As a Game master how do you screw up your PC's life?

[RazorChain]

Screwing up your PC's life isn't a bad thing, it just means you add complications. It doesn't mean that you use your unlimited resources to kill of characters but use your plotting and cleverness to create a narrative drama. You see I almost never kill characters but my players still call me a bastard GM. Yes I am a bastard because I always throw in a complication and screw them six ways till sunday. You might think that they should hate me for it but it is the opposite, their thrill does not come from fear of dying in combat but from whether their plans survive. Often I set them up 5 or 6 sessions ahead, dropping clues but most of the time it isn't until **** hits the fan that they manage to put the puzzle together.

Let's take an example. One player got knighted and got a piece of land in fief with a nice manor. In his background he had ties with a local criminal kingpin who his father had worked for as a right hand man before he died. The PC's wanted to get away from life of crime and spurned the kingpins daughter's hand in marriage.

Now he was happy, had his family good name restored and took a large loan with the Venetian Merchant Bank to build a horse ranch. Then off he goes adventuring with his pals. When he returns his manor has been burnt down and his stables as well with the horses in it. He hears that the bank wants a word with him. He meets with some bureaucrat that tells him that he is no longer a preferred customer and according to clause 7b in his loan contract they reserve their rights to sell his loan, which the bank already did.....to the criminal Kingpin he had broken ties with.

You may give up on crime but crime doesn't give up on you.

Now he's trying to prove that one of the Kingpins henchmen was behind the arson as he is hellbent on revenge.


So how do you complicate your player character lives?

[Final Hyena]

No one ever beats the Kingpin

Spoiler: Now it's time to pay the piper

Show

https://youtu.be/u1GJQ_iBEAo?t=55s

I like to con my PCs, one scam involves an enthusiast magic item seller desperate for the new item the party just got and will pay a silly price for it, except that when he comes to the meeting with his eagerness he's forgotten his tools and needs to borrow a pearl, the spell suddenly fails and he shouts at the party storming off declaring to curse their name for trying to cheat him (how long until they find out he switched out that 100 gp pearl?)

Another one is the Paladins slave, the party see some punk treating his slave like trash (within the law). The master walks out (toilet or some such) the paladin goes to offer his aid to the beautiful young maiden, they get talking and she's the sweetest old thing, but they're interrupted as the master comes back and teases the paladin. If the paladin tries to purchase her, oh the slave is for sale, at an extortionate price, and the worst part the next morning that slave has vanished.

[goto124]

What, the players don't mess their own character up well enough?

[Mr Beer]

Usual things, late night phone calls, rocks through their windows, ring bell / flaming dog poo pranks...oh player characters? No, I wouldn't do that, I'm a nice guy.

[Lacco]

Screw up? Never.

Make interesting? Yessssss...

My favourite was a mage from Shadowrun. The guy proposed a character - a student of magic at Tokio school for people with Talent, who had to run away for killing the principal - at that time he stated "he was doing something evil to his best friend, a girl". The school has been guarded by few Yak flunkies, so he had to go through them.

Fast forward few years from that. He went back and learned that he wasn't a student, but a test subject, along with several tens of other people. They have tested a special half-cyberware, half-bioware implant that sets the "IFF" in the head of people (=you can tell them "this is your enemy" and they will feel like that...and also "this is your master"), which shouldn't decrease their magical talent. Their memories were erased or modified on regular basis - and he escaped with help of free spirit. Yes, you guessed right - the "girl" was a spirit and the principal was trying to bind her after finding her true name.

He loved the story.

[TheCountAlucard]

The big empire that has its boot on the neck of the known world has sent a fleet of warships and a legion of soldiers after the PCs of my seafaring game, in accordance with their religion, which names the PCs as wicked demons.

[ImNotTrevor]

*looks at the Apocalypse World Ruleset*
*looks at MC moves*
*grins*

It can be that easy, depending on the system. But my favorite is giving them antagonists that they feel really conflicted about.

So for Shadowrun, something like this:
An orc comes to you and says that there is a club of the Humanis Group that hangs out in a bar. He wants you to go in there and straight-up murder then all.

