Yeah, so when I ask the players, how do you finish it, they add the level of gore they like.
As a dm, I want to get the players involved in the game, and make the consequences of their actions theirs. So when they do well, I will push them to describe the killing of their opponent. Not just have it hang there that the dice roll killed the opponent--what did their character do to kill the opponent.
I like to pretend I'm prepping them to join Division.
We try to be a descriptive lot. Mostly focusing on describing our actions in as cinematic or 'salvatorish' fashion.
As for describing in gory detail the visual aspect of our kills?? Not really. First of all... we as players don't know the enemies hp, so I have no way of knowing if that critical hit sliced a head of or spilled entrails all over the floor... or was a glancing blow that numbed his sword arm.
I describe the super leap from the chandalier and double flip landing behind the bsd guy and that I'm swinging low for his legs... DM takes it from there based on the numbers.
If a player really gets into the violent solutions and hacking, do you reign them in, has this happened, would you?
Same rule would apply. If other players are uncomfortable with gore... then ALL players need to be having fun. I wouldn't want player #2 upsetting player #3... Because then 3 would stop coming, and what 2 added to the game wasn't worth losing a player over.
My paladin has had a penchant for lopping off the heads of defeated enemies as the 'killing blow'. However in true highlander glory, its not described in gory detail and nobody has an issue with it. Final strike/coup de grace? We can pretty much claim 'how' we intend to kill people/things.
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As a player, I enjoy describing the actions I know I have control over. I like describing how I interact with people I meet, the impression my character is trying to convey to others, and my general attitude.
I find it more difficult to describe things that I'm less sure of, and the results of my actions in combat fall squarely in that area. Like, if I know I've scored a hit, and rolled decent damage, it's still kinda awkward when I say "I arc my enchanted blade under the guard of my foes' massive club, bringing it up in a fierce stroke, twisting as it bites deep into his scaled hide." Only to have my DM say "Fifteen damage? That's more like you've given your foe a mighty scratch."
I suppose if the DM told me that my hit had scored a killing blow, and told me to describe how I had gone about it, I could try, but it feels a little too much like I'd be stepping into DM territory there, regardless of the request.
I guess I'm just enamored of the traditional dynamic, in this case. :P
Edit: sigh. Pretty much what Phantom1592 said.
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We're talking about a game that is completely reliant on imagination and story-telling to convey what happens. You absolutely can describe violent scenes without blood and gore. The level of blood and gore you add is entirely up to you.
"You strike your foe mightily across the the shoulder in a downward arc. They cry out in pain and drop to a knee, devastated by the force of your attack..."
Violent? Well, yeah, that's kind of the MO of the game. But, bloody? Gory? Nope. Blood and gore are descriptive tools, options; not necessary.
Trying to justify blood and gore in your game is pointless; add as much or as little as you and your group like. There's no right or wrong way to do it, so long as your group all enjoy it.
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I get what you are trying to do, it is almost a decent attempt.
But why is the foe crying out in pain? Are they cut? What did the sword do to them? Are they slashed up? To what extend are they hurt by the damage and blood loss? How deep did the cut go?
You can beat someone down with a stick, but if that is a blade you are using, let there be blood!
Taking out blood when it should be there is ridiculous. Especially when players are swinging around giant swords and axes.
When my players have almost hacked something to death, I let them know they have almost hacked something to death.
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I get what you are trying to do, it is almost a decent attempt.
But why is the foe crying out in pain? Are they cut? What did the sword do to them? Are they slashed up? To what extend are they hurt by the damage and blood loss? How deep did the cut go?
You can beat someone down with a stick, but if that is a blade you are using, let there be blood!
Taking out blood when it should be there is ridiculous. Especially when players are swinging around giant swords and axes.
And this is the part where I don my Captain Obvious cape and say, "yeah, for you and your group, it can be as ridiculous as you want."
