Unpleasantness(Split from Combat Tactics and Strategies) LOCKED

[copeab]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

True, the PCs are all fairly unskilled and are fighting a crack team of VDV and Spetsnaz (thanks GM! ) but the defining feature seems to be that if the PCs stand still they get creamed.

So ... this is like, in a dungeon crawl, a first level party running into balrogs in the first room ...

Frankly, I think the problem is more with the GM than the players.

[ChalkLine]

I'm not bitching about the game, and I also didn't want to the GM's name up up either guys! If I didn't like the game, I'd simply leave.
Kato, if you could edit that I'd appreciate it.

No, what I'm talking about is not if it's fair or not, which is then't the point.

What I'm interested in is how a brittle and non-cohesive group can fend off a well trained and motivated group. It's been done n the past and it should be doable again.

At present we're in a town, the forces are prone to panicking and haven't and particular dedication to the command structure. The OPFOR are running determined probes in to engage and destroy isolated units on the perimeter. The OPFOR are using effecting radio jamming.

So it comes back to this; is it better to fight from a strongpoint knowing the extra protection the position gives you is worth trading for manoeuvre, or do you keep moving and try and keep the enemy unsure of your position long enough for some sort of reserves come up and and help out?

Are these the only options?

[kato13]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

I'm not bitching about the game, and I also didn't want to the GM's name up up either guys! If I didn't like the game, I'd simply leave.
Kato, if you could edit that I'd appreciate it.

In general this would not be something I am comfortable with, but as you were the creator of this thread and therefore I would accept your request to delete the entire thread (if if had not drifted), I considered a miner edit to be acceptable. It also deals with privacy issues which sometimes trumps freedom of information.

As this is something I am not terribly comfortable with, I would hope these requests would be rare.

[Badbru]

Originally Posted by ChalkLine

I'm not bitching about the game

I specifically stated in my post that I didn't think you were, and I was more concerned with posts from others who were targeting our GM.

What I'm interested in is how a brittle and non-cohesive group can fend off a well trained and motivated group. It's been done n the past and it should be doable again.

At present we're in a town, the forces are prone to panicking and haven't and particular dedication to the command structure. The OPFOR are running determined probes in to engage and destroy isolated units on the perimeter. The OPFOR are using effecting radio jamming.

So it comes back to this; is it better to fight from a strongpoint knowing the extra protection the position gives you is worth trading for manoeuvre, or do you keep moving and try and keep the enemy unsure of your position long enough for some sort of reserves come up and and help out?

Are these the only options?

I actually agree with your characters ingame assesment. Keep moving in an urban environment, keep the battle fluid, lots of surprise ambushes and hit and run tactics. LeBlancs last stand has shown us that when our position is fixed our opponent hammers it with everything he has and brick houses don't stand up well to rpg hits in this, and indeed most game systems.
I liken it to FPS games, camping only works untill the other guys work out where you are then they go get a rocket launcher. Every time we've held a building it's been hit hard. Do you recall the Thermobaric round hitting the op building at Nowogrod Brobranski? I think that was even followed up with a 73mm round from a BMP-A. I'm also reminded of the last half hour of Saving Private Ryan. All the stactic positions got hit hard. The only survivors were the guys that stayed on the move. Could do with a P-51 ingame about now though...

[copeab]

Originally Posted by Badbru

I'm in the same pbp game and we haven't been slaughtered in every encounter although we have taken casualties in pretty much every encounter. I think it's a product of two things;1) the game system mechanics, I go, you go, everone gets a turn so everyone gets to shoot at someone and we're mostly outnumbered...

So the PCs are inferior in quantity *and* quality?

This is a natural conclusion to actions current and past players have taken. Unfair to blame the GM on this, and, I do not believe that was Chalklines intention.

These NPCs aren't showing up unless the GM wants them to.

However, so far this sounds like a campaign I would leave and a GM with a style radically opposed to mine. I will now back out of this thread. Any followups should be PMed to me.

[Targan]

I don't play in the game this thread is about and I have no intention of ever playing in any online campaigns like it. If others like that sort of campaign good for them. To each their own. I simply make this point - if I was playing in a campaign and it became apparent that failure would be the only likely outcome for the PCs and I was just biding my time and/or engaging in pointless activities until my PC died, I'd stop playing in that campaign. Real life is depressing enough. Why role play certain failure?

