DMing a campaign with PC's who want everything

[trikkydik]

Just probing for tips and tricks to keep PC's in check, but not destroy their spirits.

And bending the rules enough to maintain fun game play yet still have a system with playable mechanics. (Because my PC's are experienced, aggressive players.)

Personal accounts would be most appreciated.

Thanks.

[Vitruviansquid]

Uhhhhhh

Communicate the tone of the campaign before you run it. If the players should expect to stay weak throughout the whole campaign, tell them so.

[Final Hyena]

From your explanation of the concerns it's hard to be sure the exact issue but it sounds like they are very gung-ho.

This could be they just want to kill stuff, there are plenty of people who want an endless dungeon crawl. If this is the case you either have to adapt your style or find a more fitting group.

Another reason is it's all they know. Many games are heavily based on combat and the dungeon crawl, many players don't know how to do anything else and see it more like a video game, they can only do what the mechanics "allow" them to. You can talk to them, tell them they can try other approaches instead of charge! Generally people respond better to in game consequences, if the next charge victims are people who would be on their side who had important information/connections and killing them is a huge loss for the players they might try new approaches.

The flip side to this is that you as a GM need to be very open to the unexpected, to be able to roll with the punches, otherwise why should the players try anything else? Which is likely the issue, so far the PCs have likely managed to get by as they are, it's all about actions and consequences.

You could go so far that their actions make them criminals, now seeing as how they killed everyone no one knows who did it, but they are wanted for their actions. That sort of revelation tends to affect people.

[trikkydik]

Uhhhhhh

Communicate the tone of the campaign before you run it. If the players should expect to stay weak throughout the whole campaign, tell them so.

telling them to stay weak would destroy their spirits...

[trikkydik]

i am really just looking for any tips and tricks, the campaign is awesome and the PC's are happy. Not looking for a problem diagnosis, just tricks of the trade.

[Quertus]

Shock collars. When they get out of hand, give them a little jolt.

Positive reinforcement. When they do something cool and creative, and within whatever bounds you have set as "not out of hand", briefly comment on it. Just a simple, that's cool, or, that's creative.

At a later date, bring it up: remember the time...

Encourage the behaviors you want by bringing positive focus to the behaviors you want.

[Takewo]

Sorry, but I don't get what you're asking for. What do you mean that the PCs want everything? Do they want to be both great wizards and great warriors? Do they want to be able to do everything? Do they want insane bonuses to their key abilities? Do they want an awful lot of magic items? Do they want to tweak classes as much as possible? Do they want to be famous? Do they want a castle? All of the above? What exactly is this 'everything' that you're talking about?

[mikeejimbo]

Here is one trick: As long as you're fair and the players are all having fun, you can give them anything. What does it harm to let them do whatever they want? I don't hold my settings sacred enough to consider them even ruinable, and the plot is whatever the players make it.

I wish my players actually had goals and desires...

[SirBellias]

Here is one trick: As long as you're fair and the players are all having fun, you can give them anything. What does it harm to let them do whatever they want? I don't hold my settings sacred enough to consider them even ruinable, and the plot is whatever the players make it.

I wish my players actually had goals and desires...

This. Including the last sentence, for me at least. If they want something outside of the mechanics for the game, if it is not too unreasonable or if it would propel them forward in an interesting way, I'd usually let them have it. Heck, in Monster of the Week, there isn't any currency system, and it basically says that anything normal that they want, they can probably have. Possibly including vehicles. I apply that idea to most games, unless there is a pre-written mechanic for it in the rules.

[Mr.Moron]

The statements are a bit vague but I'm guesing they just want to chuck-norris meme their way through universe that quivers before their mightiness and girth? If that's the kind of game the whole rest of the game is looking for best to just get on board and enjoy the OTT ride. If that's not your thing just drop out and let someone else run the game.

