One game session inglorious game/campaign failures

[Bullgrit]

I had worked up a big interest in Spelljammer from reading the campaign book and a few accessories. I told my Players that I wanted to run a campaign of it, and they agreed. I told them to make up some 7th-level characters (2 each for 3 Players) using just the core AD&D2 rules. Given a week’s delay, I created a crystal sphere including the PCs’ home planet, the Rock of Bral, and 8 or 10 other planets. I was very happy and excited about this coming campaign – it was going to be SO COOL!

I created several encounters to sprinkle throughout the campaign, including ships of pirates, slavers, undead, etc. The campaign would start with the PCs leaving their planet (the first to do so for their nation) and heading for the Rock of Bral. An enemy nation had a ship in orbit to stop the PCs.

Well, when we all gathered for the first game session, things started to unravel immediately. First off, one of the Players had created “illegal” PCs. His two characters were a demi-human multiclass deal that my PHB said were not allowed. He showed me his PHB, and they were allowed in there. So there had been a change during the pub run at some time. I let him keep his characters as they were – it wasn’t a big deal.

The PCs’ ship took off and headed into space. Soon they were intercepted by the enemy ship. The PCs’ ship had only one ranged ship-weapon, and the enemy ship had two ranged ship-weapons (each a little more powerful than the PCs’ ship-weapon). The PCs had only a few crewmen (low-level types, not even in the same league as the PCs), but the six PCs themselves were a formidable force. The enemy ship was loaded up with a bunch of low-level marines.

My thoughts on the encounter and campaign start was that the PCs would close on the enemy ship to fight man-to-man, and then have a fun battle with the enemy grunts. We’d get all the PCs involved in a grand battle. Then the PCs would capture the enemy vessel. When they got to Bral, they could pool their ship and the captured ship together and then buy a really cool ship that they chose for themselves. (They started with a basic flying cog.)

But that ain’t how it went down.

The enemy ship was trying to close on the PCs’ ship (to get in grappling range), but the PCs kept things at range, even though they were taking more damage than they were dealing out. As hard as I tried, I could not get the PCs to see the folly of their tactics, and could not get the ships together. The PCs even cheered at some of their successful grapple evasions.

Eventually, the PCs’ ship was whittled down to destruction. All that was left was for the enemy ship to sail in and capture the PCs from the wreckage. I stopped the game session at that point.

Right after this game session, one of the Players stated his desire to change characters. He said he didn’t realize what the campaign would be like – although I had told them in solid terms what the campaign was going to be like, and he had only seen one encounter at all – and he wanted to choose characters that would work better – his characters hadn’t done anything at all yet because the group didn’t engage the enemy ship except at ship-weapon ranges. So I don’t know how he made a decision that his characters weren’t right for the campaign.

A few days later, one of the other Players had to bail out of the campaign because of work issues. So I just dropped the whole campaign. This was my one and only attempt to DM AD&D2. (Although I played a PC in a many-month-long campaign with someone else DMing.)

What’s your most inglorious new game system or new campaign failure?

Bullgrit

 

[Vaslov]

Years ago I was playing in a campaign which was moving along nicely. The DM had us shipwrecked on a small island which was no more than a volcano. We wiped out the bad guy temple there and then... writers block struck. I am not sure if life just got busy for him or if he just wanted a break. He asked if anyone else wanted to DM for a short while.

I had run several 2e games years before and took up the challenge. I had what I thought was a great idea. Due to some real life challenges I did not have all the prep time I desired, but I came to the game with a clear game plan.

The party had a paladin of Heironeous, Tori I believe. Another player played his dragon mount. I decided to try and build the next game around them. They would run into a ship named Meersalm, a term which has special meaning for Heironeous in GH lore. I made up a back story it had been long stolen by clerics of their nemesis god Hextor. I figured they would rush in to save the ship. The entire plot I had in mind had this as the key.

I forgot no plan survives contacts with the players. The paladin and his mount counting the number of enemies decided to try and sink the ship. I should of let them in retrospect, but hindsight is always 20/20.

They clawed at the bottom of the hull which I countered with a spell pushing them away. I remember during one flight across the deck one of them said something about how it was a good thing the archers or crossbowmen didn't have a magic projectile that could hit the dragon. I had of course planed for them to have just that item. Silence reigned when that came into play. Yeah. The game was one big dud.

