I need some advice on a player's whose expectations seem to have gotten a little blown out of proportion. I'm running RotRL right now and we are just at the start of book 5. One character came to the party in book 2 and to give him a tie-in later I suggested he be one of the Black Arrows sent to take care of some business in Sandpoint. My player decided he wanted to have come to the Arrows against his will and we decided he had been a very low-level player in the Scarzni as a teenager and they used him as a fall-guy for the the murder of his mentor. This was mostly used as a plot device to get him in with the Arrows despite being a bit roguish at the time. After this it didn't come up again for quite a while. In the meantime, he's had plenty of personal RP opportunity in books 3 and 4 (he's also the son of Ven Vinder and so even had a lot of his own stuff to deal with in book 2 with the murder of Katrine).
Now, despite it having no tangible connection to the adventure we are playing he wants to take time off to wipe the Scarzni off the map. I've explained to him that that's not in the scope of this adventure but that maybe once the sixth book is complete we can try something. I've also said to him though, that I think he misjudges the scope of the organization. I tried to get him to understand that I'd be more than happy to craft an adventure centered around him taking out those who wronged him specifically but that the Scarzni as a whole are a lot bigger than he realizes and that they are fairly important to the setting and I'm not really willing to have them killed off at a whim.
The plot here thickens when this player informs me he's already done his own research and that they aren't really that large and imposing and he should be able to do it based on that. Now, we've been playing for over a year and I've made it abundantly clear that spoilers are an absolute no-no and if you look up spoilers to the path you are effectively cheating. This isn't quite that severe as it's only really setting spoilers but I'm still rubbed entirely the wrong way by it. Honestly, I'm stumped as to how to move forward without stubbing any toes. I'm not sure if that's even possible. Any advice on what to do would be much appreciated.
TL/DR: My player wants to casually wipe out the Scarzni despite it being way out of the scope of the adventure we are running and has looked up spoilers in order to facilitate his argument as to why he should be able to. Halp.
Perhaps what he knows of them is faulty,as in his character. Like he looked up misinformation they put out to make people underestimate them. You, as the DM, can make that decision. You can also tell him you expanded their organization irl and that,even though he looked it up, you changed it.
Or you can have him go after them and he can have his butt kicked. Not famine with the campaign, but it nay be possible for a few of them to be traveling through, then make those characters a higher level than he can handle. Of course then youd need to make them all tough after the campaign.
Just a few ideas. Yeah.
What book are you on? There's a built-in story thing that could wipe out the locals?
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Paizo leaves out information so you can fill in what you need for your personal game.
Your murder hobo is picking a fight with the wrong group for bad reasons. His beef is with a few individuals or cells not the whole organization. once on their radar he will be misreble.
Is the group from "Prince of wolves" scarnzi?
2ndGen - I've thought of that and honestly at this point I would have to change them to even run it. Him getting his butt kicked is the most appealing to me as the GM but I don't want him cheesed off either.
He literally offered to simply write up an account of him taking charge if we didn't have time to run it properly. As if it would be so easy.
Saldiven - I'm pretty old school as well so I am pretty upset he'd casually look something like that up. On top of this I'm no so sure I really want to build them up from scratch either.
Wei Ji - We are just starting Sins of the Saviors. The sinkhole should be occurring soon.
Angry Varisian Harrowers and witches....and lots of 'em!
2ndGen - I've thought of that and honestly at this point I would have to change them to even run it. Him getting his butt kicked is the most appealing to me as the GM but I don't want him cheesed off either.
He literally offered to simply write up an account of him taking charge if we didn't have time to run it properly. As if it would be so easy.
Saldiven - I'm pretty old school as well so I am pretty upset he'd casually look something like that up. On top of this I'm no so sure I really want to build them up from scratch either.
Wei Ji - We are just starting Sins of the Saviors. The sinkhole should be occurring soon.
Well do consider the following:
" Being independently minded in the extreme, one Sczarni family will have next to nothing in common with another, other than their occupation, cultural background, and general methods."
So you have loads of these varisian families, all working independently progressing their own goals in different ways.
Variasians hate them because they already get a bad rap and the sczarni only make it worse.
