Quote:
Originally Posted by adimar
This assumes that they are passive and just wait for me to throw stuff at them.
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Only if that's the way you all decide to play.
It sounds like at the moment the GM is the passive one, waiting for the players to do something and then reacting to it. Every game has room for passive and active behaviour on both sides of the GM's screen.
However, the GM is and always should be the ultimate arbiter of what is available in the gameworld. If the PCs have unlimited ammo there's only one reason for that - the GM allowed it to happen. If you don't want them to have some particular item at character creation then do NOT put it on the list of equipment that's available at character creation.
On the other hand, have you thought of turning it back on them? Let them have the heavy weapon they covet but then nothing they encounter for months justifies using it. Perhaps the local badguys realize that there's still too many heavy weapons in circulation and rather than risk their assets they only deploy light forces and use mortars and/or artillery to provide fire support.
Some of the players might start to think that carrying around a weapon they never use is no longer worth the effort.
Perhaps some regional badguy sees the PCs heavy weapon as a particular threat to their rule and details a special unit to eliminate the weapon or the PCs. As long as the PCs remain in the region with that specific weapon, the badguy keeps sending personnel after them to either steal it or destroy it or destroy them. Local civilians can spread the word that a bounty is on the PCs or their weapon or perhaps one of the civilians is friendly towards the PCs and gives them the info as a warning. Maybe the PCs will have to hide the weapon and forgo its use while they stay in the area?
Perhaps the PC with the heavy gets a lucky break during a firefight and the bullet or shrapnel that would have hit them, hits and damages the heavy weapon instead? If I remember correctly, 2013 has the option to allow a player to sacrifice a piece of equipment rather than have their PC take a wound - if the enemy fire would have killed the PC, the equipment sacrificed should be of some proportionate value.
And if the PCs are setting up a killing ground for heavy vehicles, that's certainly not a bad thing. They all want to stay alive after all. Let them fight off the skirmish line that has approached their killing ground but the enemy commander is not going to keep sacrificing assets. Let the PCs spend all that time preparing the killing ground, let them get a minimal amount of use from all their sweat and toil.
But then the enemy realizes it for what it is (after all, not all their commanders are going to be blind and stupid), and decides to attack from another direction or try a totally different type of attack.
It could be something as outside the box as dogs trained to find and attack people (in this case the PCs). Or perhaps the dogs just locate their target and keep hanging around so the enemy can see the general location of the target (apparently the Germans tried to do this in WW2).
It could be a herd of diseased cattle that are driven towards the PCs position with explosives strapped to their sides (to be detonated by radio when the enemy thinks a cow is near a PC - ever smelt a dead cow, how about a small herd of them? And then there's the risk of disease if the PCs continue to occupy the site while all that already diseased meat is decaying.
What happens to the PCs' well laid killing ground if the badguys have a few two-seat ultralights and the crew either act as artillery spotters or they drop explosives/grenades/darts/bricks/snakes/rotten eggs (don't underestimate the power of a bad stench) on the PCs from on high?
And what about the medical and food state of the PCs, heavy weapons are great but they won't fill your stomach or patch your wounds. What if the much needed medical supplies/treatment they're trying to buy for themselves or the town they're helping are so damned expensive that they have to sell some of their best equipment to make up the cost?
What if a village the PCs encounter is friendly enough to let them stay and resupply but a condition of entry is a support/heavy weapon or a vehicle (the vehicle the PCs have been transporting all their heaviest gear in)? Alternately, the town might ask the PCs to help them defend the place and if the PCs say yes or no, the town sees and then asks to buy the team's heavy weapons with maybe an offer too good to refuse?
Perhaps the town makes the offer and if the PCs turn it down, the town steals the weapons or bullies the PCs into accepting their now "less generous" offer (take the offer or we'll kill you and take ALL your gear).
What I'm saying is that, as the GM, everyone knows you have a tougher job than the players. If you have a PC group of four or five, that's four/five people to come up with a counter to what the one person (the GM) has set in place. So, you have to be instantly creative and constantly so or alternately, well prepared with plenty of pre-made encounters for the session.
The GM wants to challenge the players but not make things constantly too hard or too easy. The players should get some too easy encounters every now and then, just like they should get some too hard ones, just to keep them thinking about the ebb and flow of the world around them.
Looking back over what I've written here, I see it sounds a bit aggressive but I'm not trying to antagonise, I'm playing "devil's advocate" and I suppose what I'm getting at is that whatever is given out by the GM can also be taken away by the GM but you have to do the "take" in a manner that is fair and consistent and makes sense for the gameworld and there are so many different ways you can achieve that. Sometimes it takes a little creativity and sometimes it takes a boat-load of imagination but it can be done in a manner that keeps everyone happy.