It was so bad I almost didn't go back for the next game I was so embarrassed by how it went. Luckily it was a fairly forgiving group. Took years before I got back behind the screen though. I'd like to think I learned some good lessons from the experience.

 

[Stoat]

In the early days of 3.0, I picked up Forge of Fury to run with my group.

1) I showed up Sunday at the regular game time and found every player asleep/passed out from a long Saturday night.

2) Two of the players had spent their long Saturday night playing *sigh* Forge of Fury with another DM.

I waited until everybody got up. Made a few changes to the module, and we got started.

3) The first significant room in the dungeon has the PC's cross a rope bridge while Orcs shoot at them with longbows. Four out of Five PC's tied themselves off with rope before crossing the bridge. The fifth PC, the Cleric, did not. He was peppered with arrows, muffed a balance check, and fell to his death.

4) Everybody converted their old 2E characters to 3E, and we started over.

 

[Wik]

So many. SO many.

Our Iron Heroes game that fell apart when the PCs ran away from some shades. And then imploded because the Armiger felt that all he was doing "was getting beat on" (that's your ROLE!) and the Archer realized he only ever used his short sword and never his bow. The weapon master was upset that she only ever fought bad guys in close combat. And the arcanist had a field day becuase he kept flubbing rolls - and he loves to fail as a player. The rest of the PCs didn't like getting caught in the blast effect.

There was our post apocalyptic game that ended... twice. The first time because one of the PCs got infected with a zombie virus, and another PC shot him in the head with a shotgun... causing all sorts of PC vs. PC suspicion. A lot of fun, but campaign stopper. And then there was the time we rebooted the campaign with new PCs, only to have them try to take their Ford truck into a heavily forested area, and got caught in a crossfire.... they were all inside the truck when the bad guys launched a rocket....and rolled a crit.

Our forgotten realms game in 2nd edition, where the party put together their funds and bought a wagon and a horse. We spent all our money pimping out this wagon... and then threw a fit when the GM tried to get rid of it because he had a quest in the mountains that we refused because we knew our wagon wouldn't go there. We just wanted to wander the roads in our medieval RV.

Then there was the wheel of time campaign I tried to launch, with half the group rabid Robert Jordan fans who would correct me on every little thing I said... and the other half having never read the book. The first time, the campaign imploded due to arguments of this sort. Then I was begged to try it again, and I ran the prepublished campaign. The party created all male channelers... and were killed in the first encounter... against a swarm of rats.

We had the dark sun game that was abandoned by the GM because he got upset at us... we were all playing swashbuckler type PCs. I think I had an african-style warrior with a spear named Juma, who wore baggy pants and had a pet monkey. Another player had a wise-crackign wizard. That one fell apart.

Or there was the shadowrun game where the very first scene involved our characters in a weapons superstore (imagine wal-mart, if wal mart only sold guns, ammunition, and rocket launchers). We were surrounded by corp types, and had to hold out against invaders. When we escaped as the GM planned, he was a bit shocked to realize we had a small arsenal of weapons. He never thought that one out, and dropped the game soon after.

All of these campaigns, by the way, lasted one session. If I started talking about the TWO session campaigns, I'd be here all week.

 

[pogre]

I had a bunch of guys over to play in a 1st ed. WFRP campaign. One of the guys brought over some homemade hard apple cider. It went downhill quickly from there.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Parties first mission was to scout a beast that was blocking a trade route.
They were warned that it might be powerful, and just bringing back info would be fine. 4 of 5 Players made characters that would never retreat. TPK.

Started a desert game, bought Sandstorm (3.5 book) and wrote up starting encounters and the beginings of a meta plot. One of the players said, hey why don't we go back to the 12th level characters that we played 2 years ago. Everybody got excited, and we returned to the old game for another sucessful year, topping out at lvl 20.

First game - brand new group. Our camp was attacked by orcs, 2 hrs later it was a TPK. Wait it was all a dream
You wake up, under fire by orc archers. 1 hr later - after killing 1/2 the orcs, another TPK Another dream, why don't you negociate?
You wake up, under fire by orc archers.

2 players didn't come back. logically, I should have joined them, but the other two players and I had a great friendship, and many campaigns (after we kicked out the first DM)

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

What’s your most inglorious new game system or new campaign failure?

Never had a game last only one session that wasn't intended as a one shot. From the above stories I feel lucky.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I've never had a one-game-session failure, but I did have a pretty inglorious failure only a few sessions into a campaign.

