attitude?) The gnome witch is not built to buff the party. He is a necromancer, neutral evil, and debuffs the enemy.
During one of the first combats with the gnome witch, I was debuffing the enemy such that Daron wasn’t getting the combat advantages he wanted as the DM. I wasn’t doing any damage, but I was causing his characters to roll at disadvantage (roll 2 d20’s and take the lower result of the two), or lowering their AC, or lowering their to hit scores through using hexes. Daron was getting really frustrated. He decided to take as many of the bad guys as he needed to knock me out of combat. Other player characters were doing damage, I was simply making it easier for the PC’s to do that damage. I could tell that he was getting frustrated, because the fight was not going the way that he wanted it to.
A few weeks ago, we have a combat where we are fighting against a group of bad guys, and the prime bad guy doesn’t take any damage at all from my fifth level spell, nor my fourth level spell. However, when the Paladin moves in, the Paladin manages to kill her quickly.
Much of the role play is centered around intrigue for two or three of the players, with little for the rest of the party to be involved in. There is little or no intrigue for the monk, fighter, witch etc. This means during the sessions with intrigue, I can spend my time on the ship working on alchemy and rolling an occasional D20 to see if I can make some sort of finding for something, or be involved with the intrigue which is not centered or involved at all with the present character that I am playing. This means that if I want to be any part of the intrigue, I need to sit around while Daron interacts with the wizard or the paladin. This gets pretty boring. As a player (and as a player with ADHD), and as a character with a witch who is a gnome and neutral evil, I start looking for something to do that I find interesting. That frustrates Daron as the DM. I can tell. It is not that I don’t care, he is biasing the adventure towards a couple of the players, and that gets old pretty fast. Especially when a player like me wants to do something other than just sit around while the intrigue plays out for most of an entire session.
Now, I am ok with role playing, but the role playing needs to involve the entire party, not just a couple of the members of the party. I am also OK with an entire session of combat, but when the DM has shown that when you piss him off because you are doing something he doesn’t have the ability to deal with (debuffing his characters, as opposed to buffing your party), and when the opposing force is stupidly overpowered, waiting for one particular player to do something to resolve the combat, this can get boring for the players who are not anointed.
At one point in the adventure, we were attacked by people with guns, and they did some serious damage to us. I secured a gun from one of the dead bad guys, and took it to an armorer, to see if he could replicate them, and spend a lot of gold with the armorer. The local government came and confiscated the gun. Now technically, the local government didn’t “confiscate” the gun. They demanded that I turn it over, with no recompense. I objected. We fought for the guns, we took serious damage from the guys using the guns, and the government just wanted me to turn them over. I said no, so Daron had the government take the gun from the armorer, effectively stealing it from the party. He said that the government didn’t want us to have the type of power associated with the gun.
Last week, we had a mystery of some missing magical armor in a museum. Daron likes antimagic fields. He uses them somewhat regularly. They are powerful, and in some cases can cover miles across.
In last week’s session, we were stumped trying to figure out what had to be done. I think that Daron wanted the party to gain an understanding over time of what happened. We hung around the museum, until someone realized that the armor was gone, then the keeper of the museum got all bothered because nothing like that had ever happened. The gnome was bored. I was bored. So I started poking at the museum keeper. After all, what is a gnome witch to do, when standing around in an antimagic field? I start lipping off at the guards, who are not doing a good job. At one point, one of the characters rolls an insanely high roll on perception, and notices something odd about the wall where the armor used to be. So I go over and start stabbing the wall with my dagger, looking for a hidden passage. Am I successful, no, I don’t find a hidden passage. Then I start using gunpowder on the wall to see if I could explode the wall to get more clues.
Once again, intrigue, involving two players, everyone else sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Daron decided that I was going to be hauled off by two guards. They gave me a choice, but I didn’t make it any easier for the guards. As I was being hauled off by the two guards, I exited the antimagic field with them, and then I used cause moderate wounds on the guy who was holding my hands. He dropped me, and suddenly there were three guards. I backed away, and put up my fourth level spell, wall of Blindness / Deafness around the three attackers. As long as they didn’t move through the wall, they would be OK, If they moved through the wall to attack me, they would become permanently blind. I then turned and walked towards the museum. It would last about 9 rounds. That would let me get away, and nothing bad should have happened to the bad guys. I told Daron that.