But that is not to say that varisians dont view them as family though.
"Most Varisians are opposed to the Sczarni and want nothing to do with them. They believe that their activities invite trouble and further stereotyping against their kind. Despite this opinion, most Varisians will offer aid to a Sczarni who is in trouble, especially when outsiders are involved"
So, long story short, war on sczarni = war on varisians (though indirectly). I would think that your PC might be that "outsider" the last paragraph mentions.
Torbyne - That's correct, although I think he vastly misjudges the size and scale of them. He seems to think they exist only in Magnimar.
GeneticDrift - I haven't read the novel so, no. The specific people who framed him were honestly never even named (in part because his character may not know). I treated his whole affiliation with them more as plot device than anything else and intended to focus on the Black Arrows and his Sandpoint ties - which I have quite a bit. In retrospect, despite this player being the biggest min-maxing murderhobo in my party they have somehow had more main story tie-ins than my RP-loving players.
Just explain that what he's proposing is roughly equivalent (regardless of what he read) to one person proposing to take down the Mafia. Ask him to consider how that would play out in the real world, and say that idea would be your inspiration.
Sounds sort of like a "better to have the villain you know" mentality should the PC wage war. Sczarni may not be the most beloved portion of the Varisian population, but people still like their black sheep cousin better than people they have never met, and who may or may not be attempting to kill said black sheep cousin.
I would hope the other PC's are more level-headed, as this has the makings of a TPK and/or a plot de-rail.
Lets start with the easiest things first. Expecting a player not to read an adventure path you are playing is reasonable, but expecting a player to not read other things about Golarion is not. Many players GM some of the time, or might want to or just enjoy the variety of products Paizo puts out (including novels) that talk a lot about the setting. It is of course reasonable to expect their characters to not act on knowledge that this character has.
As for derailing a campaign into a different goal, that isn't necessarily good or bad on its own. Players should make characters that 'fit' the campaign presented to them, in the case of an adventure path that is often more defined than in a home-brew campaign. If you and the other players wanted to divert into a Scarzni hunting expedition, that is perfectly fine, but if either you or the other players don't want that, then it is perfectly fine to tell this player that he is out of luck, and if his character insists on doing that then he won't be continuing in the campaign that you are running.
Since it seems clear that you don't want to run this anti-Scarzni game, the easiest thing to do for your players is to simply state that. Something like "I appreciate that you are getting into the backstory of character and the wider world, but I am not planning on or interested in running a diversion from the published campaign like that."
Simple, to the point. Don't bother arguing how easy or hard it would be to wipe out the Scarzni, if he argues just reiterate that you want to keep to the basic plot points published in the AP, and that that is what you will be running.
When I was a young child, there were a couple bullies in my school. They were older and picked on me a lot. Even a couple fights.
They happened to be Italian so now I want revenge by eradicating all Italians!
Doesn't make any sense, does it? Neither does your player. Get him to see reason and then whip up a side quest to kill his bullies instead of eradicating all Scarnzi.
And half a very serious chat with him about the boundaries of player knowledge so you two can see eye to eye about what he is and is not allowed to research out of game.
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He seems OK with the idea of waiting until after the AP is done (and who knows his PC might even die before the end anyway) but the idea of running this adventure at all bores me on multiple levels. For one, I feel like his reasons aren't the strongest or most well-thought out. I also honestly don't feel like I'd have fun running this adventure. Finally, should he manage to succeed, the world loses an interesting group I'll have to find some way to replace or mitigate. It all seems so boring and pointless to me especially when you factor in that this player is much more of a roll-player than a role-player.
He's talked about supplanting the leadership as well and taking control but for a magus with no rogue levels whose only criminal experience was being one of the lowest-level toughs for the Scarzni for like a year when he was a teen that's not really feasible to me. In the wise words of Mike from Breaking Bad: "Just because you shot Jesse James, don't make you Jesse James."
Since it seems clear that you don't want to run this anti-Scarzni game, the easiest thing to do for your players is to simply state that. Something like "I appreciate that you are getting into the backstory of character and the wider world, but I am not planning on or interested in running a diversion from the published campaign like that."