The PCs had just completed their first "mission", a heavily modified version of the first part of Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. They ended up working for the lord of "Saltmarsh"; but it was a few days until the pirate ship was due back, so I decided to think up a short side-trek adventure.

A messenger from the nearby mountain outpost arrived, with a breathless tale of horrible undead slaughtering the outpost. Two of the characters hated undead, so I figured they'd bite on this hook.

Nope. Not interested.

Two of the other characters were really into brown-nosing the local lord in an effort to be granted land and titles, so I had the lord appeal to them to save his mountain outpost.

Nope. Not interested.

"Okay," I said, passing across the campaign map. "Pick somewhere on this map you want to go, and I'll make an adventure happen there."

Nope. Not interested.

"I'll, uh, just show myself out, then," I said. And left.

Turns out they didn't like my DMing but weren't men enough to just kick me out. Most embarrassing failure of my D&D career.

 

[Haltherrion]

As a player had a game once where the ref really wanted to try a gritty, low magic, post-apocalyptic sort of D&D game where healing magic no longer worked and magic was mostly broken. It was a setting that really did not appeal to most of the player's aesthetic senses and while we gave it ago, it kind of just petered out due to lack of interest.

In the campaign you described, I saw a number of warning flags. Spelljammer for starters is a "non-classic" D&D setting which can certainly work but also strikes many players as not really D&D and therefore not really their cup of tea. Meaning, as excited as you have may been about the setting, they might have been lukewarm about it (similarly to our low magic failed setting above). Not to say you can't engage them but suggests going to extraordinary effort in game to get them excited about the setting.

Second, in the tactical situation you described, you implied there was only one way out. That's usually a mistake in any encounter because the players often don't see things the way you do and it is better to be more flexible, design an encounter where you the ref forsee several solutions and then be flexible if they take approaches you did not think of. This allows the players to solve the problem their way (within reason). The alternative has the players casting around for "the right way that the referee thought of" which can be quite frustrating.

Finally, on the character concept, despite not knowing you or your players, the fact that one player wanted a new character because he didn't get the concept despite your earlier guidance I'm inclined to side with the player, not the ref on this. It may seem perfectly clear in your own head but from brain to paper (or email ) it is easy to leave out key details without realizing it. I don't fault the ref for this; happens to me all the time but I don't blame the player for not quite getting what I had in mind.

So... dicey setting, maybe a over-constrained first encounter, character requirements a little unclear to the players, definitely have the ingredients for a short campaign...

 

[Bullgrit]

Spelljammer for starters is a "non-classic" D&D setting which can certainly work but also strikes many players as not really D&D and therefore not really their cup of tea.

I got Player buy-in before starting it. Everyone was willing, and knew what Spelljammer was about.

Second, in the tactical situation you described, you implied there was only one way out. That's usually a mistake in any encounter because the players often don't see things the way you do and it is better to be more flexible, design an encounter where you the ref forsee several solutions and then be flexible if they take approaches you did not think of. This allows the players to solve the problem their way (within reason). The alternative has the players casting around for "the right way that the referee thought of" which can be quite frustrating.

No, I made an encounter. An enemy ship (right out of the main book) of equal size to the PCs' ship. I made no "one way" to deal with the encounter. But just like when a DM places an encounter with a group of orcs guarding a treasure chest, and he expects the PCs will kill the orcs with a frontal assault and gain the loot, (you know, the standard operating procedure for 90% of parties), I expected a particular strategy and result.

Expecting certain strategy and results is not the same as requiring a certain strategy and results.

Finally, on the character concept, despite not knowing you or your players, the fact that one player wanted a new character because he didn't get the concept despite your earlier guidance I'm inclined to side with the player, not the ref on this. It may seem perfectly clear in your own head but from brain to paper (or email ) it is easy to leave out key details without realizing it. I don't fault the ref for this; happens to me all the time but I don't blame the player for not quite getting what I had in mind.

Remember, the Player's characters did nothing in the one encounter they got because the group chose to do nothing. There was no case of the PCs not matching the campaign, or the campaign being different than the Player expected -- they had met only one encounter, and essentially refused to engage it with their PCs.

This is like the group choosing to fleeing/surrendering, without a fight, to the first [level appropriate] orc encounter they get in the campaign and then the Player deciding he wants to change characters. How to you base such a decision on just the very first encounter of a game? An encounter that you don't even engage with your PC?

Bullgrit