Greetings

[Killer Cyborg]

Hello & Greetings,

This is my first post on this forums, I a GM from the frozen north (Wisconsin). I've been running Rift games for close to 10 years now, but only recently discovered the internet forums. I got a couple of questions real quick.

1. I have a PC who in currently playing a Dragon, and he's very good at avoiding being killed. Just short of dropping a nuke on him, I slowly running out of options, any advice would be welcome.

Why would you want to kill him?

2. I also have another PC who is rather obsessed with the game, he fanaticly reads and rereads the books, and at random times will roll a strike or damage, He's driving me nuts as well as my other players, what is one to do?

Not sure what you mean by "at random times will roll a strike or damage."
You mean times in the game when it's inappropriate?
Or that when you're just sitting around watching a movie or something he'll whip out his dice, roll them, and say "19 to strike! Did I hit? If so, I just did 27 points of damage!!"

[JTwig]

Hello & Greetings,

This is my first post on this forums, I a GM from the frozen north (Wisconsin). I've been running Rift games for close to 10 years now, but only recently discovered the internet forums. I got a couple of questions real quick.

1. I have a PC who in currently playing a Dragon, and he's very good at avoiding being killed. Just short of dropping a nuke on him, I slowly running out of options, any advice would be welcome.

2. I also have another PC who is rather obsessed with the game, he fanaticly reads and rereads the books, and at random times will roll a strike or damage, He's driving me nuts as well as my other players, what is one to do?

1. Why are you trying to kill the PC? I understand that it sometimes happens during a game, but I would advise against intentionally go out of the way to kill your PCs. GM that go out of their way to kill PC eventually becomes a lonely GM. I've killed my fair share of PC, but its never been my goal.

2. Do you mean that in the middle of playing, when the focus is not on him, he will just pickup a 20-sided and roll, and announce something like "Natural 19, that would have been an awsome roll to strike". If so tell him to stop because he is ruining the mood for everyone, and maybe taking some of the other players out of the "zone".

[Spinachcat]

1. If he is playing his Dragon well, why punish him? Or are you having trouble challenging his character? Remember, the goal of the game is NOT to kill the PCs. It is to challenge them. Sometimes challenges kill, but that is not the focus.

BTW, a very fun scenario would be to give the PCs a telepathic message that a nuke is going to be launched in 90 minutes on a small town that is important to them...and then see what they do. Do they find the nuke? Do they flee? Is the nuke real? Who is firing the nuke? And what if the telepath meant that it was striking in 90 minutes, not launching?

2. A player who loves the game and reads everything is not a bad thing...unless he demands that you run the game exactly as in the books and/or if he assumes his character knows everything in the books. Then you have a problem. If that is the case, TALK to him.

BTW, you should use him as a GM resource. Make his reading useful to you. Heck, maybe he should be the next GM for the group so you can play.

I am also confused with the random rolling. Is he one of those people who just sits there rolling dice when its not his turn? If so, he does not see the importance of paying attention to other people's turns. We have descriptive and impolite names for such people.

If he is social retarded (it happens), then maybe you have to tell him that he MUST roll the dice on a cloth so they don't make any noise and interrupt the game AND that any dice rolls made without the GM asking do not count for anything. I am frequent convention GM and I have dealt with this gamer type.

[Rimmerdal]

Send a threat he can't beat or situation NO amount force can solve. Better yet get him to make a new character.


For the second guy. Talk to him away from the group.

[CushionRide]

maybe if you wouldnt make your players charachters so redicuously over powered like ooo wait let me start with.....

a normal human coalition soldier with stat rolls starting with 4d6 drop the lowest, reroll 1's, 6 explode once. a normal human rolls 3d6
by the way his PP was 47 after skills HUH?????

next you mutate him in atlantis and forget that he has to inconveniently return to the soup or he dies..... by the way the player in question now becomes a minor megadamage supernatural creature, and a tatoo maximan and to top it off he is now level 10

ok and now the moment of total rediculousness is at hand. ^_^ you turned him into a dragon, and all his tatoo's are now activated and absorbed in the transformation. HUH??? what in rifts earth can transform someone into a dragon????? o thats right they met Bahamut. and for a billion creds he made all 3 of the players involved hatch into adult dragons, with those level ups, new occupations were obviously going to be chosen, and , AND was allowed to buy every spell in the book for a mere 48 million creds

now lets not forget the fact that the players were allowed to carry that much money let alone 1 player

its your own fault this charachter exist

hellbender. sorry i have to post this instead of tell you to your face, o wait i did that once too. maybe you should tell your readers the whole story before ranting on someone elses public forums

i also love Jtwigs response,

maybe you should look at the way you run a game, i remember the comment you made to me, about some of our older players that dont come and play anymore. maybe Jtwig hit the nail on the head, i mean you have to practicly drag me to one of your games now. the worst part is ive tried to sit down and talk to you man to man about this and you got mad and walked out of my apartment. i guess it takes total strangers to maybe smear the truth in your face

[CushionRide]

o wait you just reminded me of another thing hellbender does in his games, if your the monkey in the wrench, he bans what you throw at him.

example...

he banned diabolic charachters cause in an earlier game our coalition leutenant got captured by a titan juicer which threatened to kill him if we didnt throw down our weapons. i shot our CO in the face their by eliminating the hostage situation. he was an idiot anyways, i suggested that the LT equip heavier gear and the pencil pushing retard scoffed at me, so i gave him what he deserved in the face. this was an NPC btw just to avoid confusion

i mean really come on

diabolic rulz!!!!! ^_^

o yes i also run rifts and robotech, ive had some interesting games of my own,

ive used some balanced internet RCC stats for Zoanoids and ran 3 different campaigns mildly around the Guyver premice, (no Guyver though)
i ran a chaos earth campaign that started out ok. the premice of the game.... the players play themselves and the apocolypse cometh, i thought it was cool
then a ran a Macross game that revolved around the 13th Macross colony fleet.(using dave deitrichs macross mecha designs web info) old stuff lol

im not the best GM, and several instances forced me to wayside my games, but i still love the game

[cornholioprime]

Corn's comment on the progression of this Thread, and where he thinks it's going, really fast:



Side note for all involved: Might I suggst Kevin's Advice for GMs, as located in the Rifts™ Game Master's Guide??