Arrive at the bar and, well... it turns out these guys are a bunch of old men that haven't really done anything other than be crotchety and shout racial slurs. A good portion of them are veterans from some war or another.

So now what?

Sure, they're racist...bust they're also relatively harmless and are really only Humanis Group in name. And the Johnson is REALLY insistent that they die and has some decently valid reason. (Maybe they jumped him and his dad many years ago and put his dad in the hospital, and he just never forgave.)

Now, the above example won't work with every party (obviously) but you can tailor these things.

The two ways to make antagonists that can really put the pressure on your party are:
Noble intention, but abhorrent method
Abhorrent goal, noble method/outcomes.

For an easy example:
The Frozen King wants to bring peace to the long-warring 12 kingdoms. He does this by raising an army of ice demons and undead to trample his foes before him.
His goal is noble. The kingdoms have been in near-constsnt war for over 1000 years. Everyone just wants peace. But his method is abhorrent. (But he thinks the cost is worth it, obviously.)
Or
Ovak the Shining wants to conquer everyone and force them to worship him as a living God, and does so by force. But every country thus conquered is generally better off for it. Smaller nations have begun to renounce the other gods in favor of Ovak so they can get all the benefits of being in Ovak's kingdom without the war part.

If you have a cleric in your group, that last one may very well cause a loooot of strife.

Also, just put your crosshairs on everything. The PCs will destroy everything you love. It is their job. Just accept it. Besides, you have an unlimited number of NPCs you can use. Never make an NPC who you are afraid to lose. Ever.

[DigoDragon]

What, the players don't mess their own character up well enough?

Yeah, this ^

I for one tend to complicate my own characters well enough. The GM gets a freebie there. XD

[Lacco]

Yeah, this ^

I for one tend to complicate my own characters well enough. The GM gets a freebie there. XD

I have 2 players like this. Sometimes I don't even have to think of a plot - they start discussing (IC) what for an animal could it be that tore apart the museum guard - and come with very interesting ideas. I just then select one of those.

A third player usually stops these discussions with "stop giving the GM ideas how to kill us!!!"

[RazorChain]

*looks at the Apocalypse World Ruleset*
*looks at MC moves*
*grins*

It can be that easy, depending on the system. But my favorite is giving them antagonists that they feel really conflicted about.

So for Shadowrun, something like this:
An orc comes to you and says that there is a club of the Humanis Group that hangs out in a bar. He wants you to go in there and straight-up murder then all.

Arrive at the bar and, well... it turns out these guys are a bunch of old men that haven't really done anything other than be crotchety and shout racial slurs. A good portion of them are veterans from some war or another.

So now what?

Sure, they're racist...bust they're also relatively harmless and are really only Humanis Group in name. And the Johnson is REALLY insistent that they die and has some decently valid reason. (Maybe they jumped him and his dad many years ago and put his dad in the hospital, and he just never forgave.)

I like presenting them with moral dilemmas as well but now you have to complicate things. Now the PC's stick it to the Johnson and the Johnson isn't happy so he goes to the Humanis Group and informs them(via human contact) that the PC's are bunch of Elf lovers and out to get them. Now you have a bunch of old war veterans racist gunning for the PC's. This is how your Johnson screws them over and achieves his goals for free even :)

If they kill all the Humanis club member then you let one of them be some favorite NPC's grandfather....preferably a girlfriend/boyfriend or something (she/he was too embarrassed about her/his grandfather)

[

[RazorChain]

What, the players don't mess their own character up well enough?

And then you just give them a little extra push. In my current campaign one of the PC's has nightmares, something he decided on himself. So of course I had him dreaming always the same dream, of a demon with a hook blade hands, which looks like the girl from Ring except with empty eye sockets and instead of hands she has long hookblades. In the dream he is in a building and everything is filling up with blood when the hook bladed demon starts descending the stairs, scraping her blade against the wall chanting his name "Johannes......Johaaaaannnneeees....you will be mine".

Then we have the second PC, a merchant son, who wrote in his background he was framed for a murder and ended in jail. A son of a rival merchant family was found murdered on his doorstep....the corpse was bisected at the waist.

