How do you do genies, Veeky Forums? What sorts of wishes are within their power to grant? Are they tricksters?

How do you do genies, Veeky Forums? What sorts of wishes are within their power to grant? Are they tricksters?

Giving genie wishes to the PCs is never a good idea OP.

I mean, traditionally, they were just powerful beings who operated on common sense conventions. If you tried to get around things like that, they would probably call you insolent and turn you into a dog or something.

A genie is a powerful elemental being bound by magic to a container (Lamp, pot, jug, whatever). They are proud creatures that loathe being controlled or bound, and they'll help people who free them, out of gratitude. But again, they are proud as FUCK, and if you treat one as a servant or try to rules lawyer its gratitude, it can and will go out of its way to fuck with you and make your life hell. If you get a Genie, be reasonable, be straightforward, and be respectful, and maybe it'll grant your wildest dreams. Or you could fuck up and end up a crippled, deformed beggar in the court of genies.

Hm, do you do the limited wishes thing or the lifelong service thing? I mean, after all, what's one human lifetime to an immortal?

i wanna impregnate shantae

Depends on the genie and the circumstances, but it's very rare that a genie will agree to something like Disney's Aladdin, because that's playing at being a servant and thus demeaning. More common is "Call on me when you need my help and I will come", letting the genie do his own thing in the meantime.

They are highly powerful machine spirits of age of strife. Confined in small lamp-like containers, it can create many things out from thin air (although it's limited by size of things) but after that, they falling apart.
In short, a one shot STC wich can make from a knife to a land-raider from mere seconds and out of nothing.

>>In short, a one shot STC wich can make from a knife to a land-raider from mere seconds and out of nothing.
>Guardsman finds a LAMP
>Turns it on by accident and asks it to make him a new lighter because he really needs a sandpaper cigarette right now
>Gets a gold plated fusion-torch lighter that never needs refueling
>Guardsman is discovered dead soon after, clubbed to death by mechadendrites
>Admech claim the body for servitor parts, and they take the lighter as well.
>He never did get to enjoy his sandpaper cigarette

>I mean, traditionally, they were just powerful beings who operated on common sense conventions. If you tried to get around things like that, they would probably call you insolent and turn you into a dog or something.

Yeah, people seem to have this idea that the genie "owes" you three wishes, and nobody seems to get that the genie is just trying to be a solid dude and pay you back for springing him.

The genies of my setting are ancient holograms left from the advanced Gnome civilisation that was destroyed in a catastrophe that froze their old continent. They were provided with an AI and a vast database and were used chiefly for education and instruction. Although they do not, in fact, grant wishes, their vast knowledge, of advanced technology in particular, would help anyone who found a hololamp to fulfil their deepest wishes.

>How do you do genies, Veeky Forums?
A race of not!premongolarabs
>What sorts of wishes are within their power to grant?
depends on a genie type
>Are they tricksters?
yes

>what wishes are within their power to grant
Everything you asked for and nothing you wanted.
>are they tricksters?
No, just superbeings with an odd morality and caring little for humans in general.

Would you elaborate a bit, please?

There's one thing you're ignoring: if all the genies are like that, nobody would give a shit about them.

>he didn't wish for it

>buy a new pot
>wow, that's dirty
>rub rub
>"I am the genie of the pot! What is your wish mortal?"
>"Uh, I don't want one?"
>"You dare reject my reciprocity? Wish, mortal, or be purged!"

Sometimes, you just don't have a choice.

Typically, I have a, "word of the wish," rule in place, but if you're tricky enough to word it properly, or you're willing to do something for the genie, they'll go for the spirit of it if it would benefit you.

You say, "I wish for a pile of treasure as tall as I am," and you'll get it, in awesome fashion as gold, gems, and other loot pour through a hole, piling up until it gets to your height, but you don't know where it came from, and it's just as likely to have come from the bottom of a dungeon as it is to have come from the treasury of a king who would otherwise have been friendly.

If you say, "the dungeon we're out to explore supposedly contains a king's worth of treasure and valuables; I wish we had it," and every coin, gem, and item will appear, spread out before you, and the only ones that get mad over it are the more intelligent monsters inside that dungeon that just had their stuff swiped. Well, that and the players in most games, because they get half Xp for going with the option that didn't put themselves in danger.

>I know you guys are all assholes anyway, so I wish to have a carrot.

Ehh I just use them as powerful elemental spirits of the golden continent that operate on standard conventional wisdom and are sly enough to fuck you if you don't 100% iron out your deal with them.

>What sorts of wishes are within their power to grant?
Anything they're physically capable of doing.

Free them within 100 years, and they serve you for life.
Free them within 200 years, and they serve you until you acquire great wealth.
Free them within 300 years, and they undertake 3 tasks on your behalf.
Free them after that, and they let you pick how they'll kill you.

