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Or don't sit at a table with a dm who needs to abuse the one iota of omnipotence that the players have entrusted him with.
This is exactly why we can't have nice things changes to the scenarios.
What a truly sad thing to do
How about you sit the guy down and talk to him about his character . As a DM you are ment to remain neutral in ALL things game related not kill someone's character just because YOU didn't like
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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So, Psikotik Nomad, the reason you don't see this topic on the boards, as such, is because, in PFS terms, you cheated, baldly and obviously.
People are coming down hard on you because your actions strike them as vindictive and immature. But more to the point of this campaign, they're not allowed, unless a writer has put such a deadly statue into the scenario. As table GMs we're not allowed to make those kinds of modifications.
So, here's what needs to be done, to make things right. Your kitsune player should go to the local "venture officer", or regional coordinator, and explain the situation. That person will reverse the character's death -- because it was against the rules of the campaign -- and probably issue him a revised Chronicle sheet.
(This message is predicated on the assumption that all of this happened. It might also be the case that "Psikotik Nomad" is a troll, just trying to stir things up.)
And Tamec, I concur with andreww. Character death is a constant threat in Pathfinder Society. (I've watched several dozen characters die at my tables, including a handful of TPKs.) As table judges, we can't arbitrarily save PCs any more than we can arbitrarily kill them.
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It's a home game. If you read his first posts from his profile he discusses this very game.
@Psikotik Nomad. From your posts it sounds like you haven't got a lot of DMing experience under your belt. Please take some of the posts here as advice for future games. Taking out your personal dislike of someone or their character using your position of power is in fact the very definition of bullying.
There are far more mature and less hurtful means of resolving these issues, all of which start by discussing things with the players at your table. Perhaps the Kitsune player had no idea of the impact they were having on the other players and a simple chat could have resolved everything.
As a person who has dmed a number of different systems for both strangers and beat of friends for over 20 years, I would advise you to lease reconsider your approach to running the game. If you can't separate your personal feelings from your role as adjudicating a shared game experience, then please think about stepping down from the role. If you complete acts like the one you described above as a DM, you're eventually going to hurt someone's feelings and leave them feeling bullied. That is the worst outcome from a game you can possibly get.
Think about it.
Cheers
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Dear OP,
Thank you for reminding me why I don't play home games with GMs I haven't already learned to trust from organized play.
But, in a less sarcastic vane, thank you for understanding why what you did may not have been the best solution to the problem and considering other possibilities despite the negative response.
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Um dude, not cool. I definitely wouldn't play with you as GM. Ever.
Even though I hate having players play anthropomorphic animals, I would never do what you did.
You could just tell him to leave because other players and you weren't having fun at his uselessness and single player-ism.
Killing a character is such stupidly passive aggressive way to solve that particular problem.
Better to talk to the player, or have the group in general talk to them since the character seemed to not mesh with them. As it was the second game, I'm sure you could have written his character out and brought in something new without much problem.
And to follow the general comments here, punishing someone you find annoying in game is not a great way to go about it. If you continue to GM, you have to be able to deal with people who annoy you OR people you really really like with the same even hand. While the other players might have been cheering you on, they'd be less understanding if one day they forget your pizza and you kill them out of hand.
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C'mon guys, no need to continue chastising the OP, he got the message and responded well.
Personally, I did a lot of this sort of thing when I was a new DM. Obviously, lots of other people did too, or there wouldn't be so much written on the idea of "psycho" DMs and DM vs Player games. It's a learning experience.
For years, I was a killer DM. I made my players come to the table with at least one extra character prepped. I believe in one nightmare session of the 3.0 campaign "City of the Spider Queen" I killed 5 PCs. But the game simply wasn't fulfilling. There was never character development - who would bother when the character life expectancy was 2 sessions? There was never trust - why would there be when I repeatedly thrust the PCs into unwinnable situations? There was never plot development - none of the characters cared about the story.
I took a break from DMing for over a year. I thought and read and talked, and I came to the realization that there is no real reward in winning a contest between the DM and the PCs. How can there be when the DM has all of the power?