[trikkydik]

Sorry, but I don't get what you're asking for. What do you mean that the PCs want everything? Do they want to be both great wizards and great warriors? Do they want to be able to do everything? Do they want insane bonuses to their key abilities? Do they want an awful lot of magic items? Do they want to tweak classes as much as possible? Do they want to be famous? Do they want a castle? All of the above? What exactly is this 'everything' that you're talking about?

LOL DING DING DING.

That's exactly what they want, all of them.

[trikkydik]

Shock collars. When they get out of hand, give them a little jolt.

Positive reinforcement. When they do something cool and creative, and within whatever bounds you have set as "not out of hand", briefly comment on it. Just a simple, that's cool, or, that's creative.

At a later date, bring it up: remember the time...

Encourage the behaviors you want by bringing positive focus to the behaviors you want.

You're awesome, thank you

[trikkydik]

Here is one trick: As long as you're fair and the players are all having fun, you can give them anything. What does it harm to let them do whatever they want? I don't hold my settings sacred enough to consider them even ruinable, and the plot is whatever the players make it.

I wish my players actually had goals and desires...

Also awesome, thanks

[Pugwampy]

The coolest DMs out there are the ones who always say yes . This is an unlimited game limited only by narrow minded DM,s or even DMs who are afraid of players . <quite sad really>

So what if they want a castle , give em a castle dungeon which they claim afterwards.

They want to be "wargods" ? Cool just toss stronger beasties at em . Sometimes its annoying to have to wait till they are the right level for that strong monster you dying to try out .

Player wants a nice uber magic item he saw in a DND book . Fine no problem give him options like .... Sell his soul to a demon for that ?

This is a Cooperative game . Helping players with what they want , or if too insane try to negotiate is Dungeon Master cooperating with them and because of that they will in turn cooperate with Dungeon Master .

. My players own a basement full of bunnies that feed on a fungus that becomes deadly when it gestates once in a blue moon taken from a dungeon hub and make more bunnies every session . They have chickens for eggs just so they can feed themselves for free even though the food costs are nothing . Ranger has a Giant snake companion twice the ranger level . Ranger has a baby ankylosaur . There are half a dozen statues of victims of cockatrice petrification in the house . There is a magic mirror that leads to fairyland at the front entrance . One player is actually two separate character sheets because he wants to be schitzo One player is twice the level of the other players because of a level adjustment race . Ranger owns a barbie pink balistae . Priest wears a necklace with a human monk frozen in amber and micro sized.
Players have an aged orc butler taken as a slave because he surrendered .......

....... All this Because i said yes . I have no regrets .

[trikkydik]

The coolest DMs out there are the ones who always say yes . This is an unlimited game limited only by narrow minded DM,s or even DMs who are afraid of players . <quite sad really>

So what if they want a castle , give em a castle dungeon which they claim afterwards.

They want to be "wargods" ? Cool just toss stronger beasties at em . Sometimes its annoying to have to wait till they are the right level for that strong monster you dying to try out .

Player wants a nice uber magic item he saw in a DND book . Fine no problem give him options like .... Sell his soul to a demon for that ?

This is a Cooperative game . Helping players with what they want , or if too insane try to negotiate is Dungeon Master cooperating with them and because of that they will in turn cooperate with Dungeon Master .

. My players own a basement full of bunnies that feed on a fungus that becomes deadly when it gestates once in a blue moon taken from a dungeon hub and make more bunnies every session . They have chickens for eggs just so they can feed themselves for free even though the food costs are nothing . Ranger has a Giant snake companion twice the ranger level . Ranger has a baby ankylosaur . There are half a dozen statues of victims of cockatrice petrification in the house . There is a magic mirror that leads to fairyland at the front entrance . One player is actually two separate character sheets because he wants to be schitzo One player is twice the level of the other players because of a level adjustment race . Ranger owns a barbie pink balistae . Priest wears a necklace with a human monk frozen in amber and micro sized.
Players have an aged orc butler taken as a slave because he surrendered .......

....... All this Because i said yes . I have no regrets .


