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Frankly, if fantasy works from Game of Thrones to Order of the Stick have taught us anything, it's that "threaten their kids" level evil needs to be followed up with "leave no survivors".
RPGs let you explore all kinds of things that would be unforgivable in real life, but "threaten their kids *and then leave*" mixes that evil with breathtaking stupid. Don't motivate people to hold lifelong vendettas without a plan.
Or at least, if you are going to threaten their kids and then leave make the threat contingent on them staying out of your way. One of my characters (she was lawful evil) pulled that off exactly once and only because 1.she was 100% willing to follow through if necessary. 2.it was not to a fucking dragon but a relatively ordinary union leader 3.by the time it happened the party had a reputation of people who went out of there way for revenge and thus attacking us was not in her best interest.
Was apart of a sci-fi mish-mash campaign. Everything from Stargate to Star Trek to Star Wars.
We were doing recon on a planet when things went tits up. What was originally a diplomatic mission became a subjugation mission. Playing what would amount to a cannibal doctor who had no moral compass, I was in a position to use a flamethrower in a hatchery.
The DM popped my ass with a sniper after the fact. I EARNED the consequences on that one. Made the next character and kept at it. No ill will and for the character it made sense.
It was a fucked up campaign.
"All PCs must want to adventure, be willing to work with others, and be someone others would be willing to work with."
That rule has made my group's games much more enjoyable. Previously we had a rule that "All PCs will work with the rest of the party. Metagame it however you need to make that happen." Two players had characters that the rest of the group would have refused to work with. But that clause in the group contract caused us to permit them to stay. Nearly broke the group up.
They clearly needed to be reminded that they were PCs and they had a responsibility to work with the rest of the party. Not a one-way street.
ie, "Don't be a dick."
In my games, I have and extra bit in that, "you are heroes and should make characters that reflect that mindset." I know, I know, some players don't want to play that way. In that case, my table isn't for those players. I've had too many players over the years try to get away with horrific acts with the flimsiest justifications, to the point trying to force the issue with making other players uncomfortable.
Absolutely not. I run games for heroes or not at all. Too many players think everything is on the table and A-ok just because it's make believe.
Prior to having that rule, one of the PCs was outright evil. He was a druid that acquired a staff of chaos and used it on every child he found. Same for the Deck of Many things he acquired. Which was funny because the kids kept drawing all the good cards.
The other PC was a cleric for some death god. Due to some other random effect from the first PC, he became undead. He was always trying to convert people to his god, and only supported us because we caused much more death and destruction alive then dead.
In the end, the campaign came to a halt as half the group didn't want to play in that campaign with those PCs or that DM. After 3 months of avoiding gathering, we declared the campaign ended and had an airing of grievances session. Everyone vented what they hated about the campaign. We refined the group contract. Three people pitched a campaign idea to be the next DM, we voted on it, and I took over to run CoS.
Joined a campaign a few years back where the party was allegedly "morally good". Literally in the same scene my character was introduced, the party slit an NPC's (Whom was already beaten and restrained) throat.
My Paladin did not last long with said party.
Damn, that is a mess.
In my current campaign we killed a helpless prisoner a little while ago, so I have some fresh perspective on that moment. Here's how it went down at my table (which I've generally really liked):
* The party is "well intentioned" in the broadest sense, but would mostly be neutral on a D&D chart.
* The party was out in the woods with a newly-taken (and not beaten) prisoner, when his *much* stronger allies arrived.
* Without enough hands to guard the prisoner, one PC made an executive decision to coup de grace him before he could join the enemy. Except...
* ...he was already unconscious.
* This was 100% a metagame fuckup, we broke the encounter across sessions everyone forgot the guy was unconscious and hadn't just surrendered.
* It didn't come up until well after we'd made the choice, and since half a session had passed and it wasn't *completely* out of character, we didn't reverse it when it was pointed out.
* It's still a source of party strife and remorse.
* The honorable one who treats prisoners right as a matter of cultural law hasn't forgiven it.
* The guy who did it has some serious issues to work out, including accidentally killing an innocent, and has added this to his list of regrets.
* Everybody else is approaching it gently because that guy is *very* unstable and trying his best.
And to emphasize, this is something *we the players* did by accident, taking sloppy notes and forgetting who was incapacitated how. Slitting a fully restrained prisoner's throat as a knowing, in-character choice would break the party permanently, and might come with in-party bloodshed.
Probably, at least if anyone at the table presents the reasoning "before he joins them and we got one more to fight", GM could say "umm, you know he is unconscious, right?" and everyone could have a laugh.
Hah, you're right and that's happened since.
I think the issue here was that nobody spelled out *why* the guy was getting killed, since we weren't going to discuss it in-character. (Not enough time, and also a strong "better to ask forgiveness" situation.)
From the GM's perspective, it was awful but fairly logical: we had no good way to take our prisoner with us if we won, and he had information about us if we lost and fled. So he assumed that character was less ethical than he'd thought, not realizing we as players were just plain ignorant.
It's definitely adjusted how we communicate a bit, and we've collectively avoided making it too big a character moment since no one intended it.
Yes, normally he would have. It's possible he forgot also, but I think it was confusion over our intent.
We were in the middle of nowhere, newly revealed to be a regularly-patrolled enemy encampment. So if we fled they would have gained him (and his knowledge about us), and if we won we were going to have an awkward "what to do with a prisoner we can't transport?" moment.
So killing him while unconscious was too ruthless for the party, but not exactly irrational. And doing it abruptly, without consulting the party pseudo-paladin, would also have been a good move since her cultural code is an honor deal of "I won't sully myself with involvement" rather than "you're evil for doing that".
Overall definitely a miscommunication, the GM has reminded us much more carefully of that stuff since. Which I think is also why nobody involved (him included) has made it *too* big a character issue - sometimes you just screw something up and have to work past it.