Simple, to the point. Don't bother arguing how easy or hard it would be to wipe out the Scarzni, if he argues just reiterate that you want to keep to the basic plot points published in the AP, and that that is what you will be running.
Yeah, this is probably what I'll have to do. Thanks for your well-thought out and to-the-point post. (Obviously thanks to all responders a million times over.)
I appreciate what you said about spoilers as well and agree but just to clarify: This player doesn't GM, this is the only Golarion campaign they have ever played in, and the info he has he only has because he looked into it specifically for this scenario. That is to say - he didn't run into it because he was learning the setting or reading a novel. He looked it up specifically with the full knowledge that he intends to try and wipe them out in-game.
In the wonderful words of my Rise of the Runelords party: "DUDE, WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR ANYTHING ELSE!! THE WORLD'S GONNA END!"
At this point in the campaign, [REDACTED] has out and out told them that they're on a time limit, that it's not going to be long until he's out and about again. Add in the fact that they have (almost certainly) used their nice new library to research Thassilon, they'll know that what was at Jorgenfist pales in comparison to what will come once the Big Man comes out of hiding.
Even after the adventure, there's other problems, like the matter of a certain device, what the city they're going to is made out of, etc. Add in the reasons that others have brought up as well, and he should understand. Also, don't ever forget that you get to have fun too, even if you are the GM. If it's not going to be fun for you, don't run it.
I appreciate what you said about spoilers as well and agree but just to clarify: This player doesn't GM, this is the only Golarion campaign they have ever played in, and the info he has he only has because he looked into it specifically for this scenario. That is to say - he didn't run into it because he was learning the setting or reading a novel. He looked it up specifically with the full knowledge that he intends to try and wipe them out in-game.
Well, first off, your player's wrong. The Sczarni are quite large, and very spread out, and tracking down each and every one of them is unrealistic. Nor would it be very fun.
As for spoilers? I'm torn on that. On one hand, there should be absolutely ZERO knowledge about the AP or game you are playing. I can't even understand WHY someone would WANT to read ahead. But yes, that's a garbage attitude. If by some knowledge you found out something (some people are very loose about spoilers on these forums...) then you shut up and pretend you know nothing.
HOWEVER... There are a LOT of things that are NOT spoilers. Scarni are really high on that list. They are mentioned all over the place and in multiple Player's guide for multiple AP's The information that was WRITTEN for the players.
The GM is running the game... but the WORLD is shared with the players. If he writes a back story that he came from andoran by way of magnimar... then it's certainly right to acquaint yourself WITH those places.
Diving into the lore of the world is one of my favorite things to do in a RPG. I'm not a fan of playing characters who have no idea what is past their front door. PCs are certainly able to know about hellknights and scarni and the kellid and whatever else is considered 'common knowledge.'
Should they know the leadership and where they meet on the 12th of every month... Heck no. but to just make some grand generalizations about a common subgroup? Yeah, that's not so spoilery.
Make him write detailed plan how he would do it.
You could allow him to find a group of them, predictably eliminate them, then find materials suggesting they were seeking the individuals who set him up, as conmen trading on the Scarzni name to extort rubes.
He'll probably feel like a bit of a heel then... As well as have some new enemies.
So glad I home brew my game!
In 1976, a player bought the module I was running and tried to metagame getting the juicy prize, but I switched an armored skeleton warrior for a lich. Homebrew for ever!
The two questions I would suggest asking yourself are as follows-
1) Is this something *a* player wants to do or is this something the players want to do? If it's the former, this is a valid goal for the player to have but it's also something that will probably get in the way of the whole "group effort" thing. Unless the rest of the party can be convinced to help, this is going to be something that character does on their own time.