I'm not saying you should never kill a PC, or never let them do something stupid and get themselves killed. But you should trust your players and they should trust you. It's always better to have honest conversations with you players than to use in game power to punish out of game choices. It spreads the hobby and earns you a reputation as a fair and thoughtful game master. I don't really like Kitsune either, so I feel you, but almost every player I know would much rather be told by the DM that they simply arbitrarily are banning certain items beforehand than to have a character killed arbitrarily.
Anyhow, I hope that you and the player both continue to enjoy the game. It's a great pastime! And kudos again, as Drakeroberts said, on your gracious response. :-)
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(sarcasm)As, unless you are running bonekeep GMs are not allowed to kill PCs. I've been told this goes against the "don't be a jerk" clause.(/sarcasm)
Sorry I forgot to specify this. Although I have been told twice (by dead players) that I wasn't allowed to kill them it was against the rules. My response was "Show Me" and the only rule they could produce was the "don't be a jerk" one, and I was a jerk for killing his character. I then calmly explained that if death was not supposed to happen there would not be rules for getting a Raise Dead cast.
Kudos to Psikotik for letting himself be enlightened.
I did a double take reading this thread. Is it really true that GM's and not allowed to kill PC's in PFS??
I've never played PFS and that just seems like an odd rule.
-MD
*edit - NM, looks like Tamec just answered it for me.
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Listen, murdering a player character because they are freaking annoying is NOT wrong. Give the little s*$$ a few warnings, tell him what hes doing wrong and if he continues,murder his character. I see NOTHING wrong with showing a person what happens when you piss people off repeatedly. Don't let him back into your game untill he knows the pathfinder lore,I would NEVER tolerate someone like that for more than six seconds.
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Listen, murdering a player character because they are freaking annoying is NOT wrong. Give the little s*+@ a few warnings, tell him what hes doing wrong and if he continues,murder his character. I see NOTHING wrong with showing a person what happens when you piss people off repeatedly. Don't let him back into your game untill he knows the pathfinder lore,I would NEVER tolerate someone like that for more than six seconds.
Why not have a conversation with the offending individual? I mean, I'm fully with you if conversations haven't worked - actually, no, even then, I'd rather just kick them out than 'show them what happens when you piss people off' - but why not start by being kind and talking to the person as another equal and person?
Talking to people is hard, but brings growth. Passive aggression is easy, but helps no-one. At the very least, as Hama said, just boot the person, though it would be better to boot them and tell them why you are booting them - kindly, if you can manage it. Years of hanging out with the weird, socially inept misanthropes that make up a large section of our hobby has convinced me that many players honestly don't realize that they are being pains in the butt.
Passive aggressiveness is never a good thing. Just boot the damn moron from the game and be done with it.
Somehow i now got that image from Austin Power's dr evil pushing that button for the chairs, essentially giving those people the boot.
While not having had to do this, i 2nd Hama's suggestion.
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Listen, murdering a player character because they are freaking annoying is NOT wrong. Give the little s+%+ a few warnings, tell him what hes doing wrong and if he continues,murder his character. I see NOTHING wrong with showing a person what happens when you piss people off repeatedly. Don't let him back into your game untill he knows the pathfinder lore,I would NEVER tolerate someone like that for more than six seconds.
People like you are why we can't have nice things.
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When a player is acting like a spazz our regular gamers jokingly warn them about "wandering damage".
What is wandering damage? When a player or GM does a ridiculous amount of damage far in excess of a creatures hit points where does all that unused damage go? It simply wanders the realm like an invisible phantom looking to inflict it's damage on hapless victims. Wandering damage is strongly drawn to douchy behavior and attacks without mercy.
We don't actually use it, but invoking the term wandering damage is fun way to say "stop acting like a jerk and lets get back on track"
-MD
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Listen, murdering a player character because they are freaking annoying is NOT wrong. Give the little s~!~ a few warnings, tell him what hes doing wrong and if he continues,murder his character. I see NOTHING wrong with showing a person what happens when you piss people off repeatedly. Don't let him back into your game untill he knows the pathfinder lore,I would NEVER tolerate someone like that for more than six seconds.
Wow... that is just... wow...
Like other's before had said, simply talk with the player. If you don't like it, boot them. Just straight killing his character off because YOU don't like it makes you look like a douche and makes you no better than he is (he was a horrible player but that would make you a horrible GM)...
