Illydth's page

First and foremost I have to ask as a worried DM:

Is your enjoyment coming from the story or from watching your players trigger traps and take damage?

Be very careful with DMing...it's a mistake I made for YEARS. Just because you're playing the monsters and the dungeons doesn't mean you "win" by killing or injuring characters and "lose" when your players complete your campaign. D&D Isn't about winning and losing, it's about experiencing an interactive story.

Your job as the DM is to tell this story...to make it entertaining for the players...not to simply kill characters and injure party members. Death and injury are tools in a campaign to make it more interesting, after all a campaign without risk becomes little more than a power grab and gets boring quickly.

That advice aside, I can second a couple of the things above. Power gamers or as they're sometimes referred to "Munchkins" are actually not difficult to deal with. If they're perpetually casting "detect magic" to get around the challenges of the story, then put non-magical challenges in.

At the end of the day, I find a group of players who are rules lawyering you to death aren't invested in the story, they're invested in what the next cool toy is. In many cases, trust is the key to a great D&D tabletop experience. If your players are death adverse, take it off the table short of exceptionally stupid situations. There's at least one campaign group I used to DM for that quit trying to rules lawyer me to death after I promised that I wouldn't kill characters out of hand.

I had one game group who were really only interested in leveling and acquiring equipment...so I created a short but rather fun campaign where the party were captured and put into an arena. I simply picked monsters out of the various monster books and set them against the party in single room combat scenarios...the players got exactly what they wanted and we all had fun playing out battle after battle.

At the end of the day, though, it gets pretty boring to endlessly combat with no story and no goal other than personal gain...and eventually my players wanted a real campaign. The benefit to this was every time they started rules lawyering or power gaming me, I was always able to simply suggest that we put the campaign on hold and go back to the arena for a while...and most of the time they all agreed that wasn't what they wanted...and went back to playing.

One of the things many players don't get till they've done this for a while is that a great campaign and a great story is EVERYONE'S job to tell. Players have to be just as invested in the plot as they are in acquiring the next item.

Good Luck with your players. If it were me in your shoes? I'd sit them down at the beginning of the next section, explain to them that you're not having much fun with the way things are going, and ask what's causing them to want to break your game. Solve, as a group, the concerns that cause them to power game, and then go back to having fun together.

One more piece of advice: If you haven't already, go lookup up a short movie called "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising". I'm going to get laughed at for suggesting this, but outside of the fun the movie pokes at D&D, there's actually some AWESOME advice for DM's on dealing with trouble players. The story opens with a DM and his group of powergamers, and as the story evolves you get some interesting insights on handling the powergamer problem.

will, everything you say is within the purview of the GM simply by creating custom magic items that do things you can't find in a catalog. I do that all the time.

And here you need to be careful. Creating significant numbers of custom magic items can throw off game balance more than just about anything else you could ever do (other than perhaps creating custom spells). Not a shot at your statement just a word of caution.

I 100% disagree with you on your point #1. I am lucky to be in possession of a particularly sought after telescope. It is just as special and wonderful to me today as it was when I bought it 12 years ago. The images through the thing are simply magical. I am sure I will treasure that scope until I die. I own other things that are equally special and I appreciate them just as much today as when I purchased them. My fly rod. My hunting knife. My fly tying vise. Lots of things.

No you don't. You do not treasure these items (Telescope, Fly Rod, Hunting Knife, etc.), you treasure the memories these items bring to you and the images, stories and experiences the items allow you to have.

Let me ask you a question, if I took your treasured telescope and dropped it from a 30 story building onto concrete to smash into literally a thousand different pieces, and then pulled out a BETTER telescope (one better in ALL respects) and gave it to you, would you really miss your old telescope other than, perhaps, nostalga? (given to you by a beloved family member or friend, first telescope you ever owned, paid for, got laid with, whatever?).

I postulate no. They are devices, objects, possessions. We covet possessions only because of what we believe those possessions will do for us, NOT for the possession itself.

