Boom! I guess the game is over ...

I have a cautionary tale for those of you thinking about allowing some of your players to play NPCs in a crucial point of your game ...

Many years ago, early in my role playing career, a friend of mine decided to introduce a group of us to the Star Trek RPG. I was certainly hip!

We all rolled up our Federation characters and chose a name for our ship: USS The Far Side. Wish I was kidding ...

The scenario went that before the Khitomer Accords, a Federation ship is sent to a planet in the Klingon Neutral Zone. The planet is about to explode and there are humans that need to be rescued. Unfortunately, the colony is illegal. To complicate matters, the Klingons also have an illegal colony on this planet. So, as the Federation ship arrives, it detects a Klingon ship.

Both ships establish communication and determine that they want to rescue their colonists but, of course, neither trusts the other. The GM decided to allow a couple of players to play the Klingons during this negotiation. I was one of the Klingons.

So, here's Klingon logic as I understood it: if my enemy is dead, there is nothing to fear, defend against or negotiate with. Sound about right?

In our negotiations, we "Friendly Klingons" (Sure!) bravely offered to risk one of our shuttles. We would fly over to the Federation ship, pick up the Federation representatives and pilot them down to the surface so that they could observe that all the colonists got off the planet. (Sun Tzu sez: "Never accept anything the enemy offers you.")

The Federation players bought this! Geez!!!

The shuttle landed in the bay on the USS The Far Side. A specially chosen warrior (we had LOTS of volunteers!) steps out from the shuttle. He holds up his arm, displaying the remote device he is holding and yells "For the Glory of the Empire!!" Then he presses the button. The shuttle is, of course, jam-packed with explosives. (Sun Tzu sez: "All warfare is based on deception.")

BOOM!

The Federation ship is no more and the Klingons pick up their colonists and a bunch of human slaves.

The End.

We could have rolled up new characters, but, it was late into the evening and we didn't. Nor did we ever get together to play Star Trek again. True, the GM was a bit of a prat, but it would have been nice to play a different scenario.

The lesson learned: unless you are willing for your game to go totally off the rails, be ready to counteract your player's actions to keep the game rolling.

Wiki Whack!

I tripped over a newish cool thing: Obsidian Portal.

The concept is that you can have a wiki for your campaign. I've tried building web pages and entire sites for games previously - it can be time consuming. In just playing around with this, I have so far found it less time demanding. I haven't written up anything for a real game - just a concept game - but it has been simple and fairly fun.

There are already some cool, whiz-bang features - more if you pay for the service. My bet is that there will be more as they go along.

Neat stuff!

Adultitis

Looks like the cast at Weregeek just had a random encounter with adultitis. It catches up to every gamer eventually. Roll a Fortitude Save, DC 40!