IryokuHikari
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Posts: 6
Preferred Game Systems: Savage Worlds, Mongoose Traveller, DnD 5e
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Favorite Species of Monkey: Those Snow Monkeys that bathe in hotsprings. What bros.
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Post by IryokuHikari on Mar 8, 2015 16:52:25 GMT -8
Hello All!
Long-time listener, one-time emailer, first-time forum poster here. SteveShakespere is my handle, Wil is my name, and currently, Traveller is my game.
I've been running an extrapolation of today's humanity far into the future in Traveller (obviously, with some not-quite-plausible events to get the story going), and I've run into a problem. My players.
Don't get me wrong, they're an awesome set of murder-hobos. But they have a better head for business than I have, and they micromanage their ship and personal finances with aplomb, so much so that they have almost a 2 month cushion of mortgage money. While this isn't a huge problem in and of itself, the situation that I find myself in kind of spins off of that.
I introduced a sub-plot involving a job from an old friend of our mechanic on his homeworld (known for racing, but most famously for their big death race). The job entailed stealing an experimental and "guarenteed winning" fuel mixture from one racing syndicate and giving/selling it to another racer. However, my players got the brilliant idea to bet on the one they gave the fuel to, planning to profit on the deal they made with the racer for a cut of the purse upon victory and on the long odds on that racer's victory. As it stands, the crew will make about 1.5 mCr profit from the bets and the deal, which, as you can imagine, will knock balance on its head. Victory is not assured, of course, and I've written a minigame that will help determine the results of the race, but the fuel combined with the NPC's driving skills give him a heavy chance of victory. While assassinations and such aren't uncommon in the race setting, killing the racer seems a cheap and petty way to resolve this, and would likely result in some ill feelings. ("What do you mean I can't get my 50k back? The racer is dead!")
Experienced Traveller GMs, what do I do? I fear my campaign already does not feel challenging. They've managed encounters well, but I think they have a feeling of nothing being able to go wrong. They've got cash, they've got skills, they've got guns... I do have a BBEG with a metaplot brewing, but I'm trying to make them forget about the energy absorbing obelisk that they chucked into a rapidly-being-consumed star. They've done some stuff that will come back to bite them in the butt (accidentally assassinating a duke, pissing off a powerful pirate syndicate, leaving plenty of evidence at their heist) but I don't want to bite too hard.
Any advice you have about any of this - managing wealthy PCs, separating PCs from their wealth, "balancing" Traveller difficulty and challenge, advice for making my campaign harder - would be much appreciated. Thank you for taking my Happy Jack's forum virginity, and please... be gentle...
Thanks!
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Post by guitarspider on Mar 9, 2015 0:27:38 GMT -8
Welcome to the forums! As for your game, they just stole from a racing syndicate, they're going to upset whoever runs the gambling ring BIG time and they've already pissed off another syndicate and assassinated a duke... What more do they need to do before you kick them around a bit, really? The syndicates do their thing, but surely someone up the chain of command is profiting as well. So now you're dealing with another enemy, who has the powers to confiscate ships ("suspected smuggling, searching is going to take a loooong time, we have to take it apart and rebuild it basically")and/or equipment, they might get randomly arrested, there might be bail to pay, there might be hit squads abducting a character if they're on their own and so on. You don't have to take away money or equipment permanently, but getting it back might well be some major work. If the players do get it back eventually, they'll feel all the more awesome if they put in a lot of work. The kind of enemies your group has made, those are some major calibres, they can't possibly expect nobody is going to mind them. Make them feel that. That's the way I'd do it.
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Post by Kainguru on Mar 9, 2015 3:15:31 GMT -8
Yeah that kind of big win automatically invited investigation - both informal (syndicate) and formal (Govt regulators). You could hold their cash in escrow until the investigations are completed PLUS can the bookie they made the bet with float this amount of credits?. If they've broken the bookies they'll be investigating and it might be a case of 'here's what we have sue us for the rest we got nothing left' - except opening under another name as a separate/different business. Aaron
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thegrimace
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Currently Playing: D&D 5.0, Pathfinder, L5R
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Post by thegrimace on Mar 9, 2015 13:51:02 GMT -8
Similar to the hold in escrow idea above, perhaps the bookies haven't actually been keeping balanced books, and can't afford to pay the players because they're short, and possibly to some crime boss. Does the bookie ask for the party to do something for him in order to make the money back? or offer as "fair recompense" some juicy information on a big illegal salvage operation which will be worth more than their winnings (but possibly fraught with other dangers). Alternately, does the bookie try throwing the party under the bus, claiming that he can't pay off his crime boss because the players took the cash (even though they didn't).
