Things I May No Longer Do While Playing XII: A Thousand-Yard Stare is not Permission

[Man on Fire]

I meant the second but might as well ask for all three.

I've run them Against the Cult of the Reptile God on 5e mechanics, so the cultist was up to some shady shift but was mind-controlled, the wight was an undead servant of the mad priest and BBEG not only was brainwashing people to join a cult but also mind-controlled that Paladin and once she broke free almost killed her with a poisonous bite. BBEG totally deserved it.

[Lord Raziere]

* May not climb Qaf the Heaven-Violating Spear to find out whether Pokemon Trainer Red is on top
** may not try to make MOTI's version of Vs. Trainer Red music go with every fight of an inexperienced hero against an experienced older fighter.

[Rater202]

*The Penance Stare is a powerful ability passed by a certain category of demons and angels intended that forces someone to personally experience every last bit of pain, physical, emotional, or spiritual, from the pettiest hurt feeling to the deepest scarring, truamatic wounds, as well as the guilt a rational person would feel for inflicted such harm, that they've ever through malice or carelessness inflicted on a person and then permenatly burns the memory of that pain into their mind and soul that they will flash back to it if they ever think of repeating those sins. It's purpose is to force people to feel remorse or, failing that, make it difficult to keep inflicting harm. The only ways to avoid it are to be literally physically incapable of guilt or empathy, to genuinely enjoy even excruciating pain, or to not have a soul.

It is not for making entitled middle-aged women shut the hell up about their expired coupons at the check out line in the grocery store.

[dspeyer]

* Not allowed to punch a guy so hard he crashed through the wall, the wall on the other side of the room and the window all across the hallway.

** Nor may I uppercut someone into orbit
*** Escape velocity is not better
**** Even in a low-gravity environment
***** Doing this does not make me King Of The Orcs

(From an actual game)

[danielxcutter]

*The Penance Stare is a powerful ability passed by a certain category of demons and angels intended that forces someone to personally experience every last bit of pain, physical, emotional, or spiritual, from the pettiest hurt feeling to the deepest scarring, truamatic wounds, as well as the guilt a rational person would feel for inflicted such harm, that they've ever through malice or carelessness inflicted on a person and then permenatly burns the memory of that pain into their mind and soul that they will flash back to it if they ever think of repeating those sins. It's purpose is to force people to feel remorse or, failing that, make it difficult to keep inflicting harm. The only ways to avoid it are to be literally physically incapable of guilt or empathy, to genuinely enjoy even excruciating pain, or to not have a soul.

It is not for making entitled middle-aged women shut the hell up about their expired coupons at the check out line in the grocery store.

I dunno, some of those really might deserve it.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Rater202
It is not for making entitled middle-aged women shut the hell up about their expired coupons at the check out line in the grocery store.

I wish the ones in my area would stick to coupons.

Originally Posted by Rater202
The only ways to avoid it are to be literally physically incapable of guilt or empathy...or to not have a soul.

Sadly, this describes the majority of them.

[Lord Haart]

From a certain memorable campaign (shout-out to Tein the really great DM, and to the great folk i've played with):

*When presented with a magical painting that apparently materialises whatever's drawn on it, and has a chest drawn on it without a lock, i may NOT choose SCIENCE over potential wealth and paint a Necker's cube instead.
**When said cube dissipates moments after materialisation (dealing psychic damage to everyone who catches a glimpse of it and tries to rationalise the sight) due to being incompatible with 3-D space, i may NOT use Mending to "fix its incompatibility".

*When presented with a magic dust of Mending, i may not erroneously assume it's ground-up gold and cast Mending onto it.

*Mending cannot fix a broken heart.
**A broken monocrystal processor-heart is OK, but I need to manually hold it together during the whole casting, electric currents or no electric currents.
***May not mend and shatter said processor-heart repeatedly until the magi-technological consciousness within submits to my will.

*I may damage spirits with Force effects.
**I may not react to a spirit visiting me in a dream by Commanding myself to keep sleeping and stabbing the spirit with a Spiritual Weapon.
***I may not go to sleep with a Readied action to "stick a Spiritual Weapon up its ass".

*When detained by a law enforcement squad for casting offensive spells, may not proclaim: "Offensive? These were mere cantrips, officer. You see that tree? Let me show you what OFFENSIVE spells i can do!"

*May not craft the Infinity Gauntlet for the party monk "so he'll suck a bit less".

*Even if recent events brought me quite a bit of shame, "I must capture the avatar and restore my honor" is not a sufficient reason to challenge an avatar of evil dragon deity to a solo combat.
**May not drive everyone to tears by lasting for a dozen rounds in a fight against said avatar, taunting it the whole time about how if it can't even beat me it will never beat the party, defiantly spitting at its face even as it tears me apart limb by limb, sticking a Spiritual Weapon up its ass, and dying after wounding the avatar severely enough that the party, arriving mere rounds after, gets to actually exile it from the world.
***Because it's not fair making people grieve over my character IRL in spite of blatant suicide-by-boss while the monk just kinda gets hit and fails at death saving throws unnoticed by all.