[O'Borg]

Originally Posted by Targan

I don't play in the game this thread is about and I have no intention of ever playing in any online campaigns like it. If others like that sort of campaign good for them. To each their own. I simply make this point - if I was playing in a campaign and it became apparent that failure would be the only likely outcome for the PCs and I was just biding my time and/or engaging in pointless activities until my PC died, I'd stop playing in that campaign. Real life is depressing enough. Why role play certain failure?

I agree and I've done it at least three times, including memorable moments like the CP2020 game where upon being captured aboard a cargo ship, my captors rolled out a highly sophisticated and expensive interrogation machine that they'd just happened to have on board, and a Savage Worlds Tour of Darkness game where my character double flunked a roll to jump a small stream and broke his leg in two places in about the second scene of the game, effectively putting him out the game for a few months.

There's no point in playing a game where the GM derives his pleasure from beating the other players, its a one sided contest and the players can't win.

[Badbru]

Originally Posted by Targan

I don't play in the game this thread is about and I have no intention of ever playing in any online campaigns like it. If others like that sort of campaign good for them. To each their own. I simply make this point - if I was playing in a campaign and it became apparent that failure would be the only likely outcome for the PCs and I was just biding my time and/or engaging in pointless activities until my PC died, I'd stop playing in that campaign. Real life is depressing enough. Why role play certain failure?

Unless you've been to the site it's hosted and read through the In Character thread you really can't make an informed opinion, so I suspect you don't know what you're missing out on. As to your point, the point of the journey is not the destination, but how you get there. We live in the same city, I could be role playing with you but from what I've learned of your campaign it holds very little interest for me. So absolutely, as you say, each to their own.

[kato13]

I think the gaming style that works for a player cold easily be equated to what food they might enjoy. Everyone has their own tastes. I must say from all the games I have heard described here, I have not yet been exposed to one which, to me, would be the equivalent of broccoli XÞ (yuk!)

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by simonmark6

Again, this is not meant as a criticism on the GM, it's a common trope in Twilight, the PCs get involved in a "one in a million" situation where they have, RESET, vital information, whatever and are hunted down by the authorities. I've seen it happen, commonly it's because the GM introduces a big ticket MCGUFFIN but then realises that the PCs can't survive without the plot protection a novelist gives his heroes.

In a gritty Twilight game, you can't give this to the PCs and eventually either everyone dies or it's an anti-climax where the PCs know they didn't survive by their own devices.

As a GM, I've learned this the hard way. Ouch.

And guys, I hope no one took my first post in this thread to be a criticism of the game and/or GM in question. As Chalk said, if I deep down didn't like it, I too would have quit long ago.

In the game's defense, it is more of a cooperatively written T2K novel than a turn-based PbP.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Badbru

Unless you've been to the site it's hosted and read through the In Character thread you really can't make an informed opinion, so I suspect you don't know what you're missing out on. As to your point, the point of the journey is not the destination, but how you get there. We live in the same city, I could be role playing with you but from what I've learned of your campaign it holds very little interest for me. So absolutely, as you say, each to their own.

Nice. So I take it I shouldn't invite you to play in my campaign then? Such a pity.

Sadly you've misunderstood the gist of my post but actually it is my fault because I didn't explain it very well. The content of the campaign described isn't the reason I wouldn't want to play in it. I don't have any interest in playing in online games. The latter point in my post related to any campaign, not just that campaign. The GM in that campaign might be wonderful, the story gritty, fantastic. Good for the GM, good for everyone playing in it. I wasn't seeking to make an informed opinion about that campaign, I don't care about it enough. If everyone is having fun in that campaign that is the whole point and I'm not trying to convince anyone not to play in it.

I was responding to suggestions by some of the posters before me that the PCs had been set up for a fall and were bound to fail. If I recognised that in a campaign I was playing I would stop playing in it. That is all I was saying. Getting passive-aggressively personal, Badbru, and saying "well I wouldn't want to play in your campaign either" seems childish and has irritated the hell out of me.

[kato13]

There are lots of games discussed here that. at first view of them, turned me off. As with many things in life, on this board the first view of something we get is often caused by frustration or anger. This is due to the fact that when things are going well people generally don't talk about them.

Targan I think the first view of your campaign was you lamenting the negative feeling you had when Major Po released small pox into New York. For a time it seemed like you wanted to quit but were only staggering on, out of loyalty to your group. At first blush it seemed like a psychotic spec-ops game infused with magic (the blanket) and an unmotivated almost depressed GM. It did not feel like a game I wanted to be part of.

Later on as you exposed more of your game I started to appreciate the huge level of detail you had invested in the character and NPC development and back story. I also saw the parts of the game which you as a GM really enjoyed.