Thats because they got blended into early Christian and Pagan myths about devils and sprites. If you ever hear stories about leprechauns you get the same logic abusing bullshit.

What would LAMP be an acronym for?

>not using the first wish to know what the optimal wish for your personal benefit in all fields would be, the second wish to wish for that, and the third wish to free them

But you already freed them with your second wish?

Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP.

When presented with a genie, my first thought is always to ask, "hey, since you can't use your powers for yourself, would you be willing to trade one no strings attached wish for me using another of the two for your benefit and not using the third?"

c

My assumption is it has to do with the Disney Aladdin movie, where that is how it works.

Technically I have to accept that

That's easy, the genie could see that he is saying "Splork" In a context other than wishes, along the lines of the second wish. Thereby, he could say the rules apply. Or if he's annoyed, he could just kill him infinitely in a manner that makes a sound that sounds like "Splork", which is easier than you'd think.

Traditionally the genie would probably have been owned by whoever trapped it, who then later died or lost track of the genie's vessel(not always a lamp) when it was stolen. The genie wants out, but can't do it until they've fulfilled some kind of term or are released from service, which requires a wish be made by someone else to do it, because the genie can't use their wishes for themselves or other members of their species and the person that found them isn't the one that captured them.

They're not stupid so don't wear out your welcome. Take the wish and use it for something reasonable and they'll give you what you wanted before fucking off to their astral mansion filled with magical hookers. Wish for something stupid and they'll twist the wish around to fuck you over.

>"Thank you for releasing me. For this I will grant you three wishes."
>"I wish for infinite wishes!"
>"I have 3 fucking spell slots for this shit man. Have you never been to school? I can't just make this into a perpetual motion machine and churn out wishes forever. Now we can either sit here all day and argue about why summoning more angry genies won't help you out or you can get on with this shit and just get to magicing up endless wealth like the last eight mortals ended up doing."

How it actually would have happened

>I wish that the word 'splork' were interchangeable with the word "wish"
>I wish your initial injunction pertained only to the the concept of wishing paired with the word 'wish' as opposed to the concept itself, which you were merely signifying with that word
>Both wishes are granted
>I splork for infinite splorks
>Denied. You have one wish remaining.

>wish to free the genie
>THERE MUST ALWAYS BE A GENIE OF THE LAMP
>get turned into a genie and sucked into the lamp

How mad would you be?

Depends on if the lamp has a decent internet connection. Because really it's not that huge a change from my current standard of living otherwise.

>The combination of your first and second wish means that you also splorked that my first injunction pertained to the concept of splorking paired with the word splork.

>But the word "particular" specifies.

>Guess what, there's no genie appellate court, and textual, contextual and purposive all go against you motherfucker.

>find ring of three wishes
>wish for ultimate power
>forever GM gives a smug grin
>asks to see your character sheet
>...
>doesn't return your sheet
>passes you his notes
>passes you his screen

I am now tempted to try this out in my whimsical fairy tale game

>Muslim supernaturals created from smokeless fire
I think you know what to do.

This

I also liked the X-files genie, where she didn't twist wishes malevolently, it's just that most wishes are stupid.
ie: "Peace on Earth" removes everyone else from the planet, because that's easier than fundamentally changing the nature of human beings.

Imagine this

Mixed with this

>I also liked the X-files genie, where she didn't twist wishes malevolently, it's just that most wishes are stupid.

Fuck you. I just watched that episode recently and it was the worst example of 'dur hur be careful wat u wish fur!!?!!11!' bullshit I've ever seen. I hated almost every second of it.

Then the episode backs off at the end with all its bullshit fuckery just to have a happy ending? Fuck you.

I haven't ever done genies before. If I ever decided to include them, however, I'd probably base them do as normally malevolent of indifferent creatures that only grant wishes because they've been captured and have some sort of spell placed upon them that forces them to. There would not be any limit on how many wishes they could fulfill, but what kind of wishes they can fulfill would depend on how powerful the particular genie is.

They would likely only be able to grant material wishes. Conjuring forth cups of gold and allowing his owner to travel instantaneously to other parts of the world (or granting him a flying carpet), that sort of thing. They wouldn't be able to create life or change people's opinions or give their owner superpowers (other than the superpower of owning a genie).

I'm also not a big fan of them intentionally misinterpreting wishes as that feels more like the lazy writers excuse for why the genie doesn't automatically solve all problems the protagonist has. Rather I would prefer it if the owner of the genie came to the conclusion that having his wishes granted to him doesn't make him any happier than he was befor, that his desires and wants are simply replaced by new ones every time and that the journey and adventure is more important than the end.