Oh and if you were in PFS that is straight up AGAINST THE RULES. So if you tried to pull that in PFS you would be 10 kinds of wrong right there...
@ Hama, though after a death (or 2) from things he was warned about and dismissed, he might have learned to actually listen to advice.....hopefully.
We all start somewhere, some just do better at picking it up.
don't solve OOC issues IC, solve OOC issues OOC like a gentleman, i use a group of index cards with my bonuses written and default actions because i cannot speak, and use charades to communicate actions i don't have scribed. updated level by level, easier to do in savage worlds than pathfinder, and when i speak IC, i use my whiteboard and have my boyfriend read it aloud.
i use it for OOC discussion too, if you see me doing something not listed on a flashcard, it is probably being written on my whiteboard and about to be read aloud by my boyfriend in under 2-3 minutes. everything else, i keep a flashcard for. but without my whiteboard, i'm helpless because i'm a pint sized mute girl who missed puberty at the age of 25.
what annoys my DM, is the fact my boyfriend has to read the whiteboard for me, because he is one of the only dozen people on the entire earth that can read my writing, and i am one of the only 2 dozen on the world that can read his.
@ Auren,
I'm almost inclined to ask for a sample sentence.
I've worked at the reception in a hotel and have seen so many handwritings.
Given a bit of time, those worst handwritings could be deciphered, some of which i'm sure would be worse.
Plus the fact the words are written left/right handed and like in elementary sometimes the letters are written attached-style.
i write right handed in the left handed style from before my 2nd grade teacher beat my left wrist and never taught me the proper way to right right handed, my boyfriend has the same issue.
2 lefties with a prejudice teacher beating our wrists with a ruler and expecting us to already know the proper way to write right handed, so we do all of our right handed techniques, in the way a lefty would do them, but with our right hand.
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Reading that makes me want to slap the guy over the head with that ruler. A second time if he still claims he's right to do so. >:(
That pisses me off.
Meh, Modern life kinda makes it so writing is a dying art.
Typing is pretty much the de facto method of data entrie.
I can recall when it was easy to tell women's from men's handwriting. With the kids now they're equally horrible.
Barring the side discussion about whether DM retribution is a proper practice, I did engage in a bit not too long ago, but then again I'm playing a deadly game and ever the player knew he had it coming.
The character in question is named Bradley Weatherby (BW). BW was a problem solver for a trade consortium and in his 13 sessions he has defined himself as the definition of Neutral Evil. He has screwed over countless people for minimal gain, sometimes only for his own pride, he has made shady deals that would involve the deaths of innocent people, he has carried out an assassination by rubbing highly deadly contact poison all over various surfaces of a tavern while not caring about civilian casualties. Hell, he has been involved in one way in another in every party death I have had, and I have had a lot.
The hammer fell due to enemies the party had made with a mercenary company in town. They discovered they had a shady business practice of leading people into ambushes (BW made the same deal, though he never acted on it, but they knew they had to remove the merc company first). They killed the leader and a good bit of the company, but 3 of the 4 captains escaped. They were all close friends, and one of them was the brother of the company leader. They were also "assassins." You can see where this is going.
Anyway, one of the PCs involved in this eventually became the NPC sheriff; the leader of the town is more like a crime boss, so the sheriff role is more for an air of respectability. So that NPC is now under a crime boss's protection so he is untouchable. For now. The other PC involved was initiated into a death cult to Nerull... the same one that the assassins were in. The leader of it liked the PC and saw his potential, so did this intentionally to save his life. So now BW is the only one they can take revenge on... and the PC in the cult decides he is too much of a loose cannon and does not warn him that the assassins are coming. So the assassins eventually come to him and we play it out. BW gets stomped and then brutally murdered; he had a life line in the form of a full caster NPC he brought with him for a romantic evening, but he squandered it with some badly used poison dust. Realistically he had little chance of success, so for all intentions you could consider it a bolt of divine DM retribution.
Here's a topic that more fully explains the situation.
F+*+er had it coming though and everyone in the game knew it. He likes his new character though, and that character is less likely to incur the wrath of every authority figure he meets.