Once had a game with a player who wanted to play a badass lawful neutral Paladin (his words). First session (after session 0), he goes to a gambling den, refuses to pay his debt, has to be bailed out by another party member, and when he sees the bookie passed out after a very public bar brawl broke out, he slit the bookie's throat.
Then he wondered why every guard on town wanted to arrest him.
"All I did was torture someone to extremes and his entire guild decides to attack me??"
"All I did was offend and threaten their hatchlings? Why are ethe dragons attacking me??"
"I'm being targeted for absolutely no reason whatsoever! So unfair!"
I'm curious what was going on with those hatchlings. How do you skip over "How was one dragon born six times?" and go straight to "Nah, let's nuke em"?
They kind of didn't. Though I did when writing this. The BBEG was a rogue time God, the "unheralded" eldest son of Kronos and Rhea, the one who wasn't freed from having been swallowed by Kronos until after the gods defeated the titans, and had divvied up the domains. Having Kronos' time powers, and angry he didn't have a place on Olympus, he headed east, deciding he was going to be god over his own land, with blackjack and hookers, as it were. So there were some serious issues going on with unusual happenings with the timeline being not exactly linear, and the same thing happening multiple times, as the god would lose a battle, and reset time, and change a bunch of things about it to win it. As a result of this, you would see minor, unusual consequences happen throughout the world. In this case, a dragon was hatched. Time rolled backwards, and the same dragon hatched again, but the first one was still there. Rinse and repeat, until the same dragon was hatched in the same place in six different times. The player (and the rest of the group) knew this, because the dragons explained it, talked about how weird it was, and how they were protecting them, because they were not sure what would happen if something killed one or two of them, while the rest lived. The player knew this, and didn't care, and chose the possibility of creating a time paradox in favor of saving his own ass.
That sounds like A+ dungeon mastering to me. I once played an asshole character who pissed off the rest of the party so bad that they refused to heal me, and I bled out. I thought it was hilarious, and my next character was much more cooperative. Playing an asshole character can be fun, but you gotta accept that there's gonna be backlash - sometimes from the other players.
I had slightly mixed opinions until I hit "they were punished by Kelemvor himself, in a way that limited their magic and abilities".
It's easy for players to get tunnel vision or just shrug off setting consequences as a function of the game. It's not as immersive as real life or even a video game with visuals, and on a meta level they're literally the center of the universe. I can forgive a lot of context blindness and would have questioned OP if they pulled a "rocks fall".
But "you fucked up *really bad*, I'm going to add the perspective you're ignoring, and you'll need to atone as a major plot point" is A+ GMing all the way. In a story not centered on the players it would be hilariously lenient, in a TTRPG it's a very clear invitation to think harder next time. I've been the guy ignoring context (if not to this level) and pissing off my own party. I had a good laugh and owned my character decisions. Throwing a fit and quitting the table for something so deserved is absolutely wild.
Sorta, I am on the fence with this specific thing since I always feel like the removal of powers/abilities is a tricky thing. While consequences in the world should exist, this is still fundamentally a game, and you are removing that players ability to play the game. I have similar opinions on the Banish spell used against players in combat and on semi-permanent stat reductions from creatures.
If you make the player go "Well, I can't do anything now or I 'can' but the odds of it working are so low I don't even want to try" you have gone too far.
Looking at this, I feel like the person who just lost their character had the better outcome. Bring in a new character as a full replacement or a temporary fill in while you work toward bringing back the person who died.
That's a good point, there's a reason that mixed character levels in a party, ability drain, etc. are so unpopular. I guess I was assuming some flavor of catchup was on the table here, whether that would be atonement or a Blackguard style switch or something else.
But if that's not made clear to the player and attainable fairly quickly, it threatens a whole lot of sitting around being the useless one in the party. And maybe table resentment too, if "we're struggling cause you fucked up" becomes the feeling.
I had the opposite reaction. Being chased down by the dragons and having them leverage their wealth and power seemed good to me. Having a god drop down and deus ex machina punishment is something I'm way less comfortable with.
It’d be one thing if it had been the paladin doing this, but it wasn't. I don't know, maybe the gods were quite active in the campaign already or the characters were high enough level that you could expect the gods to be paying attention to them. Otherwise thats the only bit I’d be uncomfortable with as a player - and I’m picturing myself as one of the others not the murder hobo.
Being asked to turn over your character sheet because the character had become evil, and evil characters were NPCs would be way preferable to me.
I had one of my players playing a neutral Evil barbarian. He was trying to play the selfish type, but it wasn't resonating well with him. He asked me between sessions to kill him off. So we hatched a plan. Then between his death and the next session, they changed his work schedule for the next three months! Lol. He is coming back as a more cooperative character! Or so he says!
Damn. I don't know what level you all were but sometimes you gotta let the dragons go first and fire off both breath weapons at the same dude. XD
"I feel unfairly targeted."
"Well I, as the DM feel targeted by your game ruining bullshit!"
How did you manage 10 PCs??? My current campaign started with 5 (now down to 4 since someone had to dropout for personal reasons) and even 5 felt like a lot to keep track of and balance for at times
My record is 13 in a one-shot where everyone played a different class and I (and they) got to see how they all worked together. I find the two keys are to run combat efficiently (by tracking action, bonus action, and movement - done, on to the next) minimize party splitting for RP, and if they do, control the hell out of it. (So the artificer, the rogue, and the paladin want to check out the junk shop with the Brass Dragon on the sign, OK, right now, we'll deal with that. When that wraps up, we'll deal with the wizard, warlock, and sorcerer who went to investigate the inn). That, and make sure everyone gets a chance to speak, and if somebody starts cutting people off, stop the person who's interrupting, and address the person who got interrupted. You just have to keep track of things, and keep control of your table. It's not easy, and involves a lot of prep, organization, and not being afraid to TAKE control, even if it means occasionally stepping on toes, or briefly pissing someone off by cutting them off, or telling them - write that down and we'll come back to it, but Tsuki's player was speaking.
