As a GM, how would you set up a scenario wherein the questgiver flatly denies the party compensation, yet make it compelling and interactive for the PCs?
In the video game Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, there is a sequence wherein the party visits a town and learns that it is being harassed by raiders. The mayor asks the party to dispatch these raiders. The party asks for compensation. The mayor replies: "Something like that, yes. If you agree to my proposal, I'll consider your request."
The party goes out, dispatches these raiders, and returns to the town. The mayor says, "All I said was that if you scared off those savages, then I would CONSIDER it," and "If you misunderstood my words, then the fault is yours alone. I have done nothing wrong." The mayor flatly denies the party compensation. The townsfolk, for whatever reason, back up the mayor. Clearly, these are a myopic bunch. In response to any umbraged protests, the mayor calls the party just as savage as the raiders. The party ultimately elects to take the loss and move on elsewhere.
Naturally, in a tabletop environment, this would likely play out wildly differently. As a GM, how would you set up such a scenario in a way that would be satisfying for most players?
First off the questgiver always has to be a busty attractive woman. She should not be too strong and should have no guards or guards weak enough that the PCs can handle them. She should be very arrogant and also racist if the PCs are of different races. The PCs must be given the freedom to take any action they deem appropriate.
That's how you set up the scenario in a way that would be very satisfying.
Don't have the Mayor be that myopic c**t, have him instead go "I looked over our food stores and we simply cannot sustain more people, Brenner. If we take them in they'll just end up starving alongside the rest of us. If we're to take them in, we need more sustainable food production. Would you be willing to help us get that, so we can repay you ask you asked?" People being reasonable will go a long way.
Would this be a truthful statement, though, or some sort of half-truth or bluff with the intent of getting the party to do even more work?
It just makes him not so stupid as to mouth off to the bad motherfrickers who just solved the problem. You can then swing it whatever way fits the game.
>make it compelling and interactive for the PCs
You'd need a 2nd raider attack to immediately approach during the discussion depicted in the pic.
This time, the party gets to choose to A) help again but only with an explicit, public declaration of reward (so the major is left with no gray area this time) B) abandon the town this time, or C) cut a deal with the raiders to really stick it to the town.
Not the anon you replied to, but it boils down to "How about you do me a 2nd favor for free so I can repay favor 1?"
I would hope that the party would be smart enough to demand collateral at this point, b/c the major is clearly not capable of negotiating in good faith.
Something that OP left out of this situation is that the request being made of the mayor in the game is to take in some other survivors in the post apocalypse that you've saved. Even the compensation itself is simply in doing the same sort of service.
That's what is alluding to, and ultimately the questgiver being honest about the fact that they'd need a lot of help before they could deliver on any promises from the outset would likely sit better with most players.
In that context, the mayor is asking for charity, rather than making vaguely worded promises and then refusing to follow through. Having him be honest about the lack of ability to do what's being asked means the players deal with the moral dilemma upfront, and gives them the ability to make a counter-offer or work with the questgiver to make things happen.
Having him like just ends up with the players feeling cheated, where they're now more liable to lash out at the mayor or the town they just saved, even if they otherwise may have been fine with saving the town for free if they'd simply been asked nicely.
Provide some foreshadowing that the quest giver is a c**t that might not fulfill his end of the bargain and have another (more likeable) quest giver in the same settlement in case the players get wise and just skip it. If the group does take the job from the second quest giver, reward them normally so that they won't suspect every single npc in your games is out to rip them off. Always have either another quest or an alternate patron on hand.
Players would probably want to take retaliation on something like that, so I'd just focus on making the retaliation satisfying. Make the questgiver annoying and unrepentant enough for punching his face in to feel really good, have him put up enough of a fight to be entertaining without being really able to threaten the players, stuff like that.
>Naturally, in a tabletop environment, this would likely play out wildly differently. As a GM, how would you set up such a scenario in a way that would be satisfying for most players?
I would let it play out exactly as in the game, with the exception of letting it play out differently and for the players to derive pleasure and satisfaction out of whatever path they take themselves when faced with this situation.