I'm a horror-veteran. I've been watching hard R-rated horror movies since I was 5 years old(my mother is a horror fan). I majored in Film and Screenwriting in college(admittedly didn't finish due to family commitments). Ravenloft was the first actual campaign I've ever run, and I've had players literally shiver and get queasy from some scenes I've ran for them.
I'm telling you that explicit blood is not necessary. Sure, it can be helpful. Maybe it's necessary to you; for you to accurately and confidently describe your scenes, you need that extra tinge of blood and viscera. But for the gaming community at large? Not even remotely.
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Usually when people stop having fun. But don't forget that the dm should be part of the fun equation as well.
What started as a "how much do you think is too much?" seems to have become the OP telling anyone who doesn't use buckets of gore as part of their description that "they're doing it wrong".
Just saying.
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My apologies. Loyalist has been so talkative I had just assumed he was the OP. Please let me correct myself.
What started as a "how much do you think is too much?" seems to have become Loyalist telling anyone who doesn't use buckets of gore as part of their description that "they're doing it wrong".
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If you and your players are having fun, you're not doing it wrong, regardless of what people on the internet tell you.
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Well, I said that it was the way my friends and I played the game. I completely understand if someone wants to play their game anywhere from PG13 to kiddie cartoon or full on R. That's their business.
It won't stop me from missing the visceral aspect of our games.
If you and your players are having fun, you're not doing it wrong, regardless of what people on the internet tell you.*Cough cough*LGBT thread *cough*
I'm talking about playing it wrong, not ethics.
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No, it's okay to separate discussions about "what constitutes technical proficiency in GMing" from "what's contributing to things that make the world a better or worse place."
If you're GMing and you decide to make all the human enemies your players fight dark-skinned with INT scores of 8, you're not GMing incorrectly in the sense of "a good GM provides x amount of description for attacks," or "a good GM has x amount of off-the-top-of-her-head rules knowledge."
I have some pretty strong thoughts on the ethics of those choices, but that's a different layer.
And I don't "dictate ethics" to anyone. My saying I believe something is unethical != my "dictating" anything, as I have no power to impose it.
But in any case, speaking as a moderator, that is a separate discussion, and exists in a separate thread. Please stop derailing.
I get what you are trying to do, it is almost a decent attempt.
But why is the foe crying out in pain? Are they cut? What did the sword do to them? Are they slashed up? To what extend are they hurt by the damage and blood loss? How deep did the cut go?
You can beat someone down with a stick, but if that is a blade you are using, let there be blood!
Taking out blood when it should be there is ridiculous. Especially when players are swinging around giant swords and axes.
I dont care how deep the cut went and neither do my group. Why is it "ridiculous" to limit one's descriptive language to those elements which matter to the group?
.You filter stuff out all the time (or you'd never be done describing the first room) - we filter out the blood and gore. It's not ridiculous it's different preferences, that's all.
My apologies. Loyalist has been so talkative I had just assumed he was the OP. Please let me correct myself.
What started as a "how much do you think is too much?" seems to have become Loyalist telling anyone who doesn't use buckets of gore as part of their description that "they're doing it wrong".
I am not the OP, but some have said I am OP.
as far as description I see no reason why the players shouldn't have free-reign to add fluff description to what they do as long as it doesn't affect mechanics or something the DM needs to happen. If the DM tells you that you killed the goblin, it makes no difference to the DM and what he's doing if you run the goblin through, slash it in half, or decapitate it.
It's not like the DM tells you exactly how you attack i.e. ok you make a thrust...now here you make a slash. That's something a player could decide and allows the player to contribute to the story using his own creativity. He shouldn't need to ask or have to be asked to do it..just do it and the DM can cut the player off if for some reason it was too graphic or overreaches past fluff etc.
As for the blood and gore thing, blood isn't necessary. None of it is "necessary". THe point is simply that:
-The game is inherently violent. You go around ending people/creatures'
lives by slicing them up with sharp weapons or bludgeoning them to death with heavy objects or burning them to death with fireballs. That is pretty violent and isn't exactly just taking grandma off life support by pulling a plug. Again, much of what you do is inherently violent.