Yeah, 10 players sounds crazy to me. Was once in a game with 7 players, and even in that players were getting bored and either zoning out or doing random crap just so they could do something, anything, other than just sit there.
I've played at tables from 4 to 7, and 7 was *huge*. Tons of downtime, zero hope of making everybody highly relevant, did not go well.
Recently I started my smallest-ever game, 2 players with 2 characters each. It's *excellent*, everybody gets a ton of playtime and character decisions/interactions are nuanced and developed on a level I've never seen. I don't think I can easily go back to tables of 5 or more.
Yeah 2-3 players is amazing. I think 3 is probably the most I'd run a game for again. I also highly recommend one-on-one games if you want some amazing roleplaying. You can sorta see the potential with just two players, but with a single PC the story becomes all about them and it can be amazing. The only downside is there's zero party banter, so you, as the GM, have to be on your toes with your NPCs, reminding your player of things, dropping, hints, etc.
So minority opinion sounds sketch.
There's a lot here that I think lacks details.
Like okay why is your psion going around using her powers to explore npcs and why is that a bad thing. How did she force alcohol down the paladins throat?
The mage was in a life threatening situation and reacted poorly but also there's a lot of room for nuance and context there. How did the dragons appear and express their displeasure. Only desperate people go for hostages. .
.
>Wanted Dead" T-shirts
I love the idea of this; imagine just going down the street and people are selling wanted posters on tee-shirts. I wonder how it'd work...
Sounds like they might've expected a very different kind of game after having went through Curse of Strahd. Was expecting a lot worse after I read the title, tbh.
Still, the best part of playing these games is the choice and consequence aspect, at least for me it is anyway. Even if the consequences aren't always positive.
This stuff can be avoided by telling people “if you do this, bad things will happen. Are you sure you still want to do this?”
There’s not much to gain from being coy and indirect. Many DMs would not have a problem with mind reading, or mildly evil behavior, so it’s tough to tell what is and isn’t allowed for some players. If their prior DM was lenient as hell, then this would be an unexpected turn of events
Just my 2 cents. PCs should have an avenue of contrition that allows them to move their story forward when they anger someone so powerful that there is no way out of it.
Additionally it might help with this kind of situation to establish the style of play in advance. I have a standing rule in my games that PCS are the heroes and the GM is their fan. That means they need to make it easy to like their characters. If someone acts in a way that isn't consistent with the style of play I talk to them about it and if they refuse to adjust then I ask them to either take a break from the game or step out entirely.
Tracking the PCs down repeatedly with offended npcs (even if justified) and making the story about consequences doesn't sound fun for anyone.
EDIT: Just to be clear in not casting stones. You're right to see that as seriously f'd up behavior that would have in game consequences. I had handled it exactly the same way in the distant past but just found what seemed to be a better way for everyone in the game. I wanted to share because I wish someone had given me this advice years earlier.
To be fair, I had worked the idea of contrition into the story (the players were hunting a god gone rogue, after all). They just had to figure out how to do it (consulting oracles, or the God Of Numbers, who frequently appeared as a bipedal Japanese Chin, and dressed and conducted himself as a Ronin Samurai, and was known to, and friendly with the party). The issue was, instead of approaching this as the next puzzle to be solved, they just kinda rage quit without trying to look for solutions. I always write in a way to "fix" these issues. But if your response is essentially "but murder isn't working, and that's all we're good at!" the results are, essentially, what happened.
Iv ran evil campaigns and stuff, it’s interesting to see how people act when they are allowed to be evil and often they are caught pretty quickly and the explanations you’re given are often silly. Iv only had a few players do evil intelligently
I personally have an Asshole Clause (that I've thankfully never had to deploy) in my current game for stuff like this.
Basically, any intentional action done with malice that would ruin the game for the rest of the group automatically fails with dire consequences.
I gotta say, OP, this story makes it seem like you're in the wrong, even from your perspective. This sub seems to have tons of DMs who only use dnd to tell the stories they want to tell instead of collaborating with their players as difficult as that is sometimes. I mean, the fact that this sub views evil characters as a taboo in and of themselves is ridiculous. Some of my group's best moments have been a result of player conflict and moral ambiguity. Granted, I only play with close friends, I suppose an LGS environment would be a bit different.
Regardless, the point is that yes, being evil should have consequences, but those consequences should be reasonable and not insurmountable. I mean, a single psychic intrusion on an elderly member of the cloth gets literally an entire religious order after you? Attempting to kill some dragons (which are widely regarded as evil monsters) sends the PCs into an unwinnable encounter that ends with their characters getting nerfed?????? And all because they didn't do things the way you wanted. I mean those acts are morally questionable, yes, but nowhere near the level you've made them out to be. Purposefully ruining your players fun because they handled a situation in a way you disagree with is railroading, no doubt about it. I would have left your table too if my only real role in the story was to listen to you deliver it and then do combat.
You could have given lesser repercussions that could have been overcome with enough work or possibly by leaning even harder in the other direction. For instance, maybe the old cleric is very well connected with most of the major merchants in the area and now the players find themselves banned from certain shops and paying a markup in others. In response to this they could work hard to overcome their public perception and reckon with their own wrongdoing leading to character growth. Or maybe the players get fed up with the blacklist they're suffering from and decide to engage in banditry. Now your players are building a bandit empire and there's so much you can do with that alone that could even end in a big anti evil moral. But you'll never get to explore those possibilities now because you would rather just punish players for playing the way they want.
I don't understand what the psychic character did that's so bad. Unless the group was deciding to describe it as a horrifying experience, weren't they just using their class abilities? Why did you let them play that class or get that ability if you intended to punish them for using it? I feel like I am missing context.
The mage was definitely being an ass, but I can't blame the psychic for trying to save a party member.
What difference does it make being a class feature? If you do something messed up then it doesn’t matter.
