Go to Hell, Part 1
You know what? If you poison the town well, or even if you’re guilty of aiding and abetting someone poisoning the town well, you have probably lost your moral compass. That’s doubly true if you moral compass is off trying to become a divine herald.
Roleplaying games are funning that. Being true to yourself — following what you believe to be right — can often take a backseat to getting along with the other players. Helping Assassin make the murders might not seem like giving up on your character’s’ beliefs in the heat of the moment. It’s just politesse! I mean, you wouldn’t want to step on someone else’s fun, right?
If you’ve ever been a rogue that had to restrain their sticky fingers or a paladin forced to excuse the necromancer’s blasphemous magic, then you know how much of a compromise this can be. When opinionated people gather around the gaming table, those bold personalities can lead to clashing creative visions. Barbarian might enjoy a bit of old-fashioned violence, but melting the guts out of the locals is less fun for her than chopping up demons. Unfortunately for her, she’s going to have PLENTY of opportunity to chop up demons down in hell. But methinks Assassin is going to catch some chopping first.
So what do you say, kids? Have you ever tried to make room for another gamer’s fun only to realized it ruined you own? If Hell is other gamers, tell us about your stint in Heck down in the comments!
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Once again, actions meet consequences. And baby, poisoning a town well merits some serious consequences, which the Lower Planes are all set to provide!
I wonder whether ‘saving the souls of misguided former teammates’ might be another step on Paladin’s path to the rank of Herald. If Necromancer helps him out in some way, it’d justify his new paradigm…! Think about it, she’s an expert in dealing with dead bodies, so she could get the corpses of the convicted felons out of whatever ditch they were thrown into and preserve them for eventual resurrection.
It’s interesting to see Assassin’s response to this situation. Until now, he’s always been Cocky Evil, a bit like a malignant take on the Fonz. Now he’s in a really bad spot, what with his acts of murder having caught up to him, and his crew is turning on him? Passive-aggressive dog of the female persuasion.
Hmm, an unpleasant thought just occurred to me. The Anti-Party (and Assassin) are in the Lower Planes, where Demon Queen once had her domain. Even though she’s been dethroned and reduced to a doorstop, Sorcerer is still a living member of her bloodline. Is BBEG going to come after these wretched souls? Are any of DQ’s other enemies? Are any of her former allies. hoping to set Gramma’s boy up as a figurehead – or to work out their frustrations?
Holy crap I am hypothetically clever! I jokingly guessed this was what was gonna happen in their last comic.
Naw dawg. You are actually clever. This was your idea. And it was a good one. <3
One of us! One of us!
Why do the eternally damned have halos over their heads? ESPECIALLY Assassin?
I don’t make the rules.
https://the-dragon-ball.fandom.com/wiki/Hell?file=Index.jpg
At least they got some free [Outfit, Rags] out of the deal. They wouldn’t be so lucky in the other Handbook.
Hmm, predictions that might become canon:
– Assassin gets ditched/sacrificed by the rest of the three via unanimous vote.
– Assassin ditches/sacrifices the other three for a Faustian deal, becoming some evil prestige class like Diabolist, Mantis Assassin, Shadowdancer…
– Fiendish Four / Fiend Party show up and encounter the Anti-Party. Possibly swapping out Assassin for one of the Fiends as party members.
– Anti-Party finds the Skull-trapped Queen of the Demon Web Pits and loots her (since even incomprehensibly evil artifacts are incomprehensibly priceless).
– Assassin gets stuck in the same place Thaumaturge did for their crimes against RPG-ing.
All interesting options…!
Shadowdancers don’t have alignment restrictions. They aren’t required to be evil.
I’m reminded of something that happened in my game last night.
I’m running a game based off of the Battle Network series, which means that basically all of the big plot-important threats are cyber-terrorism of some sort, or “netcrime” in the game’s parlance.
My players are investigating an ice cream parlor where somebody has messed with the freezer to dangerous levels and blaming a recent bugfix. The players are aware of this and are trying to do something about it.
Which is why I was completely taken off-guard when one player decides “I’m going to call the officials” towards the end of the session. It’s a very interesting feeling you get when your plot is entirely thwarted by a player doing the RESPONSIBLE thing.