Dude i love you, please tell me how your characters came to acquire all this, and how you managed to keep it all together.

Start at the beginning please.. :)

(Seriously, not trolling.)

[Pugwampy]

ummmm kay ?

Lets see . They got the house as a prize for winning capture the flag in an arena session . I made them split into two teams and beat each other up . Of course players were uneven so I added in an NPC orc fighter . The side with the orc fighter won so they bought him out 500 gp .

The "magic mirror" and deadly green fungus originate from DND basic game 2004 . Both are way too nasty auto kill booby traps for player 1 newbs in my opinion . Green fungus has a blue section that shoots spores at the unlucky explorer who gets too close . they fail a high DC fort save they automatically die later . The magic mirror has a spirit of a beautiful girl called Alyssa that befriends them and gives some intel about the dungeon . Also looking for her friend Venzor the alchemist . Later on mod says if she likes them enough she invites one into the mirror and if PC says yes walks into it is never seen again . I changed Alyssa into a fairy queen <very non DND fairy> . at first the team leader asked for a small version of this big mirror and said yes so she got a "smart phone " mirror Alyssa liked it cause she could explore more . Later they wanted more and hauled the portal to fairyland back to their house .

Players wanted to farm rabbits as food and we spent the better part of the afternoon chasing bunnies in the woods . The half orc rogue player sneaked like a demon catching most of them . I roll 1d20 for baby bunnies , some of which are fed to wolf and snake companion and players breakfast . < I make peeping baby bunny noises then > Too dang cheap to feed the bunny buns so they transplanted some fungus into their basement . of course when fungus wants to seed and makes a blue one i roll percentage for dead bunnies .

They took a job clearing out a failed cockatrice experiment at the under city breeding zone owned by an arena champion npc . The NPC offered to sell em very nice detailed statues of luckless folk who failed to kill the 3 or 4 chicken monsters . They bought it . Afterwards all this talk of chicken beasties they wanted to buy their own pair of chickens . 1d4 eggs per session

I added a druid orc and giant constricter to a boring 2 orc fight in the basic game dungeon . The team leader is a gnome ranger and well i got excited and offered a slightly stronger burrowing animal companion because gnomes have a special bond with those . Orc Druid was talking to our druid in secret druid language and players noticed a mother of all snakes hiding in the roof . Gnome cast speak with animals made a deal with snakey . Fed poor badger companion to snake in exchange for snakes loyalty . I thought it was a great idea . Most of the players are first timers and there is almost no real tank except gnome . Snake is brown and called Satan. Gnome became obsessed with collecting animals she is real pokemon trainer .

The Ankylosaur hatched from an egg that gnome found in area outside of fairy town . They camped and woke up to find greedy Satan swallowing dino eggs . Of course mom and pop saurus happening to come back at the same moment and mashed the snake to death . Gnome asked if there was more eggs and I rolled and said yes she grabbed one . Snake corpse was dragged back to fairy town and the unicorn raised it . magic mirror led to Fairy town of Thelenea which is protected by magic mists beyond those mists are Chult < Fearun,s Lost world setting > . What players dont know is the mists not only act as barrier but resizes players . Fairies are <non dnd approved size specialists > Gnome being besties with Queenie gets all the free sizing equipment she asks for .

Fairy town was potentially a second hub village to my underground half orc city hub but players never really cared too much except trying to steal my fairy eggs and unicorn . It was my slice of heaven .

