Assassination of player characters

[Solmyr]

My question pertains mainly to PBEMs. How do people view the possibility
of assassinating player character regents? In my experience it can cause
significant amount of bad feeling all around, especially if the player
was particularly attached to the character. Yet is total immunity to
assassination the only option? Any thoughts on this?

--

Solmyr of the Azure Star
solmyr@kolumbus.fi
World of Enothril website - http://enothril.topcities.com/
The Archmage`s Tower - http://www.geocities.com/solmyr.geo/
"War does not determine who is right. War determines who is left."

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[Green Knight]

Hi

I say go right ahead, although assassination shouldn`t be too easy, nor
too common. Games of Birthright should be mre about domains and
dynasties than single characters. Besides, is a dead regent any worse
than having a plague sweep your realm, or someone trash your army???

BJorn

-----Original Message-----
From: Birthright Roleplaying Game Discussion
[mailto:BIRTHRIGHT-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM] On Behalf Of Solmyr
Sent: 17. desember 2002 22:56
To: BIRTHRIGHT-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
Subject: Assassination of player characters

My question pertains mainly to PBEMs. How do people view the possibility
of assassinating player character regents? In my experience it can cause
significant amount of bad feeling all around, especially if the player
was particularly attached to the character. Yet is total immunity to
assassination the only option? Any thoughts on this?

--

Solmyr of the Azure Star
solmyr@kolumbus.fi
World of Enothril website - http://enothril.topcities.com/
The Archmage`s Tower - http://www.geocities.com/solmyr.geo/
"War does not determine who is right. War determines who is left."

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[ryancaveney]

On Tue, 17 Dec 2002, Bjørn Eian Sørgjerd wrote:

> I say go right ahead, although assassination shouldn`t be too easy,
> nor too common. Games of Birthright should be mre about domains and
> dynasties than single characters.

While I would like to agree, unfortunately assassination is necessarily
at least in part about single characters, and therefore depends upon the
way they are modeled in the FRPG underlying the domain system. Part of
the problem is determining the proper difficulty to assign to the
assassination attempt. It is a contest between the abilities of the
assassin and the preparations of the target, in which magic plays the role
of high technology -- a simple spell like Wizard Lock can completely
defeat even a very high-level assassin who lacks the appropriate magical
tools. Certain regents are so personally powerful that they should be
essentially unkillable except by opponents of the same "epic level"; this
goes not only for awnsheghlien, but also for wizards of decent level --
knocking off Darien Avan ought to be child`s play compared to an attempt
to kill High Mage Aelies, because even though Avan`s domain is much more
powerful, he as a person is pretty weak, comparatively.

> Besides, is a dead regent any worse than having a plague sweep your
> realm, or someone trash your army???

Depends on who the regent is. If a band of superpowerful adventurers got
together and managed to kill the Gorgon, the political repercussions would
be vastly greater than yet another defeat of his latest army of conquest.
I in fact played a wizard regent in one of Solmyr`s BR PBEMs who
participated in an analogous commando raid, which essentially ended the
whole PBEM then and there. Then, of course, there were the views of the
player whose court wizard I was, who said that the way the campaign was
structured, it was basically impossible to defeat this big bad guy on the
domain level -- or that even succeeding at doing so would be irrelevant,
because he could just keep coming back.

This was essentially using an adventure action to play out the effect of
an espionage (assassination) action, which is pretty much the only way I
can see of figuring out whether it works when full-blown D&D magic exists
underneath. The best way I can see to make assassination work in a
domain-only game is to eliminate nearly all concept of regents as people,
and say that holding levels alone determine target number, and a success
causes some loss of regency and an action or two to the victim, and a
greater number of random events for the next few domain turns as things
shake themselves out.


Ryan Caveney

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[Lord Grave]

>
> > Besides, is a dead regent any worse than having a plague sweep your
> > realm, or someone trash your army???
>

Personally, I feel more attached to my character than to my domain.
That`s while I like to play high level characters regardless of their
bloodline power or domain.

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[Lord Grave]

I roleplay this with the character in question.

If someone wants to personally attack an enemy, it is a simple adventure
action that involves sneaking through the palace and the final combat.