And this is why there are those of us who cringe at your position that every campaign needs a magical emporium where every PC can walk in and spend their 20 gagillion gold on the latest and greatest magic item. (I realize that's overstating your position, it's hyperbole not intended to belittle your point or make my point better, simply hyperbole for it's own sake).

We see each of these items your PCs WANT and are willing to research and walk into a store and BUY as stories to be told, magical EXPERIENCES that you as the GM can augment your campaign with.

When was the last time you handed out a thousand gold to your PC party and got wide eyes and pounding hearts and that look we DMs have seen hundreds of times that says "No s&&*? REALLY? WE just FOUND THAT? OMG I want it!"

Well, that applies to your "rare and wondrous" magic items just as much. After a time your players will grow used to them and they will no longer be special no matter how they obtained them.

And you're ABSOLUTELY Right and this RIGHT HERE is where I feel you go off track. You're not going far enough with your thought process. If NO object, no matter how special and wonderful and rare, stays special and wonderful because they're already in possession, then what is it about those items that DOES stay special?

It's the OBTAINMENT of that item that the players will be telling stories about for years to come. You're right, eventually the Staff of the Magi is going to become old hat...but how do your PLAYERS, 5 years later, describe how they got it?

* Yea, so I got to level 15 and had something like 20M gold coins sitting around and said...what can I do with that...so I decided to spend something like 3 games weeks doing research in a library and finally managed to create the staff of the magi which I then used. It was really cool.

* Yea, so we came into UberCity01 in MassiveProvence03 around noon one game day and there in front of us was Dan's Dastardly Magical Monstrosity...the most well known magical emporium in this game world. So I walked in and there, sitting on a shelf in a glass case behind the counter, was a staff of the magi. I was like, no way? I asked how much, the owner said "oh, 30M Gold pieces" and I said "Really? That's it?" So I reached into my 15 bags of holding and simply dumped all the contents into a pit behind his counter to hold gold and walked out with my staff of the magi. It was great.

* So after 5 days of being chased by this pack of worg wolves being lead by some freak werewolf calling himself the king of wolves, we stumbled across what we felt was the entrance to the crypt of Gaia Nostroma, the last known holder of the Staff of the Magi. According to our research all sightings of the staff were lost when Gaia was defeated by the Lich Zerostomas. With the worgs close on our heals we were forced into the tomb, regardless of the dangers we knew were coming. And that's when we ran across the first trap...

Really, which story do you think is going to hold up to the test of time? Which experience are your players going to remember for years and decades and maybe even their lifetimes to come?

All your comments you're making in this thread sound very "ho hummish" about the game. You've been there, you've done that, you've saved the world a million times, you've killed just about every known baddy from liches to dragons to the great and powerful terrasque itself...that +3 sword just doesn't do it for you!

My friend, open your eyes and re-look at what Dungeons and Dragons and all of it's numerous predecessors is. In the age of MMO do it again's to continue grinding equipment mentalities, we've all forgotten that D&&D Isn't about the levels, it's not about the equipment, it's not about the stats.

It's about the stories, it's about the adventure, it's about doing greater things than you're able to accomplish in this life in a greater than the gods themselves character that you guide.

If it does nothing for your party to make them work for that +3 sword, then by all means send them to Dan's, I hear he's got some great +3 swords...or maybe it's just easier to have one fall from the sky and land point down at your PC's feet (Make a Raw Dex Roll for me please!).

But the game is about story, and before you start handing out weapons and armor and equipment that isn't as common as dirt, you might consider this:

If your party really wants that item, isn't this a great opportunity as a DM to create a compelling story around the obtainment of that item? By all means ensure that at the end of the night or the week of game nights, or whatever, your party comes out with what they want...but SURELY as a DM you can create a better method of obtaining it than "You walk up to the sales clerk and ask "Do you happen to have a..."

Every gaming group is different, but most of my players seem to enjoy the act of shopping for magic items and digging through the books than hoping they find what they're looking for as a random drop. Maybe it's because when it comes to magic item shopping, I roleplay the sequence, so you're negotiating with the vendors, haggling over price, trying to get them to fess up to their "special inventory". And, the players have the control (or at least, the illusion of it). I've never met a situation that wasn't improved by letting the players feel like they're in control.

