WotBS Your WotBS: How Did YOur Group Surprise You?

So, I'm currently working on localisation of Shelter and Banquet for my guys, and I'm reminded again just how much fun I think this entire path is. As always, I'm curious about other peoples' experiences running the saga. Plus I feel the need to stir up a bit of discussion over something I enjoy ^^

So, please share - what has your group done in WotBS that you (and the adventure) weren't expecting? I remember somebody mentioned a group bullying Kathor Danava into using his diplomatic papers to get them out of Gate Pass, which I thought was just brilliant. Has anybody else had their players grab an idea like that out of left field? Did they kill somebody important? Convert a villainous character? Sidestep a major plot event?

Inquiring minds (in my head) want to know

My party buried Leska alive in a cave collapse and then built a dungeon full of death traps to hide the Torch for a few thousand years.

Nice to see the odd friendly "face" from my Usenet days.

I had a guest co-DM during the Fire Forest adventure to, among other things, play Tiljan, and a romantic sub-plot between her and the bard developed. (Vuel/Deception had told her something beautiful was to be found in the abandoned village, as far as she was concerned it was him.) It was mostly just flirtation until the end of that adventure.

The party split up for the final showdown, despite the fact that the unwisdom of doing so is so established it's a running joke with us - some went directly to Indomitability and others stayed in the Seela village. The bard was in the latter category, and the co-GM decided Tiljan would want to be one of the trio singing the Song of Forms at that point. It becomes clear to those onshore that things in the lake are going pear-shaped - the cleric gets tossed from their boat and fails an attempt to use a rope to, essentially, water-ski on Indomitability; the latter is approaching the shore at an alarming clip. With two PCs essentially riding him (the dwarf warblade is still struggling to pull the sword entirely clear, and the bronze dragon, yes you read that right, is just hanging on for dear life). Having described him as much further out in the lake than the adventure says, I decide those on shore have three rounds to decide what to do about this.

The bard uses the first of those rounds to try to persuade the three Seela to stop singing. Hurried diplo checks get one to stop. Tiljan falls under my rule that PCs can choose whether to be affected by such things, and keeps singing.

The second round he uses some sort of spell, I forget what. Another stops singing. Tiljan makes her save.

The third round, Indomitability arrives, leaps atop the tower, and tries to throw the bard off. He bull rushes the bard but rolls for crap and doesn't quite get him off the tower. It's the bard's turn, what does he do?

Kisses Tiljan. End of Song of Forms.

(Notwithstanding the co-DM's half-joking "Can I use Ventriloquism?", to which the reply was "I'll have to consider you grappled".)

So, the dice and unexpected player actions conspired to give that one a very memorable and rather poetic ending.

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Happy ending at the player level too. The guest GM stayed with the group and rebuilt Tiljan (actually, with the help of an update to the race description from this site) to be her PC for the forseeable future, though she's got another one in the hopper as well. (Two bards, most unoptimized party ever you'd think... actually, tonight they showed themselves quite capable of dealing with an encounter of CR = party level x2).

Most other plot deviations have been my doing. Hating the number of potential DMPCs in this series, I killed off Torrent about 15 minutes into the first session and Haddin shortly before the above events - or rather, let the party finish him when he decided teaming up with Kazyk was the way to go. Krystin is more interesting trying to figure out what to do without him than she is under his thumb. Katrina, I must say, has been an unqualified hit with the group.

Okay, so I know I'm necromancing and it's my own thread nonetheless, but my group seriously impressed me in part 3. When they got the Lyre of Building back to town, they weren't interested in handing it over to Laurabec, but instead gave it to the bard cohort and had him renovate all the refugee camps into real housing. I don't know why I didn't see that coming. So now the city is about twice as big, and all the impoverished refugees sort of own houses or do they because it's still the city's land and... it's chaos. Magistrate Vortberd (here being played by a sort of Lin Bei Fong style humourless matron) really loves to hate my group XD

They followed that up by using the Lyre to pull the Aquila up from the harbour instead of diving for it (the seafarers union are not pleased with them, but the university is). Unfortunately they're thinking about trying to use it to drop houses on enemy armies next, so clearly I need to take it away again -_-; Probably before they go into the sunken prison, or it will not be sunken for long.