Also, see the thread by SirGuido on the DM's advice forum for some kinda similar situations.
Alternate ideas:
They get paid, but it's in counterfeit or stolen currency.
They get paid, but in odd goods that they now need to figure out how to exchange for solid cash. i.e. here's your 1.5mCr but it's in the form of mining rights to some rich asteroid, which happens to be located in a pirate-rich area, or here's a cargo of very valuable wagyu beef cattle, which is definitively worth something, but has a lot of complications to it.
They get paid, but now have targets on their backs because the bookie let slip to some criminals that there's a bunch of foreigners walking away with a fortune in "their" cash. Maybe the players have to turn to mercenaries/criminals/feds for help, but also have to pay a large fee for their support...
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Post by Kainguru on Mar 9, 2015 15:20:00 GMT -8
Or they could be paid in 'Ningis' . . . noting that 8 Ningis = 1 Triganic Pu. Aaron PS you're showing your age if you get it . . .
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Post by gandalftheplaid on Mar 9, 2015 18:42:16 GMT -8
I'm digging some of these ideas. Here's a couple others for poops'n giggles.
* The bookie goes into hiding. Possible that the party can find him, but kills himself while only holding a portion of the promised money. (All he/she could cover.) Party can take the cash but others will assume they killed him.
* Ever see The Sting? Perhaps the fuel business is BS and they're getting robbed. Perhaps a dramatic malfunction of another vehicle and an expectation of an investigation to look into shenanigans. Bets are put on hold and claiming a win puts a great big target on their backs. They could try to collect and find out they (and maybe others) got suckered and there's no money, or they could run and somehow get word of the scam. Either way the party has a new set of people they really hate.
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thegrimace
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 45
Preferred Game Systems: Anything
Currently Playing: D&D 5.0, Pathfinder, L5R
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Favorite Species of Monkey: Evil
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Post by thegrimace on Mar 9, 2015 19:24:49 GMT -8
ooh! or, if they've overreached and tried giving this superfuel to the worst vehicle in the race (in order to make the most drastic betting profit) then maybe it can't handle the fuel and explodes or just barely moves or something. i.e. if you put high performance racing fuel in a civic it's not going to go so well for the civic.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2015 3:39:52 GMT -8
Personally I think you should ensure they get all the money for two reasons. First betting on the race like they did is pretty smart and I know I'd feel cheated if some plot device was introduced for the sole reason of stopping me getting the winnings. Secondly if you come up with a way that prevents them from receiving the money I'd expect they will drop everything they were doing and turn getting the money into their primary goal so ultimately they will be expecting to get it at some point.
Instead I'd use it as an opportunity to step up the threat level they're facing. Firstly I'd make the scale of the win widely known, either through criminal channels (a bookie lets slip as to who won all that money and what ship they're on) or public (a big ceremony to hand it over or maybe a journalist reports on the win then starts digging into the history of the crew). Once it's known how much money they have trouble shows up. Do any of the crew have bounties on their heads? Well now they're 5 or 10 times larger and a flood of hunters show up. The family of that Duke? They can't afford to let the affront to their honour stand any longer now that the PCs are big names. The pirates? Now it's worth chasing down the PCs in order to steal the winnings.
Ultimately I'd try and force the PCs to spend the winnings in order to survive (ie buying off the Duke, paying for mercs to protect them etc) while also hinting that if they want to stay in the big leagues they'll need to find some way of continuing to earn that sort of cash, if they can't then after a short while they'll be back to having a small amount of savings and the regular jobs they've been used to.
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
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Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Mar 10, 2015 13:19:05 GMT -8
When we played traveller a lot, this was a constant problem for our GM, and one of the reasons I prefer narrative money systems like Firefly RPG. In my experience, PC's always manage their finances better than GMs. The GM pulls a (usually ill-considered) stunt to deprive the PCs of cash, the PCs resent it and it becomes a battle of wills between the PPcs and GM with the PCs always, ALWAYS, succeeding in wearing the GM down.