If someone wants to locate an assassin, it is Espionage action. However,
this action is used only to locate the assassin. Indeed, individuals who
would be willing to attempt assassination of important figure are very
rare. If assassin is successfully located, I roleplay the combat with
the target character.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Birthright Roleplaying Game Discussion
> [mailto:BIRTHRIGHT-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM] On Behalf Of Solmyr
> Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 10:56 PM
> To: BIRTHRIGHT-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
> Subject: Assassination of player characters
>
>
> My question pertains mainly to PBEMs. How do people view the
> possibility of assassinating player character regents? In my
> experience it can cause significant amount of bad feeling all
> around, especially if the player was particularly attached to
> the character. Yet is total immunity to assassination the
> only option? Any thoughts on this?
>
> --
>
> Solmyr of the Azure Star
> solmyr@kolumbus.fi
> World of Enothril website - http://enothril.topcities.com/
> The Archmage`s Tower - http://www.geocities.com/solmyr.geo/
> "War does not determine who is right. War determines who is left."
>
> ************************************************** ************
> **************
> The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
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> To
> unsubscribe, send email to
> LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
> with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.
>

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[kgauck]

Its nearly impossible to kill someone without getting someone to be able to
work unnoticed on the inside. That means either you need to get one of your
assassins to become a regular inside the court of the potential victim, or
you need to have someone with a grievance (already inside) willing to carry
out the mission. This requires multiple espionage missions. Actually, as
might be becoming apparent, I prefer complex events be modeled by multiple
actions, even if, when all is said and done, the odds remain about 50:50.
The reason is that multiple actions allow for discovery and intervention by
victims and third parties. It costs more to take multiple actions, and more
time is a precious commodity. I`d say that an assasination requires 3
actions for a regent, at minimum. And if the PC were being espionaged, I
wouldn`t keep him totally in the dark, unless the espionage rolls were very
good. I wouldn`t tell him what was up, but I would drop hints like
describing that a known freelance agent was captured and killed himself
before revealing his connections. Makes you wonder, but what is the problem
to uncover? Good espionage actions should be covered by still and
additional action to ideally be discovered instead of the true action. I`m
now up to 4+ actions to kill someone. One to recruit the inside connection,
or to place the insider, one to collect intelligence and formulate a plan
based on collected intelligence, one to perform the assasination, and one to
create a diversion. If someone can do all of that without being discovered,
I`d allow an attempt. I`d also disallow bidding on the assasination action
itself.

Kenneth Gauck
kgauck@mchsi.com

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[geeman]

At 11:55 PM 12/17/2002 +0200, Solmyr wrote:

>My question pertains mainly to PBEMs. How do people view the possibility
>of assassinating player character regents? In my experience it can cause
>significant amount of bad feeling all around, especially if the player
>was particularly attached to the character. Yet is total immunity to
>assassination the only option? Any thoughts on this?

Well, if I were to run a PBeM I`d have a moratorium on assassinations and
on dueling. The characters in the published materials have such a wide
range of character levels that direct conflict is probably not
fair. That`s not to say there would be no "adventure level"
assassinations/duels. They`d just be DM/PBeM Master inspired events rather
than player conflicts.

Gary

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[Peter Lubke]

On Wed, 2002-12-18 at 08:55, Solmyr wrote:
> My question pertains mainly to PBEMs. How do people view the possibility
> of assassinating player character regents? In my experience it can cause
> significant amount of bad feeling all around, especially if the player
> was particularly attached to the character. Yet is total immunity to
> assassination the only option? Any thoughts on this?

PBEMs

Assassination should be perfectly fine.
In a PBEM (in any domain game) the player is playing a Domain not a
Character. The domain endures after the assassination of the regent -
although a domain action may be lost, eventually the heir takes over.

Yes, even the greater awnsheghlien. Rumour has it that the Spider isn`t
the original of that name for example.

Assassination as an attempt to usurp the throne is another matter
entirely. This would require extensive lead-up work, and the targeted
domain would have to be pretty shaky and ready to fall due to a number
of possible events - assassination being but one of them. Assassination
by itself is not enough.

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[irdeggman]

Assassination was always one of the domain actions that I personally despised. The fate of a character down to a single dice roll? I always insisted that the dice roll determined whether or not the opportunity existed for a potentially successful assassination and then role-played the "encounter". Now in a PBEM game this is a different situation and I tend to agree with Peter Lubke. It is possible (and likely) but also requires a substatntial amount of time to set up, hence it is not really a single action but a series of actions. In the Alternity RPG there was a thing called a complex skill check which essentially involved making a series of successful checks in order to obtain the desired result.

[Ariadne]

In the Cerilian History assasination is already practiced: The mage-King El-Arrasi (foundor of the modern Khinasi) was assaninated by the Serpent.

IMO this can be a practice in evil lands, but not common in others. Assasinating PC's might anger them, but they should lern early to fortify their private rooms. My priestess' bedroom for example is protected by serveral "glyph of warding"s, a "Symbol: Stun" and a scroll with a "page guardian" laying there. The complete room is warded by a "forbiddance" spell. So the chance, someone of the "Brotherhood of Khet" can enter (and survive) it to assassinate her, is very small (No one has tried it until now)!