-Thus to describe what the players are doing would require you to describe something violent. Unless you're going for something cartoonish or surreal (like hitting someone gives them that Looney Tunes lump on their head), the more you describe a scene, the more graphic and violent the description is going to realistically be.
-So...why are you going to add all those other realistic and violent elements like the person gasping his last breath, crying out in pain, crumpling to one knee etc. and intentionally omit the other obvious and realistic element that is going to be there? Obviously if you slash someone in half there is going to be blood dripping from your blade you just sliced them with.Why is it that if you suddenly include that there was blood in this...
I could not have typed it better.
One thing I will add, is that gore and combat being realistic in the damage being dealt, can be a way to encourage non-violent solutions, accepting surrender, and rping.
As in, as happened a few weeks back. A player was being pursued by a dismounted knight through some trees, he skirmished him up, some shots missed and were deflected, some caused horrible wounds. The knight nearly died, but when it was clear he was raptus regaliter, he begged for mercy. He was bleeding profusely, he had arrows through him, it was like he walked through the red wedding. The player could tell this guy was f~#@ed, I was describing his fear, and that he was only just standing from all these playing inflicted wounds. The pc got it, he knew he had won, the knight was a mess, so he accepted his surrender, helped him back to the main force and eventually let hm go after he got some intel (without torture). A messy, gory combat scene. The mercenary accepts the surrender of the knight, he acknowledges his pain, he roleplays, the knight is let go later.
If you get away from cartoon violence, it can add depth to a game. Less about hp and more about wounds done to others and whether you die, kill your foe, or spare them before it is too late.
as far as description I see no reason why the players shouldn't have free-reign to add fluff description to what they do as long as it doesn't affect mechanics or something the DM needs to happen. If the DM tells you that you killed the goblin, it makes no difference to the DM and what he's doing if you run the goblin through, slash it in half, or decapitate it.
It's not like the DM tells you exactly how you attack i.e. ok you make a thrust...now here you make a slash. That's something a player could decide and allows the player to contribute to the story using his own creativity. He shouldn't need to ask or have to be asked to do it..just do it and the DM can cut the player off if for some reason it was too graphic or overreaches past fluff etc.
Knock yourself out, if that's the way you want to play it. It's nothing I've really been interested in describing, and honestly, our combat takes long enough without having every player go into "I raise my hands majestically, a hellish, green glow wreathing my extremities. The very fabric of reality bends as the energy lances out in a wire-thin ray, searing the flesh of the creature as it plays over its exposed skin" or "Gritting my teeth, I tighten my grip on my blade. Noticing a pattern in the rhythms of my opponent's attacks, I lunge forward, thrusting my blade through his defenses with exquisite timing. A gout of claret issues forth from the hideous gash in his punctured chest".
Granted, that's some pretty purple prose, and probably on the far side of the bell curve of verbosity, but I'm actually really okay with just saying "I cast disintegrate on this jerk-face" or "I wade in swinging", and then having the DM describing the results. As a player, it feels almost like a reward when the DM waxes poetic about my successes, and much less self-agrandizing than when I do it.
As for the blood and gore thing, blood isn't necessary. None of it is "necessary". THe point is simply that:
-The game is inherently violent. You go around ending people/creatures'
lives by slicing them up with sharp weapons or bludgeoning them to death with heavy objects or burning them to death with fireballs. That is pretty violent and isn't exactly just taking grandma off life support by pulling a plug. Again, much of what you do is inherently violent.
-Thus to describe what the players are doing would require you to describe something violent. Unless you're going for something cartoonish or surreal (like hitting someone gives them that Looney Tunes lump on their head), the more you describe a scene, the more graphic and violent the description is going to realistically be.
