Hostage

Because not everything needs to end in a fight user. The locals want some sort of insurance that you're not going to rob their ancestral burial grounds. If you aren't going to cooperate with them, why should they cooperate with you? Because you'll beat them up if they don't?

I get this is just a power fantasy for both sides but still, a bit of diplomacy never hurt anyone.

confirmed murderhobo

These are drow user. Drow matrons are fucking terrifying.

user, you must understand, in the hypothetical setting this is taking place, the locals aren't worth saving. This is a classic that DM situation where out of ass bullshittery is pulled and then justified with some wishy washy cultural relativism. Always look out for DMs who pull this stunt, they will often want to take the player away for a "private session" of 1 on 1 roleplay, possibly diceless.

Well then I guess they're tombs can just stay filled with zombies! Not my problem your dear or grampap is gonna be turned into a reverent if you're gonna be such a bitch about it.

"Okay, enjoy your curse, bye."

What?

Plot twist the locals are bluffing and trying to use reverse psychology, they actually want the players to take the ancestral jewels cause they're cursed and shit.

I dont tolerate any hindrance to my power fantasies, step aside

>Leave your handsome bard with me as hostage
>The bard has already left the party and is waiting in the hostage-takers bedroom.

I have a home, it's filled with treasure and servants who maintain it. I'm just rarely there on account of all the murdering I gotta do.

>Diplomacy
>Let me keep one of your friends as a hostage, without offering you any assurances of their safety or comfort, while you solve my problem.
For creatures that try to start with demands like that, both insulting and crippling to the party (to say nothing of the implications for choosing the pretty one rather than the highest value ransom), is perfectly reasonable to treat them with similar distrust and disdain.

There are players like this, who will try and challenge any form of authority. It's fun when they butt up against authority that is just plain stronger than them.

Honestly one of the most fun moments as a GM is player's realizations that they're in over their heads.

Uh...no? Our party works best as a cohesive whole. We're not going to steal anything, but if you really don't trust us, then I guess you can clear out your own crypts.

either these drow matrons are strong enough to clean up their own shit at which point we can just leave with our cleric or else they really should not be talking shit to people who're about to clean out a haunted tomb they don't even try to get near

this thread is giving me flashbacks to my campaign where all the players had hard ons for their power fantasy

>either these drow matrons are strong enough to clean up their own shit
They're nobles. I mean likely you're capable of doing a lot of things, but pay others to do it.

>Can't leave one of the party with you, we'll need them in the crypts with us, but I understand your concerns. Here's a shoe as collateral.

I'm not saying the OP wasn't poorly thought out or anything, but most of these parties won't give a shot at diplomacy, they just want to murder things.

diplomacy has its uses, negotiating treaties with hostile armies, making friends with kings and particularly powerful dukes, establishing long term relations with people that actually have some future relevance or even something as simple as getting a better price for some of the more expensive gear we need.

But when some jackasses who actually need your help try to make an asinine demand that's either the worst attempt at a doublecross ever or else just plain ol' counterproductive to the entire situation they better have something tangible to back up their level of idiocy.

I would think you would want to diplomize with them, to me the worse case scenario is that they let you into the dungeon then seal it back up because they feel insulted.

I'd say having some equipment with you capable of bypassing certain obstructions is a fairly standard part of adventuring gear

>Your gods are the kind of shit we kill for amusement.
0/10 wouldn't play with or run games for.

That DM sets up a situation to isolate one player for a little erpg.
Also, That DM likes to contrive situations to fuck with the players, then come up with "cultural" reasons that the NPCs are obstructional cockmongers.

Try a less poorly thought out angle.
If the NPC is unreasonable, there is no reason for the players to be otherwise.
Also, you don't like murder hobos, don't run game for them.

>Pretending you've ever run or played in a game.
Oh user, most of Veeky Forums has never and will never game.

Yeah, fuck that, we kill everyone. Just. To. Be. Sure.

>Well then I guess they're tombs can just stay filled with zombies!
They will just get someone else to do it.

>Hire someone for contractor work
>Contractors in this shithole are known to randomly steal shit from houses they are working on
>I'll pay you after I can make sure you didn't take anything from me
>LOL than I guess your house will never be worked on

What makes you think you are so special?

Deal. Any opportunity to ditch the damn DMPC is good in my book.

You gave them the mission, fuckhead. You don't hire people and tell the details of the job later, that's not how it works. Now they will either tell you to fuck off, or they will do the job on their own terms. Also this kind of shit looks like something wood elves would try to pull off, and fuck those guys.
Oh, and fuck your shitty god too, if he allows that sort of shit, he sound like a weak faggot.