Random loot is not in their control. Shopping for items looks like it is in their control, and usually is at least partially there. This makes my players happy.

Why? Why is it always one or the other in these discussions? Why is it always either "Give players access to whatever they want or leave it up to the control of "random loot".

I don't think any loot in any campaign I've run in the last 10 years has been "random". I HATE random loot...rolling off on loot tables after a surprisingly difficult encounter due to the dice rolls and finding that the mobs dropped 5 silver and a potion of healing pisses me off just as much as it does my players.

You go up against that big baddy only to have him randomly drop the party's first ever +5 weapon!! A BATTLEAXE! Which no one has the proficiency to use. But that's ok, because he also dropped plate mail +3...sized for a halfling.

WOOT! MOAR PLZ!

Is it so hard for an INVOLVED GM to understand what would be upgrades for the party and to make sure that "random" loot drops aren't exactly as random as they should be? Oh sure, the handfull of potions and that ring or two (so long as my mages aren't hurting for armor class *cough rings of protection cough*) may very well be random...but...hey look, my main fighter is specialized in elven war blades...and wouldn't you just know it? Even though their isn't an elf in the campaign so far, this ogre's horde just happened to turn up a magical elven war blade...instead of a long sword...which no one uses....

--Illydth

At this point, both of these threads have gotten VERY VERY convoluted.

First off to the DM OP in this thread: You have my sincere admiration. This campaign, from the small level of detail I've read here, seems to be as convoluted in thought, planning and execution, as any $20 hardcover I've ever read from a major publishing house. Regardless of how these threads pan out, you should feel proud of yourself for a campaign well written and well done. Anyone who's called you an idiot in this thread obviously hasn't read any of your very well written posts.

There's two topics I want to comment on here, and I'm stepping back from any detail because at this point I'm CERTAIN I do not have enough history or knowledge either of the details of THIS campaign or any past history of previous campaigns to give you any useful SPECIFIC advice. I'm going to try to take EVERYTHING you posted here at face value.

First, this campaign is COMPLEX. At least from what I've read here, it seems to be VERY VERY complex. This is awesome. However, complexity in a campaign creates branches in a story line path that can be very unforeseen. It looks to me like you've reached one of these branches. Best laid plans of mice and men, you've encountered a situation where (right or wrong) your PC has jumped to a conclusion you didn't intend for him to come to.

It's my opinion, just from what I've read, that you made this bed for yourself. Even now you've refused in this thread to identify the NPC as safe (and I get why, please don't) so I have to concur with your Rogue player that his interpretation of the events are AN interpretation that could be read. The person talking about Jade Regent and disallowing the PC to kill the main NPC in Act 1 is quite off from where we're at here. In this situation, you (the DM) have spent an inordinate amount of time convoluting the story and throwing curve balls at your players (a good tactic by any good DM).

The problem is when you have players who have only half the information, they are going to come to conclusions on half the information. Sometimes those conclusions draw actions that the DM can obviously say are wrong, but that the players may not be able to. In your post above about the way the party vs. rogue see things I say that both sides have valid opinions...She could be above reproach and she could be the BBEG himself (herself?). There's just not enough information in the campaign to know. This makes BOTH party opinions correct and thus makes the rogue's "Kill her now" action JUST as valid story wise as the rest of the parties.

I also appreciate your opinion that a decision/event as large as this should be handled by the PARTY of players and not a single player. Unfortunately that's not how this has panned out. That's not the reality of your story right now. The reality is that you have a single character looking to go Cowboy on information he's got only half right...

Maybe? I keep coming back to this point because it IS convoluted. The only way I can see agreeing with a heavy handed approach here is if your NPC was ABOVE REPROACH. And she's not...not according to the information posted here and in the other thread anyway. She has the possibility of being linked to the BBEG or even of BEING the BBEG. The rogue may be jumping to the wrong conclusion, but he's not doing so based upon the information he has.