-So...why are you going to add all those other realistic and violent elements like the person gasping his last breath, crying out in pain, crumpling to one knee etc. and intentionally omit the other obvious and realistic element that is going to be there? Obviously if you slash someone in half there is going to be blood dripping from your blade you just sliced them with.Why is it that if you suddenly include that there was blood in this violent act you just committed that that's such an incredible no-no? This just seems incredibly silly to me. You don't have to describe every scene with intestines falling out like the satire in the beginning of Tropic Thunder, but to purposefully omit it all the time when you include other realistic and violent descriptors seems pretty inconsistent to me.
It's not a "no-no". It's just not for everybody. You play the way you enjoy, others play a little (or a lot) differently. It might seem silly to you, but the super-cool thing about playing your own game is that you don't have to do it that way.
Your input is appreciated, and it's really neat to hear how you run your game. But your posts sound a whole lot like you're trying to tell anyone else who wants to, say, not run their games that way that they're doing it wrong.
I think people largely recognize a certain level of dissonance in the sanitized violence of their games, and they're okay with it. It might break immersion for you to not have the stabbing of others described to its logical, gruesome conclusion, but that's actually a preferred mode of play for some of us. We go into the "settings" menu and turn off the gore, and we still have fun, regardless of how silly or childish it might seem to you.
One thing I will add, is that gore and combat being realistic in the damage being dealt, can be a way to encourage non-violent solutions, accepting surrender, and rping.
As in, as happened a few weeks back. A player was being pursued by a dismounted knight through some trees, he skirmished him up, some shots missed and were deflected, some caused horrible wounds. The knight nearly died, but when it was clear he was raptus regaliter, he begged for mercy. He was bleeding profusely, he had arrows through him, it was like he walked through the red wedding. The player could tell this guy was f$##ed, I was describing his fear, and that he was only just standing from all these playing inflicted wounds. The pc got it, he knew he had won, the knight was a mess, so he accepted his surrender, helped him back to the main force and eventually let hm go after he got some intel (without torture). A messy, gory combat scene. The mercenary accepts the surrender of the knight, he acknowledges his pain, he roleplays, the knight is let go later.
If you get away from cartoon violence, it can add depth to a game. Less about hp and more about wounds done to others and whether you die, kill your foe, or spare them before it is too late.
And that sounds like it was a perfect opportunity for you to take your players where they wanted to go, and down the path where the scenery matched their expectations and desires. We just had an encounter tonight, where our DM pretty much did the same thing by saying "The Orc throws his battered and notched scimitar to the ground, falling to his knees. He's in terrible shape, and it's obvious that he's not going to last much longer. He pleads with you, his broken Common tinged with fear, 'Please,' he mutters, obviously ashamed, 'be mercy!'"
Pretty light on the gore, no real description of how badly we had really messed the bad guy up, but we still arrived at the same place, even with our cartoon violence. I can't speak for the rest of my fellow players, but I felt moved by the fear and pain the Orc was feeling, even with the mostly PG description. I still felt inspired to argue, in-character for mercy on our foe, without a lovingly detailed laundry list of every exposed tendon or sucking chest wound inflicted on our enemy.
Why did he give up? What was done to him? I can't tell any of that from his terrible shape?
Is he roasted from a fireball, blackened and seeping? Is he sporting a range of bleeding lacerations because a TWF scimitar wielding char worked him over? Did the barb almost break his back with a meteor hammer or maul, shattering half his ribs as it came down with bone-breaking force?
Oh I have taken hp damage and have fallen over, I can not continue. Give me more than that!
I think people largely recognize a certain level of dissonance in the sanitized violence of their games, and they're okay with it. It might break immersion for you to not have the stabbing of others described to its logical, gruesome conclusion, but that's actually a preferred mode of play for some of us. We go into the "settings" menu and turn off the gore, and we still have fun, regardless of how silly or childish it might seem to you.
Definitely my position and I'd even go further: words and session time spent on gore and realistic descriptions of violence are words and time not spent on plot and dialogue.
I choose to minimise discussion of violence partly because nobody in my group cares about a descriptive approach to violence and they would much rather hear more about the BBEG's overarching plot than the intricate details of how it's playing out blow by blow.