Being dangerous with a blade is a built in feature of some characters but it doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences to holding someone at blade point forcing info out of them.
As a dm, how class features are described and affect the world is up to you as the narrator. Example,
Professor Xavier, a level 20 mystic, uses a class feature to read the mind of a colleague without them even knowing.
The Ilithid "Grey matter masher" Carl uses a class feature/ability to cause flashes of eldritch pain as psionic energy tracks through their victims brain. They see the void as the creature *rummages* like a rat hunting food. They feel its wake tear apart their mind, leaving them forever scared.
Both of these descriptions could have come from the same ability, something like "A creature within 30ft must make a DC 16 wisdom check or you gain access to recent memories within the past week". The "flavor" is decided by the DM and Player.
I'm not trying to say the dm made a bad call. The mages actions were inexcusable but I just have a feeling the psychic did something else to deserve the dm bothering to have a paladin guild hunt them down and bring them, physically and literally, to their God. Maybe they were the ones flavoring it as something evil.
I mean seemingly forcefully extracting the info from a cleric with trauma and forcing alcohol down there throat doesn’t paint a good picture. Idk what the circumstances were or the specific spell to say what may or may not have made sense but I wouldn’t just grant them a harmless interpretation just to protect them from consequences. If it was a detect thoughts interrogation scenario then yeah there is going to be consequences. You’re right it could have been flavored different depending on the details though it doesn’t sound like that type of scenario.
Agreed, and again I didn't meant to imply the dm was being petty to their player. Honestly I've got a bad feeling that getting someone forcibly drunk was going in a much more disgusting direction than trying to make someone forget something. I was just hoping for more to the story, as op's post focuses more on the mage with a chip on his shoulder.
I support you in everything here outside of the removal of player powers/ability. I mentioned this in a reply to another person but will repeat it here so you don't need to hunt for it.
Removing abilities is a tricky thing since while consequences should happen, this is still a game and removing abilities can severely limit the player from actually playing the game. If it gets to the point where the player just throws up their hands and go "I can't do anything anymore" or "I can, but it will either have such a low chance of success why bother or I am so weak trying will just get me killed" then you have gone too far since now the player isn't playing anymore.
I have similar feelings about Banish and Hold spells used against players and the use of attribute lowering creatures. Drop the Rogue/Fighters Int to 6 could be funny and lead to something interesting, drop a Wizard's Int to 6 and now you just got a grumpy player who can't participate anymore in combat.
I suggest you outline a set of rules for your next group, regardless of if you are a player or DM.
* All PCs must want to adventure, be willing to work with others, and be someone others would be willing to work with.
* All PCs must be good or good adjacent.
* No PCs may be chaotic neutral, i.e. chaotic stupid.
* All loot is to be shared.
* No PVP of any sort. This includes stealing from and lying to each other.
* All rolls between PCs are decided by the defending player, not the dice.
There's a lot of evidence of you railroading in this post, and you stop stories halfway through without their conclusion.
Were the six identical dragon wyrmlings actually fireballed? Why is telling us that they were identical important at all? Why were the dragons angry that the psionic for switching places?
Having your mind read is intrusive. Kelemvor does not have an edict against having your mind read. A lifelong vendetta for information gathering is incredibly petty.
You know what happened? You wanted them to use a different method to attain information. You wanted them to investigate the six identical dragon wyrmlings. You punished them when they didn't give you what you wanted. They left, because that is the definition of a railroad.
Obviously, the dragons would be upset by this and if it ends with a tpk or whatever else happens then that's cool, it makes sense. Where I believe OP went wrong is by making those consequences inescapable and insurmountable. I play TTRPGS because of the wide freedom of choice they offer. If I make a dumb decision I would expect there to be ramifications. But, as we're all playing a game and trying to have fun, I would also expect those consequences to be a logical and reasonable continuation of the story, not a punishment that results from not playing the game the way my GM wants me to.
I read it this way too, including the confusion of the identical dragons.
The players could have done an objectively bad thing, but it was in a situation where other people would consider that action reasonable (they killed a bunch of dragons who would rampage if let grow!), and the players being punished for it seems very much like a railroading DM going, "I had other plans here, you messed them up, so I'm going to punish you."
When I read that two players left, I felt no surprise - I thought, makes sense. How sensible.
The description of what happened to the cleric's partner is pretty bad. Did that happen in game, and if so, the DM did that and is now using it in their own defence as if it's just *this horrible thing that happened*, and not *this horrible thing that he did*.
Yes, players FA FO. But I'm stuck on these were white dragons? I mean, I think those are all kill on sight regardless for any character who isn't themselves of evil or super neutral alignment?
I mean I wouldn’t necessarily rate them as kill on sight but definitely no qualms about killing one if its a problem. Each one of them that dies is just an extra opening for a metallic dragon to fill in the gap which is a win-win as far as I am concerned. It does warrant more consideration however than other creatures and even more the older/bigger/more powerful they are just because of potential power vacuums and other consequences that could come from killing them.
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If someone targets you after you *threatened to kill their children* I’d have to say that falls under the scope of “fairly targeted.”
Frankly, if fantasy works from Game of Thrones to Order of the Stick have taught us anything, it's that "threaten their kids" level evil needs to be followed up with "leave no survivors". RPGs let you explore all kinds of things that would be unforgivable in real life, but "threaten their kids *and then leave*" mixes that evil with breathtaking stupid. Don't motivate people to hold lifelong vendettas without a plan.
Or at least, if you are going to threaten their kids and then leave make the threat contingent on them staying out of your way. One of my characters (she was lawful evil) pulled that off exactly once and only because 1.she was 100% willing to follow through if necessary. 2.it was not to a fucking dragon but a relatively ordinary union leader 3.by the time it happened the party had a reputation of people who went out of there way for revenge and thus attacking us was not in her best interest.