(And in the mean time, might I also suggest a little time off for the lot of you? Friendship is more important than Gaming. Even this Game.)

[CushionRide]

honestly i wouldnt have posted anything if bender would have just let you all in on the whole story, but as it is he leaves the crutial information out, and that gets me in rant mode im sorry for that. as for me ive taken a mild break from RP. maybe occasionally

[The Beast]

To hell with the game, I want to find out more on the whack job that rolls dice in the bathroom.

[bigbobsr6000]

1.) As a GM you can always have an NPC stronger and better than any character. My two favorites is the little girl who needs help finding her kittens. Which can be several dragons in reality or ?? The other one is the thin old man with a walking staff in peasent clothes. He jumps up, touches the dragon in the neck, (no dodge, no saving throw, no parry, nothing on the part of the victim) the dragon falls down paralyzed. The old man has an aura that prevents his victim from reacting to his touch attacks. And/Or does x damage as well. He is also inpervious to all attacks. These type tactics I only use as neccessary to let powerful PC's know there are others more powerful than they are. And looks can be deceiving. Sometimes the little girl is a powerful Deity or god.

2.) Rowdy, disruptive players get XP taken away. After one talk in private and a warning I will start to give them XP penalities for each offense and increase it each time. I have had a player loose a level by his action during game play. If they are that disruptive, they are asked not to come back next session or ever if severe. It is better to loose a player or two, than to have other players suffer. First and foremost it is suppose to be fun.

Just some ideas from an ancient GM.

[CushionRide]

1. sixth sense nullifies the suprise attack, as does elom symbiotes(thats what i use)

2 the kid in question is wierd, the dice rolling guy i mean lol ill aggree with bender on that i do think he needs a good slap.

good calls though absolutely

[Killer Cyborg]

Why would you want to kill him?

Not sure what you mean by "at random times will roll a strike or damage."
You mean times in the game when it's inappropriate?
Or that when you're just sitting around watching a movie or something he'll whip out his dice, roll them, and say "19 to strike! Did I hit? If so, I just did 27 points of damage!!"

For the first, you got to understand somethings. First, yes I try to kill my PCs, I run games that are massive and complex, missing a key piece of information or running headlong in without thinking first gets people killed. I though complex puzzels, quests, & missions at my players. I've bombed them, trapped them, thown NPCs 15 levels high then them at them, I've even thrown an entire CS Field Army at them. But my players thrive on this kind of action, better yet they have learned to excel in these campaigns.

The player if this Dragon has been playing the same character for nearly two years now. He's 17th level, has close to 11,000 MDC (Body, Armor, fields, etc...), I'm literally running out of challenges to throw at him.

Probably a good time to retire the character, then.
I've never seen much point in playing characters at that high of a level.

Also, I think that 2 years is an awful quick time to get that high.

BUT, if you want to kill (or threaten) something that powerful, it can be done.
Buy some old Robotech books and look up the Synchro-Cannon.

For the Second player, yes he will roll the dice away from game, when waking up in the morning, in the middle of the night, he's even done it in the bathroom. And he's driving everyone in the group nuts with his antics.

THIS sounds like the guy you need to kill.

[BookWyrm]

Welcome to the madness, HB. Be mindful of detonating percentiles.

[CushionRide]

maxi-big the madness ^_^ JAR JAR HA HA

[drewkitty ~..~]

snip..

For the Second player, yes he will roll the dice away from game, when waking up in the morning, in the middle of the night, he's even done it in the bathroom. And he's driving everyone in the group nuts with his antics.

have the others restrain him while you smash his dice.

Or you can start doing diceless games or GM's dice only games, maybe get him a girlfriend.

[CushionRide]

well i think that finally caps this topic

[Dog_O_War]

Close quarters much?! This is some of the most entertaining, yet shameful display of "friendship" I've ever seen. I may be new here, but that doesn't matter as this isn't a problem a vet. poster can solve.

You guys need to step back from the game once in a while and have a "do anything but play rifts" night. The guy that is the GM; nice, long service you've put in there - 10 years is a lifetime behind the screen, and I think you need to pass your knowledge onto someone else for a while.

Players in said GM's game - what he did (post and whine about you here anonymously on the internet) was rude, sneaky, and underhanded; it's your fault for putting up with his antics. You have no one to blame but yourselves. That being said, did you not see the signs? A bad GM, a tired GM, and a new GM all give them off - and they all mean the same thing; this is going to suck. Seriously, what did you expect when you were given adult dragon status? For the game to get more interesting? For a "you win" sticker from Kevin himself? I know I sound condiscending here, but you must realize the game was going bad a some point - like when the first old-timer left.

This is now more of a question of,
"OUR GAME EXPLODED DUE TO A MULTITUDE OF CIRCUMSTANCES; WHAT IS THE NEXT STEP?!"
Start over fresh; decide a power level you can all agree with (GM and players), and then go from there.

~woof