Actions have Consequences is probably the best advice anyone on this thread can give you right now. You have two options as I see it at this point:

1) DE-complicate the story right now. Release some of your plot details, lay out some of your plot hooks, and show a bit more of your hand to your rogue player. Your player has to make a better choice than the one he's discussed with you...he's made his choice based upon the information you've provided him, so now, if this is really that important, you need to provide more info to allow him to make a better choice.

2) Follow "Actions have Consequences" and allow the action to happen. No one here can say definitively, based off of the actions we have, that the Rogue ISN'T doing better for the campaign (I'm not talking for the players of the campaign, I'm talking about for the imaginary story they're living out) by soul locking your NPC and tossing it in a dark hole somewhere. YOU may know that's not the case, your other players may BELIEVE that's not the case, but one player believes that IS the case, and he's got every right to act on it.

Any other option is contrived by you, the DM, to counter an action by your player. The original question in this thread is: How can I save my NPC? The answer is: You can't.

Not without accepting that you have crossed the line from story teller to omniscient player character. All of the ideas on this thread pre-suppose one very important fact: That someone already has knowledge of this Rogue's attempt to remove this NPC from the campaign. The fact you are asking for ideas means that you are about to actively attempt to counter the idea of a PC with knowledge that PC has given you out of character.

This ENTIRE thread means one thing: You, the DM are guilty of metagaming. This is a bad spot because the story cannot continue without the DM knowing all the details, but the players can no longer give you all the details for fear of you using those details against them.

Be cautious, you're quickly stepping into "Me vs. Them" territory. Your reasons may be the best in the world (and it sounds like they are, trying to prevent RL Heartache from the outcome of a game is always a noble cause), but your credibility as a DM to your players (not us "anonymous faces on the internet") is quickly going to come into question. It may be this one campaign for this one player, but what happens next time when another of your players finds himself in a similar situation? They look back at this campaign and see how you handled this event and realize that they can't trust you.

You save the NPC in this case by providing better motivation and better information to your player at an appropriate time (like when he's about to commit the act) that convinces him not to follow through on the act...if you can't do that, as a DM, you must sit back and let the actions have the intended consequences.

The second point I wanted to touch on was the motivation of the rogue player. It sounds like part of his interest is to surprise the rest of the party at the end with his wondrously devious actions for some big reaction at the end.

I cautioned him in the other thread about his motivations...making sure that what he's looking to do is better for the story and not for his personal ego. If this is an ego issue, where he wants this big ending so that he looks cool, or some such, then I'll present you a third option for how to save your NPC.

Just say no.

Don't metagame the information, don't RP the solution, don't try to rules lawyer or spell combine or otherwise give in to finding an IN CHARACTER reason to stop his actions. If you truly believe that this action is harmful, not just to your storyline but to your players and their enjoyment of the game, then you as the DM have not only the right, but the responsibility to tell the player that you will not condone such an action.

If he wants to argue with you tell him there's an over arcing rule that he may or may not find in the various handbooks but which has existed in D&D Since it's original printing back in the 1970's.

Have fun.

If his action is sure to cause conflict and pain and suffering to the other players, if it's going to cause drama and hard feelings among your gaming group, simply tell him no. Quit looking for IC solutions to OOC problems...deal with Out of Character issues out of character, deal with IC problems with IC solutions.

From everything I've read, IC the character is within his full rights to do exactly what he's trying to do. The IC solution is to let it happen or provide him better information to help him make a different choice.

OOC the character may be harming the group as a whole...that's a decision you have to make as the DM. If that is how you feel, stop the action. Period. You don't have to justify your actions as the DM to stop an OOC issue from occuring...here's where "It's my campaign, and I don't feel that action will have good consequences on this gaming group" is appropriate.

--Illydth

These are the options I've come up with so far and I'm not entirely happy with any of them.
-Tell the player not to despite he's convinced "it's what my character would do"
-Let him proceed with the...

Yuck to all those...where's the "Let the Rogue do what he wants, let the dice roll determine the outcome, and let the campaign continue on with the results of the action being taken into consideration" option?