Make them unable to pay for whatever reason, and isn't playing talmud word games. Also make sure the party really needs the pay. So they get ripped off, but it's like a tenant who lost his job, it's not really his fault, but also they need the money and will suffer for not getting it.
Creates an impulse to lash out but it wouldn't really be right.
>Creates an impulse to lash out but it wouldn't really be right.
Wouldn't it, though? If you don't pay for services rendered, you're a thief. If you try to weasel out of it, you're a liar and a thief.
Not really. Theft requires intent. If I promise to give you, say, a pallet of canned soups if you work three days, and I have the pallet of soup, but then it gets robbed while I'm not looking, and I can't pay you with it, then...
I didn't really steal from you. Not in any classical sense of the term. It's more like defaulting on a contract. People do it all the time.
Another example, one more common and applicable to the real world than the one I gave, is failing to pay loans, like student debt, car notes, or mortgage, because of job loss. These people aren't thieves, not in the classical sense.
If you promise to pay for something and then renege the moment the job is done and reveal you never had any intention to pay in the first place, you've committed theft. This is literally the only way theft of services can occur, since you can't break into somebody's house and steal 30 hours of labor from under their bed.
Brenner and his men got robbed by the mayor
In that scenario, you've committed fraud, not theft. Also, you can commit theft of services without that, and people usually do so by doing things like running a power cord into the other person's house surreptitiously.
Finally, and most importantly, this thread isn't about the Brenner scenario specifically, but instead about cases where PCs are flatly denied compensation in general, asking how to approach this generally. Consider the question: "As a GM, how would you set up such a scenario in a way that would be satisfying for most players?"
And I told you one way. Make the situation more complex than intentional fraud. Make the one reneging a victim of circumstance, circumstance that emerged after the agreement was made.
Emerging circumstances might help if you want to keep the players from just killing the quest giver. Because I feel like 9 times out of 10 the players will be rightfully pissed off enough that they would do something drastic.
I think that if they make the quest giver a scumbag like the Mayor, then yes, they'll just kill him, and rightfully so.
Also, another way to make it so they don't kill the quest giver is if they make him formidable. Not necessarily impossible to kill, but it wouldn't be easy, and a couple people in the party would go down with him. Add in the quest giver being capricious, paying sometimes but not always, rather than just persistently a piece of shit, and I think that would add some nuance to these scenarios.
Intermittent failures and capricious business partners like that are also a part of real life and I think TTRPG PCs would to a degree react like normal people do: willing to negotiate because they don't want to ruin a good thing but also annoyed that it's sometimes a bad thing
>make him formidable [...] capricious
In my experience, that just makes the party shift their long term goal to 'murder this guy after humiliating him via torture.'
Beating him bloody in front of the town and robbing him (and anyone else involved in hiring them) of saleable goods seems like a relatively reasonable response.
>The mayor says, "All I said was that if you scared off those savages, then I would CONSIDER it," and "If you misunderstood my words, then the fault is yours alone. I have done nothing wrong."
"Well, I don't see anywhere in this contract a promise for me to not kill you alongside the raiders."
*blam*
The likelihood of this kind of response is why I don't really understand just what the frick people like the mayor in OP's example are thinking. If the people of the town can't handle the raiders on their own, why would they piss off people who can amd are therefore at least as formidable as the raiders? It's not just a dick move, it's a really stupid move. I could understand it if the mayor tried to present himself in a sympathetic light, explained that the town just can't spare anything and that they absolutely had to do something about the raider problem, apologized for the deception and then hoped for the best. That'd make sense as a desperate man's desperate course of action. The kind of unapologetic arrogance shown in OP's example almost seems like a deliberate attempt at antagonizing the player, though.
They are counting on the wandering heroes being moral.
If they are counting on these guys being moral wandering heroes, why engage in deception in the first place? Why not just explain the situation? And if they went with deception, why be so damn rude about it afterwards instead of being rightfully apologetic?
>If they are counting on these guys being moral wandering heroes, why engage in deception in the first place? Why not just explain the situation?
Pride, probably. They think they're too good to beg.
In other words, as I said before, it's both a dick move and a stupid move, made because the mayor is both an butthole and an idiot.
that's pretty really stupid thing to bet on, and as that poster pointed out, there is a better way to convince them
They were counting on the wandering heroes being forced to cooperate by the game engine. Which is somewhat harder in a pen and paper RPG than in vidya.
