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Tales of the Dark Side
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MrNexx
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 01, 2020 11:03 am    Post subject: Tales of the Dark Side Reply with quote

So, when have you given a Dark Side Point? I'm not talking about "They used Force Lightning, so they got a DSP", but "The character did X, so I got them a DSP"?

One time, I had a player whose Jedi was trying to cut down a fence... and he kept rolling utter s***. Like, just good enough that he wasn't injuring himself, but he was failing again and again with a 1 on the wild die, and the player was getting incredibly frustrated. Finally, he shouted "Screw it! Force Point!" and scored an amazing success... multiple sixes on the Wild Die, huge numbers.

And I gave him a Dark Side Point for calling on the Force in anger.
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Ray
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 01, 2020 3:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Failed Jedi in my group kept killing injured Army Troopers, even when they were trying to retreat. He was just at the cusp of getting a DSP, when I had a trooper yell out, "The Jedi is killing our wounded!!!" and the player went, "Uh, yeah, that's... Not the Jedi way, is it?"

Everyone else at the table shook their heads "No".
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 01, 2020 3:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ray wrote:
The Failed Jedi in my group kept killing injured Army Troopers, even when they were trying to retreat. He was just at the cusp of getting a DSP, when I had a trooper yell out, "The Jedi is killing our wounded!!!" and the player went, "Uh, yeah, that's... Not the Jedi way, is it?"

Everyone else at the table shook their heads "No".


Sounds like one of the DSP's i issued, after a force sensitive Medic pc, KEPT SHOOTING STUNNED AND TIED UP prisoners.. Just "cause i wanna be as cruel to them, as they were to my folk"...
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MrNexx
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 01, 2020 6:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
Ray wrote:
The Failed Jedi in my group kept killing injured Army Troopers, even when they were trying to retreat. He was just at the cusp of getting a DSP, when I had a trooper yell out, "The Jedi is killing our wounded!!!" and the player went, "Uh, yeah, that's... Not the Jedi way, is it?"

Everyone else at the table shook their heads "No".


Sounds like one of the DSP's i issued, after a force sensitive Medic pc, KEPT SHOOTING STUNNED AND TIED UP prisoners.. Just "cause i wanna be as cruel to them, as they were to my folk"...


Oh, yeah, that's a point.
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Whill
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 01, 2020 6:41 pm    Post subject: Re: Tales of the Dark Side Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
Sounds like one of the DSP's i issued, after a force sensitive Medic pc, KEPT SHOOTING STUNNED AND TIED UP prisoners.. Just "cause i wanna be as cruel to them, as they were to my folk"...

That one's easy. DSP for sure.

Ray wrote:
The Failed Jedi in my group kept killing injured Army Troopers, even when they were trying to retreat. He was just at the cusp of getting a DSP...

You're too forgiving. I would have already given the DSP on the very first injured retreating trooper that he killed. There would be no more "kept killing" without getting a DSP for each one.

MrNexx wrote:
So, when have you given a Dark Side Point? I'm not talking about "They used Force Lightning, so they got a DSP", but "The character did X, so I got them a DSP"?

One time, I had a player whose Jedi was trying to cut down a fence... and he kept rolling utter s***. Like, just good enough that he wasn't injuring himself, but he was failing again and again with a 1 on the wild die, and the player was getting incredibly frustrated. Finally, he shouted "Screw it! Force Point!" and scored an amazing success... multiple sixes on the Wild Die, huge numbers.

And I gave him a Dark Side Point for calling on the Force in anger.

I have mixed feelings about this one. It is disappointing that players of Jedi characters don't act more Jedi-like. I'm weary of Force PCs in general due to having multiple players that weren't great roleplayers of Jedi.

Is frustration the same as anger? Sure, frustration can lead to anger, but I don't think that frustruation itself is necessarily anger.

Even if the player was angry, was the character actually angry at the fence? Yes, player anger (or even frustration) can lead to bad character choices which can lead to DSPs, but this situation was a non-story meta issue when the player was frustrated with real world dice rolling. He wasn't angry at an NPC that did something to his character or anything.

Also, I think that was a harsh GM move on your part to even make him roll dice to cut a fence. That is a non-combat situation where the lightsaber was being used as a tool. The player wasn't "attacking" the fence. I probably wouldn't have required him to roll at all and instead just said it would take X time to cut through based on what the fence was made of. It doesn't seem right to give him a DSP when you were the one that required him to make all those rolls just to cut a fence in the first place.