Now Daron rolled to see if the guys would become damaged by the wall, and two failed, meaning that they would be permanently blinded when they walked through the wall. Seeing that the *armored* guards (yes, that is important here) were going to be permanently blinded, he decided to have all of them blast me with scorching ray for a bucket full of d6 damage. So two things are out of sorts here. First, after rolling the save and failing two of the three saves, Daron decided that if the characters were to walk through the all of blindness / deafness, two characters would be permanently blinded, so he decided not to walk through the wall, then used magic spells on armored characters. There was no roll for spell failure, he just hammered me with the spells. Now this is pretty much bullshit.
So I hit the three bad guys in the area with my fifth level spell, suffocation. Now suffocation only affects one character, not three, but I figured that if Daron was going to cheat, I was going to respond in kind. When the DM throws the rules out because the rules are inconvenient, then the rules go out for the players also. Besides, two of his characters rolled for permanent blindness, which would have removed them from the combat, or at least seriously lowered their ability to work.
The blinded character has the following attributes:
Blinded
The creature cannot see. It takes a –2 penalty to Armor Class, loses its Dexterity bonus to AC (if any), and takes a –4 penalty on most Strength– and Dexterity-based skill checks and on opposed Perception skill checks. All checks and activities that rely on vision (such as reading and Perception checks based on sight) automatically fail. All opponents are considered to have total concealment (50% miss chance) against the blinded character. Blind creatures must make a DC 10 Acrobatics skill check to move faster than half speed. Creatures that fail this check fall prone. Characters who remain blinded for a long time grow accustomed to these drawbacks and can overcome some of them.
So Daron has to make fortitude checks on both the suffocation and stepping through the wall of blindness / deafness. I am watching his die rolls. I watched them on the first roll he mad against becoming blinded, when he realized two characters would be blinded, he rolled some 12’s and a 17. So whatever the fort bonus was for the three guards, a roll of 12 did not make it. Then he rolls to save against suffocation and rolls against the fort checks twice, and magically, I mean supermagically, all three characters make their rolls, while rolling 10’s, 12’s and some 15’s. Wow! I mean totally fucking amazing! There is some serious cheating going on here. Sorry, I shouldn’t jump to conclusions, it isn’t cheating. After all, he only:
- Decided upon an action – to move through the wall of deafness / blindness, made rolls, and upon realizing that he would have had something bad happen changed his decision, and then used magic
- Used magic with armored characters, without making any sort of failure roll for wearing armor while casting magic
- When I questioned this, he clearly said that the guards were magic users, not that the guards were using some form of ring or amulet.
- After failing the check, he rerolled the checks, and rolled just as badly as the first checks, which would have failed the check again, but somehow the fort saves were better the second time he rolled poorly on the failed check.
This is because the DM doesn’t want to deal with a character doing something different than the script calls for.
Then, they step through and all hit me with their swords. My AC isn’t very high and I accept that I can be hit pretty easilly, but all three hit (which isn’t too hard), and proceed to kill me using adamantium swords, which cut through my 5 DR on all of my amulet.
Uh huh. Right. Guards, are multiclassed, fighter and magic user. They are able to use armor and magic. They are able to cast magic while wearing armor. They have variable fortitude saves. Two guards magically become three when combat ensues. And normal guards carry adamantine swords.
I call bullshit on this.
Now the guards performed a coupe de grace on me and threw the body into the water. I was resurrected by the party, and lost 4 strength permanently.
The key here is what Daron told me while I was being resurrected. I heard a voice say “you need to stop doing this”
Doing this? what is “this?” I should stop being bored because the DM wants to roll us down a railroaded path, and then use intrigue for two of the six or eight people sitting around the table, while the other five or six people just sit on our thumbs for one or more hours during the session? Really?
So because I am not involved in the intrigue for an hour or more, possibly the entire session, I should just sit back and let stuff happen around me? Really, I should “stop doing this?” Doing what? Trying to become engaged in the adventure? Trying to find some way to have some fun, while the DM and one or two players are having extended interactions with nothing else going on for the rest of the party?
Mumph, grumble.
And then yesterday, during our weekly Gamma World session, Brian didn’t like one of the results of his combat decision. He decided to use his toxic spores on two of the robots that were attacking him. He made his roll, and determined his hit, and damage. Then I asked what type of damage the spores were. The robots are immune to poison, after all. This had been discovered earlier in the same game session by another player. We looked through the book, and determined that toxic spores were poison damage, so the robots took no damage.
