In Legends of Steel Part VIII (10 page pdf), some wyvern-riding moo-rons show up and convince the local yokels that pass as the government in this farm town that they should hand us over to the evil empire. In retaliation, we murder three wyverns and everyone who dares open their bitch mouth to us. And Manoj gets a crazy psycho stalker girlfriend!
We were pretty confused and frustrated by the RP session after that. So the hapless city, now that we’ve murdered their prospective new overlords, feels they are probably going to be razed to the ground in retaliation by the bad guys’ army. This is probably accurate; from what we can see a bunch of Catholic schoolgirls could raze them to the ground.
So then they want someone to take a message asking for help to their King. We volunteer, if only because it will get us out of this dunghole. They go to have an Important Council Meeting that they try to get us to come to. Being averse to boredom, we go get drunk instead. Then this local elder shows up and makes the following pitch “behind the back” of the local baron.
1. Some people don’t like kicking taxes upstairs to the king. But everyone’s scared of acting on this. And the Baron is scared of asking for help.
2. So we should delay the King’s forces in getting here.
3. Because they will then throw off the invading army by themselves, and have enough mojo left over to throw off the King’s army too. Freedom!
4. And we should do this because we “owe them” for provoking the bad guys’ wrath.
My rebuttal, admittedly somewhat obscenity-laced, was:
1. “Sounds like you’re a bunch of scared motherf***ers all the
way up the chain of command. What do you need us for?”
2. …
3. “But your farm town here couldn’t fight off a dozen drunken goblins on a good day. You’re asking for help to fight the one army, but now you think you can take two?”
4. “I’m sure you mean to say there’s something else in it for us… Because if we owe anyone for the impending violence, which you brought on yourselves in the first place, you’d think we’d owe the Baron, the actual legitimate ruler of this place, and the King. And not some random fat f**k like you.”
But no, that was his best offer. I tried to help what appeared to be the railroad plot out. “If only you were to offer us positions of power in this new regime… Or money or booze or something…” But no. So I told him he’s better f**k off or else he was going to get three feet of steel rammed through his guts real soon. The rest of the players all nodded sagely in agreement. He scuttled off.
The elder, and the GM, seemed somewhat taken aback. But we were getting grumpy and don’t like nonsensical adventure hooks – come to a party with an offer that has an up side. If we just want to kill people there are a lot of takers – why should we kill for you?
It’s one thing if the hook is what “good” or “heroic” characters should do, which is a mistake in a game where most characters are amoral mercenaries, but in this case it isn’t even the good, or brave and glory-filled, option. It’s the craven and bad option for zero compensation. Huh?
Geek Related 