Why did he give up? What was done to him? I can't tell any of that from his terrible shape?
Is he roasted from a fireball, blackened and seeping? Is he sporting a range of bleeding lacerations because a TWF scimitar wielding char worked him over? Did the barb almost break his back with a meteor hammer or maul, shattering half his ribs as it came down with bone-breaking force?
Oh I have taken hp damage and have fallen over, I can not continue. Give me more than that!
The point is that you want more than that but others amongst us want something else instead. There isnt a 'correct' amount of descriptive prose and it's not something you can argue for or against - it's preference, pure and simple. It's similar to whether you like the Alien or the Star Wars approach to death.
It's good you know what you like, but it doesnt make other approaches 'ridiculous' or 'silly'.
Why did he give up? What was done to him? I can't tell any of that from his terrible shape?
Is he roasted from a fireball, blackened and seeping? Is he sporting a range of bleeding lacerations because a TWF scimitar wielding char worked him over? Did the barb almost break his back with a meteor hammer or maul, shattering half his ribs as it came down with bone-breaking force?
Oh I have taken hp damage and have fallen over, I can not continue. Give me more than that!
You can have as much of that as you want in your game.
We were there, we knew what we had done to him- we had done it, after all. For our group, it wasn't necessary for us to know that his spleen was bruised by our monk's furious fists, or that his temporal mandibular joint had been smashed by the business end of our fighter's mace. It was enough to know that we had hurt him badly, and that he was surrendering in pain. He gave up because he was obviously going to die if he kept on fighting. Hit points were never mentioned, and the descriptive and role-playing elements were completely satisfying for us.
See that's my point, more on the business end (of the fighter's mace), is more of the business of combat being covered.
Yeah plot, dialogue, etc etc, I've run courtly games with gore, you can cover the non-combat side plenty, and you can detail what is going on in combat as people are being brutally killed. Give the players feedback for what they are doing, take it away from just being about numbers or a pg rating (honestly, I don't know why you would want to keep a game on a pg rating, we are all long past 13 right? Right?). Unless you are giving the orcs a massage, and putting them to sleep, I want some meat and blood.
Especially when taking down big juicy monsters. A month back, a player took a charge from a dragon with his halberd and started hacking his way into it as the rest assisted, eventually ending up deep in its chest, plunging through its vitals and finally putting the beast down.
He was drenched in stinging, hot blood. His halberd was bent, he was half killed and ripped up, but he was victorious. Victorious I say! By the skin of his teeth and virtue of tearing out the insides of his foe, do or die, plunge in or perish. A halberd time is a hell of a time.
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Seriously, Loyalist, what is so hard for you to understand about some people not wanting to get super descriptive about the violence that's being caused?
I and my group don't personally dive into the blood drenching and guts spilling sort of descriptions, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't flatout call our games childish.
The level of condescension and "one true way-ism" you're displaying right now is absolutely astounding to me.
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I have a more general question for the thread, that I feel pertains to the topic:
How large is everyone's average gaming group?
I've found, that in smaller groups(1 DM, 2 or 3 players), it's much easier to get much more descriptive with encounters, which in some small part includes getting more visceral and gritty with attack descriptions.
I've played in larger groups(1 DM, 7+ players) and it's a lot harder to sit and get overly descriptive, when you have a large group of people all awaiting their turn. OOC scenes are still deep and involved, but things centered around die rolls and action sequence, tend to be a lot more streamlined and faster paced, less descriptive. At least in my experience.
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I like using "body horror", but if there's something that's pushing things past any of the player's comfort levels, GMs should try to know their players' boundries and respect them, not push ahead in the name of some sort of "purity of the director's vision" or whatever. The same goes for the players respecting the boundries of the other folks at the table, including the GM's.
edit-On a related note, torture porn was probably the worst thing to ever happen to horror films.
Along with not wanting gruesome details to move into trigger territory or "Sam Peckinpah's Salad Day's-style self-parody, being overloaded with non-gore related dark themes can be a huge turn-off too. Constant Morton's Forking players into terrible situations and choices is basically setting a crash course for Grimderp*.
