Comments on: Fight the Familiar

By: Dungeon Mastering » 9 ways to grasp you players’ attention

Dungeon Mastering » 9 ways to grasp you players’ attention — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 06:00:44 +0000

[...] Introduce the campaign mysterious nemesis as charismatic, charming. Maybe he could send the PCs a note of apology because they have opposite goals and he might get in their way. Just go against the usual flow of the campaign. Fight the familiar! [...]

By: Martin

Martin — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:52:08 +0000

(John Arcadian) I’m not sure if the main theme here is RPG assumptions, as much as fantasy assumptions.

I was aiming for general RPG assumptions, not any particular game or genre — but I do think fantasy tends to have the most widely known tropes and conventions. I should have picked more diverse examples.

By: Rust

Rust — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 03:17:09 +0000

For a minute there I thought this thread was about killing off player’s familiars.

That’s just cruel.

By: StingRay

StingRay — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 13:29:25 +0000

Heather, I definitely agree. Most of the orcs can be evil, but if you throw in just a small group that isn’t, it gives the players pause.

I ran a session recently where the players were investigating a church that was getting robbed. They caught a goblin inside the church, but the goblin was actually trying to make a donation, and the thief was just a raven collecting pretties for its nest. It was the LG cleric and the paladin that got the drop on the goblin, so she didn’t die immediately, and she introduced herself as Sally and explained how she knew the priest of the church.

To this day, my player’s talk about how surprised they were to meet a goblin named Sally.

By: Heather

Heather — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:21:16 +0000

I love it when GMs shake things up a bit. One campaign I’m in has a handful of different Orc tribes… one of which doesn’t look quite so ugly and isn’t as stupid, and which is capable of some very noble acts, even though they have to do them in secret since most folks would still believe they’re evil. It makes the evil Orcs more interesting in their own right by contrast, because they’re no longer just faceless bad guys simply by virtue of being Orcs.

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:42:14 +0000

I once ran a NPC who was a dick to the PCs. He even openly interfered with their goals.

However, I used that to my advantage when I had a adventure that made him out to be a good guy- and make the PCs feel like they were working for the bad guy. I even twisted the dagger when I had the ‘dick’ NPC recover their bodies when they fell out of the sky.

They hated him for being a dick, but even more when he turned out to be right. Twas fun.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:50:15 +0000

One of the best examples of turning things on its head that I’ve seen for the fantasy genre was the Dark Sun setting. I’ll acknowledge that, as somebody who’s not a D&D 3+ player, I don’t have any familiarity with Ebarron or Arcana Unearthed, but the Dark Sun setting has scads of potential sitting there.

By: John Arcadian

John Arcadian — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 19:38:12 +0000

I’m not sure if the main theme here is RPG assumptions, as much as fantasy assumptions. There are different genre standards in a game of shadowrun, than in dnd obviously. Sometimes they overlap, but they are very much different because of the genre. When I play shadowrun(cyberpunk) I tend to assume that every NPC could possibly be out to get me, while in a fantasy game in any system I tend to think of generic NPC as information giver/plot pusher.

By: Telas

Telas — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 18:30:43 +0000

Ditto to the post and comments. I don’t do “the opposites game”, because that’s a cliche in and of itself. However, I definitely mix up the assumptions a bit to keep the players on their toes.

Playing in games where things don’t always follow the “RPG assumptions” is a lot of fun, too.

By: Corrosive Rabbit

Corrosive Rabbit — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:51:35 +0000

Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be anything key to the story to catch the players’ attention. In one campaign I ran, the players’ “base of operations” was a mid-sized town. The undertaker in this town was a teenaged halfling girl who inherited the business from her father. She was the opposite of the typical undertaker stereotype, in that she was always cheerful, wore bright colours, and was very loud. Even though she was a minor NPC, the players never had any trouble remembering her name, and when her abduction became the focal point of an adventure, the PCs seemed far more devoted to her rescue, simply because she was a memorable NPC.

Sometimes you can get a lot of mileage out of turning the perceptions of players regarding good and evil on their heads. No veteran player is going to be disturbed by an orc horde anymore, but a tribe of cannibalistic elves takes what is familiar and safe (elves), and forces the PCs to adapt (quickly!).

Most players play RPGs as a way to vicariously explore and experience new and fantastic things. As a GM, you can’t go wrong by giving them exactly what they want.

By: Frost

Frost — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:28:11 +0000

I’m also a fan of Eberron in that it shakes up the stereotypes. It took a few sessions for some of the players to get used to the idea of good orcs and barbarian halflings that could rip the head off an ogre.

Now they actually take pause before kicking in the doors (sometimes).

By: Steev

Steev — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 14:58:29 +0000

As a player, one of the things I still remember fondly is discovering that the orcs on this particular world were quite advanced and civilized. They happened to live in the desert, where they had developed huge underground habitations, which (along with their standard armor) had forms of magical air conditioning to keep things cool.

That discovery changed orcs for good, at least for me. Changing things up is always a good thing.