Wishes. Good, bad, ugly, YOU decide.

[Brian]

This is copied in part from another thread, since I'd like to continue the subject, but it would derail the intent of the original thread:

I wasn't going to say anything, because I thought maybe I was the only one who thought it was wrong to take a wish to be an excuse to screw over the players.

I'm going to guess that the origin of this particular disagreement came from the impression that the 'wish' spell was taken to mean, 'you can tell the GM what happens in his game', and the ensuing tips about twisting a wish against the players was just fallout from GMs who felt that their control over the campaign was slipping.

As Dunefar says, this is probably going to be a really rare circumstance.

However, I would imagine that if we all took a step back and looked at how the game is run, there's another way to look at wish spells. Namely, it's a suggestion to the GM from the player. And you know, the great part about wishes is creative interpetation. I'm not talking about screwing over the player, because they don't always deserve to be punished, unless they make a really stupid wish.

Maybe whatever they contacted gives them something totally unexpected, but still useful to the situation? This seems to me to be a generally poorly applied tool of gaming, either way.

[Dracos]

I personally try and stick away from wishes.  I generally don't feel like going through the bother.  I don't see much they add to the game to make them worth the trouble of explaining having them there.  When I do place them, I generally don't worry that much about misuse.  I see it as a failure of the GM if players get their hands on something like that who would abuse it.  Generally, players don't want to wish their game into oblivion or ask for all and sundry.  Even if they do, I'm more likely to either grant the destructive wish ("Rocks fall, everyone dies.  Congratulations.") or just have nothing happen ("The magic power looms there, but seems not to have the power for such a grand change.").  Act like a cornered dog and players will sense it and get frustrated by it.

Generally, don't let idiots get wishes and you won't have to worry about it.  If you've managed to play long enough with players that they are within range of wish spells and you still don't have a feel for them, perhaps you don't quite have the observation skills to BE a good GM.  Sure, sometimes things go unexpectedly... Buuut....

Dracos

[Carthrat]

In my opinion, players should never learn a reusable 'Wish' spell. It's stupid. Genies, rings, or some other limited use item is far better, IMHO.

[Brian]

I think that wishes can be a nice tool to be used while GMing, if used carefully and appropriately.  Having a wish directly solve a major issue is really cheesy, but allowing it to, say, undo something that the PCs failed on before (say, bringing back a character who was killed and could not be brought back any other way, or restoring a semi-valulable magical item, etc.) is a great way to set the PCs at ease with regards to stress from failures.

On the other hand, you also have to be careful not to give them the impression that any mistake they make can be undone with a wish.  I once had a campaign set in a world where there were no ressurection spells, and the PCs were granted a single wish.  So they had to choose, thanks to the benevolence of the goddess they had managed to please, one person to be brought back from the dead.

One of the players had failed his liege lord, the elven king, and knew that the wish could free him from his coma.  Another player had his lover slain (she was a follower of his, and died to save him) and knew that the wish could bring her back.  The two both wanted their wishes granted, but knew only one of them could be a possibility.  Because of this, they ended up deciding that they had to compete to see who would get the wish.

This ended up working rather well (I'll spare you the rest of the details, as they are not salient) and added a bit of depth to the campaign.  On the other hand, this wish was also very carefully worked into the campaign, and the PC's didn't 'end up' with it, they knew they needed it, and it had to be earned.  My experience with how to impliment wishes may be biased, but I enjoyed it, and the players had fun.

On the gripping hand, I've only actually implimented the full 'wish' about five times in a campaign.

I've only run into a single situation where a player of mine actually tried to 'abuse' a wish, and after he told me what he wanted, I had to tell him, "You know, that's entirely out of character from what you have already established of your character."  He realized I was right, and changed his wish to something else which was appropriate for his character.

The other implimentation of wishes were 'minor' wishes.  Those are basically rolls against percentile (d100, set the number to be, say 5 or lower, or whatever you feel like) to see if the wish gets granted.  I also don't tell the PCs that this is going on; as the GM, it usually just means me saying, "Okay, so you blow out the candles on your cake, Luken.  What do you wish for?" or "You toss your three copper pennies into the Fount of First Blessed Water.  The priest standing next to the chimes taps out a short melody with a wooden wand, and bows to you.  What did you wish for?"

This can be fun, especially if it's something trivial, since the PCs have no idea that I might actually impliment their wish later.  The PCs typically ask for things that are trivial, and usually if they ask for anything more, it gets granted in ironic fasion, or not at all.  So Luken _did_ get an army that rose from the earth at his beck and call, and would ravage targets he chose.  It just happened to be an army of rats, and they would only actually ravage things they could eat.  (He sold the flute later.)  Kurell, on the other hand, did not get Artemia's Sixth Shadowed Blade, in any fasion whatsoever.

Of course, milage may vary, but I'm a proponent of fun. ;)

[Edit: Grammar suckage.]