He might be hoping for either them being moral and not turning their guns on the townspeople, or being so weakened from the fight that they're unable to.
Alternatively the Mayer could just be a c**t. If I remember the rest of DoR right he's one of the most unreasonable people in the apocalypse and literally dies because of his own selfishness.
>or being so weakened from the fight that they're unable to.
In other words, what happened in Seven Samurai.
The last three characters I played would’ve unironically immediately killed the guy after asking twice if he’s sure about that
Regardless of consequences, you sign a contract you see it through that’s the fricking merc code
>unironically immediately killed
As opposed to ironically immediately killing?
How do you kill someone ironically?
Grab their arm and use it to punch them to death while saying "stop hitting yourself!"
> How do you kill someone ironically?
You shout “this village will now be saved” and then kill everyone in the village. Then you proclaim a village saving victory.
not him, but sure, it's possible to roleplay ironically
The one time I did that the furry rolled to fireball the village elder's family, and the rest of the party joined in on the slaughter.
That's when you yell "vibe check" before surprise attacking.
I've done it all the time in VtM. Certain games don't engender expectations of reward, other than simple survival or "doing the right thing". My players are pretty vindictive about this sort of thing though and even when they have to take it they immediately start conspiring to eliminate whoever israeliteed them out of compensation.
Well firstly it only really works when the players are in a scenario when completely destroying everything around them daring to resist their godhood as being players is not the rightful meta reaction.
So I'd have to say a race campaign where there a very limited number of your character's species remaining is one such idea.
The interaction could be using very vague language and upon the destruction of a group of raiders or what have you, the leader of said group would deny payment and have his group leave on the grounds of
>They were just thugs, there was no violence, if one got away they will now seek retribution with the rest of their kin, you brought danger upon us that we cannot handle. As per contract I will not reward you and now I have to worry about our young seeing the next dawn as we travel.
Then bring them back later.
>you brought danger
No, the mayor did when he bargained for the mercenaries to act, or else it was already there. Blaming bandit hunters for hunting bandits is completely inaccurate in a factual sense as well as being politically/diplomatically moronic. Moreover the right to violence is absolute and this dumb frick would get his skull caved in by anyone with any dignity for trying to slander them with this kind of incendiary accusation.
Realistically, this town would get looted by the mercenaries for misleading them. Or at least the mayor's stuff.
this basically
I played a campaign years ago where pretty much this exact scenario came up. I wouldn't be surprised if the GM ripped it from this game because it sounds very similar.
Basically it played out exactly like said. We immediately beat the mayor to a pulp. While one of the PC's busied himself knocking out the mayor's teeth "looking for gold fillings", several more of us ransacked the town hall and snagged anything that looked remotely valuable - paintings, candlesticks, I remember we even took their silverware. The townsfolk tried to stop us from leaving but we successfully intimidated them into going back to their homes, lest our sorcerer incinerate them.
We had one character who refused to participate but was sympathetic enough to stand aside and let us collect our compensation.
The DM seemed pretty astonished that we'd do such a thing at first which I found odd - this was about midway through the campaign, our alignments were mostly neutral leaning evil, and the party had established themselves as extremely mercenary in outlook from the get-go. Given the nature of the party it wasn't going to go any other way.
>The DM seemed pretty astonished that we'd do such a thing
My necromancer would have had several new ghouls serving him if he was openly insulted in such a manner. The fact that you guys didn't kill anyone speaks volumes towards your restraint. There would not be any force on Heaven or Earth that could stop us from extracting our payment.
>As a GM, how would you set up such a scenario in a way that would be satisfying for most players?
Just run it and let the players react how they will. The party going brigand like sounds fun as hell to run. The party torching the whole town in anger could lead to all sorts of interesting consequences. The party dedicating themselves to a more discrete means of getting payback would be the players defining their own goals, which is cool to work around.
There's really nothing bad for a game in them reacting 'badly' to something like this, short of the players sperging out at you personally outside the game or something.
