GM needs advice - RPG players gone nuts!

Cafe Society
1

The Game: World Tree, an oddball RPG witha great system and world and wierd gods with strange personalities. The Gods are sort of people all right - they’re just strange and very powerful ones. TO cast world Tree magic, natives call on the gods themselves to send a portion of divine power, set in pre-imagined ways.

The Set-Up: The characters wanted to contact the goddess of illusion Shax Shay Shaz, and theorized that - since she could apparently be reached simply by travelling far enough, was the goddess of illusion, and only appeared as or in an
illusion - that an illusory journey might work just as well as a real one. Thanks to a Hammer Casting skill (pumping exra magical energy in) of 20, lots of donated magic, and a magic pooling spell, they poured 66 magic points into a casting of Fantastic Voyage, rolled well, and managed to achieve a power of 858 (Well, well over what they meant to) at the local temple of Shax Shay Shaz.

The Spell: Fantastic Voyage (Creation/Sustaining/Illusion/Mind/Spirit; complexity 10)

Sends a willing subject on an exciting illusory mental trip, with
an actual duration of § minutes and an apparent duration of up to
§ minutes, since the show skips over the boring bits.

A complexity 5 spell is useful and handy and can probably be mad up on the spot by anyone. A complexity 10 spell is more useful and probably can’t be don on the spot by just anyone, but a mage-type probably has a dozen like that. It calls on the gods of creation/sustainging/illusion… in the course of the spell.

So… Our overenthuiastic hammer caster is going to have a
headache for a week or two at the very least. The recepient is going
to be out of things for a while and will certainly encounter at least
a personal hallucination of Shax Shay Shaz, since that’s what he was
concentrating on (Whether or not this will have any reality - and if
that actually makes a difference when you’re dealing with the
illusory goddess of illusion - is also a good question). They’ve
certainly generated enough of a power-flare to attract attention
throughout the city, if not from neighboring ones.
I can think of a lot of possible results, but I’m tossing it out
for consideration here:
Should extraordinarily high power have ramifications in itself, or
should the only effect be the numerical ones in the spell description?
How far away are high-powered spells noticable?
Is there an upper safe limit to the “any number of magic points” entry
under Hammer Casting?
That’s a great deal of power. On the other hand, it’s not likely
to be unheard of. The only really unusual aspect was the cley-pooling
spell - and a powerful mage with Cley Overlap, or a few Graces, or a
large enough crowd of excited donors, could get along without it.
What power level - if any - would actually be enough to attract
special notice from the gods?
If it is enough to attract divine notice, which god or gods would
it attract the notice of? They wanted to contact Shax Shay Shaz, but
the spell involved five arts.
Will Shax Shay Shaz be amused?

Just for entertainment, their next proposed experiment is to use

Sunray (Cr Ru Py 10)
“Fires” a beam of intense light from the caster’s pointing finger
(or whatever). Attack base = Perception + Finesse + P/5 minus GM-
assigned range modifiers, Base Damage P/10, damage increment = 1,
does half damage if S resists. [Range: Line of sight, Speed: Build,
Dur: Real, Resist: M.R. Half].
-While this is spectacularly ineffectual as a weapon under most
circumstances, it does have virtually limitless range - unless it
hits a mirror, cloud, or patch of darkness, diffracting, or opaque
object.

To try and ignite the sun a few minutes early to see if this is A)
Possible, B) Renews everyone’s magic a minute or two early, and C) to
see if this resets the normal 27-hour cycle by a bit permanently, and
D) See if any of the gods take an interest in this or are amused
enough to let them have a minor knack OR smack them with something.

2

I can’t say I have experience with this system, but I have to say that in my own game, I tend to avoid letting the players become uber-powerful through tweaking the system. For one thing, I penalize metagaming ruthlessly with experience losses. However, if the players are just high-level, then I don’t think you should punish them for using their power.

If you’re okay with your players becoming gods – because they’re on the verge of that, really – then by all means go ahead. If not you may want to make some sort of “power cap” put down by the gods – so high that virtually anyone wouldn’t have an idea that it’s there, but it’s there, a virtual glass ceiling.

Either way,I would assume that if there are multiple gods, there are likely jealous gods who would be none too happy with mortals flaunting this level of power. My campaign is in a pseudo-Earth where all of the gods of each religion are real, so I have a lot of leeway for that. I find that even as regular adventurers that they are getting involved in religious matters (killing followers of one god and looting their artifacts is a Bad Thing to that god). Consequences of doing something bad will often stay the hand of the worst powergamer – and it’s particularly good to have a poker face. Don’t make them instantly explode when a god’s ray of light hits them – make an adventure out of it. Make them start looking over their shoulders, waiting for the axe to fall. It’s highly enjoyable to exact long and slow revenge for powergaming PCs through the other powers (mortal and immortal) simply taking notice of the PCs and reacting accordingly. Very amusing.

3

Oh, they’re not. Frankly, they could defeat a hansdful of guards or mercenaries, but certainly not particularly dangerous creatures without a lot of work. The most powerful “magic item” any of them has is a lamp that can cast darkness instead of light. They’re goofing off while starting a long quest of sorts to gain blessings from the gods while starting a newspaper empire and so forth.

