The Really Bad Ideas Topic

Running a campaign with players who like to derail the main quest storyline... and giving them access to a magic device capable of time travel.

Creating a character based on Kamina, whose favorite snack is sliced daikon. In Legend Of The Five Rings.

^^ — This is for bad ideas, not COMPLETELY AWESOME ideas.

Do you mean the time travel idea, or the Kamina idea?

...and what would happen if you combined the two?

Time machine: Destroyed after one voyage. Cause: Pilot rammed it into dinosaur.

On topic, creating a dungeon in an abandoned mine shaft with a giant wall of nothingness destroying all alternate paths and the way you came in on. Every so often, Gelatinous Cube.

In case arbane was talking about my idea:

The "Chronometer", as it was called in the campaign, became the reason why I didn't plan out the main story too far in advance. I fully expected the PCs to mess with it at some point, which put me in a difficult position because I didn't know when they would do it, so I was constantly unprepared for a while.

I have to admit that it would have been fun if they tried tinkering with it despite not knowing anything about it. I had the random dice roll table all set up....

In case arbane was talking about MY idea: playing a brash and somewhat rough young samurai who already has a bad reputation of "wherever he goes, someone gets punched in the face" (exaggerated, really) with a side of LARGE HAM!!! is at least not a good idea unless we're

1. trying to impress ronins, or
2. beating the crap outta mahotsukai and other fuck-ups.

Relevant to another thread in this forum:

Letting people role-play tea-partiers.

Mr Bun seems comatose.

Our baby is a RABBIT?!? How come we have a rabbit?!

I thought that creating the super disease was the way to eternal life. I was wrong.

Exalted: No Day Caste Auto-kuma who used to serve the Silver Prince, and focus on stealing stuff from sea-going merchants in the area.

Exalted: You gave the Fremen Firepowder!?

Never store anything important or fragile in Gem.

Play a game of FATAL.

Not So Badass Longcoat: I didn't say it was a good idea, just an AWESOME one. :D (And he might do OK in Crab territory, IIRC.)

^^ lol. Any game of FATAL plays out like a bad porn plot. ...Or So I Heard

edited 8th Aug '10 3:31:35 PM by Carbonpillow

Double post -.-

edited 8th Aug '10 3:31:18 PM by Carbonpillow

Allow the Sickeningly Sweethearts to both play, with both of them as humanoids.

Allow the Sickeningly Sweethearts to both play, with one as a nonhumanoid. (Caution: 1d4chan.)

Feng Shui: "Never give the Jammers a nuke, no matter how good an idea it seems at the time."

I've got a few I've actually seen put into practice:

Give the party the aforementioned NPC Exposition Fairy. Make them the only source of information about the campaign world. But make them really bad at it. Never have them tell the players about a monster's frustrating special ability or the innocuous activity that quaint local law punishes by death until it's too late for the information to do them any good.

When the party gets fed up and tries to murder the NPC, only then do you reveal they're a God Mode Sue.

When your players show up, present them a multi-page list of your house rules. Make sure they don't get complacent by instituting a minimum of three more each session. Bonus points if your entire campaign is nothing but combat, and you decry every effective strategy they come up with as "broken" and drop the ban hammer on it.

Invalidate as much of the gameplay as you can by explaining It Was All A Dream. Entire sessions worth. You'll frustrate the power oriented players because they never get XP or loot, eventually frustrate the story oriented players because the story never progresses, and frustrate everyone as they try to remember the total of their hit points, spells, and expendable items before they spent them in that epic battle they dreamed of.

Punish role play at every opportunity. Talking Is A Free Action? No, if a character's statement takes more than three seconds real time, then they spent a full round action doing it. Monologues are for the NPC's, and the gist of all of them is that the player characters are pathetic and weak. (Which in comparison to your gestalt NPCs with eight different templates, they should be.)

Every evil villain must be Chaotic Stupid in alignment. They must perform their every action For the Evulz, regardless of the consequences. Every villain down to the lowliest mook must fight to the death, and every villain must immediately break any alliance they make with the party within five minutes, with complete disregard for whether they profit anything by it.

Throw insane challenges at the party to encourage them to solve conflicts through role play; annihilate them when that role play is not good enough. (Pro Tip: Their role play is never good enough.)

Make sure you know more about the player characters than the players do. Only inform them of this information moments before it becomes relevant. They didn't really need to know about their history as a military deserter, or their sexual orientation, in advance anyway, right?

Make heavy use of circumstantial modifiers, because it's realistic, and in a game where you're a wizard who can shoot lightning from your eyes or a cyborg fighting space ninjas, REALISM IS ALL IMPORTANT. "Sweat running into your eyes" is good for a -10 penalty to attack rolls, ill fitting shoes should just about cut your land speed in half, and the expression on the player's face when they tell a lie should be considered in-character, and penalize their Bluff check.

Ugh. It's crap like this that make me wonder why I still bother to play.

edited 9th Aug '10 12:28:57 AM by disturbly

Thumped for being inflammatory.

edited 9th Aug '10 8:23:52 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

Completely ignoring character backstories and any obligations NP Cs could have towards the P Cs.

Focusing only on hack'n'slash.

Referring to NP Cs as "this guy" while G Ming.

Nothing wrong with focusing solely on hack n slash as long as that's what everyone's there for.

Bottom line: The only bad idea is misunderstanding your players.

Focusing only on hack'n'slash.

Okay, I'll fess up; I kinda do this a lot. Especially in the first session of any campaign I run, I tend to throw in a few gratuitous fights. They let me gauge what my players are capable of, and burn through time (I never seem to have enough prep time for the first session). At the end of the night, I hold a brief Q&A session, figure out what my friends want to segue into, and use that and my newfound knowledge of their characters to prepare a better second session.

It's weak D Ming on my part, but my group have learned to tolerate it.