Hot take: the Mayor is right. There was no actual promise of anything. Had I been given something about "considering" doing it, I'd chuckle and say I'll "consider" getting rid of the raiders, and then probably just not. The "I'll consider your request if you do X" ploy is old hat.
Cold take: the Mayor is now dead. That's is also ignoring the fact that implied contracts are a thing all over the world. Implying that you could pay for services when you never had the intention or ability can leave you at fault.
At least in the original, the heroes knew they were in it for some rice and mix of personal reasons, none of which was getting a pay day. The villagers are upfront about paying in food and are obviously destitute (they don't eat rice themselves), so there is no deception. The one thing they hide are the weapons taken from murdered rogue soldiers and the farmer's daughter.
Honestly the homosexual sayingnthe mayor is right? Sounds indian, chinese, or African Those clowns are fricking piss easy to negotiate with and hammer out a contract. But because they're uncivilised savages amd morons, they dont understand what contracts ARE, and for cultures that are ALL about MUH HONOUR, are notoriois cheating lying fricking buttholes without any honour at all when it comes to actually fulfilling theor part of the fricking contract ot agreement. Which is why the indian subcontinent, africa and china are just NOT to be done business with. Cannot trust those frickers with anything. Shit cultures.
>Let me build factories and plantations that will destroy your natural resources..
>And then you'll invest in our economy?
>Something like that, yes. If you agree to my proposal, I'll consider your request.
>>And then you'll invest in our economy?
To the tune of billions, yes. China didn't even have a middle class until Western capitalist investment came along
There was no contract, though. The Mayor was engaging in obvious trickery from the get go. The smart move is to just say no at the outset.
Okay street shitter. Back to your cow shit burgers.
Not an argument
>There was no contract.
>See, this guy is probably Indian, Indians don't keep their contracts.
>There was no contract though.
>Godamn indians!
This is why no one takes you people seriously.
>if you are dumb enough to get swindled, the swindler did nothing wrong
ni hao and happy lunar new year
While it's true that the people in question should've clarified things before taking the job, it's pretty clear that the mayor was intentionally misleading with his words. It's true that there was no contract, and in a functional society with laws and people to enforce said laws that would matter, but since the mayor needs to convince independent operatives to take care of his raider problem, I assume we're not talking about such a society. Contract or no, the mayor first intentionally misled a group of people obviously capable of violence and then responded to these people's understandable annoyance with extreme and antagonistic arrogance. No matter how you spin it, it was both a dick move and a stupid move, and in the context that matters a whole lot more than the finer points of contract law.
Of course there wasn't a contract, the place had just gotten smacked with a meteor a couple of weeks ago.
In that world honoring your promises, even implied promises, is far more important than the letter of the old world's laws.
>Hot take: the Mayor is right. There was no actual promise of anything.
Do you suppose he'd still be saying that while we were cutting parts of him off, or would it just purely be screaming by that point?
>Well firstly it only really works when the players are in a scenario when completely destroying everything around them daring to resist their godhood as being players is not the rightful meta reaction.
Why are all your NPCs thieving israeli c**ts?
Make them work for "exposure". Let the quest giver drop very obvious hints that he knows some important and influential people/entities/organization and that the job is basically to prove their worth. After they finished the job he will say he set things in motion and how they will see, but it takes time and so forth.
>Make them work for "exposure".
With how many theater kids in the average rpg community, this is likely to get the questgiver murdered at the outset. Nothing riles up theater kids like the "exposure" meme. Its like Libertarians with Roads or Insurance Agents with Pre-existing conditions.
I mean this comes to bite him in the ass when they just leave the people to their fate who know they won't be able to do anything to survive without help.
these sorts of gotcha moments never end well because they almost never make any sense. Always comes off as the DM trying to invoke some sort of playground logic. Make the quest giver legitimately sympathetic like other anons said in this thread or expect the arrogant bastard to get some kind of comeuppance. If you want him to be a scoundrel at least have him try to run away or give them a bullshit IOU or some other legitimate attempt to worm their way out of responsibility. Just saying "nuh uh you agreed and you're good guys so you won't swing on me" both requires meta knowledge of weird bs like PC alignment or the DM playing chicken with the players saying they won't derail your adventure for ego when you are trying to ego check them for no real reason.