Brian said “well, if I had known that, I wouldn’t have done that… I am going to do this instead”. I respond something to the effect of “no, you made your call, you rolled your dice, and it had no effect, there is no do over”. Brian was upset at me for this, and started arguing. I interrupted him, and “you are an experienced player, you don’t get a do over, if you were a new player I probably would allow it, but you have been playing RPG’s for decades.”
Brian was not happy. He didn’t argue the point too much more, but he was unhappy. I need to explain some things here. I have been playing with Brian for several years. In the past, he has gotten very upset when I called something against what he wanted to do. We were playing Call of Cthulhu several years ago, and he was trying to do something. If I remember right, a large 2X4 was animated by a ethereal being and was whacking the shit out of everyone on the room. He wanted to grab the 2X4, and nail it to the wall. I figured that you had to make three successive rolls to control it These would be:
- Grab the 2X4
- Wrestle it to the wall
- Nail it into the wall
Brian was able to grab the 2X4, and thought he was done. I told him that over the next few rounds, he would need to make two more successful checks to control it, and nail it to the wall.
Something happened in Brian’s mind, where he got very upset, and he packed up and walked out. I didn’t see him for several weeks, and ran into him at a convention. When I ran into him at a convention, he pulled me aside, and said that he wouldn’t be playing with me any more. I asked why, and he told me that I was too nitpicky, and he didn’t want to play in my games because of the way I DM’d. OK, I can accept that.
After a year or so, Brian came back, and started playing again.
Brian continued to play over the last few years, but he doesn’t like it when I miss something and then try to come back to it. Brian can get very vocal. I have tried to explain to him that when you are a player, you are focused on your character. When you are the DM, you are focused on everything. And it is very complicated as you are being shotgunned questions and providing answers, while keeping things straight. There are times that you miss stuff, and realize a few seconds later that you should have had one more attack, or the damage should be different, or the result of the lock pick would have been…
Being a DM is exhausting. I love doing it, but what I object to is having someone get butt hurt because the DM figures out something slightly after their turn, and tries to rectify it. Usually, I will lump it into the next turn around, but sometimes it is important to rectify it at that time. Brian can get very vocal when I try to do this. I am not cheating, just realizing that with all of the things going on, sometimes something important has to happen, which may ultimately hurt, or benefit the party.
I have a challenge for any player who wants to complain about a DM. You should try it. It is a lot of work. It can also be a lot of fun. If you complain to me about what I am doing, I will ask you to DM. I like to play also.
Now, I did DM the Thursday games for a while. We played Call of Cthulhu for about 3 months. I think people had fun, but it was not the same game as Pathfinder. I get the feeling that most of the people on Thursday like a more high fantasy game than something like Call of Cthulhu.
I will admit it, I am sensitive to criticism. I have spent my working career in a position where I have to be polite and professional, while people accuse me of murdering their children, and in all too many cases, people try to shift or transfer the guilt that they feel for causing a fatal accident onto me. It wears on me. Molly has had to learn over the years how to interact with me, since I am very quick to go into professional mode, and shut down emotionally when she doesn’t say things the “right way”. 25 years of dealing with extremely angry people has caused me to have a very thick shell which I can turn on in a drop of a hat.
I was in Safeway on Friday, and saw a person I dealt with about 12 years ago. He recognized me and wanted to tell me what he knew. 12 years ago, he was angry because he wanted speed bumps on his road. I met him in front of his house, and he proceeded to berate me, call me names, told me that I would be responsible for the deaths of his children, since they could not play in the street safely. I told him what we could and could not do. He was a nasty piece of work.
Flash forward about 5 years, and I was coaching a Lego Robotics league, and he brought his son to the league. He didn’t remember me, but I remembered him. He was an engineer, I was an engineer… both of our kids were in Lego Robotics, he wanted to get to know me, and be friends. I finally looked him in the eye and recounted the experience we had five years prior, and told him that I was on my own time, and I chose who I wanted to interact with on my time. He had shown me that he had no respect for me, and I would be polite and professional with him, but no, I did not want to spend time with him because of how he treated me five years prior.
He was shocked. I don’t think that he had ever had anyone tell him something like that. I have seen him around the neighborhood several times since then. I have seen him at public meetings. He is always polite, but seeing him draws up a bile and feeling of dread. I am polite in return, but that is as far as it goes. He probably is a really nice person, who was frightened for the safety of his family. In my mind, when you step over a line and try to transfer responsibility for the safety of your family, or accuse someone else of being responsible for acts that haven’t occurred or accuse me of murdering your children, or deciding you know more than I do about how things work, I don’t need to be around you.
