Not to mention that monks can’t multi-class unless they want to lose all those cool things…
But the most abused single-level class to take would be Ranger. All those free feats…I’ve outlawed it in my game, my players ALL tried to abuse it…even the magic-user types…
Er, wtf? That’s plain stupid. If you want druid spells, play a fucking druid. Easy to deal with, though. “No, that’s stupid. Don’t be lame.”
I once had a Talislanta GM throw us in a literal tunnel dungeon. We fell through a hole in a swamp, into this tunnel. We could only move forward in the tunnel - for some reason, if we attempted to go back, we couldn’t. There were no passages leading off this tunnel, just an endless stream of “amusing” NPCs. It turned out we were in the body of some dead God. That idea might have looked good on paper, but it was incredibly dull and frustrating. It was like a parody of a bad GM running a bad adventure.
God, I hate that.
Podkayne, I go out of my way to make the Pattern walk sound scary and dangerous, especially for first time walkers and players always so gung-ho to claim their birthright. It’s the only time I ever bring in Mirelle, supposedly Random’s younger sister that died on her Pattern walk and is only mentioned in one of those vile Choose Your Own Adventure Amber books. When they say they want to walk it for some frivilous reason, the NPCs look at them like they’ve lost their minds.
When they do walk it, foolish people, the visions they get are of angst filled or angst inducing scenes from their past. Their lucky to make it to the center and have to rest for anywhere from a day to a week. I’ve made players cry who were so deep in character that they felt their pain. I’ve had some characters need therapy afterwards.
It takes some planning but I’d much rather play it out the way Erick intended.
Demise:
I wholeheartedly agreed. Unfortunately, the munchkin in question was completely immune to arguments of this sort. We eventually had to kick him out of the group because he kept trying to pull crap like that, and would get all pissy because we wouldn’t let him. The gaming experience has improved a thousandfold since he left. 
And BTW, when monks multiclass, do they lose monk benefits altogether? I thought they stayed frozen at their current level and they could never progress any further as monks, but retained the abilities that they previously had. (Re: rangers… you ain’t kidding. I still don’t understand why woodsmen-types should automatically be able to fight with two weapons like Drizzt Frickin’ Do’Urden. That’s just plain silly.)
You know, I think I’m thinking of what happens when monks become non-lawful. Yeah, pretty sure that’s it. You’re right, they don’t lose their special abilites, same as paladins.
Because the trees…erm, the woods are very…ahhh, animals use two thingies…? I dunno, but fighting with two weapons is spiffy!
Funny thing is, if you do the math, fighting with the neg. mods you get with two weapons and fighting with only one weapon are almost exactly as effective. Those sneaky WotC/TSR guys!
Speaking of non-lawfully played monks, and things related, I get mighty tired of the continual drift of characters towards chaotic neutral.
The scene: the party is sneaking into a demonic critter’s lair. He’s a Predator-ripoff, likes to hunt intelligent people from across the planes, that sort of thing. It’s pretty easy to be quiet near his central chambers because there’s a lot of screaming–several folks are in advanced states of vivisection in a nearby room. Skin flayed off, muscles suspended out from skeletons on wires, internal organs exposed, and so forth–kept alive by nefarious magics, in agony.
My character’s a good lug; these poor souls are beyond ever being helped, so I’m going to end their pain with the aid of a quick, sharp knife and let them die clean. And what’s your IC reasons for arguing with that, fellow good party members? What’s that say for your character alignment? Thought so, now shut the fuck up. We’re not the moral-expediency corps here.
Plus, I’m bitter because my regular group is falling apart. Damn scheduling conflicts.
Oh geeze… I’ve had the misfortune to play in several games like that. Oh, minus the fascinating adventure. And the marvelous attention to detail. And the original plot ideas.