>Hire someone for contractor work
>Contractors in this shithole are known to randomly steal shit from houses they are working on
>We murderous rapists will keep one of your workers with us, completely alone and out of contact so I can make sure you didn't take anything from me
>Id rather get my shit stolen than my shit hole stolen

>They will just get someone else to do it.
It's their problem, not the players'.
>What makes you think you are so special?
They're not, but no one in their right mind would accept that job offer.

Ok?
See you in a few hours bro.

I literally cannot see why most of you are fussing about this outside leaving a party member out of the fun.

No, we need all the members of our party. He comes with us, or we don't do the job. Would you ask a section to leave the medic behind?

Also, we're petty looters.

Alright, we'll leave an NPC with them and be back to pick them up once the undead are cleared out.

>We murderous rapists will keep one of your workers with us
Why are you working for murderous rapists?

Ask OP.

THEY ARE THE PLAYERS

THE ONLY CHARACTERS THAT SHOULD BE SOLVING MAJOR PROBLEMS UNLESS YOU'RE A SHIT DM WHO HAS SHIT DMPCS SOLVE THINGS

THAT MAKES THEM SPECIAL COCKGOBLIN

IT'S LITERALLY THE REASON THOSE FUCKING NPC CUNTS EXIST

Yes I mad at railroads

Why would we leave behind the cleric who may be able to lull the undead back into rest? Instead you have the wizard who'll use the bodies as meatshields just walk in there unabated.

>I'll pay you after I can make sure you didn't take anything from me
>I'll also hold one of the essential members of your group, who you need to do the job I hired you for, at gunpoint until you're back
>Possibly rape them too

Fucking flakes thinking they're special, am I right?

>If you don't bow to each unreasonable demand foisted onto you buy every dickhead NPC you encounter then you're just a murderhoboing autist who can't roleplay.

I hate this meme where the only way you can't be a murderhobo is if you make yourself beholden to random jackasses trying to extort you. Especially when they aren't even in a position where they have any kind of clout over the party.

Not to mention this may very well be the prelude to an ambush where they pre-emptively take out a party member and wait for the rest to be exhausted from the dungeon or when they come back sans party member that can heal them up and are pretty beat up they'll suddenly try to alter the deal.

Seriously any intelligent person would just tell them to go fuck themselves at this point.

And then there's the meta-argument that forcing a player to not participate in what may very well be the better part of a session is a gigantic dick move.

You want a hostage to make sure we don't loot the tomb. However, we do not wish to split the party.

Thus, I propose a logical compromise: You will be our hostage. We will drag your ass around the tomb, and you can make sure we don't take anything beyond that which is fair payment for our services. Unless you'd like to just let us do our fucking job here.

>Major point in RPGs is that everyone is there for a good time.
>"Why is everyone so riled up about leaving someone out of the good time jeez?"

user, come on now.

Worst kind of player. Big man pushing around npcs.

in this case they're justified
these npc's are terrible people, they're the sort of jackass that'd sue a fireman for busting down their door in an attempt to save their arses

The request in itself is insulting, impractical, and impugns upon the character of people who are objectively trying to help clear out some evil.

That DM detected.

>You want to take the cleric? The cleric we need to assist in destroying the undead?

This.

They're not taking our shaman/priest/druid/cleric/whatever religious holy man we have.

I'd have absolutely no problem with them checking our pockets and bags before and after we went into the tomb if they want to make sure we didn't steal anything, but they're not splitting up the party.

This is probably why you have a Cursed Undead problem in the first place, better yet; why can't we get a local religious man or crypt keeper to escort us?
I want to speak to this tomb's manager!!!

As opposed to the shitty NPC trying to push around the party?

If the GM wants to try to browbeat players with NPCs then those NPCs better have something to back it up. I'll stand for getting pushed around by someone who is very clearly someone I shouldn't fuck with. But when some random fag starts making petty, insulting, or outrageous demands of me for no reason and the GM gets pissy when I don't bite then it's not my problem.

Can you read?
Are you dyslexic?
Does my sentence dance around in your head, words not quite setting in?

Are you a hoholala queerfaggot?

>"Okay, enjoy your curse, bye."

I GM. This is the response I would expect, and is the one I would give as a player.

given that the main goal is for everyone to have fun, any mechanic or instance that arbitrarily denies them this for a prolonged period is terrible session design

No, you're right in what you're saying there. The original scenario is not something to stand for but I hate players acting like bad asses who are too cool to take shit from anyone.

Maybe, but I'm a DM for ten years now, seven of then before knowing Veeky Forums and I had my fill with 'godslayer' players.

You sound like the type of GM who thinks players "need to be taught a lesson" whenever things start going right for them.

Let the players be big dick cool guys for once. They have more fun when the world isn't out to get them.

Besides, if some nosebleed NPC pulls shit like the OP then he deserves to get knocked down a peg.

I'm sure this sounded good in your head, but you really should've read over it a few times before posting. I laughed out loud after just the first sentence.

