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[RangerCado]

I would call the sentient meat thing a failure too...

[ragnarok97071]

Yeah, here's my advice:

Players: try not to derail the everything too bad. Though I'm sure the story of Angel and Selina completely ignoring the plot and going to live in the other country and have a million impossible kids would be hilarious and amusing, that's not the story we're trying to tell. Also, stop trying to act like you're an archmage when you're a freaking sparkslinger.

Gold: Okay so all I can really tell you is stop being so actively hostile toward your players. Punishing them for stupid stuff? Sure, why not, the crystal apocalypse was cool. Butchering yourself for a REALLY good roll? Not so much. Yes, Overshoots are supposed to have some pretty bad side effects, but they're supposed to be MOSTLY good.

[Yoink]

I'd think of a butchering overshoot as more like... dicing the meat into a fine paste, personally.
I dunno.

[kj1225]

I would call the sentient meat thing a failure too...

I disagree. It was a great experiment involving what I can and can't do.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'm trying to get more novelesque, but...well...not many novels have huge chapters on everyone screwing up and trying to fix this irrelevant little major problem, you know?

Railroading, man. Somebody tries to escape from the initial briefing or fuck with you on the very first turn, smite them. Smite them hard. I mean, freaking legions of archers. Thunderbolts and lightning. Very, very frightening things.
And make the important quest-giving NPC's (or at least the plot-essential ones) capable of smiting at least one player without much effort.

I don't railroad.
And there's only so much railroading can do to stop a clusterfrak like this, short of Deus Ex Machina or--worse--fudging rolls.

GM- The way you've done things is quite hostile towards the players, where even basic actions are getting ridiculously penalized for rolling a 1, 2, or 6. For all the magical stuff with power getting high rolls and control getting low ones, mostly understandable in the failure of Control rolls. But rolling a 6 for butchering shouldn't CRIPPLE the player by losing all their fingers.

To be perfectly fair, I intend to let her work around it for however long it is until it gets fixed.

Yes.

Though to be fair I only messed up once with magic.

Messed up badly? Sure.

Yes, Overshoots are supposed to have some pretty bad side effects, but they're supposed to be MOSTLY good.

Tell that to every GM I've ever played under. Start with piecewise, I'm sure the HMRC* would appreciate it.

*Yes, I know they're ARM now. Shut up.

[Harry Baldman]

I don't railroad.
And there's only so much railroading can do to stop a clusterfrak like this, short of Deus Ex Machina or--worse--fudging rolls.

To the first bit - that's no good. You need a little bit of railroading if you want to get a campaign going. To actually put the PCs on the rails to begin with rather than just plop them into a situation and going 'do whatever, man'. The thinking that railroading is akin to dictatorship and you should not do it ever is asinine to say the least.

To the second one, you didn't actually need to railroad too much. Just have the place we were at have, you know, guards. And secured gates you can't just run away through. And have the prince and the other lady do something other than say 'that is most displeasing, hrm'. From a story point of view, it would make sense, considering that this is some kind of military operation and that it has decided to host a whole bunch of unstable, dangerous weirdos (apparently engage in 'basic training', too).

Tell that to every GM I've ever played under. Start with piecewise, I'm sure the HMRC* would appreciate it.

*Yes, I know they're ARM now. Shut up.

Distinction: piecewise's overshoots are often funny or impressive (description counts for a lot, you see) rather than simply disruptive or annoying. And they fit with the tone of the game itself, unlike here. Notice the spoiler above the original intro to ER stating both "Incredibly fatal" and "Black Comedy". And I still think they sometimes tend to detract from the game (not to mention screw over character progression to the point where you need a highly expensive item to be of any use whatsoever after reaching a certain skill level).

Also, I'm technically a GM you once played under, and I support the message of overshots not needing to be 1 levels of bad, or even as bad as a 2.

[RangerCado]

On a 6 with the added slight bad to it, I expect the low end of a three roll, or the high end of a two as the added affect. For the butchering example again, a less hostile addition could have been accidently slashing the palm of your hand as you cut through some muscle, which DOES impact your ability to use the hand due to the stinging pain and hampering of a bandage on it. This would caused a small(-0.2 to -0.6) to rolls using that, or both hands for a couple days.

Another possibility could have been cutting into the stomach by accident and losing part of the meat or hide to the acids. An external function could have also been the bad with crows or ravens coming and stealing a bunch of the meat but you still got the hide and some of the meat. Its all about moderation of how BAD the overshot should/needs to be. Any of the above would have respected the 6 is good and kinda bad rule. (which I still hate often)

Honestly, I really want to play this game and would like to see where the setting goes. Just lower the hostility of the 6s and make us desire those higher rolls, rather then dredding when our bonuses or rolls will put us over the 5 range. And as for us players, we'll avoid using our largely UNTRAINED magical abilities.

Can we PLEASE agree to this and start the story anew? Or perhaps rewind to either the briefing of why we're here, or when Selina began her escape?

[kj1225]

I support a rewind to the briefing.

[GreatWyrmGold]

To the first bit - that's no good. You need a little bit of railroading if you want to get a campaign going. To actually put the PCs on the rails to begin with rather than just plop them into a situation and going 'do whatever, man'. The thinking that railroading is akin to dictatorship and you should not do it ever is asinine to say the least.

The problem is, it's a lot easier to do wrong than right...and it's hard to know when you need to railroad until the train's bobbing in the lake.

[Harry Baldman]

The problem is, it's a lot easier to do wrong than right...and it's hard to know when you need to railroad until the train's bobbing in the lake.

True. Still, only way to learn the proper way is to try it a lot of times and see what works. From this, I think we can safely say that in a prologue it's safe to railroad the players a little bit, no?

[Parsely]

The problem is, it's a lot easier to do wrong than right...and it's hard to know when you need to railroad until the train's bobbing in the lake.

True. Still, only way to learn the proper way is to try it a lot of times and see what works. From this, I think we can safely say that in a prologue it's safe to railroad the players a little bit, no?

Absolutely.

I support rewind. Don't kill this GWG, alright?

[RangerCado]

The problem is, it's a lot easier to do wrong than right...and it's hard to know when you need to railroad until the train's bobbing in the lake.

True. Still, only way to learn the proper way is to try it a lot of times and see what works. From this, I think we can safely say that in a prologue it's safe to railroad the players a little bit, no?

Absolutely.

I support rewind. Don't kill this GWG, alright?

I'll support this, and railroading for the prologue... Though no promises after that Selina won't try to run.

[Lenglon]

It's a military base, if you want to railroad, you have an entire army to do it with. All you have to do to force the issue is make escape attempts have to pass oppose checks for every. single. guard. if they can pass 1,000 opposed checks, they deserve to break the rails.

[WillowLuman]

(As someone in the audience, I felt like this was going the way of the Avengers, where the initial attempt to bring all the super people together didn't go so well. However, Selina was getting a little annoying, though that may have been because every single roll to try and bring her back resulted in abject failure.)

[Xantalos]

(As someone in the audience, I felt like this was going the way of the Avengers, where the initial attempt to bring all the super people together didn't go so well. However, Selina was getting a little annoying, though that may have been because every single roll to try and bring her back resulted in abject failure.)

((There's also the fact that she's basically a living romantic plot tumor from my experience.))