I've got 2 comments and I want you to know that as a DM of 20+ years you're not alone in this...I'm as guilty as you are, even to this day of the following as well.

You are not reading a book to your players, you are writing a story that is based around THEIR actions. Your mistake here was making the story pivot around this NPC. D&D Campaigns pivot around the PLAYERS not the NPCs. They are an ongoing story with an open ending that isn't written till the ending happens. As I told your player in his own thread, this is a combined story with your players having some say in it...your pre-conceived ending, while I'm sure it's spectacular and would take the breath away from your players if only you'd be allowed to tell it (I know mine would...every time)...is IRRELEVANT.

You have 2 options right now, and I council you (thorough experience) to be careful which one you select.

* As all of your answers above indicate and lead toward, you can Deus Ex Machina a solution to the problem forcing the players to live through your pre-written story (whether they want to or not).

* Or you an let your ending go, understand your roll as FACILITATOR of the story and not as story TELLER, and get joy out of "I wonder where this is going to lead?"

I know that was very leading, but you have the option of doing either of these. Just understand when you make your choice what you're doing.

One question for you to consider: Are you certain that your pushback here isn't because your "Loose Cannon" has just found the Achilles Heel of your plot? The destruction of this NPC surely doesn't bring crashing down all of the plots and plans of their foes does it?

Your second mistake here was setting the pivotal NPC up in an anti-party light. That may have been unintentional, but the fact is, someone in your party has been given the impression that this NPC is about to get him killed...you cannot expect the PC to walk merrily into the light (the oncoming train) with a smile on his face...particularly not when he has the capability of stopping it. Again, this isn't a book, it's an ongoing story.

This sounds like an EXCELLENT time to me for an NPC "pouring her heart out" by having your NPC make a perception check just before the attack happens to realize it's coming and, though she's helpless to stop it, beg to explain herself to the Rogue before he s***cans her from your story. Her response (JUST to the Rogue) should be to pour her heart out to him about her experiences, what's happened to her and why she's not expendable. She should come to realize her life is null and void and go so far as to explain everything she could possibly know to save her life. If she's that linchpin to the story of 6 players, then you may even have to go so far as to explain the ENTIRE plot and spoil the ending to this Rogue simply to allow him to see what you see through your NPC's eyes to save her. Once the explanation is done it should STILL be left up to the rogue whether to follow through or not.

If you've painted her as a spy without her having ANY knowledge of ANYTHING happening to her, you've made your own bed.

I don't blame your rogue at all. His life is threatened, you've backed him into a corner and given him information that this NPC is the cause of at least some of his woes without giving him enough information to understand why her benefit to him is MORE than her determent.

Another question for you to consider: *IS* her benefit more than her determent to him? To the party? Or is your rogue player right in that killing her would CERTAINLY make his life a hell of a lot easier? Is there an explanation you can give him? Facts from the Campaign, Secrets yet to be revealed that you could provide that would change his mind about this NPC that will keep him from his course?

Or would your PC's be better off if he just stuck a knife in her gut now?

Just to add, I have a huge amount of respect for my DM and I do not believe he is playing favourites. I don't believe it is particularly relevant that the NPC is romantically linked to his wife's PC, if it were linked to another PC I believe the situation would be the same. I don't believe he would have an issue killing his wife's pc any more than killing any other PC.

I don't believe the NPC is immortal, I believe the DM has her death scene in mind and has had for a long time. I just don't want to play the scenes which lead up to that death scene. I would rather act now and save her life (in the long run). "In order to save the village it became necessary to destroy it"

I do believe the DM is attached to the NPC. In a campaign where most of the villains are personality less bugs, he loves his recurring villains and NPCs.

Here, Again, I have a problem with this. (My current players who may read this will be rolling their eyes when they see this because it's a complaint I've had with my own active campaign, giving you advice and actually following it are two different things, and the first is MUCH easier than the second).

It sounds like your DM has pre-written the ending. It would save you BOTH a lot of trouble if he'd simply have everyone put down the dice and read you his pre-written ending.