So 3rd session in when the merchant son is cornered in his bed, trying to fend off a nighttime assassin, wearing only his small clothes and wielding a dagger. Then out of the shadows appears the hook bladed demon behind the assassin, plunges both her blades into the assassin's back and rips him apart in two halves. The merchant son gets sprayed with blood and entrails before he sees the demon vanish into the darkness again.

Now both of the players are really freaked out.

[ImNotTrevor]

I like presenting them with moral dilemmas as well but now you have to complicate things. Now the PC's stick it to the Johnson and the Johnson isn't happy so he goes to the Humanis Group and informs them(via human contact) that the PC's are bunch of Elf lovers and out to get them. Now you have a bunch of old war veterans racist gunning for the PC's. This is how your Johnson screws them over and achieves his goals for free even :)

If they kill all the Humanis club member then you let one of them be some favorite NPC's grandfather....preferably a girlfriend/boyfriend or something (she/he was too embarrassed about her/his grandfather)

[

Which you certainly can do. I'm not exactly fleshing out this scenario. (It took more time to type it out than think it up)

But those are all valid complications, and should be catered to the group of runners you have. Really, everything you do to add complication should be tailored to the PCs.

[DigoDragon]

A third player usually stops these discussions with "stop giving the GM ideas how to kill us!!!"

Hee hee. I like to ask my players to provide background hooks on their characters when starting new campaigns so that we have some mutually agreed complication to use. One of the fun ones was a PC with a background that he had a half-brother who left his tribe and pretty much vanished. That missing sibling eventually showed up as a minor villain. And the the players complicated it by thinking he was a a major villain. and then I complicated things even further by having this sibling become the campaign's BBEG. :D

I like presenting them with moral dilemmas as well but now you have to complicate things. Now the PC's stick it to the Johnson and the Johnson isn't happy so he goes to the Humanis Group and informs them(via human contact) that the PC's are bunch of Elf lovers and out to get them. Now you have a bunch of old war veterans racist gunning for the PC's. This is how your Johnson screws them over and achieves his goals for free even :)

I remember one runner who had a side story of looking for his lost daughter. Eventually the team finds out that this young Johnson they've been working for was the lost daughter and they told him and things got complicated because now the father is working for the daughter as a runner and the daughter can come home to her father, but she's his boss and... well Shadowrun sitcom ensues. XD

[Kid Jake]

In my Mutants and Masterminds campaign one of the PCs was an abusive a-hole with substance abuse issues, whose personal side plot mostly revolved around trying to reconnect with his, now adult, children after gaining super powers and assuming that he could make them proud of him after all this time. Neither of them had seen him in more than fifteen years, his youngest son was a toddler when he walked out on them; but his oldest boy was old enough to resent/fear him so he took a bit of convincing.

Over the course of the campaign he slowly won them over, even going so far as to throw his oldest son a ridiculously lavish wedding to make up for not being there for them....with stolen Mafia money.

At the wedding itself he learned a valuable lesson as to why they always wear masks when they fight crime in the comic books, when the enraged Italians gunned down his in-laws, paralyzed his youngest son and set the church they were in on fire. He nearly drank himself to death over the incident and his oldest son severed all ties with him for good, not even showing up for his (unrelated) funeral.

[Pex]

Screwing up your PC's life isn't a bad thing, it just means you add complications.

Yes, it is a bad thing. It is not your job as a DM to make your players miserable. I disavow your entire premise.

[ImNotTrevor]

Yes, it is a bad thing. It is not your job as a DM to make your players miserable. I disavow your entire premise.

Not players. PCs. There is a difference.

If the PCs are never challenged, never faced with something that threatens them, their belongings, their loved ones, all of the above, then nothing happens at all. At that point you're playing "ideal life simulator."

No good story ever started with "and they lived happily ever after." They all have conflict. Things go wrong. This is asking for the methods to use when things need to go wrong, even at a personal level for each PC.

I have no problem with the GM causing my character grief, so long as it is sensical and not ridiculously punishing. (Ie, I'm sent to jail forever for smelling a rose) But challenging my character's core beliefs? HELL YEAH! (Ie, my assassin goes to kill a politician he considers evil and finds him at home holding his newborn daughter and weeping with joy.)
Of course, everyone you do this to needs to be signed on and ok with it.