*Alternately, "s%!#dark".
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honestly, I don't know why you would want to keep a game on a pg rating,,,.
Wow. You really don't, do you?
I knew this boy in high school, generally he seemed really nice, but, apparently, he was just crazy about ketchup. I really can't stand the stuff.
One afternoon he sat at my lunch table and noticed that my fries were conspicuously ketchup-free. He got up and went to a neighboring table, retrieving a ketchup bottle, as ours was missing one. I told him that was very sweet of him, but I didn't actually like ketchup, thank you all the same.
He told me that the school's ketchup was actually really good, and that I shouldn't be put off by the idea of "community" ketchup.
I told him that wasn't really the problem. "I just don't care for ketchup," I said.
"Ridiculous," he replied. "You can't have fries without ketchup!" He then proceeded to squirt ketchup all over my fries.
What an odd, and somewhat frustrating, sense of déjà vu I'm having.
My weekly group is four players and GM, I'm in a couple occasional groups of 5 and 6 + GM. The most I've ever seen around a table was "Rob and his humongously large D&D group" which had thirteen players. The biggest group I think I've ever successfully GMed for was 7. The PBEM game I'm in has 9 (I think, at last count), but PBEM allows for extremely long and detailed descriptions if you like, although too long a description and I can't be bothered to read it.
Seriously, Loyalist, what is so hard for you to understand about some people not wanting to get super descriptive about the violence that's being caused?
I and my group don't personally dive into the blood drenching and guts spilling sort of descriptions, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't flatout call our games childish.
The level of condescension and "one true way-ism" you're displaying right now is absolutely astounding to me.
They aren't childish.
They are PG-13 with cartoon violence.As admitted above.
:)
I have a more general question for the thread, that I feel pertains to the topic:
How large is everyone's average gaming group?
I've found, that in smaller groups(1 DM, 2 or 3 players), it's much easier to get much more descriptive with encounters, which in some small part includes getting more visceral and gritty with attack descriptions.
I've played in larger groups(1 DM, 7+ players) and it's a lot harder to sit and get overly descriptive, when you have a large group of people all awaiting their turn. OOC scenes are still deep and involved, but things centered around die rolls and action sequence, tend to be a lot more streamlined and faster paced, less descriptive. At least in my experience.
Quite right on this, when the group is too large and the enemies thus too numerous, the numbers have to be crunched and other aspects of the game suffer.
Seriously, Loyalist, what is so hard for you to understand about some people not wanting to get super descriptive about the violence that's being caused?
I and my group don't personally dive into the blood drenching and guts spilling sort of descriptions, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't flatout call our games childish.
The level of condescension and "one true way-ism" you're displaying right now is absolutely astounding to me.
They aren't childish.
They are PG-13 with cartoon violence.
As admitted above.
:)
"Admitted"?
It is oookay, some of you are too squeamish to include blood and serious bodily harm, in a game involving killing (over and over, session after session) with melee weapons, ranged attacks and monsters. Which it will be remembered devour folk, crunch people into bloody bits, crush them, impale them on horns, or claw chest cavities and faces open and casting shredded bodies into the dirt. If you think -10 isn't gory, or -20 isn't, or crits aren't, or death via spiked pit traps is not and never will be gory, on you go. I cannot persuade you otherwise.
It is fine, it is the dao of squeamishness. Everyone finds their way.
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It is oookay, some of you are too squeamish to include blood and serious bodily harm, in a game involving killing (over and over, session after session) with melee weapons, ranged attacks and monsters. Which it will be remembered devour folk, crunch people into bloody bits, crush them, impale them on horns, or claw chest cavities and faces open and casting shredded bodies into the dirt. If you think -10 isn't gory, or -20 isn't, or crits aren't, or death via spiked pit traps is not and never will be gory, on you go. I cannot persuade you otherwise.
It is fine, it is the dao of squeamishness. Everyone finds their way.