Our GM developed two tactics to deal with it.
1. In fact it wasn't "the PCs" who managed their money so well, it was one of the players. That player wasn't me, I worked in a bank at the time, and the last thing I wanted to go on my days off was look at Profit and Loss accounts. But one of my playmates was at uni, doing things like maths - making virtual money was fun for him. So our GM allowed him to shaft the rest of the crew, siphoning off a cut of OUR cash, then he allowed us to discover it, and BAM ! Great story!
2. He let us get rich. In one 2300 campaign, I ended up running a mil-ind/media conglomerate, in the next, he didn't even bother waiting for us to get rich, we started off as scions of the richest families in the system. I'm sure if he were running out group today, we'd be in some post-scarcity society...
Bottom line, if you want to play a Firefly-like story, don't play Traveller. In the Firefly RPG there are no accounts. I start the session off with something like "So the technobabble resonator is shot, you need a new one. OR you can eat this month, which is it to be?" They might reply "What about the cashy money we earned on the last job?" But I will say "oh yeah, how much was that exactly? You don't know do you? 'Cause it ain't on your character sheets is it? 'Cause I never told you! Hah! Fuck you and your actuarial abilities, player! You're poor because it's Firefly!!! Rick you! I win! I WIN! I fucking WINNNNNNN!!!"
Hmmmm too much listening to Angry DM....
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Post by Kainguru on Mar 10, 2015 15:04:59 GMT -8
Maybe don't assume all players, and thus their PC's, are as shit at keeping the books balanced as characters from fiction tend to be - IMHO the crash of 2008 made being monetarily savvy practically a required life skill for many . . . Aaron
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IryokuHikari
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 6
Preferred Game Systems: Savage Worlds, Mongoose Traveller, DnD 5e
Currently Playing: Nothing :(
Currently Running: Also Nothing
Favorite Species of Monkey: Those Snow Monkeys that bathe in hotsprings. What bros.
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Post by IryokuHikari on Mar 10, 2015 19:07:40 GMT -8
This is why I love you all.
I'd have never thought of a lot of these, so, thank you a ton!
A lot of these will work pretty well with some modifications to fit the setting, and I will be stepping up the difficulty regardless. I've been treating the PCs kinda with kid gloves, but one of the players even came to me and said that they would like the difficulty stepped up and for some things to start going poorly. And OH BOY will they go poorly. Well, hopefully.
Thanks for all the advice and the ideas! You have made my party's life so much more difficult!
Switching gears to a sorta related question, How do I challenge my players (specifically in combat) without overwhelming them? I have one combat monkey, a doctor with an assault rifle, and two squishy non-combatants. I want them to be scared, but so far, a few rifle bursts, and everyone is dead. Thoughts?
Thanks!
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Mar 10, 2015 22:49:56 GMT -8
Traveller IIRC is a kind of "he who shoots first, wins" system, so up the opponents' initiative before upping their firepower. See how that goes. I ought to add, over only PLAYED Trav (for many many years), never GMd it.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2015 10:03:06 GMT -8
Switching gears to a sorta related question, How do I challenge my players (specifically in combat) without overwhelming them? I have one combat monkey, a doctor with an assault rifle, and two squishy non-combatants. I want them to be scared, but so far, a few rifle bursts, and everyone is dead. Thoughts? Are there any stun weapons in the system? If so I'd start using those and have NPCs actively trying to capture the PCs.
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Post by gandalftheplaid on Mar 11, 2015 16:23:37 GMT -8
The Central Supply Catalog has multiple weapons in it with Stun effects. It also has a specific blurb about how stun rules work. I fail to recall what if anything is in the main rule book.
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SirGuido
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Post by SirGuido on Mar 12, 2015 7:56:15 GMT -8
Yes, I had multiple issues from giving my players too much too early. This included that the players took the alien ship I gave them as a big maguffin and lead in to my plot... and sold it. They totally bullied the buyers out of lots of dough and ship upgrades to pay for it too. I fixed it by making the buyers upset when they realized they didn't have a fully working ship and put a contract out on the ship. Some mercs caught up with the party and tried to take the ship, when they failed... they EMPd it. LOTS of damage later, the party is no longer incredibly rich.
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