[Rater202]

I may not use a discarded medical cadaver as an improvised weapon during a routine training exercise.

[Bohandas]

*May not claim to be a “hacker” if my character can’t code, can’t crack passwords, and can’t hotwire anything.
**Really good deception and intimidation skills, some miniature surveillance bugs that can be surreptitiously attached to a computer to record everything someone does on it, a set of boltcutters, a crowbar, a combat knife, shaped-charge explosives, an assault rifle with an underbarrel shotgun attachment, and breaching-rounds for the underbarrel shotgun are not a substitute for computer and electronic engineering skills.
***Even if I can get a password or open a door quite effectively with some combination of the above.

[BisectedBrioche]

I'd say:

* Not allowed to create British versions of Shadowrun slang

But it's more mixed than anything.

[Rater202]

I may not use a discarded medical cadaver as an improvised weapon during a routine training exercise.

Especially not without checking if anyone has PTSD that would aggravated by a sudden corpse.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

* If I design a player's character, and they ask for a version of Red Riding Hood with a wolf hound I may make them a magical wolf hound person who telepathically speaks through their little girl companion.
** If another players designs a gnome drug dealer I may start their adventure in a prison where the hound has requested to borrow this prisoner for his mission.
*** The hound player may then come up with a name for the organization they're clearly a part of that sent them on this mission.
****The gnome player may negotiate 3/4 of a year sentence reduction out of the warden for coming along.
***** They may then go and find themselves a bar to properly start the adventure. Little girl included.
****** The two human characters may dislike these two so much initially that they start throwing around stink bombs and ruining the crime scene.
******* I may improvise a way to still let them find the critical hint.
******** The players may brew an underwater breathing potion when the obvious way forward is to look for a boat.
********* They may suspect that I then moved a bunch of stuff from above to under water, even though the only change I made was adding a well to the drowned village placing the locked up troll king at the bottom because they started making Lassie jokes.
********** I may turn the boss monster into a giant frog holding a musical instrument because that was what one player guessed it would be.
*********** I may not try to come up with a good position based combat system with multiple types of weapons. It's too complex to be easily playable yet too simple to be fun and doesn't match the rest of the game. I should stick to working with nonsense.

[Anti-Eagle]

* May not base a Malkavian on the Homeless guy from "a Night of Spatula Madness."
** Francis E. Decs is still not allowed.

[Rater202]

*Any character that can bitch slap an Elder Vampire to death or take out a moderately sized group of middle-aged or younger vampires by spraying and praying with a standard semi-automatic rifle straight out of char-Gen is banned.
**As is any character that can wrestle a Crinos form Werewolf into submission out of Char Gen.
***Or defeat a Mage using only Hedge Magic.
****Or manipulate people's perception of reality better than the Technocracy.
*****Or turn an entire cemetery into flesh-eating zombies without invoking paradox.
******Or have a high-caliber minigun with infinite ammo for free at char gen.
*******Or be able to rig a presidential election by watching the debates at char gen.
********May not question why the Storyteller is Running Exalted vs The World of Darkness if he doesn't want Exalts to act like Exalts.

[danielxcutter]

*Any character that can bitch slap an Elder Vampire to death or take out a moderately sized group of middle-aged or younger vampires by spraying and praying with a standard semi-automatic rifle straight out of char-Gen is banned.
**As is any character that can wrestle a Crinos form Werewolf into submission out of Char Gen.
***Or defeat a Mage using only Hedge Magic.
****Or manipulate people's perception of reality better than the Technocracy.
*****Or turn an entire cemetery into flesh-eating zombies without invoking paradox.
******Or have a high-caliber minigun with infinite ammo for free at char gen.
*******Or be able to rig a presidential election by watching the debates at char gen.
********May not question why the Storyteller is Running Exalted vs The World of Darkness if he doesn't want Exalts to act like Exalts.

Exalted is one of the highest-powered TRPGs and the WoD franchise precisely the level to screw over the players, right?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

********May not question why the Storyteller is Running Exalted vs The World of Darkness if he doesn't want Exalts to act like Exalts.

*********If my pitch for a game is ever "gods vs monsters", I should probably consider making the PC's the monsters.

[danielxcutter]

That depends on the mythology; some monsters/demons/etc. give gods a run for their money, like Sun Wukong for example.

[Rater202]

Exalted is one of the highest-powered TRPGs and the WoD franchise precisely the level to screw over the players, right?

Yes.

Though it should be noted that in this fan-made supplement... Well, technically fanmade. It's made by one of the former Exalted Devs.

Anyway, Exalts are weaker than they are in their home series. IT's not that they've been diminished so much as the rules are different, outside of Dragonblooded they have no Infrastructure, and the World is so diminished that there just isn't enough essence to support their full power.

