ok my problem is this, i ran a quasi forgotten realms campaign and now i got my players to sigil. i really like all the philosophy\faction based stuff and stories but one of my players is a bit of a heck&slasher and i really want to make him come around to my point of view he is pretty consistent. lets just say that when he heard the words "free league" he said "say no more- im in!" and he doesnt care too much for the other stuff. any advice to bring the rpg out of my player aa bit more? (he plays a dwarf fighter priest by the way)
need dming addvice
Sat, 2004-11-06 18:09
#1
need dming addvice
Sat, 2004-11-06 22:05
#3
need dming addvice
Another fun hook is the deep-six double-cross, assuming you think your player is canny enough to lann the con. Give them a standard hack-and-slash -- retrieve something from the Grey Waste or whatnot -- only have them run smack into something bigger and nastier than they can possibly deal with. Turns out, this was the "wrap-up" of a complicated scheme; some high-up blood was simply cleaning up loose ends and the party was a useful tool. Throw in a bit of politics (as Rip/Kaelyn described above), a decently complicated scheme to unravel, and you've got them hooked.
Vengeance is a powerful motivator and, among other things, it can force your player to think more, plan more, role-play more -- the Indeps might only help them if they do something suitably "Indeppy", for example, and without Indep help they'll never get the evidence they need to make a key witness squeal -- so that the reward of finally catching the bastard who set them up to die will be all the sweeter. Worked for one of the best campaigns I ever ran, although that was many years ago in a different setting.
Mon, 2004-11-22 05:07
#4
need dming addvice
The best thing is not letting the party find anything they want right away. Sigil is a large confusing place full of people just waiting to peel them. After a fake tout, a bar full of fiends and justice-freaks just waiting for an excuse to arrest someone, any hacknslasher should be forced to start getting subtle with the locals
Also, there was a free dnd adventure from the wizards' site about lizardmen burning human huts with a giant fish-eyed piece of glass mounted on top of the lizardmen shrine. After PC-s hacknslashing through the defences, i added an underground dungeon where they got down and hacknslashed some more until they came to a druid lizardman leader who begged them not to destroy their lair, because it was enough that those humans kept fighting them all the time. Then i brought in a lizardman witness who was crying and saying how the players just came in and slaughtered the whole place
The added dissapointment was back in the human village where mayor passed a will save for the zone of truth and made a small political speech about peace and tolerance 
Players wanted to kill me but i don't think they'll ever just take any quests without question and head blindly for the enemy :twisted:
Just remember the old planar advice - It's not important how much you can do, but how much you know 
There's plenty of room for a hack-and-slasher in Sigil, as long as he doesn't try hacking and slashing his way through people with important political connections or who are outrageously powerful in a physical or magical sense.
I suppose one thing you could do set things up on what he thinks is a straightforward "kill the monster" quest, only to find he's actually been set up. Perhaps he cleans out an orc lair beneath the city streets that his mysterious benefactor assures him has been harassing the people of the Lower Ward; soon after he discovers that although the orcs did happen to be evil and somewhat troublesome to some of the local businesses, they weren't breaking any laws and the Hardheads are arresting the PC for murder.
Fortunately, a very good lawyer volunteers to handle his case for free thanks to the good graces of one Shemeshka the Marauder, or Estavan, or Zadara, or the Anarchists, or the Harmonium, or the Doomguard, or A'kin.
And suddenly the character is hooked into Sigil's intrigue, indebted to the powers there and forced into their struggles.
Of course, the Free League, being who they are, may work to help him get out of this debt and become a free dwarf again. Of course, this means many other quests to accomplish this, and then more missions on behalf of the Free League to help others in similar straights or just to oppose factions oppressing the Indeps in general.
There's plenty of room for side quests that really are simple hack-fests. It doesn't hurt to throw people a bone now and then.