[Pex]

There are always opponents to face and obstacles to overcome for any typical campaign. There's no need to murder my character's mother, rape his father, burn down his house, and the culprit is his pet dog who was a demon in disguise.

[ImNotTrevor]

There are always opponents to face and obstacles to overcome for any typical campaign. There's no need to murder my character's mother, rape his father, burn down his house, and the culprit is his pet dog who was a demon in disguise.

No one has suggested any of that. Or anything remotely close.

It is one thing to say that you don't like a thing. It is another to say that it is always a bad thing.

Apparently you dislike GMs targetting your character to create personal drama. I would find that boring. It makes me character unable to be made vulnerable in any real or meaningful way beyond "Will [insert antagonist] succeed in killing me?" I welcome GMs targetting my character's stuff. Of he wants to kill off a loved one or family member, I ask that he at leasts asks if it's ok first. (Some people have issues with that) otherwise? Go for it. Easy lives without enemies coming for your stuff and trying to take you out are boring lives.

No one has suggested anything rampantly stupid like wholesale murdering everyone in a person's backstory.

[goto124]

To be honest, I find that I'm either overly attached to a character and want nothing bad to happen to her, ever...

Or I don't care about the character at all and can't even bring up the energy to play it. It's not pleasant.

[RazorChain]

There are always opponents to face and obstacles to overcome for any typical campaign. There's no need to murder my character's mother, rape his father, burn down his house, and the culprit is his pet dog who was a demon in disguise.

Yes but lot of players...or even most players I have played with want their backstories or the NPC's they have created for their character backstories to matter and come into play.

I have had one player who tended to come with a characters who were from a faaaaaar awaaaay and had a vague background. Like this: I'm a knight and I come from a noble family far far away. End of story. But then again when he's a GM he had a crime syndicate cut off the fingers of one PC's because the group was in conflict with them. Like they walked into his inn, held him down while they cut off his fingers as a warning. When the group went after the crime boss who was behind it, a TPK ensued....or those of us who were unconscious ended as slaves in the mines. End of campaign. Or one PC became mutated because of chaos magic and had an arm growing from his stomach.....These are not fun complications

So this is based on trust. Trust that the GM is trying to complicate things for a narrative drama. Nobody likes to play with a power mad GM that destroys everything you have built up just for fun.

But for example if you are going to use a recurring bad guy who is a mastermind, then you will have to think like a mastermind and use underhanded tactics. In a post above I mention a criminal kingpin that had the estates of one PC burnt down and bought his debt, of course what followed was that the Kingpin offered the PC his only daughter in marriage and the keys to his criminal syndicate.....and boy was the PC tempted, but he refused because he had vowed to turn his back on crime. This set the PC and the Kingpin on an inevitable collision course.

In contrast you can have the PC's overcome obstacles, bigger bad guys and never use any personal drama. Some might prefer that. But my players know they are entering a personal drama and what I will do to make them hate the main antagonist. This is why I get stuck as the main GM for the group.

[goto124]

Also, it really helps for the GM and player to talk about what's acceptable to mess with in the backstory. "The big brother can turn out to be evil, but don't do that to the mentor. The mentor can die though."

[TheCountAlucard]

As a less-group-centric example from the seafaring game, one of the PCs has had to watch his father, the chief of his tribe, slowly grow increasingly mentally unstable as a result of (undiagnosed) long-term lead poisoning. The PC and his cousin worked together to declare the father incompetent to lead, so the cousin could take power and restore order.

The cousin then used his new authority to send the PC off on a quest believed to be impossible, so as to keep him away from the tribe. Things got a little more complicated when the father in his madness murdered a respected member of the tribe (thinking he could call down the thunderbird that supposedly is the mother of the PC in question); afraid to order his death, the cousin exiled him to the other side of the isle, and had him married off to the cousin's sister-in-law (with her instructed to play the part of the "thunderbird").

The PC has been kept abreast of these most recent events via dreams sent to him by a goddess; wait 'til he finds out he's about to have a baby brother!

[RazorChain]

Also, it really helps for the GM and player to talk about what's acceptable to mess with in the backstory. "The big brother can turn out to be evil, but don't do that to the mentor. The mentor can die though."