Yet.

Basically, one of the cataclysms of Exalted took, reality broke, and the Dragonblooded shoved all of the Anathema into a small cage.

Thousands of years later, with a dozen different world-ending apocalypses aiming straight at a vastly diminished creation and the only people able to fight it either actively furthering it along or too busy fighting amongst themselves, the remaining Dragonblooded(who pretty much know that the prison holeds something really powerful and that it might be a bad idea to let it out) decide "screw it" and let out the Solar, Lunar, Sidereal, and Abyssal Exaltations just becuase they figure that it can't possibly make things worse.

Considering that the Great Curse has either run it's course or else is too dimished to have any effect?

(Infernals were imprisoned separately... Underneath the Ten Thousand Hells from Kindred of the East. They've added all of that awfulness to their existing Solar and Primordial power and escaped shortly after the Celestials returned. Alchemicals are, techncially, a differant kind of exalt from Classic Alchemicals.)

Incidentally, most of those are real things. There's a One Dot Infernal Charm that lets you mockingly someone to make everyone who hears what they said assume that it's a lie and that the person is untrustworthy. No One else has to hear themockery and it explicitly works on live TV broadcasts.

[dspeyer]

* Just because a game is set in the present day does not mean the gaming system exists in-universe
** Even if some of the PCs are RPG fans
*** Therefore responding to "magic exists" with "let's search through RPG sourcebooks until we find one that seems correct" is a bad plan
**** Goes double if big pieces of the magic system are our GM's semi-official homebrew
***** Under no circumstances should our characters attempt to arrest and interrogate the GM

[Adrastos42]

* Just because a game is set in the present day does not mean the gaming system exists in-universe
** Even if some of the PCs are RPG fans
*** Therefore responding to "magic exists" with "let's search through RPG sourcebooks until we find one that seems correct" is a bad plan
**** Goes double if big pieces of the magic system are our GM's semi-official homebrew
***** Under no circumstances should our characters attempt to arrest and interrogate the GM

****** We absolutely should not organise a LARP session where we actually arrest and interrogate the GM in character.
******* If we do so anyway, warning the GM beforehand would be considered polite.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Ok so, I'm no longer going to get arrested for chair punting, and then get banished (making my character unplayable) because I accidentally discussed murder in front of some guards.

[Lord Raziere]

* may not cut in line for something when I don't even know what the line is for
** when someone punches me, may not assume we're playing tag and accidentally palm slap them into a wall
*** when informed I'm not allowed to use tools in the tournament, I may not reply with "okay I'll just fingerpaint!"
**** May not beat an entire martial arts tournament while the under impression its all just weird dancing then ask "whats martial arts?"

[TeChameleon]

* "When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail." is supposed to be a warning, not a life goal.
** May no longer bludgeon the DM's overpowered, supposed-to-be-run-away-from encounter into submission with nothing more than a half-strength party, a couple of creatively placed spells, lots of slingstones and the tank's ridiculous AC (on the plus side, should be getting some interesting loot from that lot... )

[Rater202]

*For future reference, if I want to be a snake person I should probably start as one.

[Man on Fire]

* The Paladin no longer can research how to break Warlock Pact so throughfully she takes another level if Warlock by accident.
** Paladin is also informed that if she keeps talking Warlock levels just because she cannot decide on an oath soon only oaths left for her will be treachery and oathbreaker.

[Telok]

** Paladin is also informed that if she keeps talking Warlock levels just because she cannot decide on an oath soon only oaths left for her will be treachery and oathbreaker.

*** May not use the warlock/oathbreaker paladin multiclass, the infinite nature of the Far Realm, and the small but non-zero chance that any particular bit of the Far Realm has a warlock patron gullible enough to grant warlock powers to me, just so I can justify having a new warlock patron every day.
**** No exploiting infinities.


* No more punk cyborg monk ork Elvis impersonators of uncertain gender hitting on PCs. Or hitting PCs with other PCs.
** The Max Hedroom mecha-lich game show host epic drinking challenge may end up being banned too.
*** Just because I printed a glow in the dark t-rex skull does not mean I should work a ghost t-rex encounter into the current plot. I need to print a bunch of little ones and make it a t-rex ghost swarm.

[Man on Fire]

* The party is no longer allowed to stop a fight with hags to share terrifyig facts about pigs omnivorous nature to the point the dm accidentially refers to next hag as a pig.

[Adrastos42]

* The party is no longer allowed to stop a fight with hags to share terrifyig facts about pigs omnivorous nature to the point the dm accidentially refers to next hag as a pig.

**Covering up a murder by feeding the corpse to a hag might well work, but it is nonetheless not worth it.

[Rater202]

I may not depict The Unconquered Sun as All-Might.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

**Covering up a murder by feeding the corpse to a hag might well work, but it is nonetheless not worth it.

***On the other hand, free cake...