He has the death scene of an NPC already in mind? Then the events leading up to that death scene must already be there also. How much of this campaign is little more than "Ok, you're now going to do this...please roll for it?"

That's the difference between the DM being a story FACILITATOR and the DM being a story TELLER. He (and I, many times) needs to be reminded that he's not reading a book to you, he's creating a story with you, and in that his ending, while quaint, is IRRELEVANT. That might be what he works toward in the story, but he cannot and SHOULD NOT *STOP* you from enacting an alternate ending he hasn't come up with.

I think that's the crux of the issue you two are discussing...you're going off the beaten path with a story he has pre-conceived. At this point, I agree with the others on the thread, it's time to get your DM's permission to go read his thread and get your viewpoints straightened out.

I'm confused about your DM, not you. I haven't read the other thread, so I apologize for jumping in without a clue of your DM's perspective.

First things first, a DM's job is as a story teller and Facilitator. I see WAY TO MANY DMs who feel their job in the game is to be the anti-hero to the campaign. To any DMs reading this, YOU CANNOT "WIN" DnD, you are not a player and thus have no stake in "winning". Any scenario you setup where you care more about "your" NPCs than you do about the players is a scenario you are actively courting pissing off your players.

Don't get me wrong, I've made the mistake. Even at 37 after 20 years of DMing campaigns I STILL have to check myself almost EVERY TIME I run a campaign not to get TOO involved in the life bar of my anti-hero.

Back to your scenario: The DM has created an NPC, linked that NPC to your ultimate enemy, given you the task of beating this ultimate enemy, fed you enough information to make you believe this NPC is working against you (intentionally or unintentionally) and he expects this NPC NOT to meet it's death at the party's hands?

Here, again, he is a story facilitator. If this NPC is truly a linchpin and he's painted himself into a corner with the NPC he can't get out of, and he truly doesn't want you to kill this NPC then I suggest following the DM's advice. Sounds like an excellent time for the NPC to reveal all of her secrets (or most of them) in an EXCELLENT dialog about her experiences when she was kidnapped with hard evidence why she's either not expendable or not working for the enemy.

If she can't do that, if this just doesn't work, any good DM worth his salt has to be willing to follow the story. I was playing in a Cthulhu campaign once that pretty much reproduced the "alien" story...at least to some effects. At the end of the campaign someone was going to die by letting hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity pass through them. My character had the technical skills the DM was counting on to save the REST of the party while the classic hero character was supposed to be the sacrificial lamb. Unfortunately earlier in the campaign my character had decided through events that happened to her that she was tired of being the "last survivor" (think Ripley from Alien) of these alien massacres so she sacrificed herself to save the rest...thereby damning all of them to death (no one saw the DM's plan till later).

Thing is, the DM let this happen. He didn't try to step in and change things, he didn't try to talk me out of frying myself, he didn't reveal part of his plan and say "now let's reconsider". He facilitated the story and allowed what he knew to be the worst possible ending to happen...because that's what you DO as a DM.

While I appreciate everyone saying "If the DM is trying to keep this NPC Alive there must be a reason." If he's not revealing the reason and simply pleading with the party to not kill the NPC there's something broken with the story.

And if the DM can't handle the fact that it's his wife's love interest in the campaign that's about to get whacked, and his wife can't handle her love interest getting whacked by the DM / Another player, you ALREADY have several strikes against your campaign.

* You have an NPC that is immortal. No matter what ever happens in the campaign you all KNOW the NPC will never die. It doesn't take long for the party to come to grips with this fact and abuse it to the death of the campaign.

* You have "protected players", if sending the NPC in as fauder doesn't work, send HIS WIFE IN as fauder...have her stand in front and tank the Terrasque. If he's not willing to kill his wife's lover NPC he's CERTAINLY not willing to kill his wife's character.

Explain to your DM that his story is going off the rails at this point. The only thing you can do as a DM to protect something like this from happening in your campaign is Deus Ex Machina...and doing so is ALWAYS the first step to an unbelievable, and thus very distracting, campaign.