You prefer a style of storytelling that others don't. Why be a jerk about it? It's got nothing to do with being "too squeamish." Some games simply don't call for that level of brutality when describing combat.
I'm not into "kick in the door, hack and slash" style games, but I'm not ragging on them just because I choose to play differently.
You're better than this.
It is oookay, some of you are too squeamish to include blood and serious bodily harm, in a game involving killing (over and over, session after session) with melee weapons, ranged attacks and monsters. Which it will be remembered devour folk, crunch people into bloody bits, crush them, impale them on horns, or claw chest cavities and faces open and casting shredded bodies into the dirt. If you think -10 isn't gory, or -20 isn't, or crits aren't, or death via spiked pit traps is not and never will be gory, on you go. I cannot persuade you otherwise.
It is fine, it is the dao of squeamishness. Everyone finds their way.
I'm sorry, but... Squemishness?
Causing physical pain, even being described and not actually done, is not how I get my kicks and giggles. Squemishness has nothing to do with it for me, but my own personality is more like "You run him through with your spear," rather than "You drive the spear through the orc's heart, and as he cries out in pain you feel him start to give up resisting the pain of the cold, biting steel."
The hits might be gory, but we don't have to describe them as such. We can leave that implied.
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I'll cop to squeamish. I am pretty easy to upset, when it comes to pain and violence. I don't like to focus on the horror of battle. I'm not into the whole "Hope, tortured and flayed. Reason, dismembered, grinning at its limbs in its lap. Decency raped to death" thing, to mis-quote Joss Whedon.
I know it's the reality of a sword battle, of clashing forces. It's the reality.
I'm playing a fantasy game.
One of my favorite fantasy books, "The Hobbit", was written for children, but it spawned "The Lord of the Rings" which could arguably seen as one of the biggest influences of Dungeons and Dragons.
The sense of the heroic, of the ideal, of the epic that you find in those books, and others like them, is what draws me to these games, not the gritty, quotidian, lurid or grotesque.
So, yeah, I'll cop to squeamish. But I won't be ashamed of it. I really wish you'd stop trying to make me feel like I should be.
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And even then there's the risk of going too far. Two campaigns ago I had a particular villain (Harishek Ap Thulkesh the Blind Clockmaker) that the PCs ended up having to do a favor for in exchange for information that they needed to go up against the main campaign BBEG. Deal with a devil sort of proposition. In the end I made my players cry. Not their characters, but the players themselves, because of the moral dilemma I put them into, and what emotional strings I ended up tugging.I really want to know what you wrote now...Also, I wrote it in 2005, so the horror may truly be in how my writing was then compared to now. It wasn't for publication, nor at the time did I ever expect to write anything for publication, so at best it received a run through spellcheck, but little else.
you made them listen...
you monster
This was incredible.
My players would have (and have) handled it a little differently - as in, not giving the Clockmaker what he wanted and they would have found another resolution to the problem. That or confront the creature once it's intent was known = TPK/moral dilemma railroad over. Either way, the creatures demand and options presented (if those were the only options) were incredibly too railroady/greydark.
Mind you though, I would still have offered something similar to my players as an easy solution to a tough problem, they just would have told me to stuff it via finding and actual solution that did not negate the concept of playing good or heroic characters. Or they would have fought the creature if they thought they had a chance of defeating it and probably would have died. Part of the problem with putting out moral life/death challenges - players may actually take you up on it.
And while offering up someone else as a sacrifice when you're not actually giving anything up yourself may seem morally tough, it's still was taking the easy road (challenge wise/game wise and almost every-other-wise besides emotionally) and a cop-out on the part of the players to deal with the real risk of the situation. Their characters death for one.
I'm sure they wept all the way to the next part of the adventure + netted some XP in the process.
The phrase "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" doesn't even apply here, because they facilitated the needs of evil for their own benefit and allowed it to flourish and as such I would label them weak enablers of evil, if not evil themselves.
Poor saps fell for it though.