TL;DR: just make it make sense if you make you NPC act like he's somehow untouchable and has the upper hand when he doesn't don't be surprised when he gets some quick payback his way.
>In response to any umbraged protests, the mayor calls the party just as savage as the raiders.
The campaign now focus on ruin their lives for they are without honor. We tell everyone of them having broken a contract even though there was no contract. We go to a regional capital to lobby for their taxes to be raised. We try to get the trade routes change to pass them by, because "they can't keep the roads safe or pay for others to keep it safe."
We are not raiders, we kill you FAR slower.
I used illusory money
Most players would just kill the guy
In an actual game, most players will make their definition of "compensation" far more expanded if they see an NPC try to screw them out of what they feel is a proper reward, even if they decide on just making it a moral victory. Hell, even in the actual scenario from Days of Ruin, Captain Brenner decided to make it a moral victory by taking his sweet time lecturing the mayor and implicitly the citizens hiding behind their mayor that if this guy's willing to betray the people who just risked their lives to save them all than they should watch their backs once the mayor stops pretending to give a damn about them, which ends up costing said mayor massively once he tries the same trick again in kicking out all the soldiers, except this time all of his citizens back Brenner due to having a firmer grasp of the mayor's character and he's left as a pariah of his own people.
But really, I wouldn't try this kind of shit on a whim. Unless it's made very apparent that the quest giver is going to pull this kind of crap on them and the players don't feel they've been appropriately compensated, they either get pissed at the DM or turn murderhobo in return since they're adventurers and they're not going down into basements killing giant rats for the job experience.
If you want him to be a scumbag, he should probably offer the party a meal and the use of his daughters for the night.
>the use of his daughters for the night.
Honestly, while I normally play some flavor of Good character in a game. I also tend to play characters who'd probably accept that kind of offer and fully intend on indulging in it. That said, I'd probably still kick the mayor's ass if he stiffed me.
>GM is a gay and makes unlikable NPC
>Loot goblin party burns the village to the ground and loots what they can
>GM is surprised at the third Geneva Convention violation of the week
>Naturally, in a tabletop environment, this would likely play out wildly differently.
Yeah, because most people would have shot that mayor dead for his bullshit.
Brenner was too good for that world.
They're gonna find out why the last jonson who refused to pay the agreed upon amount got nicknamed "Holster" & had to get a cybernetic spincter implanted. If you're gonna stiff the bag-men, you're better off just killing them instead. And don't miss.
As for details, my shadowrun party did a smash & grab for some prototype Willy Wonka type candy manufacturer by his competition who was a slugworth stand in. We do the job, we get the recipe file, we go to the rendezvous. The lacky of the Jonson refuses to pay up front. Says he will send the money to be delivered in a few hours. Our decker asks him how the frick he knows where we might be in a few hours & calls him on his bullshit. Jonson starts to loose composure, we have a few guys on the rooftops being sentries take out his bodyguards. Then my mage holds him in place with magic & sticks the streets steetsam's shotgun right up his ass. I tell him every hour we don't get paid I pull the trigger. After the first round took his choclate cherry he suddenly had the money. We striped him naked & called Doc Wagon & his boss who was the guy who hired us. Turns out the boss meant to pay us & "holster" was gonna pocket it instead to screw us over. Holster's boss didn't like that & put him on shit jobs after.
As long as you allow the players to respond to it however they like, you can get away with this just fine. NPCs being dicks is never a problem, players not having the agency to respond is.
If your group has a lot of trust in you as a DM and the party leans good, there's a solid chance it will play it out like in Days of Ruin and just call the mayor out on being shitty then move on, assuming there's good reason for this. Otherwise, assume some sort of martial justice.
>how would you set up such a scenario in a way that would be satisfying for most players?
Generally you'd just use a permutation on the Seven Samurai setup. With the right players/party, it might even not end in a massacre. I'm more of a fan of the reward being much smaller/different than what was promised or implied, because players don't like to be cheated, it makes them feel stupid. It's also a bit like leaving a treat out for a dog, saying 'get the treat!', then hitting the dog for getting the treat. You will not be trusted going forward.