The fact that he DM has already given you all the tools and THOUGHT THROUGH these things (lead protects from divination...who the hell has THAT house rule who hasn't already pre-supposed this kind of thing happening, etc.) leads me to believe he's simply playing favourites.

Explain to your DM he either needs to come up with a good, in game, reason or you're shivving mommy's little lover spy at the first available opportunity :)

To the OP since we seem to have gotten a bit off topic.

Again, not trying to judge you or your players, but you seem to be forcing an issue here.

The way I'm reading things, your players seem to be a bit more ROLL play oriented and a bit less ROLE play oriented. You seem to be interested in introducing sex into the campaign for yet another way to provide your players a numerical buff for their characters and/or a way to give one of your players crap.

Honestly, there's about a million and 1 ways to add buffs to characters other than through the act of sex, and if you really need more excuses to give a guy crap, explore better scenarios if you can't find a good way to put a player in an awkward position that his buddies are going to laugh at him about. Just remember, a 1 rolled on a D20 is all the DM needs to scar his players for life (note I didn't say "characters"). :)

If you feel your players are receptive to someone catching an STD and spending a gaming night trying to fix it, then by all means play out the scenario...I can't imagine it'd be hard for a gaming group interested in this kind of story to find one of them to be the unwilling victim...there's very little need to look up or research rules on bonuses and penalties for STD's if this is the basis for your night's adventures. Stand them in a whore house, flaunt the most naughty and hot things of interest in front of them: one of the PC's will take the bait, and your adventure begins. No need for tables of rolls and the draw of battle buffs.

If, however, it IS a sideline thing which, in your campaign and group, breaks down to nothing more than a benefit/determent system (this is what it sounds like reading your posts), I'm questioning the real need to bring this into the game.

Let me put it this way? Why Sex and STDs? Why not a buff from eating good food at a tavern or a determent for food poisoning? Why not a buff for visiting the town priest and praying to their gods, or a determent for being tricked into praying to the wrong gods? What is it about "Sex" and "STDs" is drawing you to that plot mechanism for your bonuses and penalties?

If the answer, as it sounds like in your posts, is you want one of your players characters to catch an STD so the party will give him real life crap about it, I'll give you the advice to get a bit more creative.

A Pissed Magician + Charm Person + Women's Lengere/Clothing + A VERY public place will get you the same thing without introducing an entirely new rule set to your campaign.

TBH I'm not sure it's time to check into a clinic. I'll buy the different strokes for different folks comments.

I should remind everyone, however, that sex in D&D has been there since the Succubus was introduced in AD&D First Edition. The whole INTENT of that demon type is allure, ensnarement, and some of the most horrific kinds of BDSM you could ever imagine.

If you are running a Demonic / Horror based campaign, between evil rituals, twisted cults and their beliefs / ideals, and certain elements of some NPC Monsters themselves, it can be VERY difficult NOT to bring sex into a campaign.

Even without this kind of content, there are times where you almost have to throw suspension of disbelief into a campaign NOT to introduce some kind of sexuality. PC's being captured by ruffians with female characters in the mix (particularly those with exceptionally high charisma scores) really brings almost a "Wait, why wouldn't they..." question to the minds of players when your characters are stripped of their weapons, armor and practically clothing and then...left alone?

Even without all of this, I've found it almost impossible for even adult players (let alone hormone driven teens) of an RPG to be in a co-ed party and NOT have some kind of sexual tension between characters. Even if it's not acted on, the opportunity is always there.

D&D/Pathfinder is a rough world for your player characters. No matter how "lawful" the adventure, bad things happen, and sometimes, those bad things almost have to include some of the oldest forms of human mistreatment...why? Because it's how humans act...and, as a DM telling a story intended to be believable, to deviate from what is normal for people (even if we don't want to face it) can cause huge suspension of disbelief issues for your players.

Asking for some guidelines on how to handle these kinds of topics doesn't make the DM intending to use them a horrible DM.