This is complicated for me, since I run into people who I deal with at meetings regularly. I live and work in the same community. Most people don’t cross the line where they are so nasty that I decide that I won’t deal with them at all outside the work environment. Also, people who I game with know what I do, so they do ask me questions about what is going on. For the most part, I am OK with talking about what is going on, as long as no one starts telling me that I am wrong, tries to transfer guilt or responsibility onto me, or starts telling me that they know more about what I do than I do. I am actually OK with dealing with upset people even on my own time, as long as they don’t cross those lines.
In my job, I spend a lot of time dealing with angry people. Some are scared, some are angry, some are really angry. I am pretty good at dealing with them. I can usually defuse the situation and get them from anger to having a more productive conversation. One of the best pieces of advice I have been given in my career was from the City Engineer from Issaquah. I went from consulting to working as their traffic engineer, and found that I was getting bogged down trying to solve people’s problems. The City Engineer told me “your job as a government employee is not to solve people’s problems. Your job is to make people feel that their concern has been heard”.
Just because I am good at dealing with angry people doesn’t mean that I like it, or that it hasn’t taken a toll on me. In a professional environment, I can deal with it, but on my own time, I have no desire to deal with it. When I have a player get angry during the game, I usually let it go for a while, but at some point, I have had enough.
So what does all of this have to with gaming? Not much, but also a lot.
I had a crummy week at work. Not horrible, but it has been ebbing and flowing, and is currently more ebbing with angry people. After 25 years of being chewed on, it becomes hard to not let it get to you. When I go to have some fun on Saturday, and I get an interaction like I had with Brian, that puts a large blot on the fun for the day.
It is funny. I can take shit from Sue and Mike, all flipping middle fingers at me. Most of the time, I can take whatever people flip at me. I know none of it is personal. but sometimes, I get frustrated. I think it is because of the history of Brian and his interactions over the years that I have less tolerance for when he and I both have a bad day. I actually really like Brian. He is interesting to talk with. He is a lot of fun to sit and chat with about a lot of things. But sometimes he gets but hurt about something, and his way of reacting gets me riled up.
I also really like Daron, and the entire group that we play with on Thursday’s. Most of the time, we have a good adventure. Sometimes, I feel left out.
It probably doesn’t help that I have had a crappy week.
So what happened in the Gamma World adventure? Well, lots.
The party went through two more encounters. They are getting more and more deadly. The first encounter involved the party going into a room that was (Surprise!) a kill box. They had to figure out what to to do. The room had three glowing craters, complete with radiation, along with three crystal pillars, a console in the center of the room and a wire mesh on the floor around the console. The party entered, and were met by four robots that were flying, and four Porkers.
The party took a while to figure out that they could use science checks on the console to open up the door to the next room. No one ended up dead dead. Damage was given, bots were killed. Porkers were killed.
The party rested for five minutes and went into the next room. In here, they found a bunch of sentry bots and guard bots. They also found two large machines which were humming. The android and robotic characters found some pretty good vibes coming from the machines. Eric wanted to kill one of the machines.
It turned out to be a slaughter. Almost a TPK. One by one, the party died. It took them one turn to figure out that every turn, new robots may come into the scenario. However, it took them a little while longer to figure out that they needed to turn off the three consoles that were potentially generating new robots. Shari successfully turned off one console which reduced the number of irises that were generating robots, but she was killed before she could turn off another one. Collin tried all sorts of fancy things, then ended up dead trying to turn off another console while being attacked by two bots. Bill tried to convince the bots that he was a repairman, and only convinced one type of bot, while the other type of bot killed him. Eric tried to kill the machines, which did not work.
In the end, everyone died but Brian. Brian managed to move into a long hallway, so only one bot could attack him at a time, and with his armor and high AC, he was a good holdout. More and more bots kept coming into the kill zone, but only one could attack at a time.
Odds are that eventually, Brian would have died. He was going to run out of luck eventually, but we decided that if he played dead, the bots would go back to their stations, and then he could revive the party again.
Long story short, it was a successful time playing Gamma World. I got to write about 4,500 words of blather about how I felt. Things are good.
robrpg 
Another great recap of another GREAT gaming session! Thank you Rob!!
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