The 'Days of Ruin' setup itself never would've worked in most pnp games because it was obvious they were going to be double-crossed and the players generally won't oblige such.
Had this happen in a game once. The party's 'fight addict' member casually wrung the mayor's neck in front of the town council, then asked a random member of them for the payment they'd been promised.
The player (and character) didn't even really need/want the reward, it was more that the character didn't like a weakling thinking he had him over a barrel.
Shoot the mayor so he explodes into blood sausage, then leave.
kino
>If we do this, you'll reward us right?
>oh yeah, sure! I'll throw you a ball!
>alright good
>[party completes task]
>We're done. Now about that ball.
>[questgiver throws a toy ball to them]
>heh nothin' personel dumbass. I did exactly as I said.
This is the part where the party removes the questgiver's head from his shoulders, because that shit is not clever and not a means to get out of an agreement unless the questgiver is some kind of Fae shithead who honors the word of the agreement, not the spirit of it.
At least the mayor and his followers get their comeuppance later in the story.
>Naturally, in a tabletop environment, this would likely play out wildly differently. As a GM, how would you set up such a scenario in a way that would be satisfying for most players?
The entire point of this interaction is to show that Brenner is a man who doesn't belong in the world as it stands. He's essentially a chivalric paladin (and even Gygaxian paladins would summarily execute thieves...) who even in the face of post-apocalyptic anarchy remains true to his principles and the distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Brenner is a good man, who turns the other cheek and does the right thing and protects the weak even at great personal expense, and it ends up getting him killed.
That's why Lin learns from his mistakes and shoots Greyfield in the fricking face when she has the chance.
>That's why Lin learns from his mistakes and shoots Greyfield in the fricking face when she has the chance.
One of my favorite scenes in a game. It's so rare for a hero to just shoot the guy.
>"Y-you wouldn't dare!"
>"Actually, I would. Will wouldn't. Will would try to put you on trial or something. But Will isn't here. Is he?"
>"You wouldn't dare...! Y-you can't...! You can't do this!"
>"You are responsible for the death of Captain Brenner. You killed him, and now I'm going to kill you. Will and the others won't like it... But it's what needs to be done."
>"Stop! I... I... I surrender! I surrender my forces to you! Th-there! You can't hurt me now! I am a prisoner of war! C-C-Captain Brenner would never hurt a prisoner! It's murder! If you kill me, you're as bad as me! You'll be just the same as me!"
>"...Huh. I guess you're right."
>BANG
What I really like about Lin is how self-aware she is. She even recognizes she's too cold and unapproachable to properly succeed Brenner in terms of charisma and mutually agrees with Will to make him a figurehead leader for morale's sake while she's the one actually making the plans and doing the legwork behind the curtain.
You always need dirty soldiers so the clean ones can sleep at night.
>Goin' somewhere Jarek?
That guy also gets his by taking an actual psychopath at his word.
He is not a thief. He never agreed to payment.
Regardless of roleplaying ability or the moral character or motives of the PC's, there are some axioms in player behavior. As rule of thumb, if you deny players reward for their actions they're going to get mad and do stupid shit. Same as if you steal from them or put them in jail or take away their initiative. Expect the PC's to get irrationally angry and possibly violent in-game, and the players at the table annoyed and resentful.
Thinking about how my parties would have handled this, however lawful good my Paladins might have been, there was always one wild card barbarian or fighter in the group who would have torn the guy a new butthole. At that stage you are relying on the cyclops to restrain their wolverines when the players don't really want to
Its a 50/50 whether the players would say "oh well, we got scammed, I guess that's that" or they resort to violence and torch the village on their own.
Just beat up the mayor and move on. I don't think it's necessary to kill him just for being an butthole.
Stop writing your table top game like a video game
This isn't exactly a scenario exclusive to video games. Those kinds of moral tests happen in other forms of media too.
Other forms of media don't have characters with agency beyond that of the author's.
Nor do video games.
This reminds me of the scenario "The God that Crawls" from LotFP. In brief, there's an immortal abomination beneath a town, and the villagers are trying to lure the PCs into the catacombs so they'll get eaten by the titular God, who is the mutated body of a saint.