The first suggestion I would make is to understand your players. If you know situations can arise where horrific topics like torture or rape might occur (even if they're not guaranteed) make sure to ask your players if they mind a little adult content in their game. If your players are uncomfortable with it, suspension of disbelief be damned, don't include it. Perhaps that smelly bandit who's been out in the woods for the last 5 years avoiding the law has a headache that afternoon when your female party bard with an 18 charisma, wearing the skirt slit up to her hips, gets captured.

Secondly, use some tact and taste when presenting such topics to your players. Graphic descriptions of torture, rape or even simple sex should be kept out of a campaign unless that's what your players...ALL of your players...have asked for. Even then, keep in mind there is quite an art to writing a GOOD porn story...if you don't have what it takes, don't do it...you'll only end up coming across as crass or over the top.

Lastly, don't abuse it. If every other chapter of your adventure includes the party's only female being stripped and ravished over and over again, that's not good story, it's abusive to your players.

In my WoW Guild we used to "gobble up" other guilds regularly. And almost yearly we had a guild breakup where a bunch of people who were unhappy with how things were would leave taking a bunch more people with them and leave us stranded till we could get back on our feet.

My officers and I always scratched our heads and wondered why, after all the precautions we'd take learning from our history, why this kept happening. The answer was simple, we never learned from history. We kept implementing new ways to protect from the old happenings but we never SOLVED THE PROBLEM.

Step back and solve the problem. There IS a problem here, it's obvious. The players are obviously interested in a computer RPG scenario where respawn means "try it a different way". There's NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS KIND OF PLAY. Let me say it again just to make certain it's heard...there's NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS KIND OF PLAY.

It is NOT, however, standard "Table Top" methodology. All of the GMs on the boards suggesting penalties and restart restrictions are not seeing this from your player's perspective.

Your players seem to see an unwinnable encounter as a chance to "try again and get it right this time". It's MMORPG Raid mentality...if you do every action perfect and focus fire all your character's abilities in the right order, you will beat the encounter. If you don't, try again.

RPGs are played for the sense of accomplishment...whether online or tabletop, the idea is to create a persona and use that persona to accomplish a goal or task. It seems your players want their sense of accomplishment to come from progression and overcoming challenges while you are looking for maybe a better story? Either way you have a fundamental difference in your approach. Till you solve that all you're doing is putting unacceptable terms on your games that your players will either say "screw you, I'm not dealing with that" or will work around.

You are in a competitive "I'll do it my way, you find your way around it" relationship with your players at this point. No Play group can sustain this, because in the end either the players go far enough to ruin the DM's fun and he stops DMing, or the DM goes far enough out of frustration to ruin the player's fun and the players stop playing.

Solve the problem. If your players are interested in a more MMO Experience at your game, increase the difficulty by 2 or 3 CR above where your hard encounters are even RIGHT NOW, and let the players wipe 2 or 10 times banging their heads on how to beat it...when they do they feel accomplished and walk away with new loot to experience the next part of your campaign.

That said, this does have to be fun for you also. If that simply isn't the campaign you want to run, I'll be the 200th person in this thread to say it...talk to your players. If this isn't the game they want to play and it's not the campaign you want to run reboot...do something else.

There's a hundred different solutions you can apply here that equate to a compromise...you can agree that you will include some encounters they want if they'll try to play the game the way you want, you can come to terms with each other and agree on what they want in return what you want from the campaign and agree, again as friends, to make the game enjoyable for EVERYONE.

I fully believe, however that NO solution on this board that starts with "Just tell them" or "You're the DM" will work. Not on a long term.

If 10 years in an MMO has taught me anything it's that no one online feels any connection or compulsion to stick with anything they don't like. "Life is too short" should be the internet's motto. The moment you put a restriction into your campaign that your players aren't interested in your campaign will be over. No one on the internet accepts the "I'm the DM, it's my game, you'll do as I say" mentality.

Work it out, don't put arbitrary rules into your game to box in your players...from the sound of it that would only provide them more opportunities to "work around" you and your game needs for what they want.