After my first group campaign ended, I started running a solo campaign for one of the (very seasoned) PCs. In 1e there wasn't a Force sensitive yes or no, so anyone could learn Force skills. The PC hadn't been Force sensitive but we decided to have him start to get trained. The player did ok overall. There were a few DSP warnings in the solo campaign and the PC had gotten one DSP (he rationalized it was worth it for the outcome). We played the module Black Ice, and when he was going through all the traps the engineer had set up the player got frustrated. Then when he finally defeated all the traps and made it to the engineer, the engineer raised his hands and said, "I surrender!" The player wanted to cut his head off with his lightsaber for all through he put him through. I told him that would earn him a DSP. The player argued that it shouldn't. Then I got mad that my friend didn't actually think that killing a weak, non-combatant, surrendered engineer was evil and he wanted to argue about it, so I just said the NPC is placing himself at your mercy so is not defending himself. No roll is needed—This is an automatic kill. Then I got out my black die for Dark Side checks, and rolled a 1. That campaign ended right there with the PC crossing over to the Dark Side. I took the character sheet ripped it half in front of his face, and never played with him again. (We were still friends though.) The player let his real world frustration make his character do something evil in the story.
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Ninja-Bear
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 01, 2020 9:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And ripping up the character sheet helped the situation exactly?
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Whill
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 02, 2020 1:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

LOL. Before you come down too hard on me, I was only 18 and the player was 14 or 15. He was like a little brother to me (His older brother was my best friend who had died a couple years earlier). We remained friends after this. We partied in college. He and his parents came to my wedding. But I don't see him much anymore because now he is a doctor in Europe.

Yeah, there was no situation to help at that point. The damage had already been done. His character had crossed over to the Dark Side. See, I have never implemented to the optional 2e rules of Dark Side characters redeeming themselves. For over 30 years now, I have ran the game with the rule that when the PC crosses over to the Dark Side, that PC instantly and irrevocably becomes an NPC. As I stated, I was mad he was arguing with me about the morality of murdering a helpless character, and I never gamed with him again. So the tearing of the character sheet was melodramatic, but it had no lasting impact on anything that happened after that. All it did was graphically display for him that I was serious that the campaign was over due to his choice to turn to evil. It was more disappointing that the story of that campaign ended up a tragedy. And it wasn't the only copy of the character sheet. I still have the untorn one 30 years later.

I view the Dark Side Point rules as a deterrent to players playing their characters too evil. If they like their character they don't want to get too dark or they might lose the character. I've only had one other PC cross over to the Dark Side. That player realized that playing a Jedi wasn't as fun as he thought it would be because of my morality standards. So he intentionally crossed his character over. I knew what he was doing and he knew I would let him make a new character to replace that one. To his credit, he wasn't the best roleplayer but he did try to make his PC's turn to evil interesting in the story. When the DPS roll came that crossed him over, we were both relieved. He made a non-Force PC, and his former character became an NPC villain in the story.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 02, 2020 2:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

MrNexx wrote:
garhkal wrote:
Ray wrote:
The Failed Jedi in my group kept killing injured Army Troopers, even when they were trying to retreat. He was just at the cusp of getting a DSP, when I had a trooper yell out, "The Jedi is killing our wounded!!!" and the player went, "Uh, yeah, that's... Not the Jedi way, is it?"

Everyone else at the table shook their heads "No".


Sounds like one of the DSP's i issued, after a force sensitive Medic pc, KEPT SHOOTING STUNNED AND TIED UP prisoners.. Just "cause i wanna be as cruel to them, as they were to my folk"...


Oh, yeah, that's a point.


If you've read many of my other "DSP" threads, its one of the many, i've handed out.
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Mamatried
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 02, 2020 2:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I got one, escaping a prison where the inmates wore shock collars. the players and a couple of helpful NPCs managed to disbale their own collars, then disbale every one else's collar temporarily, then as the chaos erupted and peple began swarming the escape craft, we ( I ) turen on the shock collar for everyone else, with the result this had in the middle of no go zones and the like...total mayhethey stopped swarming the ship.

becuse of the extrmeness of the scene ( hard describe here, had to narrated)
it was at the time worth it, as the prisoneer indeed did supper for use to get away

I also got one for actually findiing out who had information on a bio project we had been hunting, we had hit a dead end, so we had two suspects, I persuaded the group to kidnap both, bring them onboard the ship and interrogate them.

So here is how I got a darkie. ( and no the darkside does NOT have cookies, that is a lie)

I put them both into a secure room, told them that I knew that one of them had this info, I also pulled a successful con on saying I know who it was and that the innocent man naturally would be let free.
I then placed a baster on the floor and mentioend that it had ONE shot left.
I left and let the two guys sort it out while I had the droid go over all the onfo we had gathered so far just in case.

I figured that the persone with the info(the guilty one) would kill the other guy, becuse of the promise to be let free, and thus playing them like that I found the right guy.

We heard a shot, I went back into the room, one guy was dead, I then politiely raide my baster and told the man with the info to spill the guts, rolling a successful intimdated he did.

I got a darkie, but no cookies
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 02, 2020 4:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Did you get the info at least/?
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Mamatried
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 02, 2020 8:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

yes
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