The pink balista came from a goblin battlecruiser as did the monk premade character for a new player . I give newbies premade heroes and if they bite we spend time making them whatever they want next session . Basically players were microsized from drinking strawberry flavoured puddle of water in the basic game dungeon. <Add on dungeon room> All suddenly appeared into a great lake . took them a long time to realize they shrunk. Players were sized to say 1 - 3 milimetres> I helped em gobble the water faster by saying it gave armour boosts vs colososs > :smallsmile: . Actually schitzo priest player was suspicious especially when his buddies disappeared . We all smiled and twiddled thumbs till he sighed and joined us . heh heh heh

They rescued the new player from walking the plank on a goblin battlecruiser <gobs and monk assume found the water first and shrunk before it happened to players a month or two before ? > Naked elf girl monk kicked butt , players kicked butt. the gob battlecruiser had twin balistae,s < One balistae went KABOOM when DM rolled a 1 what a pain man > All went to a forest of mushrooms and found the lost fairy outpost town of Remlia <non DND approved elves with butterfly wings.> players woke in the morning gnome wanted a balistae and found a bunch of my hippy non violent fairys and painting and decorating the half floating wreck with flowers and pink . Gnome took it anyways. Cool ?

By now players know they are shrimps and ask fairies for help . Fairies say only their queen <Alyssa> can resize them but she lives in a far far away kingdom and and they need a portal not used in a while .At this point i was subtly herding players to into leaving Orc Town and living in Fairytopia <surrounded by dinosaurs> Fairyland is in Faerun but players live on Golarion .


They found the portal and newborn baby scorpions huge Giants to them of course > Session ended with baby scorpion massacre <meanies> but monk was paralyzed with Scorp poison> Player was hooked and rejected monk stats to make a paladin hero <poo>. Fey of Remlia had no cure but offered to encase monk in amber to protect her . Players go to Alyssa get sized back . Lots of resizing of amber monk and crafted into a necklace <ewwies ? > Pink Balistae is sized into pocket size and made into a shelf ornament until a siege session which Gnome finally makes it balistae size .

This is how Mr jekyl/ hyde was born . The player was an uber Heal bot but wanted kill things too later . Its less fun playing such a support class
The player,s girlfriend joins . Player feeling creative wanted to tactically build characters . At first He wanted to make himself an uber buttkicker . I helped with all the book info on Halforc and Goliath barbarians.
He goes to bastards and bloodlines and picks a Fire Jovian Level 7 adjustment . New player and did not know of level adjustment rule and add 5 more levels of Barb. He gives girlfriend that monster to play with and well chooses a dark version of his priest <shcitzo> in this case a dark priest / sorcerer multiclass . So new player is introduced as Jovian running amuck in the fairy castle basement . The priest also changes blonde hair colour to black when his personality swops . I did the old he got waaay too dusted with fairy dust and that magically changed him.
Evil version priest was introduced by being mauled by a Dimetrodon outside the mists. He basically rolls 50/50 to see if he changes once every 1D4 encounters .

I had a two session siege of the fortified tavern . My moletown orc city has an upper city slum district made up of shanty towns and the S***e and Bite tavern .
This Orc chief Rat Bug of Tribe SnotEater fell in love with my favorite fattest ugliest Half orc female NPC tavern owner called Gar Mum or Orc mama . He called on his tribe of 25 something boyz and laid siege . Took two sessions <well 1.5 That danged Fire Jovian joined second session > I did two funny things i never did before in a siege . I took a druid player hostage and also well I felt like surrendering instead of fight to the death which i usually do . <no point jovian will fart me to death in a second so it seemed reasonable > Players decided on rolling dice for either execute , set free or enslave . Rolled enslave . Orc chiefy is their butler . Gnome squad leader was thrilled to have a new pokemon pet>

I think thats enough summary origins . I am gonna miss adventures in fairytopia . My players are now evil servants of Lolth . They exchanged Queen Alyssa for a Drow Priestess called Arda . I am bit sad I invested alot of emotions into fairyland . I offered them heaven but they chose heck . The magic mirror is silent . Players dont know that the fairies have taken care of thier animals and butler . Changed the petrified victims back . their house is empty everything is moved into Thelenea . Beloved Otto the half orc rogue was discarded in favour for a catfolk ranger . He is in fairyland too . <makes me feel better>
Arda,s second in command a mean Drider has taken the monk pendant for herself .

My players have fallen into darkness but the campaign goes on ...... I am DUNGEON MASTER .

[trikkydik]

That was a good read, thank you