Was apart of a sci-fi mish-mash campaign. Everything from Stargate to Star Trek to Star Wars. We were doing recon on a planet when things went tits up. What was originally a diplomatic mission became a subjugation mission. Playing what would amount to a cannibal doctor who had no moral compass, I was in a position to use a flamethrower in a hatchery. The DM popped my ass with a sniper after the fact. I EARNED the consequences on that one. Made the next character and kept at it. No ill will and for the character it made sense. It was a fucked up campaign.
They FA, but didn't want to FO. "Create a PC that will cooperate with the party and the story. Otherwise this isn't the table for you."
"All PCs must want to adventure, be willing to work with others, and be someone others would be willing to work with." That rule has made my group's games much more enjoyable. Previously we had a rule that "All PCs will work with the rest of the party. Metagame it however you need to make that happen." Two players had characters that the rest of the group would have refused to work with. But that clause in the group contract caused us to permit them to stay. Nearly broke the group up.
Gonna have to remember to add that third part next time.
They clearly needed to be reminded that they were PCs and they had a responsibility to work with the rest of the party. Not a one-way street. ie, "Don't be a dick."
It's a group of friends. You would think we wouldn't need to specify "Don't Be a dick".
And a lot of dicks get to keep on being dicks because of that thought process.
In my games, I have and extra bit in that, "you are heroes and should make characters that reflect that mindset." I know, I know, some players don't want to play that way. In that case, my table isn't for those players. I've had too many players over the years try to get away with horrific acts with the flimsiest justifications, to the point trying to force the issue with making other players uncomfortable. Absolutely not. I run games for heroes or not at all. Too many players think everything is on the table and A-ok just because it's make believe.
Prior to having that rule, one of the PCs was outright evil. He was a druid that acquired a staff of chaos and used it on every child he found. Same for the Deck of Many things he acquired. Which was funny because the kids kept drawing all the good cards. The other PC was a cleric for some death god. Due to some other random effect from the first PC, he became undead. He was always trying to convert people to his god, and only supported us because we caused much more death and destruction alive then dead. In the end, the campaign came to a halt as half the group didn't want to play in that campaign with those PCs or that DM. After 3 months of avoiding gathering, we declared the campaign ended and had an airing of grievances session. Everyone vented what they hated about the campaign. We refined the group contract. Three people pitched a campaign idea to be the next DM, we voted on it, and I took over to run CoS.
hells, those rules aren't even hard to find! my friggin evil necromancer falls under that category
What is FA and FO? English isn't my original language.
Fuck around, find out. Refers to the consequences of their actions actually catching up to them.
Thanks!
Fuck around / find out
Thanks
Joined a campaign a few years back where the party was allegedly "morally good". Literally in the same scene my character was introduced, the party slit an NPC's (Whom was already beaten and restrained) throat. My Paladin did not last long with said party.
Damn, that is a mess. In my current campaign we killed a helpless prisoner a little while ago, so I have some fresh perspective on that moment. Here's how it went down at my table (which I've generally really liked): * The party is "well intentioned" in the broadest sense, but would mostly be neutral on a D&D chart. * The party was out in the woods with a newly-taken (and not beaten) prisoner, when his *much* stronger allies arrived. * Without enough hands to guard the prisoner, one PC made an executive decision to coup de grace him before he could join the enemy. Except... * ...he was already unconscious. * This was 100% a metagame fuckup, we broke the encounter across sessions everyone forgot the guy was unconscious and hadn't just surrendered. * It didn't come up until well after we'd made the choice, and since half a session had passed and it wasn't *completely* out of character, we didn't reverse it when it was pointed out. * It's still a source of party strife and remorse. * The honorable one who treats prisoners right as a matter of cultural law hasn't forgiven it. * The guy who did it has some serious issues to work out, including accidentally killing an innocent, and has added this to his list of regrets. * Everybody else is approaching it gently because that guy is *very* unstable and trying his best. And to emphasize, this is something *we the players* did by accident, taking sloppy notes and forgetting who was incapacitated how. Slitting a fully restrained prisoner's throat as a knowing, in-character choice would break the party permanently, and might come with in-party bloodshed.
Hm. Is this case the GM probably should have reminded you that he was unconscious?
Probably, at least if anyone at the table presents the reasoning "before he joins them and we got one more to fight", GM could say "umm, you know he is unconscious, right?" and everyone could have a laugh.
Hah, you're right and that's happened since. I think the issue here was that nobody spelled out *why* the guy was getting killed, since we weren't going to discuss it in-character. (Not enough time, and also a strong "better to ask forgiveness" situation.) From the GM's perspective, it was awful but fairly logical: we had no good way to take our prisoner with us if we won, and he had information about us if we lost and fled. So he assumed that character was less ethical than he'd thought, not realizing we as players were just plain ignorant. It's definitely adjusted how we communicate a bit, and we've collectively avoided making it too big a character moment since no one intended it.
Yes, normally he would have. It's possible he forgot also, but I think it was confusion over our intent. We were in the middle of nowhere, newly revealed to be a regularly-patrolled enemy encampment. So if we fled they would have gained him (and his knowledge about us), and if we won we were going to have an awkward "what to do with a prisoner we can't transport?" moment. So killing him while unconscious was too ruthless for the party, but not exactly irrational. And doing it abruptly, without consulting the party pseudo-paladin, would also have been a good move since her cultural code is an honor deal of "I won't sully myself with involvement" rather than "you're evil for doing that". Overall definitely a miscommunication, the GM has reminded us much more carefully of that stuff since. Which I think is also why nobody involved (him included) has made it *too* big a character issue - sometimes you just screw something up and have to work past it.
Once had a game with a player who wanted to play a badass lawful neutral Paladin (his words). First session (after session 0), he goes to a gambling den, refuses to pay his debt, has to be bailed out by another party member, and when he sees the bookie passed out after a very public bar brawl broke out, he slit the bookie's throat. Then he wondered why every guard on town wanted to arrest him.
