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Old 12-02-2017, 06:41 PM   #11
tshiggins
 
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Default Re: What will you not allow?

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Originally Posted by Maz View Post
I have increasingly started to make players redo their characters because "they do not fit the game we are playing right now". Most often this boils down to them not really being able to answer a simple question such as "but then why wouldnt your character not just do that? Why are they here now, participating in this?"

Latest example: One player wanted to be a socially and physically inept techie who just wanted to fix up old computers and tinker with robots. Well thats a good concept, except we are playing a game where the PCs are all highly trained special agents expected to do on the spot investigation and take direct action.

I used to try to "go with it" but it always ends up being a bad experience for evryone.


This is also because Im sick and tired of the `reluctant hero` where the player wants ME to be the one to constantly force them into the hero role without it fitting into the game-story already there.
Yeah, as a Gaming Dinosaur, 2nd Class, I can say this has been a chronic problem in gaming since things began to diversify. We used to call it the "software interface problem" -- it's what happens when the game the GM came up with isn't the one the players think they're playing. Mark Skarr has a player for whom this is a constant problem.

Ideally, you fight that with a beer-and-pretzels meeting before character creation even begins. The GM should describe what he has in mind, and the players should bounce some character ideas around.

That usually helps get everybody thinking on the same track, before anyone has put in a lot of time and energy into the creation of a character, only to have the GM shoot it down.
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Old 12-02-2017, 06:54 PM   #12
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Default Re: What will you not allow?

I think depression and manic-depressive are somewhat debilitating to the average hero-type. I might be convinced otherwise with a good pitch.

Any over-wrought aura affliction that does damage in a large area munchkin crap is right out.
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Old 12-02-2017, 08:01 PM   #13
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Default Re: What will you not allow?

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This is also because Im sick and tired of the `reluctant hero` where the player wants ME to be the one to constantly force them into the hero role without it fitting into the game-story already there.
Yeah, I've had to deal with a player whose character concept was "I am exactly where the plot needs me to be"; as a relative seat-of-the-pants GM who tends to throw stuff together without plotting out every little detail ... there was no way I could GM this character, as it was basically "the GM has to tell me when and where to go". I ended up flat-out saying "I can't play your character for you."

So that's another thing I won't allow. I won't allow any character that requires the GM to tell the player what he has to do.
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Old 12-02-2017, 08:08 PM   #14
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Default Re: What will you not allow?

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
A technique I recommend for Unluckiness as well - there's no *practical* difference between "you miss" and "your foot slipped just as you made your lunge and you barely managed to recover your balance", but the one goes a long way toward making the player *feel* Unlucky.
I feel the rulebook description of Unluckiness kind of messes up by giving missing a die roll as an example of bad stuff that could happen. It's about the most boring possible way to implement "things go wrong for the character" - there are plenty of much more interesting ways to make Unluckiness come into play.
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Old 12-02-2017, 08:15 PM   #15
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Default Re: What will you not allow?

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Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post

[...] when the game the GM came up with isn't the one the players think they're playing.
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Originally Posted by Phantasm View Post

I won't allow any character that requires the GM to tell the player what he has to do.
These two, mainly: The character that tells me the player didn't bother to read the campaign notes or listen to my spiel, and the character that can't do anything unless I make it happen. I pretty much insist that players (1) pay attention, and (2) take the initiative. As GM, I already have enough to do.

I had one player whose every character was a Sam Spade type, even in campaigns with zero mystery and the opposite of a noir sensibility. And I had another who would just kind of sit around being mumbly unless I (figuratively or literally) had ninjas attack his character. I found their characters just about impossible to integrate into my campaigns.
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Old 12-02-2017, 08:19 PM   #16
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Default Re: What will you not allow?

As a rule, I don’t allow players to play not-their-sex. For some reason, that just takes me out it.
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Old 12-02-2017, 08:25 PM   #17
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Default Re: What will you not allow?

Like some others...I don't have a rule like "No evil characters ever." Instead, I have rules for one particular campaign. My main rule is: make a character that fits the campaign frame.

If we are doing a grim darkevil campaign? You can't make a Lawful-Good Paladin.

If we are doing a team based campaign where everyone is a doctor in an ER in Chicago...you can't play a wandering murder-hobo.

If it is a campaign where I'm going for a psychological realism feel...you can't play an 2D flat archetype sort. Conversely , if we are going for a 2D archetype pulp feel...where people are white hats and there isn't much internal angst...then you can't play an angsty gray hat.

Basically, make a character that will work in the game and will work with the other players.
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Old 12-02-2017, 09:04 PM   #18
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Default Re: What will you not allow?

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Like some others...I don't have a rule like "No evil characters ever." Instead, I have rules for one particular campaign. My main rule is: make a character that fits the campaign frame.
That's how I do it too. I won't allow a character who doesn't fit the campaign I intend to run, or the specifications I derived for that campaign.

What I normally do is hand around a list of possible campaign, and ask players to rate them. Then I put players in a campaign that had a lot of high ratings, and that they were not unwilling to play in (at worst, I sometimes have players in campaigns they're kind of neutral about). So the players have had the option of refusal in advance. If they rated a campaign above 0, they were agreeing to play in it, and thus they were agreeing to my specifications. But those specifications can be different from campaign to campaign.

For example, in my last supers campaign, I specified that players could play any character that fit their conception of what being a superhero was about—but I wanted original concepts. One of the players privately sent me a link to a site that provided information on a character who was clearly the prototype for another player's character—I think a video game character or something like that; something I wasn't familiar with, anyway. And after reviewing it, I got in touch with the latter player privately and told him I needed him to come up with a different concept.

As the saying goes, "What part of 'No' didn't you understand."
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Old 12-02-2017, 09:13 PM   #19
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Default Re: What will you not allow?

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As a rule, I don’t allow players to play not-their-sex. For some reason, that just takes me out it.
When I first started running campaigns that players had chosen by filling out prospectuses, I held a character creation for my first RuneQuest campaign. One of the players asked me, "You allow people to play characters of the other sex?" in tones that suggested surprise and perhaps concern. And I looked at him blankly and said, "Allow?" I really had never thought of disallowing it.

I've never restricted this, and really it's never been a problem. Except with the one player I refer to, who went on to play in a lot of my campaigns, but who has been observed (a) to roleplay attraction to female characters played by female players he finds appealing and (b) not to roleplay attraction to similar characters played by male players. This has caused reactions ranging from amusement to irony to irritation, especially among my many women players.

In the last analysis, though, since I have NPCs of both sexes, and as GM I have to play all the NPCs, my players are having to see my play female roles, so I don't see why players who want to play cross-gender shouldn't be allowed to.
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Old 12-02-2017, 09:57 PM   #20
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Default Re: What will you not allow?

I work up a different set of guidelines and restrictions for each campaign, but there's one that always seems to find its way on there...

"the ability to work in a group"

Maybe it's the players I was with in high school, but several times, they made loner, antisocial types. If you can't work in a group, you're stealing everyone's fun. Unless it's a solo game, then... whatever, man.
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