I like it! ^_^ It’s an interesting twist, and shows the player’s using their head.
When you said “messed with the freezer to dangerous levels” the first thing I imagined was the freezer going into overdrive and freezing everyone in the shop.
Then I realised that that didn’t make much sense in technological context. Maybe a magic icebox could do that but that’s not how electric freezers work.
If I were a hacker, how would I make a freezer dangerous? Overtax the motor perhaps and hope it starts a fire? Defrost it on the weekend so the icecream starts to go sour, turn it back on on Sunday night so that it looks normal, hope the customers get sick?
Assassin totally isn’t going to be sticking around the table long enough to chip in for pizza, is sort of the vibe I’m getting…
They burned down the orphanage and the DM is the one who caused it. Literally.
I was playing in a four hour session in a small con, many years ago. We were trying to hunt down a slaver group hiding in a small town. The leader was a doppelganger, so we were having issues pinning him down.
It was getting into the last hour of the session and we had solid proof the leader was hiding in the orphanage, changed into one of the kids. I was getting ready to say we should separate the kids and ask them questions, when the rest of the group decided the quickest way to finish the session was to burn the whole thing down.
I was not happy, but the DM actually was expecting that. I actually packed up and went home after that, ruined the whole con for me.
We used to have one guy in our gaming group who always played a Chaotic Stupid rogue, regardless of his actual PC’s species/class/alignment. LG paladin? Introduces himself by trying to rob the catfolk swashbuckler. NG fighter? Conspires with the rogue to rob the temple that’s selling us healing potions.
The story has a surprising outcome, though. After what seemed like a good roleplaying talk with my low-level cleric about what spells she had memorized and what they could do and our jobs in the party, he immediately went back to Random Chaos Engine.
His fisherman-turned-gladiator tried to rob every shop we came across. He conned locals out of their money with a fake charity. He nearly got us all arrested and/or banished from town into the unforgiving desert. Twice. He constantly interrupted the DM’s narration to ask “are there any cool looking rocks?” (His growing rock collection became another source of annoyance.)
Then came the final fight: we see two groups of adversaries and choose which side to back. (Animals are Neutral, Orcs = Bad, easy choice). As my cleric decided what to do in that first round, the “gladiator” used a Heroic Surge to run up to the cleric, use free actions to drop the rock collection into the cleric’s hand and ask “Are these rocks good enough for ‘Magic Stone’?”, then delayed the rest of his action.
Best.
(Literal) Brick Joke.
Ever.
I used my action to cast Magic Stone on the handful of pebbles, my move to cross paths with every party member who was A) not a tank and B) not armed with a bow, each time using the “drop an object” free action to arm them with a +1 magic sling bullet. Everyone can use a sling, slings are free, and all the non-warrior types had one in their inventory.
Those orcs never stood a chance, and I had been terrifically played by the player I’d been silently maligning all night long.
That’s pretty good!
This is why the part of Sesh Zero where you work out how the ‘party works together’ is so important. If two PCs won’t be able to get along due to clashing ideologies or lines drawn int he sand, then they need to work it out, or play something else.
And by “work it out” I’m fine if that also means “fight like cats and dogs all the time, but pull together against external threats”.
This is why, if you absolutely must put a Paladin and an evil character in the same party, you make the evil one sneaky and give the Paladin a Perception score so low that’s it’s gone through the floorboards.
You can also make redeeming the evil one the Paladin’s personal project, if the evil character’s player in on board with that eventually happening.
Another impossible task for Paladin in his herald quest: be a lawyer for his ex-party to get them another chance.
You could also make corrupting the Paladin the evil one’s personal project. They know they can’t be too evil/heavy-handed cause the Paladin would be too on their guard (or just kill them outright) but prove actually useful/willing to be a team player, and like a frog in a pot of water, they’ll eventually be boiled to death. Obviously this is best if the two players are cool with this.