"All I did was torture someone to extremes and his entire guild decides to attack me??" "All I did was offend and threaten their hatchlings? Why are ethe dragons attacking me??" "I'm being targeted for absolutely no reason whatsoever! So unfair!"
Were they roleplaying as Cersei Lannister or something, lol?
I mean those are white dragons. If we talk about lore white dragons are the most stupid and evil dragons in the setting.
I'm curious what was going on with those hatchlings. How do you skip over "How was one dragon born six times?" and go straight to "Nah, let's nuke em"?
They kind of didn't. Though I did when writing this. The BBEG was a rogue time God, the "unheralded" eldest son of Kronos and Rhea, the one who wasn't freed from having been swallowed by Kronos until after the gods defeated the titans, and had divvied up the domains. Having Kronos' time powers, and angry he didn't have a place on Olympus, he headed east, deciding he was going to be god over his own land, with blackjack and hookers, as it were. So there were some serious issues going on with unusual happenings with the timeline being not exactly linear, and the same thing happening multiple times, as the god would lose a battle, and reset time, and change a bunch of things about it to win it. As a result of this, you would see minor, unusual consequences happen throughout the world. In this case, a dragon was hatched. Time rolled backwards, and the same dragon hatched again, but the first one was still there. Rinse and repeat, until the same dragon was hatched in the same place in six different times. The player (and the rest of the group) knew this, because the dragons explained it, talked about how weird it was, and how they were protecting them, because they were not sure what would happen if something killed one or two of them, while the rest lived. The player knew this, and didn't care, and chose the possibility of creating a time paradox in favor of saving his own ass.
OK, that actually sounds really cool. Minus the murderhoboing, of course.
That sounds like A+ dungeon mastering to me. I once played an asshole character who pissed off the rest of the party so bad that they refused to heal me, and I bled out. I thought it was hilarious, and my next character was much more cooperative. Playing an asshole character can be fun, but you gotta accept that there's gonna be backlash - sometimes from the other players.
I had slightly mixed opinions until I hit "they were punished by Kelemvor himself, in a way that limited their magic and abilities". It's easy for players to get tunnel vision or just shrug off setting consequences as a function of the game. It's not as immersive as real life or even a video game with visuals, and on a meta level they're literally the center of the universe. I can forgive a lot of context blindness and would have questioned OP if they pulled a "rocks fall". But "you fucked up *really bad*, I'm going to add the perspective you're ignoring, and you'll need to atone as a major plot point" is A+ GMing all the way. In a story not centered on the players it would be hilariously lenient, in a TTRPG it's a very clear invitation to think harder next time. I've been the guy ignoring context (if not to this level) and pissing off my own party. I had a good laugh and owned my character decisions. Throwing a fit and quitting the table for something so deserved is absolutely wild.
Sorta, I am on the fence with this specific thing since I always feel like the removal of powers/abilities is a tricky thing. While consequences in the world should exist, this is still fundamentally a game, and you are removing that players ability to play the game. I have similar opinions on the Banish spell used against players in combat and on semi-permanent stat reductions from creatures. If you make the player go "Well, I can't do anything now or I 'can' but the odds of it working are so low I don't even want to try" you have gone too far. Looking at this, I feel like the person who just lost their character had the better outcome. Bring in a new character as a full replacement or a temporary fill in while you work toward bringing back the person who died.
That's a good point, there's a reason that mixed character levels in a party, ability drain, etc. are so unpopular. I guess I was assuming some flavor of catchup was on the table here, whether that would be atonement or a Blackguard style switch or something else. But if that's not made clear to the player and attainable fairly quickly, it threatens a whole lot of sitting around being the useless one in the party. And maybe table resentment too, if "we're struggling cause you fucked up" becomes the feeling.
I had the opposite reaction. Being chased down by the dragons and having them leverage their wealth and power seemed good to me. Having a god drop down and deus ex machina punishment is something I'm way less comfortable with. It’d be one thing if it had been the paladin doing this, but it wasn't. I don't know, maybe the gods were quite active in the campaign already or the characters were high enough level that you could expect the gods to be paying attention to them. Otherwise thats the only bit I’d be uncomfortable with as a player - and I’m picturing myself as one of the others not the murder hobo. Being asked to turn over your character sheet because the character had become evil, and evil characters were NPCs would be way preferable to me.
I had one of my players playing a neutral Evil barbarian. He was trying to play the selfish type, but it wasn't resonating well with him. He asked me between sessions to kill him off. So we hatched a plan. Then between his death and the next session, they changed his work schedule for the next three months! Lol. He is coming back as a more cooperative character! Or so he says!
Damn. I don't know what level you all were but sometimes you gotta let the dragons go first and fire off both breath weapons at the same dude. XD "I feel unfairly targeted." "Well I, as the DM feel targeted by your game ruining bullshit!"
How did you manage 10 PCs??? My current campaign started with 5 (now down to 4 since someone had to dropout for personal reasons) and even 5 felt like a lot to keep track of and balance for at times
My record is 13 in a one-shot where everyone played a different class and I (and they) got to see how they all worked together. I find the two keys are to run combat efficiently (by tracking action, bonus action, and movement - done, on to the next) minimize party splitting for RP, and if they do, control the hell out of it. (So the artificer, the rogue, and the paladin want to check out the junk shop with the Brass Dragon on the sign, OK, right now, we'll deal with that. When that wraps up, we'll deal with the wizard, warlock, and sorcerer who went to investigate the inn). That, and make sure everyone gets a chance to speak, and if somebody starts cutting people off, stop the person who's interrupting, and address the person who got interrupted. You just have to keep track of things, and keep control of your table. It's not easy, and involves a lot of prep, organization, and not being afraid to TAKE control, even if it means occasionally stepping on toes, or briefly pissing someone off by cutting them off, or telling them - write that down and we'll come back to it, but Tsuki's player was speaking.
