Café de Nuit

I'm having a few issues with one of my players, and I was wondering if anyone could help out . . .

This friend of mine has played in every campaign I've run (I'm on my third right now), and he tends to be a consistently good roleplayer. He's also incredibly lucky with the dice, and his characters have very rarely suffered any serious side effects from fear, horror, or madness (the worst he ever had to deal with was a samurai who had to spend a week in fasting because he'd dropped his sword in a moment of terror). In my current campaign, he's playing a cleric of Ezra--which fits into the campaign incredibly well, since the overall plot of my campaign is much easier to implement if someone in the party has ties to the church--and while he likes the idea of playing a cleric, he's been looking for a way to spice her up, since she's currently pretty bland.

Last session, his streak of luck finally ended. He botched a horror save something fierce, and his character has now developed a fascination with the Whistling Fiend. Now, I know for a fact that about half my players would accept this development with open arms--the character needed spice anyway, and besides, horror and madness effects are damned fun to roleplay. But as soon as he found out what his character was going to go through, he threw up his hands and declared that he was going to create a new character, because this one was clearly no longer playable. And for the record, the character got this effect at the very end of the last session, so he hasn't even gotten the chance to roleplay it yet.

Am I the only one who thinks this is unreasonable? Does anyone have any advice for how to get him to suck it up and remember that we are, in fact, playing Ravenloft here? Or should I tone it down and give him a less debilitating effect? I really don't want him to scrap the character, because she's very useful to my campaign and because I feel like not playing a character anymore because they've gone a little crazy really goes against what he knew he was getting into playing Ravenloft. Any thoughts?

Your player is definately unreasonable. You can take the hard route, and tell him "tough luck, now play the character." Or you can tone it down. But don't let him get away with not playing the character. After some time with it, your player may well thank you for forcing him to tough it out. And if this still doesn't seem reasonable to him, just ask him what seems reasonable to him for having failed the WORST of the three Ravenloft Will saves.

I can sympathize with him, as it can be pretty frustrating to tough it out with a character. But I think he's just not used to the vagaries of fate (aka the Dice) yet. I know how tough it can be as I just got back from an Ars Magica game that I am currently playing in (6 years of real world time strong!) and just had my Magi character go through a particularly nasty bout of Twilight when he created a longevity potion (He has the flaw Twilight Prone). He's now dangerously close to Final Twilight and lost 3 seasons of study/adventuring time (including a major story arc element).

<Sigh>

But I still look forward to playing him out to the bitter end. And so should your player for what fate chose for him. If your madness effect sends his character into the arms of the Whistling Fiend he should be thanking you for putting the hurt on him. I mean, isn't this why we play Horror RPGs?

Dominique wrote:Last session, his streak of luck finally ended. He botched a horror save something fierce, and his character has now developed a fascination with the Whistling Fiend.

I would agree with Balinok Trader in that your player seems to be rather unreasonable. It sounds like your player has had a very lucky streak and wants to give up the character the first moment that the dice rolling goes bad. Admittedly, it was a bad result, but I think that there is a lot of potential here.

I don't think that you should force him to play a character if he is opposed to doing so, but there should be a very good reason for him giving up so soon. I don't see the fascination with the Whistling Fiend being something that makes the character unplayable, and this situation should provide plenty of opportunities for the player to develop the character in more detail (i.e. perhaps the cleric believes that the Whistling Fiend is a dark avatar of Ezra).

My suggestion would be to talk with your player and find out what specifically is the problem. If the horror save would truly ruin the playability of the character (in his opinion), then you can comprimised slightly with him. Just don't let him convince you of dropping the hooror effect or throwing out the PC.

I can see it now, the cleric foregoes his sword and decides instead of weild a spear and whistle cherrfully much of the time as he twirls the weapon about. If he is truly fascinated with the Whistling Fiend, the character is likely to immitate it as well as go on about it as often as possible.

I also fail to see why the fascination would make the character unpayable, it just oens a whole new avenue to take the characters fdown and shake things up a little in the way the character would normally be played.

Hell, if bad rolls made me give up playing a character I would have to roll up at least 5 or 6 in each session I have played. Rolling several fumbles in a roll and then failing every saving throw in a combat is is very bad, especially when you are the fighter trying to protect the rest of the party. That happened to my character and it ended with him losing a leg and being knocked out when he failed his system shock (99% with his Con 18 back then). So if the player things a failed horror check is bad, he needs to stop using loaded dice lol.

Yeah, he's being a pu-- I mean, yes, I do agree with the other posters here. Something tells me that "looking for a way to spice her up" was code for "I want to be badder and more kick-ass", in which case he should remember that Ravenloft is a tough proving ground for heroism indeed....