Especially fun when it starts out with “you see an old man on the street.” Yeah, so? I bet I’ve seen a lot of old men on the street. And being a lizardman that is generally intolorant of all these warm-bloods around me, and only asociates with them out of necesity, I couldn’t care -less- if there’s an old man on the street. No, I don’t want to talk to him. No, not even after he looks at me funny. Or follows me. Followed me for several blocks? Following a lizardman who is intolarant of mamals -and- has bad temper. Time to draw the sword, yell at him, and give him a good kick if he doesn’t go away. What do you mean I can’t do that??
sigh
This is why I GM now…
Tip: Chaotic Neutral was not created to let you make whatever choice you wanted without repercusions. Just because your character thinks it’s gonna get away with screwing over the rest of the party does not mean the rest of the party is going to ignore your punk ass. Also, your character alignment means that your guy is probably NOT going to be very good at drawing maps, or dealing with people, or making strategic plans. You wanna be an amoral, flighty fighter? Fine. ROLEPLAY the fucker, then!
It was shit like that that makes me prefer point based systems where you pick and choose individual phycological disadvantages.
Once, before a GURPS gaming session, a fellow gamer and I were just hanging out, waitng for the rest of the gamers to arive. Trying to be polite and all, I asker how she was doing. She proceded to give me a detailed account of what her character was up to, and her plans for the day. I was going to correct her and tell her I was asking how she as a real life person was doing, but I realized she had already answered my question.
Agreed. Yet one more reason upon the heap of others that I ditched AD&D for GURPS.
Normally, I don’t care so much about the system, as the plot; The game rules are just a guideline for the story. But when the rules are easily ignored, or actually -hindering- gameplay, it’s time to ditch them
I understand the distaste for GMs leading you through their own little set story where you have about as much say in what happens as you do in Legend of Zelda, but people who refuse to progress the story annoy me as well.
There’s a guy here motioning to you. What’s that? You don’t care? Ok, then sit in the bar and stare at the wall all night. I’m not going to have a horde of orcs rush through the wall just because you want to refuse to pick up on the obvious hints that something is happening. There’s a glowing portal here. What? You’re afraid of glowing portals? That’s fair… this one though exudes a glow of warmth and comfort. It beckons to you. What? Still don’t want to go in? Ok, fine. Sit on a rock and watch the grass grow. Unless you want me to have a bird swoop down and drop you into the Pit of the Ogre Lords, in which case you’ll just bitch that I did that, we’re not getting very far into the adventure tonight.
I know a guy, Tyler, who runs lots of RP sessions with his “group”. They usually make up their own RPG’s, rules and regulations and everything. Normally, the law is “Tyler does what he wants” (he’s typically the GM). His word is law in those little worlds he invents. If you piss him off (in the game or in real life), bad shit happens to you. Normally, that would be seen as a bad thing in an game, but he does it so well that it always adds interest to a story. He once had a character’s hand get sliced off because that character’s RP’er “stole” his girlfriend away.
He was kind of nuts…
Sounds like a great roleplaying experience! Unfortunately, that’s only going to work with good roleplayers who are willing to get into character. Our current Amber group is much more “cool” than many other groups I’ve been in. For example, once I teared up when my character’s daughter was killed, and they seemed very uncomfortable with that. Also, a couple of the players are just very mechanistic, and they can’t seem to consistently get into character–particularly to the point where they really empathise. We’ve been working on them, and one has made a great deal of progress. The other one, though, just can’t get past the stage where he has to ask himself, “Hmmmm, what does my character feel about this?” For a while the hubby blamed himself, and thought that he needed to change the way he ran this guy or something, but then he talked to some folks who have GM’d for him in the past, and they had problems with him as well.
The game would probably be better if we gave him his walking papers, but we haven’t got the heart, particularly since he’s close friends with another person in the game, and it would be tres awkward to ask him to leave while continuing to game with his friend.
Whereas we’d rather play the way that works best with our group dynamic. There are things in the books that work well for us, and things that don’t work so well. We’ve got no more qualms about experimenting with rules variations in Amber than in any other system.
I understand that, but my friend always found the worst ways to do it, ways where it would be incredibly -out- of character to fall into. There were all sorts of ways to do it creatively, but he always found the worst way of doing it. In that particular case, apparently he wanted me to initiate the conversation instead of the other guy, which is why he just followed my character around instead of talking to him. If he had -said- something, it would have been fine, but just following around a rather agressive and intolorant character with the hopes that he’ll start up a friendly conversation “just because he’s there” didn’t seem too reasonable.