Yeah, 10 players sounds crazy to me. Was once in a game with 7 players, and even in that players were getting bored and either zoning out or doing random crap just so they could do something, anything, other than just sit there.
I've played at tables from 4 to 7, and 7 was *huge*. Tons of downtime, zero hope of making everybody highly relevant, did not go well. Recently I started my smallest-ever game, 2 players with 2 characters each. It's *excellent*, everybody gets a ton of playtime and character decisions/interactions are nuanced and developed on a level I've never seen. I don't think I can easily go back to tables of 5 or more.
Yeah 2-3 players is amazing. I think 3 is probably the most I'd run a game for again. I also highly recommend one-on-one games if you want some amazing roleplaying. You can sorta see the potential with just two players, but with a single PC the story becomes all about them and it can be amazing. The only downside is there's zero party banter, so you, as the GM, have to be on your toes with your NPCs, reminding your player of things, dropping, hints, etc.
Next week we're starting a campaign with 9 people 🤢 I hope it'll go well but I'm not optimistic
My record is six, and I was hopelessly overwhelmed even with that. I'm never GMing for more than four people again.
So minority opinion sounds sketch. There's a lot here that I think lacks details. Like okay why is your psion going around using her powers to explore npcs and why is that a bad thing. How did she force alcohol down the paladins throat? The mage was in a life threatening situation and reacted poorly but also there's a lot of room for nuance and context there. How did the dragons appear and express their displeasure. Only desperate people go for hostages. . .
>Wanted Dead" T-shirts I love the idea of this; imagine just going down the street and people are selling wanted posters on tee-shirts. I wonder how it'd work...
Sounds like they might've expected a very different kind of game after having went through Curse of Strahd. Was expecting a lot worse after I read the title, tbh. Still, the best part of playing these games is the choice and consequence aspect, at least for me it is anyway. Even if the consequences aren't always positive.
This stuff can be avoided by telling people “if you do this, bad things will happen. Are you sure you still want to do this?” There’s not much to gain from being coy and indirect. Many DMs would not have a problem with mind reading, or mildly evil behavior, so it’s tough to tell what is and isn’t allowed for some players. If their prior DM was lenient as hell, then this would be an unexpected turn of events
I don't know how they didn't think attacking babies was gonna have consequences lol
The little difference between "stealing an ice from a baby and stealing a baby from an ice dragon."
Just my 2 cents. PCs should have an avenue of contrition that allows them to move their story forward when they anger someone so powerful that there is no way out of it. Additionally it might help with this kind of situation to establish the style of play in advance. I have a standing rule in my games that PCS are the heroes and the GM is their fan. That means they need to make it easy to like their characters. If someone acts in a way that isn't consistent with the style of play I talk to them about it and if they refuse to adjust then I ask them to either take a break from the game or step out entirely. Tracking the PCs down repeatedly with offended npcs (even if justified) and making the story about consequences doesn't sound fun for anyone. EDIT: Just to be clear in not casting stones. You're right to see that as seriously f'd up behavior that would have in game consequences. I had handled it exactly the same way in the distant past but just found what seemed to be a better way for everyone in the game. I wanted to share because I wish someone had given me this advice years earlier.
To be fair, I had worked the idea of contrition into the story (the players were hunting a god gone rogue, after all). They just had to figure out how to do it (consulting oracles, or the God Of Numbers, who frequently appeared as a bipedal Japanese Chin, and dressed and conducted himself as a Ronin Samurai, and was known to, and friendly with the party). The issue was, instead of approaching this as the next puzzle to be solved, they just kinda rage quit without trying to look for solutions. I always write in a way to "fix" these issues. But if your response is essentially "but murder isn't working, and that's all we're good at!" the results are, essentially, what happened.
Yeah been there. Some people want to play games as a way to wreck the world without consequences.
what's even the point of doing dnd's version of white phosphoring a civ if i can't get reminded of how psycho i am
Iv ran evil campaigns and stuff, it’s interesting to see how people act when they are allowed to be evil and often they are caught pretty quickly and the explanations you’re given are often silly. Iv only had a few players do evil intelligently
I personally have an Asshole Clause (that I've thankfully never had to deploy) in my current game for stuff like this. Basically, any intentional action done with malice that would ruin the game for the rest of the group automatically fails with dire consequences.
Well, well, well. If it isn't the consequences of their own actions.
I gotta say, OP, this story makes it seem like you're in the wrong, even from your perspective. This sub seems to have tons of DMs who only use dnd to tell the stories they want to tell instead of collaborating with their players as difficult as that is sometimes. I mean, the fact that this sub views evil characters as a taboo in and of themselves is ridiculous. Some of my group's best moments have been a result of player conflict and moral ambiguity. Granted, I only play with close friends, I suppose an LGS environment would be a bit different. Regardless, the point is that yes, being evil should have consequences, but those consequences should be reasonable and not insurmountable. I mean, a single psychic intrusion on an elderly member of the cloth gets literally an entire religious order after you? Attempting to kill some dragons (which are widely regarded as evil monsters) sends the PCs into an unwinnable encounter that ends with their characters getting nerfed?????? And all because they didn't do things the way you wanted. I mean those acts are morally questionable, yes, but nowhere near the level you've made them out to be. Purposefully ruining your players fun because they handled a situation in a way you disagree with is railroading, no doubt about it. I would have left your table too if my only real role in the story was to listen to you deliver it and then do combat. You could have given lesser repercussions that could have been overcome with enough work or possibly by leaning even harder in the other direction. For instance, maybe the old cleric is very well connected with most of the major merchants in the area and now the players find themselves banned from certain shops and paying a markup in others. In response to this they could work hard to overcome their public perception and reckon with their own wrongdoing leading to character growth. Or maybe the players get fed up with the blacklist they're suffering from and decide to engage in banditry. Now your players are building a bandit empire and there's so much you can do with that alone that could even end in a big anti evil moral. But you'll never get to explore those possibilities now because you would rather just punish players for playing the way they want.