The players are high-level. The characters would translate to about 8-12th level in DnD terms. But this is a very loose comparison, since some characters can be more powerful in their field at the cost of generlaization. There’s no reason anyone can’t do this. It’s just that there’s no reason to. The spell is ridiculously powerful, but “power” is not terribly important conpared to “complexity”

Well, there can’t actually be such a cap (at least not up to 1000 or so); there’s are several theoretical game spells printed up which can end the world quite quickly - its just that no one is or ever probably will be strong enough to use them. The gods probably wouldn’t even stop it. And this stunt, while nuts, isn’t actually unbalancing at all.

The Gods made the world for the major species and established the laws for them - and by and large they knew what they were doing. As the OP says, this sort of thing is probably not unprecedented; its handily possible under the given rules but can’t unbalance the game. Shoving power through a spell is sometimes useful but not really that great. They were trying to expoit a possible “loophole” to get the attention of the goddess of illusion.

4

Minor note here: religion is a bit odd.

Everyone knows that when you die your spirit is called home by your god and eventually gets born again; only a few gods made important species, so all the player characters are born and die with their god. Being a priest means nothing at all, except that they usually have some experienced with that god’s branch of magic. Religon as such exists in a form not really seen on earth except by agnostics who vaguely feel compelled to go to some non-denominitional church at christmas. The gods made the world for one major reason, at least as far as characters are concerned: so the major races could adventure and do stuff. They made lots of horrible monsters for the purposes of being opposition, more or less. And they generally like to make new things, people, and so forth.

5

Make one of the players the new Shax Shay Shaz. :smiley:

Then give him the responsibilities of a God, and write 'im out of the game. That’ll teach 'em. :cool:

6

So, to distill this down to its essence: The players pulled a clever yet crazy stunt to attract the attention of the goddess of illusion, and succeeded well beyond expectations.

I have one question, and I hope the answer is yes: Is one of the party members, hopefully either the person who cast the spell or the person who took the voyage, male? Or alternately, lesbian?

If so, then the simple solution is that the afore-mentioned goddess develops a crush on said party member. Every time the party comes to a city, and some times when they don’t, a beautiful barmaid, or merchant, or other appropriate comely wench approaches that character, expresses great interest in him, and ultimately seduces him… Whereupon she turns out to be an illusion. When they stop falling for that one, Ms. Shaz tries to get his attention by other means. Remember back in third grade, when you had your first crush on a girl and tried to drop a live frog down her shirt? Sort of like that. I’m guessing that a goddess of illusion would tend to have rather a mischevious streak. If the character decides that hey, a goddess of illusion isn’t so bad, and returns the attention, she starts playing hard-to-get for the duration (might not even enable the casting of any illusion spells). As soon as he stops seeking her, back to the frogs-down-the-shirt.

On your second question, it would really depend on the details of the cosmology for this world. To ignite the Sun, you’d have to hit it, right? Before dawn, is the sun of this world above the horizon, and just dark? Or does it rise from below the horizon, like it does for us? Because if it’s the latter, they’re not going to have a target to ignite, and the spell would just blast away into space. If the Sun is always up, though, then that’s going to have some effect, but it beats me just what.

7

Actually, the sun is a giant lamp that the gods turn on in the morning. :cool:

but thank you for the ideas…

8

Roughly how unlikely was the uber-spell. if it is 1/100 or more likely just do the spell effect as in the book. If it is less likely than that there are several ideas.

Lots of folklaws include areas of magical power and significance. How do these occur except through the side effect of ancient powerful spells in that area. The temple would become like Lourdes with occasional miracle illusions occuring ever so often afterwards, because a permanent connection to the illusion world now exists. (maybe mannifest in an improved chance of casting the same spell, plus spontanious sometimes meaningful illusions occuring) People will be flocking to the temple for a chance to see long lost relatives, themselves as they looked when young or will look when old …

The goddess gaining an interest in the player who cast the spell, doesn’t matter what the sexuality of the player is, only the what the goddess wants counts, and since illusion can fix any physical problems. (wouldn’t it be nice for the mail warrior to get transformed to a beutiful femal nymph when in his God’s presence, to satisfy his God’s requirements.)
Any ways the temple will certainly be interested in the character and his/her friends, they have proved themselves to be on Shax Shay Shaz’s side, and therefor opposed to any God S.S.S. doesn’t get allong with. Looks like the party might have a holy mission whether they are holy or not.

9

Well, one of the is an immortal spell-smth with a penchant for adventure. He cast the spell. The other is a nutty warrior-assassin with a bad habit of taking pity on his “victims” (seriously; hasn’t been able to kill one NPC non-possessed-by-very-odd-creature yet) He elected to sit for it.

There wasn’t much in the way of random chance for the spell. They just pooled enough magic power to do it got excessively lucky rolls. IUn fact, usually thi method is highly inefficient.

10

I’d go with Chronos’ ideas.

The rules give guidelines. The players’ actions (and their dice roll) and the game mechanics say that something extraordinary happens. You decide what that is.

Ask: What would make the best story?

Getting the attention (and continual interference) from a god is fun. Go for it. Let the players be in the dark. Let them encounter random crazy stuff that continues through several adventures. Create a story arc. You go nuts.

Peace.