Never start any threat with "pssh.... we kill gods for fun.... kid...."

unless its a very silly game where everyone is trying to be the ultimate edgelord

>not playing an edgelord at all times
>even in lighthearted games
>specially in lighthearted games

You're only a true edgelord if you take yourself seriously

To the outside observer there might be little difference between being genuine and being convincingly ironic.

This brings up another question.
How do you let your players be big dick cool guys?

Give us one good reason we shouldn't walk off right now and let you deal with your own well-deserved undead and curses. If you need someone to do for you something you were too much of pussies to do yourselves, you don't get to make demands like that. You ugly purple shits.

Could be the speaker in question has enough ranks in Knowledge (magical shit) to realize their god is a wizard who doesn't have enough power to do more than convince some yokels that he's a god.

This thread reminds of another similar one. The OP presented a scenario where the party kills a dragon and then out of nowhere the dragon's child and the child's human father show up demanding the dragon's treasure as her inheritance.

Much like this thread, it featured a handful of morons whinging about all the people who chose the objectively correct answer. Which was telling the kid to fuck off.

What do you mean out of nowhere? They were just at the grocery store, you knob! Getting delicious gnoll steaks for the "little" missus to cook with her flaming breath.

What, you think some dude and his midget friend are conspiring to steal a dragons treasure by hiding in the lair and waiting for the exact moment adventurers do all the hard work to jump out and claim the reward?

I think the OP's scenario was the child and her dad teleported in. The child was conspicuously half-dragon, going by the OP's fetish-y dragon loli image.

I couldn't believe how many bleeding hearts in this thread decided they actually would start divvying out the group's treasure to this kid. Which is to say I couldn't believe anyone would actually fall for the GM's transparent dual attempt at "teaching the players a lesson" and jewing them out of hard-earned treasure.

No, obviously the GM was trying to have the PCs teach the kid that dragons do not inherit gold, they work for it. You gotta earn, kid. Life doesn't just hand you shit.

The cycle of treasure is dragon raids kingdom, burns down peasants, raids merchants/tax collectors/castle treasuries (anything with an appreciable amount of gold to trigger its treasure sense), and eat princesses. Adventurers later arrive and their hard work is defeating the dragon and spending that gold often unwisely flooding in back into kingdoms through drinking and debauchery, thus allowing for gold to circulate back into the next dragon's claws.

Don't be a lazy asshole who tries to "inherit" a horde. That's as bad as being one of those dickass dragons who buries himself in the mountains and waits for the dwarves to dig too deep and then claims their riches for itself. Lazy bastard.

>the ancient evils awoken when the Dwarves dig too greedily are the NEETs of the monster world.

Whatever, man. We've got other jobs we can take. There was that thing in the sewer back in Gnomington that they wanted us to take care of. Either that or that Sphinx which we completely forgot about in the middle of the desert.

So, where do you guys want to go? I'll prep the teleport.

Obviously you've been hired by a cult who is trying to trick you into giving up your best weapon against the dead and feed you to whatever horrors lurk within. If you proceed to far the cult will then turn this into a real hostage situation by threatening to kill the party member unless you drop your weapons.

Classic evil cult.

Why don't you just send one of your men with us instead?

Basically what I would do. Propose something else as a hostage?

> "hold onto my sword of demon slaying. Nobody else within a week's travel can afford what it's worth, and I don't need it to fight undead. The sword's worth more than anything from the tombs I could easily conceal."

>"Upon my honour as [LG], I will not steal from your ancestral tombs."

>"So we don't get any of the treasure from the cursed tomb? Consider my fee increased by 40%."

> "He stays, but we're taking you into the tomb with us to ensure the safety of our friend. Can't be too careful these days.

> "The Warlock can stay. Careful, she gets anxious if she can't sacrifice to the Outer Gods. You guys keep soul gems on you, right? It's just that if we let her carry them she offers them all at once, and I swore to Tyr I'd never clean up a mess like that again."

That could prove a liability of a different sort, and very easily.

I'm more interested in how they think this hostage thing is supposed to play out because even if they have a hostage they STILL need a way to check to make sure you didn't rob the place blind.

I have no problem with OP's scenario, as such, because it's at least believable that a bunch of dumbasses in over their heads (otherwise they would have been able to take care of the issue themselves anyway) because it's clear they didn't think this through.

Personally I'd love it if the place was cursed that whomsoever removes anything of value from this tomb shall unleash an unholy plague of undead, so five days after the PCs rob the place blind the priests or townsfolk or whoever oversee the place discover they've got a fresh new back of undead after you clear the place out.

good post

The whole premise is fatally flawed. They're basically relying on the players because it's a problem they can't handle themselves, so what the hell makes them think they can stop the players, hostage or not, if you decide to beat the shit out of them? In other words they are STILL relying on the good will and nature of the players and trusting you not to push their shit in and do what you want anyway, so really the whole hostage scenario is a pointless waste of time.

