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Kraken
Federated Suns
Marshal
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 2755
Location: United States
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 Posted: 13-Dec-2009 10:04 Post subject: Comeuppance to a power player? |
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In each instance where a player opted to let me create a character for them, I ended up with a character / vehicle combo that - when placed in conjunction with the campaign - required them to do a lot of thinking and expand themselves as players.
In this case, each of the previously-mentioned 3025 mechs has a critical flaw of some sort. The Stinger has paper-thin armor. The Blackjack can't deliver a killing blow all by itself. The Warhammer has a bad heat curve. The Archer is all but defenseless w/o its LRMs.
Successfully piloting one of those four will require said person to abandon their "I'm all powerful" mentality and instead learn tactics and discipline. Otherwise, she'll keep getting shot out of her mech.
The Stinger, for example, is a good skirmisher and a wise choice as a support unit for infantry. Likewise, a properly-employed Blackjack can snipe at and frustrate enemy forces while providing limited anti-aircraft support. Warhammers are lethal if you get a pilot who understands range brackets, and Archers make excellent field artillery pieces.
_________________
"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat." -Edgar Allen Poe"I knew there was something special about you, but I never realized you were really a cat." Wolfwood to a random cat (Trigun)
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Centurion13
Federated Suns
Private
Joined: 27-Mar-2008 03:44
Posts: 11
Location: United States
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| Posted: 13-Dec-2009 11:29 Post subject: Comeuppance to a power player? |
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Kraken, I think you might have missed my point.
You're approaching this from two different directions. They can't both be the true account of things, no matter how hard you squint. Your previous post is a perfect example - you are going to equip players with pregen characters and vehicles and let them learn the error of their ways through game play. Fine. If this sort of behavior had cropped up during the last six months, I could understand your response.
But you already know what that player is like - and furthermore, your other players do not share her failing. So you are setting this up for - and dragging your playing group into - a series of deliberate confrontations where you will 'win' because you've constructed the game setup so that you come out on top. And it's plain to me that the 'winning' is important to you.
What comes across to me is that it's not the game which is your highest priority, or the enjoyment of the other players, but rather, the foolproof foiling of that single player's ambition. You are engaging in a contest of wills - egos - that can have only one outcome regardless of who gets in the last word.
Look, try hard to say no to that temptation. I did the same thing twenty five years ago. It did not work. Sure, you say the errant player will pay with their character's life for 'stupid' play. That would mean something to a normal gamer who has invested a good part of his or her time in a character he or she cares about. They might pause before doing something ill-considered.
But the power gamer does NOT care about their character, only about matching wits with you, the GM. They will die and come back, die and come back and all that matters is that they have the last laugh on you - and believe me when I say that they are laughing their butts off even as their character commits suicide, because it's just another way to frustrate your attempt to rein them in.
It's you against that one player. You think no one else will notice? Of course, if this is why you game, and what motivates you as a GM, I think it's a fine course of action. You will certainly teach that woman a lesson.
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Kraken
Federated Suns
Marshal
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 2755
Location: United States
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| Posted: 13-Dec-2009 20:22 Post subject: Comeuppance to a power player? |
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A large part of my GM style is forcing the players out of their comfort zones - both themselves and their characters - in an effort to make them think and give them challenges.
For example, at one point I had a player who had his character charge right on into battle, no questions asked. To curb this, I set up a mission to where the party had to secure an abandoned refinery that the bad guys were converting into a mech repair yard. Said yard was guarded by a 3025 Cataphract and two platoons of infantry.
I set up the maps in such a fashion that there were a series of hills in front of the refinery site. As most of the party's mechs had long-range weapons of some sort, they could have easily sniped the Cataphract and the infantry to death.
Instead, said player opted to charge right for the Cataphract even though he was in a 3025 Enforcer at the time.
Unfortunately for him, the Cataphract wasn't the real threat; it was the infantry, who were all armed with SRM launchers. He - like the other players - had so gotten used to the notion of infantry being squishy that it had never occurred to him to ever regard them as a threat.
Fortunately, the party psychopath anticipated something like this, and so did indeed do what I had set up for: he used his LRMs to clear a path through the infantry, then moved up and backstabbed the Cataphract while it was busy mauling the Enforcer. Had he not figured it out in time, the entire party would have been swarmed to death.
Needless to say, the player in question held off on blindly rushing forward for a while and the entire party learned to respect infantry.
_________________
"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat." -Edgar Allen Poe"I knew there was something special about you, but I never realized you were really a cat." Wolfwood to a random cat (Trigun)
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chihawk
Clan Blood Spirit
Master Bartender
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 8081
Location: United States
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| Posted: 14-Dec-2009 07:35 Post subject: Comeuppance to a power player? |
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Like I've said before, the more I read about your GM style the more I'm glad there's no chance I'll be playing in a game you run.
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www.210sportsblog.com
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