However, if the entire party is agreed about derailing the plot, you should ask yourself:
2) Whose story am I telling? Our (the players and the GM) story or Paizo's story? If you're fine with going completely off the rails, go completely off the rails, You'll have to express to your players that when you're not working from pre-made material they have to have different expectations on how prepared the GM is, and they'll have to have some tolerance for that, but sometimes pursuing the bizarre tangents the players want to pursue is great fun (I've run adventures where the players needed to first raise a small amount of money to fund an expedition, and instead of doing little quests to chase orcs off of farmland or whatever to raise money like I expected, they formed an organized crime syndicate... the campaign turned out *very* different as a result.) But if you don't want to have to do the work for something like this (after all, you presumably paid for the AP) you kind of have to walk a tightrope here. Let the players make progress on their side goal, but don't let the side goal detract from the main narrative, and don't let them finish the side goal (it can't be the sort of thing they can just get out of the way and then do the adventure). I mean, if we're talking about wiping out a large group with lots of resources it's going to take a matter of years, if not decades. Presumably they will figure out they're being systematically eradicated and take exception to that too, so this will be making the PC's lives more difficult.
But the issue is that it's more or less fine for characters to have whatever goals or motivations that they want. But "wanting to do something" doesn't mean you can do it. Some goals, after all, are worth pursuing even if they can't actually be completed. It's pretty unlikely that Batman could ever eradicate all crime in Gotham, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to and doesn't do what he can.
What I would suggest is "your players are looking up spoilers in pre-written adventures" should be taken as license to change literally anything you feel like changing from here on out. I mean, you always had that ability, but now you should feel free to take it as far as you like. A player wanting to pick a fight with an organization seems to be a good excuse to plant that organization in a more deeply rooted and sinister conspiracy...
Be up front with your player. It will save everyone some time and possibly some aggravation.
Story time!
A long time ago, in a city far, far away...
We were playing the module Throne of Bloodstone (which has allowances for PCs to play up to level 100 characters). The DM nerfed my friend's and my designs to play 100th level (1st ed.) barbarian brothers (ala the B-movie Barbarians). With the nerf, I talked the DM into letting me play a solar instead. Good times ensued, until...dun dun dun.
We got to Orcus' throne room and he wiped the floor with us, well them. It was painfully clear we were going to TPK, so my solar shapechanged into a quickling and ran the heck out to a point where he could plane shift away. Summarily discovering that the entire party was, indeed, TPKd, he made it his mission to try to get Orcus to pay for what he had done (not to mention we really needed his wand for blah blah blah reasons).
The solar attempted to gate in Orcus but he would never come. The solar located and demolished multiple temples of Orcus a day until they were no more...and Orcus still wouldn't come. The solar gated (successfully, mind you) Orcus' hated rival Demogorgon and Demogorgon said "Nah, I don't want any part of that, tyvm." The solar gated (also successfully, much to my complete dismay) the Prince of Deception, Fraz Urb Lu (sp?) who never comes when gated. He said "Nope!" also. Repeat this for pretty much any demon prince I could think of. They all came. They all said "Heh, good luck with that!"
All of this went on for some time and the other players and I got more and more frustrated while the DM shot us down left and right. He eventually said my superiors (the gods, basically) called me home and we were done. He could have saved us all a lot of effort by doing so way before that and saved us a lot of frustration.
Moral of the story is be up front with your player. If their idea isn't going to be productive for them, let them know. Good luck!
Or let him try, meet a bunch of 20th level Mafiosi, and have them stick knives in all of his vital organs in alphabetical order.
Then have him role up a new character with a different background.
Torbyne - That's correct, although I think he vastly misjudges the size and scale of them. He seems to think they exist only in Magnimar.
1) GOOD! Don't correct him.
Let him try & convince the rest of the party to help him.If they agree? Take a couple of sessions to indulge his war on the mob in Magnimar.
Heck let the party/him be successful in wiping them out/seizing control of the Magnimar branch.
And then, resume saving the world.
However.... As we all know, this organization is a lot bigger than just one cities worth of criminals.
Others, elsewhere, WILL learn of it.
If he killed them all this will take a bit longer.
If he just seized control & then resumed adventuring? Others will know very soon. So he'll have an interesting homecoming if he survives the actual RotRL campaign. :)
If the rest of the party declines to take up his cause & he still insists?
Then tell him that he needs to roll up a new character for use in the actual AP. Because his current character has abandoned the quest in order to take care of something that's best described as a tale for another time (IE; a different campaign)
2) Just tell him straight up that NO, you're not going to run that. Tell him why.
Oh, and point out that the task/group is WAY bigger than he thinks.