I think I mentioned this before to you Targan, that at one point I went through every one of your 2000 or so posts at RPGhost in order to build as detailed a dossier as possible for every character you mentioned.

So with time and exposure I went from wanting to stay away from what I initially assumed was a dysfunctional munchkinesque gaming group to a near obsessive interest in the characters and actions of said gaming group.

I think the same thing happened with Chalk's game. The first impression taken by many (including myself to a degree) was that of a sadistic GM hell bent on making his PC's lives miserable. Many of us have lived through that and recoiled a bit from it. But again i think it was a little bit of frustration painting a negative picture of a campaign in which the participants really enjoy themselves.

I think in the end everyone's own campaign ends up being like a family. While someone can complain about their family all the time, if an outsider voices negative opinions, it will often be seen as an attack. Just as we are protective of our families, I can see why people are protective of their games.

As stated many times before, a campaign is a matter of taste, and while we are loyal to our own campaigns, not everyone is going to be able to see it like an insider does. Therefore we must be tolerant and hope that with time understanding grows.

Even with full understanding of a campaign, it may still not be someone's cup of tea. A gamer or GM should however keep open eyes as there will almost always be something conceptually useful in every campaign.

[pmulcahy11b]

All I can say at this point is -- let's not do this again, people! We just survived a friggin flame war!

[Targan]

Fair enough. Sorry. Having a bad day, and I reacted poorly.

[Badbru]

You know Targan, when I woke up the next day I jumped online with the intention of deleting that post of mine that seems to have upset you so much. I thought to myself,that was really stupid letting him get to you like that, and by responding as you did you'll have only derailed the thread yet again. Then I saw a few more posts in the thread and that it was back on track and that you hadn't said anything about my post so I left it up.

It was a bit childish I know. That's also why I allmost deleted it. But you're absolutely right when you say I must have misunderstood you, because I did.

When you said "...I have no intention of ever playing in any online campaigns like it." I read that as a specific attack on the game I enjoy playing in. If you truly meant to say "I have no intention of ever playing in an online game" then that is what you should have said. Adding like it to the end of your sentence means you are specifically referring to the online game I play in.

You then went on to needlessly add, "If other's like that sort of campaign good for them. Each to their own."
Given the context I understood from your previous sentence how was I to interpret this other than: I don't like that campaign. ?

You then went on to make a huge assumption- and you know the thing with assuming don't you ass+u+me - That was that our GM has set all his player's up for failure and that we players are pointlessly wasting our time playing if it's all just predetermined that we're going to be killed off.

Well... how could I react to that?

Then you finnished by saying you'd quit.

So yes, I really really really misunderstood you because what I understood your post to be saying was: I wouldn't play in that game. I don't like that style of campaign, and if I wasn't getting what I wanted from the game I'd quit.
Which to my mind was threadcrapping and trolling, particularly as your post appeared to actually add nothing on topic with regards to tactics.
I was infact so pissed off myself instead of posting what I did I allmost pm'ed Kato to see if I could get your post deleted.

So congratulations to both of us. We've managed to really piss each other off.

For my part in it I'm really sorry it occurred.
I'm really really sorry that Chalklines thread has been twisted, turned, hijacked, and derailed.

What I'm not sorry about is defending the game I play in and the people who also play in it with me. As Kato much more elegantly pointed out, we get very attached to our game.

So Targan can we shake hands and call it even?

I know you have a long history of roleplaying. I know you've served in the reserves. I know you're widely read on matters of military history and tactics. So I invite you to comment on the topic at hand if you have an opinion it. If you don't, because as you stated in your response, you don't care about it enough, then I invite you to reconsider posting in a manner that may be misinterpreted, and I'll endeavour in the future to do the same.


And, just so that I myself am not completely off topic...

Yes the fight is allready underway. We reached the outskirts of the town before light, having suffered a dusk ambush on the way. We waited untill light to move the bulk of our forces in. We really haven't had any time to set up mines, or booby traps etc allthough as a player I've made it clear I wanted to. We have a mortar and some ammunition for it but our radios are being jammed. SSD-1109 does stand for Special Signals Detatchment afterall. We took harrassing sniper fire during the morning and have now lost one fire team from an aggressive probe which we are repelling now, with even more casualties
The situation does indeed look grim but we've been in grim situations before.
Personally I wouldn't have gotten involved in the spy angle re the valuable intel and it occurred ingame before I, Raellus, or Chalkline joined the game.

[kato13]

Sorry guys I had to end this.