Mastikator
2022-04-04, 05:32 AM
The first story is about how a certified bounty hunter lost her certificate because she confessed to 2nd degree murder to the sheriff. But first the a preamble- this setting is not some lawless wild west or post apocalyptic setting or medieval dark age. This is in the capital of the republic of Neke, it's a civilized, non-dystopian scifi setting, you can't just kill people.
So anyway here's the first story, starts when a criminal organization puts a price on one of the PCs head, let's call him S, the PCs know this explicitly, they've seen the bounty. Anyway 2 of them (let's call them M and H) decide to go on a side-mission and leave the PC with a bounty on him behind, in their rented apartment registered in their name. Their little side mission takes a few hours, while they do that the PC is attacked by a sniper through the window. He hides in the bathroom with his machine gun, he waits for over an hour. The other two comes back and find him in the bathroom.
Thinking the danger is over (or I don't know what he's thinking) he goes back to the shattered window to clean up the glass. Yeah guess what the sniper does? They pursue the sniper by running straight at her, she gets a few shots in and the PC is almost at zero (before I remind him that he's allowed to duck and weave, hide behind buildings ect to not be a super easy target). M gets a clear shot on the sniper- the sniper who is aiming at S, and she one-shots the sniper.
All 3 of them make it to the sniper's rooftop and find her there unconscious and bleeding out.
OK so here's the interesting part, I tell H that with his medical skill (he's a doctor) he can tell she has only a few minutes before she dies from loss of blood and that he could potentially save her (to interrogate her, turn her in, whatever?). Now I realize that none of that occurred to any of them because he thought it was weird I even said that, he did stop the bleeding, they stripped her of armor, weapons, clothes, she was basically in her undies.
...And then they just leave her? Ok but M has a solution, while the others have left the unconscious sniper she quietly breaks her neck. OK she's dead now.
OK so what has happened here, the sniper tries to assassinate S (very illegal). They shoot her down (legal), they save her (commendable) and then execute her (very illegal). The thing is that M is the certified bounty hunter, she has a license to neutralize dangerous criminals who has a bounty on them. She does NOT have any kind of license to just Judge Dredd people, even bad people, legally she was supposed to call it in, or bring her in.
Fast forward and the players have taken refuge with the sheriff. The session starts with me (DM) telling the players that the sheriff will want a recap from them to remind everyone what they've done so far, what they tell the DM can give them reward or not.
Well M admits to executing the sniper... to the sheriff.
The sheriff immediately suspends her bounty hunter license, the player seems upset but I (the dm) explain that what she told the sheriff is a crime. She could potentially get her license back but only if she stops digging herself deeper. I have hopes that she's not going to be a murderhobo in the future. Honestly if she had said nothing about the execution to the sheriff she wouldn't be in trouble. (and if she had brought the sniper in alive she would've received praise and reward)
Story number two
In the first session H bought an airplane that they were going to use for fast travel. OK, it was a crappy small cargoplane (only thing he could afford). I explicitly ask him if he wants insurance for his plane, in case it breaks, he says no, I remind him that if it breaks and he doesn't have insurance he gets nothing and may have to pay to have it removed. He insists on not having insurance (to save money no doubt).
Fast forward to the second last session, 2 of the players are inside the airplane and a firefight breaks out, both players fire through the windows at the enemies, the enemies fire back and they use the airplane as a shield.
Normally I wouldn't hurt the airplane as long as they're outside it, I think it's mean to destroy player resources. But they're inside it using it as a shield, I'm sorry but that puts the airplane on the menu.
We roll for damages on the airplane and it sinks into the harbor (it's a water plane, now Swiss-cheese-shaped water plane).
Last session H (previous owner of said airplane) said he could get insurance for it, at which point I remind him that I explicitly asked him if he wanted insurance and he explicitly said no.
Then he said that he owners of the harbor (also the shooters) could repay him for the airplane.
I'm really at a loss for how stupid that is. They're the bad guys, they will not just give him a new airplane. If anything they'll demand proof that it's his, then send him an invoice for littering their harbor with his junk. Even if he lawyer's them to pay for the airplane they will evaluate the airplane based on whatever is beneficial to them, he bought it cheap but upgraded it. They don't care if it's upgraded, they'll look at the receipt for when he bought it. There's just no way he can come out a winner here.