One of the Pathfinder games I played was about overthrowing the new ruler of a port city. I had decided to play a pirate, overturning a government is a great way to get your name known *and* a probably a safe port of call. During the big speech I rolled for pickpocketing just after the samurai nat oned a perception roll to find someone in the crowd and the DM told me I managed to lift the guy’s wakizashi. I hadn’t been targeting this guy, but the DM thought it would be funny and we all chuckled. Later, after circumstances brought the party together he just turns to my character and goes, “Give me back my sword now.” Now… we had literally just met, and she’s a pirate so I was like, she’s not going to just fess up, so they started a back and forth like “It’s not a sword from around here,” “I’m not from around here either, sailed all over.” I didn’t care about keeping it tbh but it didn’t seem like the kind of thing she’d give up for a complete stranger. Honestly just a, “I fight better with two blades,” would have enough. Pretty much immediately into this though the Inquisitor pulls a sword on my pirate. Well, things were resolved but for the rest of that game I just didn’t feel like I was playing her honestly, because she 100% would have been plotting murder for that. She drew steel on my pirate, as her very first interaction. That player later dropped out and my head canon is that the inquisitor’s floating at the bottom of the harbor.
Maybe I sound like an asshole here but I was not looking to cause any issues, the DM kinda lobbed a grenade into my lap for rolling good, in the first session.
Back in my 3.5 Days I had a player, we will call E, that spent way WAY too much time on character optimization boards. If there was an A+ option for his character, E HAD to take it. Didn’t matter if it was in a source I okayed or not. E would push for it. And I was trying to be a “Yes” kind of GM. Eventually he got so overpowered compared to the rest of the group that I couldn’t balance combats with him in the party. (One of his big things was to force balance checks constantly.) This isn’t to say my other players didn’t optimize. It’s just that they were more along the lines of “I’m a fighter, I’ll dump charisma”.
As the story unfolded, the party was exploring a cave that the BBEG was hiding in. BBEG has set up tons of traps in this cave. E triggers a trap and gets a poisoned arrow to the back. The initial damage of the poison is dash. So I describe that the arrow hurts, and there’s a stinging sensation but little else. One minute of game time later, I ask for a second save. E rolls very poorly and I roll VERY well on the 3d6 con damage. E’s character dies. E is very angry. Demands to come back as a ghost. And I stand firm in saying no. E skips a session or two and I have the party find his new chacter when they’re trapped in a pocket dimension traveling the seasons.
E’s new character is entirely combat focused. He has almost no utility oriented gear or magic. Ok, explains why he’s trapped and needs help getting out of the pocket dimension. Now, in order to leave this dimension the party has to progress from each season. Spring to Summer to Fall to Winter. Each season is exaggerated in how we perceive it. Summer is blistering hot, lots of thunderstorms, etc. To progress from one season to the next, the party either has to kill the ruler of that season and take their powers OR do a favor for them.
Party meets E’s new character in Summer and after some difficulty, they make it to Autumn. Autumn is the harvest and is ruled by a vampire and everything has a very Nightmare Before Christmas vibe to it. Party agrees to help the ruler gather the harvest. His commoners. Party is split on what to do, but E takes the ruler’s trinket and nopes out to winter by himself. Except winter is perpetually twilight, in a taiga, during a snowstorm. He has no means of shelter and no means of keeping himself warm. He quickly freezes to death and is never discovered by the party.
E sends me a new character that is literally copy pasted from a character op board, uses books that I had not said yes to, and has a Prestige Class with a really weird special requirement. I waiver back and forth on what to do. I want to be a good GM and say yes but I’m also annoyed with E’s behavior. I eventually say no firmly. I even offer to help him come up with something that may fit the party better. Instead I got an email stating that E didn’t like the game I was running and that it wasn’t the kind of game he wanted to play in.
I am reminded of something I saw on a D&D forum once. D&D is an incredibly social game played by some of the most socially inept people. 🙁
I get why they’re all in the underworld, but why does Assassin have a yellow halo? He does not deserve it at all. Also, wouldn’t the fiery hells be Sorcerer’s favorite muse for his new spells, “A lë Fîrebaal” and “Blasticus Maximus Destructivucus?”
It’s probably just an easy ‘These characters are dead!’ marker. Ever see Dragonball Z when Goku was dead for the first time? There’s an episode where he falls off Snake Way and ends up in hell and everyone he met still had a halo.