One group I have played with for over 20 years...so they know me
Now I have a new group that I'm Game mastering for and I explained that I wanted backstories and the backstories were a fair game for me to use. I'm not going to spoil how I'm going to use them, that's like reading the last page of a book.

[ReaderAt2046]

In my current game, the GM actually hasn't really screwed me over at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. See, my character's backstory is that he is the illegitimate grandson of the current Lord of House Mactire. While my character's mother (Lord Mactire's beloved daughter) was alive, my grandfather tolerated me for her sake, but when she died, he wasted no time in banishing the reminder of her disgrace from his sight.

Now that was the part I'd made up. What the GM contributed was my character running into an old acquaintance and learning that, while I'd been slumming, my uncle had died, leaving my grandfather without a direct heir. The possible candidates for the succession were a third cousin (or thereabouts) who was a complete buffoon and belonged to a different noble house, a fifth cousin (or so) who was just a baby, and me. So all of a sudden I had a pretty decent shot at the House Mactire Lordship. Better yet, in the most recent session I was granted lordly regalia by a powerful spirit, which grants me just the opening I need to take my shot.

[JoeJ]

One of the things I really like about Mutants & Masterminds is that it requires every PC to have at least two complications of the player's own choosing. And anytime the GM uses one of those complications to make things difficult, the PC gets a Hero Point they can spend to do something awesome. So, for example, if the player decides that one of their complications is that they have a dependent child, then both the player and the GM expect that the child will need rescuing from time to time. Or if one of their complications is that they're the subject of prejudice, then they'll sometimes have trouble getting cooperation from NPCs.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I cripple them instead of killing them. I run a Pokemon game that basically uses a heavily house-ruled version of the handheld games' ruleset—and every now and then, if someone's critter takes a good deal more damage than they have HP, I deal stat damage and (as appropriate) disable some of that critter's attacks until it recovers. It heals slowly, and while the Center can speed the process up the Nurse won't release the Pokemon back to the trainer until it has healed completely. Which means they can't switch them out and their team size is at a permanent -1 until that Pokemon recovers.

One of my players tried to switch out a Pokemon that was in that condition and got told off. Ooo, was she mad. XD

[ZxxZ]

"That information is not available at your security Clearance, Citizen"

[Faily]

I find that it varies from player to player. Some players are just suckers for punishment, others don't care much one way or another. Some players have a "vision" for their character and a firm idea of where they want their character to end up at the end of the day, rather than letting the game run its natural course and shape the character from that.

Personally (depending on starting level of course for D&D) I prefer to start with a simple background, and rather embellish it as I go along, or simply let background be background and focus more on the now and what the future will bring. Like my long-running Pathfinder Paladin, I gave her a relatively simple background... and no way in hell had I guessed that she would be ending up as a ruler focused on rebuilding a land that will, according to her plans, become mmore tolerant of monster-races. Her cohort is an Ogre, which was a joke at first, but Grund the Ogre Paladin has become a beloved character and her truest friend.

What, the players don't mess their own character up well enough?

+1 this.

[icefractal]

I find that it varies from player to player.

Very much so. That's why I'd say that while PC-centric tragedy can be a positive thing that everyone enjoys, it's no good doing it without talking to the player first and seeing if you're on the same wavelength - otherwise, it can be completely counter-productive.

Like for example, this:

In my Mutants and Masterminds campaign one of the PCs was an abusive a-hole with substance abuse issues, whose personal side plot mostly revolved around trying to reconnect with his, now adult, children after gaining super powers and assuming that he could make them proud of him after all this time.
...
He nearly drank himself to death over the incident and his oldest son severed all ties with him for good, not even showing up for his (unrelated) funeral.

I assume the player in question liked it, but personally speaking that doesn't sound like anything I'd want to play through.

[Arcane_Snowman]

Yeah, I'm very much on board with the "players complicate their lives themselves" sentiment though that may also have a lot to do with the fact that I've run quite a bit of Ars Magica, which gives the players points for coming up with a hook to complicate their lives. I generally don't go with a players background unless they themselves flesh it out a bit, otherwise I'm a big proponent of having their actions have long ranging ramifications, if possible.