Made worse, of course, by the fact that that used to be how he’d start -all- his adventures in all his campaigns, from a magic-rich fantasy campaign to a sci-fi cyberpunk campaign. Once or twice I can understand, but it shows a little lack of creativity to fall back on the same crutch time after time after time. There are better ways to get characters much more deeply involved
Not to mention the other reason people play neutral alignments: so Prot. Evil et al won’t work on them. No other reasons, just that. I said to hell with it and got rid of alignments and just used my judgement about how a person was playing an alignment-restricted class.
I also made it so that spells that had alignment-based effects worked against NPCs based on hostile intent or nature instead. Works much better, and I can always tweak it depending on the situation.
Demise…I love you.
Although I rather enjoy D&D as a whole, the alignment thing has pissed me off from the start.
A crutch for bad RPers and bad DMs, is all it is…
How is alignment a crutch for bad role-players? Alignment is part of the character, it’s part of role playing. Is race a crutch? Do you not assign races and then just tell people what race they’re acting like?
Alignment is just another description of your character. Like race, or like intelligence, it is something that a good role-player will take into account. I am much for impressed with someone who can repress what they want to do in favor of what their character would do, given his alignment than with someone who simply does whatever he feels like doing and lets someone else (such as the DM) figure out what alignment he is.
I agree that players who consistently act against their alignment should be punished for it by having their alignment changed. And I agree that players often abuse alignment - but then again they also abuse races, classes, and skills. But I don’t see what’s so silly about the idea of alignment itself.
Race is different than alignment - it’s not treated as a definite definer for the character (you CAN be an evil Elf, a Chaotic Dwarf, or Gnome with no particular desire to tinker), though it does give CULTURAL biases to play with.
Alignment means you don’t have to play the character’s history or personality.
‘I wouldn’t do this because I’m Lawful Good.’ is bad RPing. ‘I won’t do this because I’ve been raised to believe it is wrong.’ is good RPing. Might seem subtle a subtle difference, but it’s really pretty major.
Demise’s way of assigning allignment on the fly based on the character’s actions/motivation is the best way to handle it - make it a descriptor, not a prescriptor (is that even a word? Oh well.).
I also disagree that changing alignment is a punishment (OK, it is if they’re a Monk or Pally, but if they’re playing a Monk or Pally chaotically (or Evilly for a Paladin), they’d probably have more fun as another Class (Heck, the DM/Player could probably cobble together a semi-Monk, or semi-Pally if they wanted) anyway. And their loss of their abilities provides some good RP opportunities.).
That first number four really struck a chord.
To two bad gamers:
My characters are sometimes bitches. Yep, it happens. Sometimes my character will want to screw your character over. Sometimes I will try. And because I am the way I am, I sually apologise out of game.
**This does not mean you should get mad at me! I am playing a character! **
Thank you.
The group I hang out with is really snobby about bad gamers. Most of the time, powergamers and people who take stuff to personally don’t last too long.
I gues I’m just confused because I never based my personality on my alignment, I based my alignment on my personality. I would come up with the idea for a character and then choose the alignment based on what I thought someone with that sort of personality would act like most of the time.
Stormbringer, a revised version of the Elric! RPG, a Chaosium game set in Michael Moorcock’s Young Kingdoms, has an interesting alignment mechanic. There are three alignments: Law, Balance, and Chaos. You choose an alignment to start out with, and each alignment gives different bonuses at character creation, but after that you get points in different alignments through roleplaying. For example, if you betray someone, you get a Chaos point. If you free someone wrongly accused, you get a Balance Point. If you bring a scoundrel to justice, you get a Law Point, and so on. What your alignment is, then, can change over time, and if you have a whole lotta points in one, then that has ramfications in game play as well.
I thought it was a nifty idea, and something that might be easily adapted to the D&D alignment system, which I find a bit simplistic and constraining. I don’t like pigeonholing my characters into one of six little boxes, and people change over time. Also, it usually takes me two or three sessions to “shake out” a chacter and figure out what (s)he’s all about, so in several D&D games I’ve found that I chose the wrong alignment when the character was little more than a pile of attributes and an equipment list, and I’ve sometimes had resistance from DMs about changing it. I guess the last one is purely my fault, though.