I have a third story, this one centers around S, this one is the most egregious on my part as being far to merciful. But this is the part that I don't like about DMing, when the players do something that obviously should result in negative outcomes I feel mean.
S, M, H and N (who was absent in the other two sessions) are in a small town that focuses on fuel production. The party is made aware that an attack is going to happen at the town from the natives (this is a human colony on an already inhabited planet). The natives want to destroy the towns fuel production to stop the pollution.
Again M and H are doing a side mission and S has a plan. S is currently at the director's house while the natives are gathering around various sensitive areas and the dozens of guards are getting swarmed by the hundreds of natives. But S has a plan. Alright, cool I think, I want to see what S has planned.
He runs down to the nearest sensitive place and wants to intimidate the crowd, I ask S what outcome he wants from this intimidation, after what feels like pulling nails he finally says his intention is scare them to prevent them from being close to him. OK he rolls well and he succeeds, he positions himself so that the natives can't sabotage the refinery because they can't reach it without getting close to him. Pretty clever. And as I told him there are 4 major refineries and several silos. Ok so he tries to herd them away. I explain to him they're not dumb animals, as soon as he leaves they just walk around and wait for him to leave so they can get back to their mission.
But then he reveals his other big plan! He pulls out his laser rifle!
In the previous session I've explained that laser rifles require special protection goggles because the light is so intense it will temporarily blind anyone near the laser. S heard this, ignored it, and now fired the laser up in the air. I tell him he's blinded- as are the natives.
But I'm being far to merciful to him, the natives have put themselves at a distance to him, some are out of blinding range even. They could've swarmed him and taken all of his stuff- his laser, his armor, everything while he was blinded. But it would've been so mean to the player. Instead I allowed the attempt to succeed by having them view this as a warning shot, they ran off.
(for reference, I had made a point system with many many options for how they could stop the attack, using diplomacy, violence, threats, subterfuge, bribes, only caveat is that at least two methods needed to be tried. He didn't even try talking to them, I had to bail him out by having the chief show up and talk to him and the director, the director was scripted to lie to the chief that the pollution would stop and instead will just hire way more security. I don't feel bad that they failed the mission.)
This was one of those "I've tried barking at them and it didn't work, now I'm out of ideas
So anyway here's the first story, starts when a criminal organization puts a price on one of the PCs head, let's call him S, the PCs know this explicitly, they've seen the bounty. Anyway 2 of them (let's call them M and H) decide to go on a side-mission and leave the PC with a bounty on him behind, in their rented apartment registered in their name. Their little side mission takes a few hours, while they do that the PC is attacked by a sniper through the window. He hides in the bathroom with his machine gun, he waits for over an hour. The other two comes back and find him in the bathroom.
Thinking the danger is over (or I don't know what he's thinking) he goes back to the shattered window to clean up the glass. Yeah guess what the sniper does? They pursue the sniper by running straight at her, she gets a few shots in and the PC is almost at zero (before I remind him that he's allowed to duck and weave, hide behind buildings ect to not be a super easy target). M gets a clear shot on the sniper- the sniper who is aiming at S, and she one-shots the sniper.
All 3 of them make it to the sniper's rooftop and find her there unconscious and bleeding out.
OK so here's the interesting part, I tell H that with his medical skill (he's a doctor) he can tell she has only a few minutes before she dies from loss of blood and that he could potentially save her (to interrogate her, turn her in, whatever?). Now I realize that none of that occurred to any of them because he thought it was weird I even said that, he did stop the bleeding, they stripped her of armor, weapons, clothes, she was basically in her undies.
...And then they just leave her? Ok but M has a solution, while the others have left the unconscious sniper she quietly breaks her neck. OK she's dead now.
OK so what has happened here, the sniper tries to assassinate S (very illegal). They shoot her down (legal), they save her (commendable) and then execute her (very illegal). The thing is that M is the certified bounty hunter, she has a license to neutralize dangerous criminals who has a bounty on them. She does NOT have any kind of license to just Judge Dredd people, even bad people, legally she was supposed to call it in, or bring her in.
Fast forward and the players have taken refuge with the sheriff. The session starts with me (DM) telling the players that the sheriff will want a recap from them to remind everyone what they've done so far, what they tell the DM can give them reward or not.