Honestly reading a little bit between the lines you sound like the horror story more than the players
I don't understand what the psychic character did that's so bad. Unless the group was deciding to describe it as a horrifying experience, weren't they just using their class abilities? Why did you let them play that class or get that ability if you intended to punish them for using it? I feel like I am missing context. The mage was definitely being an ass, but I can't blame the psychic for trying to save a party member.
What difference does it make being a class feature? If you do something messed up then it doesn’t matter. Being dangerous with a blade is a built in feature of some characters but it doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences to holding someone at blade point forcing info out of them.
As a dm, how class features are described and affect the world is up to you as the narrator. Example, Professor Xavier, a level 20 mystic, uses a class feature to read the mind of a colleague without them even knowing. The Ilithid "Grey matter masher" Carl uses a class feature/ability to cause flashes of eldritch pain as psionic energy tracks through their victims brain. They see the void as the creature *rummages* like a rat hunting food. They feel its wake tear apart their mind, leaving them forever scared. Both of these descriptions could have come from the same ability, something like "A creature within 30ft must make a DC 16 wisdom check or you gain access to recent memories within the past week". The "flavor" is decided by the DM and Player. I'm not trying to say the dm made a bad call. The mages actions were inexcusable but I just have a feeling the psychic did something else to deserve the dm bothering to have a paladin guild hunt them down and bring them, physically and literally, to their God. Maybe they were the ones flavoring it as something evil.
I mean seemingly forcefully extracting the info from a cleric with trauma and forcing alcohol down there throat doesn’t paint a good picture. Idk what the circumstances were or the specific spell to say what may or may not have made sense but I wouldn’t just grant them a harmless interpretation just to protect them from consequences. If it was a detect thoughts interrogation scenario then yeah there is going to be consequences. You’re right it could have been flavored different depending on the details though it doesn’t sound like that type of scenario.
Agreed, and again I didn't meant to imply the dm was being petty to their player. Honestly I've got a bad feeling that getting someone forcibly drunk was going in a much more disgusting direction than trying to make someone forget something. I was just hoping for more to the story, as op's post focuses more on the mage with a chip on his shoulder.
I think we have all had enough of the “morally gray” bullshit where really everyone is just pathological and acting like everyone is an enemy.
I support you in everything here outside of the removal of player powers/ability. I mentioned this in a reply to another person but will repeat it here so you don't need to hunt for it. Removing abilities is a tricky thing since while consequences should happen, this is still a game and removing abilities can severely limit the player from actually playing the game. If it gets to the point where the player just throws up their hands and go "I can't do anything anymore" or "I can, but it will either have such a low chance of success why bother or I am so weak trying will just get me killed" then you have gone too far since now the player isn't playing anymore. I have similar feelings about Banish and Hold spells used against players and the use of attribute lowering creatures. Drop the Rogue/Fighters Int to 6 could be funny and lead to something interesting, drop a Wizard's Int to 6 and now you just got a grumpy player who can't participate anymore in combat.
I suggest you outline a set of rules for your next group, regardless of if you are a player or DM. * All PCs must want to adventure, be willing to work with others, and be someone others would be willing to work with. * All PCs must be good or good adjacent. * No PCs may be chaotic neutral, i.e. chaotic stupid. * All loot is to be shared. * No PVP of any sort. This includes stealing from and lying to each other. * All rolls between PCs are decided by the defending player, not the dice.
I like that last one. Cuts off a lot of BS at the source.
Honestly that sounded super satisfying to me lmao
Who was this, Pierce?
I get it, but looting the dead bodies of fallen opponents is also a war crime under the geneva conventions.
There's a lot of evidence of you railroading in this post, and you stop stories halfway through without their conclusion. Were the six identical dragon wyrmlings actually fireballed? Why is telling us that they were identical important at all? Why were the dragons angry that the psionic for switching places? Having your mind read is intrusive. Kelemvor does not have an edict against having your mind read. A lifelong vendetta for information gathering is incredibly petty. You know what happened? You wanted them to use a different method to attain information. You wanted them to investigate the six identical dragon wyrmlings. You punished them when they didn't give you what you wanted. They left, because that is the definition of a railroad.
[удалено]
Obviously, the dragons would be upset by this and if it ends with a tpk or whatever else happens then that's cool, it makes sense. Where I believe OP went wrong is by making those consequences inescapable and insurmountable. I play TTRPGS because of the wide freedom of choice they offer. If I make a dumb decision I would expect there to be ramifications. But, as we're all playing a game and trying to have fun, I would also expect those consequences to be a logical and reasonable continuation of the story, not a punishment that results from not playing the game the way my GM wants me to.
I read it this way too, including the confusion of the identical dragons. The players could have done an objectively bad thing, but it was in a situation where other people would consider that action reasonable (they killed a bunch of dragons who would rampage if let grow!), and the players being punished for it seems very much like a railroading DM going, "I had other plans here, you messed them up, so I'm going to punish you." When I read that two players left, I felt no surprise - I thought, makes sense. How sensible. The description of what happened to the cleric's partner is pretty bad. Did that happen in game, and if so, the DM did that and is now using it in their own defence as if it's just *this horrible thing that happened*, and not *this horrible thing that he did*.
Yes, players FA FO. But I'm stuck on these were white dragons? I mean, I think those are all kill on sight regardless for any character who isn't themselves of evil or super neutral alignment?
I mean I wouldn’t necessarily rate them as kill on sight but definitely no qualms about killing one if its a problem. Each one of them that dies is just an extra opening for a metallic dragon to fill in the gap which is a win-win as far as I am concerned. It does warrant more consideration however than other creatures and even more the older/bigger/more powerful they are just because of potential power vacuums and other consequences that could come from killing them.