They totally ignored the Wayfarers, and instead had their hearts set on taking down Xeth Gilder and Tormod Micolai (the localised versions of Makung Shaftobem and Cernaban Gremman). I figured I'd let them tell the story they wanted instead of pushing them around, so I statted up the troublemakers and let them throw down. One session later they had captured Gilder, chased Micolai into retreat (creating a convienient air pirate rival for next book) and took over their fancy house as a home base. The magistrate begrudgingly let them get away with that, since they managed to actually give her enough evidence to close the brothels and biomancers case, and because I thought it would be a good idea to tie them to Tabris (Seaquen) while I had the chance.

(*I gave them a bardic follower to make up for the lack of the Fire Forest plot, thus Tiljann, thus their chance to learn the Song of Forms.)

TL: DR - HEY NEW GMs, put limitations on the Lyre of Building unless you want to see your players treat your campaign world like Minecraft

... I hardly recognize any of the events or NPC names you just mentioned, and my group has since finished the third adventure. Is that all stuff from the 4E version?

Hard to say, I've never read the 3.5 version so I have no way of knowing whether they're new additions ^^; Laurabec is the eagle rider who's sticking up for the refugees, might be 4e-only since she's self-contained in book 3, and her central connection is a skill challenge. The Lyre itself is the result of that skill challenge, so it may well be that all of this is only in the 4e version. Kind of a shame though, because I rather like Laurabec, and she added a nice melancholy air to the end of book 2.

Vortberd is the town magistrate who blames all the unrest on the refugees. He might well be a 4e add-in, since he connects mainly to the arson rats challenge, which I think is 4e only.

Shaftobem and Gremman are the "masterminds" behind the White Wyrms terrorist group you first meet in book one and can solve in book 3, and I can see how they might have been a 4e thing, since they mostly add depth to what's already there rather than create new leads (and possibly to give the players to the idea that Ostalin's ruler is a bit of a nutter).

Tiljann must be all-versions, surely. She's way too important.

The White Wyrms were added in 4e. The others were all in the 3.5 version.

Perhaps oddly, I'm glad to hear that. I loved that in book 3, especially, there were so many different sources for the heroes to get most of the same info from, and they all had somewhat different perspectives on it. It's all well and good to have an exposition NPC they're made to meet, but Shelter felt much richer because it largely gave them exposition in the form of opinion. It would have been a shame to find out that most of those voices were afterthoughts! ^_^;

Vortberd was a brain fart on my part. Laurabec and Tiljan I recognized the names of (as I've said, Tiljan was actually a PC in my group for a while).

However, there's no Lyre of Building that I recall in the 3E version, much less an entire subplot around it, and I have no idea what the Aquilla is.

It's also interesting how different two groups' takes on an adventure like this can be - "totally ignored the Wayfarers" is the furthest thing possible from what my group did! They ignored most of the city stuff in the middle - basically, everything you can do in Seaquen that isn't Wayfarers-related and/or absolutely essential to the main plot, they displayed no interest in whatsoever. At one point they complained that those parts didn't give them any obvious hooks half an hour after I explicitly listed six of them, which is the point where I gave up on that stuff and skipped straight to the war council. In fact Laurabec's final scene at the end had zero impact because they'd forgotten who she was despite meeting her on two separate occasions.

I was about to apologize for the digression, but actually that last part does fall under "how did your group surprise you?", just not in an entirely pleasant way.

Their latest entry into that category, in the fourth adventure - accepting the mission to assassinate Kelkin, but instead of fighting him, persuading him to sit the battle out and prepare for the real enemy, Ragesia. It's a very obvious approach when you think about it, especially given his links to Gabal and distrust of "Nina", but for some reason neither the adventure writer nor I contemplated any possibility of that encounter being something other than a battle.

(Ryan - was there ever a real Nina, or is "Nina" ONLY a guise for... well, what she actually is? I plan to play it as the latter, but the former would create a parallel with Vuel's fate in the second adventure.)

In the 3.5 version Naizelasa the green dragon does have a lyre of building that she plays mournfully to make buildings and smash them, since she's sad her egg was stolen.

Nina Glibglammer? Sure, there was a real gnome advisor, or at least that was my intention. Probably doesn't matter either way.