Well M admits to executing the sniper... to the sheriff.
The sheriff immediately suspends her bounty hunter license, the player seems upset but I (the dm) explain that what she told the sheriff is a crime. She could potentially get her license back but only if she stops digging herself deeper. I have hopes that she's not going to be a murderhobo in the future. Honestly if she had said nothing about the execution to the sheriff she wouldn't be in trouble. (and if she had brought the sniper in alive she would've received praise and reward)
Story number two
In the first session H bought an airplane that they were going to use for fast travel. OK, it was a crappy small cargoplane (only thing he could afford). I explicitly ask him if he wants insurance for his plane, in case it breaks, he says no, I remind him that if it breaks and he doesn't have insurance he gets nothing and may have to pay to have it removed. He insists on not having insurance (to save money no doubt).
Fast forward to the second last session, 2 of the players are inside the airplane and a firefight breaks out, both players fire through the windows at the enemies, the enemies fire back and they use the airplane as a shield.
Normally I wouldn't hurt the airplane as long as they're outside it, I think it's mean to destroy player resources. But they're inside it using it as a shield, I'm sorry but that puts the airplane on the menu.
We roll for damages on the airplane and it sinks into the harbor (it's a water plane, now Swiss-cheese-shaped water plane).
Last session H (previous owner of said airplane) said he could get insurance for it, at which point I remind him that I explicitly asked him if he wanted insurance and he explicitly said no.
Then he said that he owners of the harbor (also the shooters) could repay him for the airplane.
I'm really at a loss for how stupid that is. They're the bad guys, they will not just give him a new airplane. If anything they'll demand proof that it's his, then send him an invoice for littering their harbor with his junk. Even if he lawyer's them to pay for the airplane they will evaluate the airplane based on whatever is beneficial to them, he bought it cheap but upgraded it. They don't care if it's upgraded, they'll look at the receipt for when he bought it. There's just no way he can come out a winner here.
I have a third story, this one centers around S, this one is the most egregious on my part as being far to merciful. But this is the part that I don't like about DMing, when the players do something that obviously should result in negative outcomes I feel mean.
S, M, H and N (who was absent in the other two sessions) are in a small town that focuses on fuel production. The party is made aware that an attack is going to happen at the town from the natives (this is a human colony on an already inhabited planet). The natives want to destroy the towns fuel production to stop the pollution.
Again M and H are doing a side mission and S has a plan. S is currently at the director's house while the natives are gathering around various sensitive areas and the dozens of guards are getting swarmed by the hundreds of natives. But S has a plan. Alright, cool I think, I want to see what S has planned.
He runs down to the nearest sensitive place and wants to intimidate the crowd, I ask S what outcome he wants from this intimidation, after what feels like pulling nails he finally says his intention is scare them to prevent them from being close to him. OK he rolls well and he succeeds, he positions himself so that the natives can't sabotage the refinery because they can't reach it without getting close to him. Pretty clever. And as I told him there are 4 major refineries and several silos. Ok so he tries to herd them away. I explain to him they're not dumb animals, as soon as he leaves they just walk around and wait for him to leave so they can get back to their mission.
But then he reveals his other big plan! He pulls out his laser rifle!
In the previous session I've explained that laser rifles require special protection goggles because the light is so intense it will temporarily blind anyone near the laser. S heard this, ignored it, and now fired the laser up in the air. I tell him he's blinded- as are the natives.
But I'm being far to merciful to him, the natives have put themselves at a distance to him, some are out of blinding range even. They could've swarmed him and taken all of his stuff- his laser, his armor, everything while he was blinded. But it would've been so mean to the player. Instead I allowed the attempt to succeed by having them view this as a warning shot, they ran off.
(for reference, I had made a point system with many many options for how they could stop the attack, using diplomacy, violence, threats, subterfuge, bribes, only caveat is that at least two methods needed to be tried. He didn't even try talking to them, I had to bail him out by having the chief show up and talk to him and the director, the director was scripted to lie to the chief that the pollution would stop and instead will just hire way more security. I don't feel bad that they failed the mission.)
This was one of those "I've tried barking at them and it didn't work, now I'm out of ideas