Really this quest isn't about the crypt at all, it's about teaching these peasants that you don't try to hire heavily armed and powerful people and then dick around with them. Therefore the only sensible thing to do is to march the village elders or whoever into the cursed crypt, lock them in with the undead, then torch the surrounding countryside, salt their farms, take a dump in the town well, and ride off into the sunset with their comely daughters/sons. Thus increasing the WIS score of the locals just that tiniest bit so the survivors know better next time.

OP here, my autism is wordiness so most of my threads don't pick up--this one did, but largely due to lack of exposition.

Originally it was the party asking for permission to enter the crypt and a relatively indifferent King offering them a compromise that allowed them to kill monsters but prevent looting.

I got the idea from wives kept by wealthy people one owes debts to in India, but couldn't find a simple explanation for why an adventurer had their spouse with them and it felt too big a leap to expect a typical party would have a married couple in it.

Also,
>beautiful/handsome,
it's kind of supposed to imply he's going to try to seduce their party member whilst the others descend and fight.

The implication was that the local religion was built on a false divinity. Not that we actually kill divinities.
If the royalty had divine rights, they wouldn't be having problems with undead. Undead are very easy for the divinely empowered to deal with. As are curses for that matter.

Also...
Fucking confirmed for DM trying to get some hanky time.

>I got the idea from wives kept by wealthy people one owes debts to in India
So you got your idea from literal savages? And it's still completely incomparable.
>people one owes debts
But the players don't owe shit to those idiots, they were hired to do the job. And the savages can't even clear it themselves, so it implies, that the players are those in position of power, so there is even less reason to comply.
>it's kind of supposed to imply he's going to try to seduce
Another reason to tell the paying party to fuck off

Oh, and fuck you too, OP.

>literal savages
You know you have your own board, right?
>>>/pol
>But the players don't owe shit to those idiots, they were hired to do the job
Once more, while not initially conveyed either way, the implication is meant to be their quest took them to this crypt but the owners of the crypt were not the ones who hired them.

Additionally, while it's true they owed no debts, I specify in a follow-up the tradition is meant to deal with trespassing armies--imagine if the Norwegian King had sent his wife to stay in the Danish court during his invasion of Poland. That's not really how it worked out, but then this is a board for role playing games famalam, I'm not going for historical accuracy.
>Another reason to tell the paying party to fuck off
They're not the paying party but, yet, I doubt most parties would agree to such terms--I didn't set out to "highlight an amicable and widely accepted arrangement."

>Oh, and fuck you too, OP.
Hey if you're pic-related hot jus'sliiiide into muh DMs boi.

>You know you have your own board, right?
>implying I'm wrong
>implying I'm not a crossboarder scum
And even if your reasoning was like that, it's still fucking retarded to compare those circumstances.

>implying I'm wrong
You hear a word associated with brown people and meme "savages," so yes, you are.

>comparing those circumstances
I very loosely drew the concept of holding a person in escrow from this tangential source. No direct comparison was intended, I'm sorry if that's how it comes off, t'was merely a hypothetical.

>associated with brown people
Indians. I'm not racist.
>I'm sorry if that's how it comes off
Should've worded it better.

Feel free to spend as long a time you want with the bard as you want. We mean it.

>Indians. I'm not racist.
Alright, so Indian civilizations were "a member of a people regarded as primitive and uncivilized"? And not on the basis of race, so something about their civilizations was... uncivilized? I understand the whole "they didn't have Guns, Germs, or Steel!" argument but what's so bad about them compared with contemporary medieval societies?

>Should've worded it better.
Yeah most of my posts don't gain traction due to people hating the way I write, it's unfortunate.

Oy vey.

Not him but how can you compare ancient society and culture that still exists to this day to something that is no longer around and then ask how they are any better than the other? I would like to hope that a current day society or culture is better than what we used to have but if you compare a modern day society with one that is hundreds of years old and they come out even then the difference is pretty obvious.
long story short I guess They are considered uncivilized because civilization is judged and graded by quality of life,technology,infrastructure,education and so on and so forth and India lacks alot of what can be considered civilized and modern to this day.

DESIGNATED. SHITTING. STREETS.
Also cast system, and that's just the tip.

>just the tip
alright now hold on was that some sort of euphemism because I feel like all of your posts are suspiciously homosexual in nature

The origin and practice comes from an era where they were comparatively amongst the most civilized places in the world. Obviously they went down hill at some point, but so did the Romans familarious.

>memes
As I indeed originally suspected, u jus meemin boi.

Yeah, kind of arousing me ngL.

are you homophobic?