Generally, when the party escapes, the second half of the scenario begins i.e. When they return to town and kill everyone. In my party's case, we suspected it was a trap, we went ahead because it was where the scenario was going, and when we escaped we eventually herded everyone into the church and burned it down.
Literally no-one in the village was spared, but honestly they brought it upon themselves.
Unfortunately, AW DoR is a very bad example. Becuase it had a euro translation which was good? And an american translation that was just fricking awful. So depending on what version you had most of the story was all fricked up and moronic in one version. I cant remember which.
You contracted a private party of career killers to take care of a violent threat you did not have the means to deal with, and now you think it's a good idea to STIFF them?
Sounds like a decent moral dilema. Do they become riders and attack the dumb villagers, proving them right, or do they walk empty handed but morally correct?
You then either make them crawl back begging for help (vindication) or someone sees their actions and gives them a better quest (direct reward). But the moral dillema is okay. Good guy options are easy when they give the best reward, but in that world no one would do bad guy things. If being righteous is a reward in itself there has to be something tempting on the dark side.
but the morally correct thing is punishing the mayor
And since they don't have the payment, liquidate some of their personal belongings, starting with members of the local government.
Two wrongs LITERALLY don't make a wright.
What two wrongs? Punishing the mayor isn't a wrong.
>tasked to investigate source of restless dead at local graveyard for some petty coin
>find necromance that's raising them
>kill necromancer, take her head as a proof
>sorry we only pay the initially agreed petty coin for scouting the source, no bonus for stopping it
it is what it is
Were they expecting the party to find the source of the undead and then just leave?
Apparently, though why they feel confident cheating the people who braved an army of the living dead and killed the one who created it is perhaps another question.
Killing a necromancer is its own reward.
>The party ultimately elects to take the loss and move on elsewhere.
This is unrealistic both in an RPG and history. If a unit expecting compensation is refused payment they mutiny. Usually this takes the form of taking hostages and demanding payment or straight up sacking and looting the location. This happened with mercenaries, with soldiers, and would happen with adventurers. Why would you expect them to just move on? The only time I'd expect the PCs to move on is if the town has a superior force backing them, but then why did they need the players to begin with?
>Naturally, in a tabletop environment, this would likely play out wildly differently.
>The party ultimately elects to take the loss and move on elsewhere.
you haven't been playing this game for very long, have you?
I'm just curious why anyone would be stupid enough to do that. If I hire a heavily armed gang to solve a problem for me, why would I be dumb enough to assume they'll slink away - tails between their legs - if I point at some technicality?
Like, that's an actively suicidal thing to do. You are effectively saying "Yes, please rape, rob and murder me" when it would simply be less of a hassle to pay up.
You would have to be REALLY stupid to do that. Like, is the thought process "Surely, these are strongly moral people who won't plunder us for pissing them off?"
Because we've already established they kill for money. Just putting that out there.
The town LITERALLY wants to kill the weakened party getting back...
I have altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
In Shadowrun, having the Johnson cross you is a story as old as time, though it is always bad form. This is usually done if the Johnson, for whatever reason, identifies the risk of the group successfully going after him as lower than the price he owes them. Usually because they presented themselves as incompetent.
You can apply that to any setting, though, and the players have two choices then:
>Giving the employer a friendly reminder that he made a miscalculation with that group, typically consisting of the employer getting a good beating or worse
>Accept that they've been played for a fool
However, in any scenario, I wouldn't make this a habit. Players remember and you have to live with the fact that, after that, they're going to be more suspicious.
Instead of straight-up stiffing the PCs, I'd have the quest-giver try to weasel his way out of the situation by offering an alternative and/or delayed payment. "Look, I know I said I'd pay you, but I don't have that kind of money right now. But I do have this treasure map showing the location of X. A-and if you come back after the harvest is done I should have the money as well." Where X should be something that at least one of the party members would be very interested in, preferably far away.
This is a reasonably good way to do it. It works better if that employer has been dependable previously.
You can't, because the correct answer in this scenario is to now beat the piss out of the questgiver, and take what the PC's deem as an equivalent payment of their own choosing. They's be completely in the moral right to do so, too.