Went to Milwaukee this past weekend to visit my fiancee, and we decided to take in an AL game at a local game store. I recount this story not to blame anyone in particular -- I probably deserve as much blame as anyone -- but to point out how things can snowball out of control and lead to a poor play experience.
It started out oddly enough. My fiancee and I arrived at the store where the regular group had started early in an attempt to complete an 8-hour module in one sitting. The only other available players were a pair of 12-year old boys and one slightly older, maybe 14-year old boy. From experience, I know that gaming with younger kids can be challenging, so I'd hoped to play my paladin, but the module chosen was one my paladin had already played (The Drowned Tower), so I instead pulled out my warlock with the Actor feat, thinking that at least I'd be able to serve as the party 'face'.
The first part of the adventure went surprisingly well. We got through the initial combat, then quickly finished the initial investigation part of the adventure. The kids got a chance to try to bluff their way into the seedy bar without paying the seven copper cover charge, but we got the info we needed and took a short break before heading out to the main meat of the adventure.
Things started to go south after we reached the tower. One of the kids, playing a dragonborn barbarian, decided to head in a different direction from the other two kids, so me and my fiancee followed him, even as he started descending farther into the tower before the other characters had finished getting through the first level. Then, one character triggered an encounter, and before we knew what was happening, the rogue was down and making death saves. The DM allowed me and my fiancee's characters to hear the rogue's cry as he was knocked down, and my fiancee's dragonborn headed back up the stairs to help.
It was at that point that the dragonborn barbarian remembered that he'd been inflicted with Megalomania (from the chart in DDAL 3-6, No Laughing Matter), and decided that the directive, "Anyone who doesn't do exactly what I say doesn't deserve to live," meant that my warlock had to die for telling the barbarian to go back to help the rogue. He attacked, and my warlock responded by casting Crown of Madness on the barbarian; it stuck, and the warlock ordered the barbarian to come along and help. The barbarian quickly shrugged off the spell, but not until my warlock had re-joined the rest of the party -- the wizard had summoned a gargoyle to delay the monsters that had dropped the rogue, but hadn't been able to get to the rogue to aid him. It certainly looked as though we were going to have a TPK right there on the first level.
Eventually, the barbarian lost interest in hunting the party, and the wizard's spells ended up handling the encounter, so we settled in for a short rest to try to recover from the misadventure. The barbarian decided to head down the stairs he'd gone down, triggering the next encounter, and getting quickly dropped. The rest of the party eventually followed and cleaned up the encounter, but we left the barbarian unconscious, uncertain whether he'd try to kill us if we revived him. Pushing as quickly as we could, we managed to finish the four-hour adventure in just under six hours, just as the store was closing, so we didn't have time to resolve some of the outstanding plot issues hanging over our heads (such as pooling to buy the barbarian a Greater Restoration to cure his madness).
As we were leaving, I thanked the DM for the game, but over the next day, the more I thought about it, the more I was irritated about how the game had gone. In the end, everybody got XP, and I even got the magic item, but I have to think my fiancee and I would have had more fun sitting at home and playing Dungeon Siege on her X-Box.
As noted, there's a lot of blame to go around:
- The AL takes some blame for including an option in an adventure which allows a character to 'act' Chaotic Evil even though such an alignment is prohibited from the game. It's one thing to say that 'it's what my character would do' doesn't enable disruptive play, but when the personality trait is given in an AL adventure, rather than being chosen by the player, the AL has to take some blame for enabling the abusive behavior.
- The barbarian player takes some blame for intepreting, "this character who offended me doesn't deserve to live" as "I will kill that character". One could argue that a more mature player would be able to make that determination, but again, the player was 12, and a very small number of 12-year olds likely have the maturity needed to handle that kind of character option. This one clearly didn't.
- The DM takes some blame for not correcting the player, and not taking control of the session when it became obvious that the game was close to going completely off the rails. I will give the DM credit, though, once the game got back on the rails, she kept everything running smoothly until the end, finishing the mod before the store closed.
- I take some blame for both planting the seed in the barbarian player's mind that splitting the party was an OK thing (since we did it successfully in the exploration part of the adventure), and then arguably escalating the PvP by casting a spell on the barbarian after he attacked me (though, in my defense, the spell was meant to get the barbarian back on track, as well as to prevent him from attacking me, as the spell applies the Charmed condition). If I had the chance to go back in time, I'm not sure what I'd change rather than simply letting the barbarian head downstairs to be punked by the cultists waiting there.
--
Pauper
It started out oddly enough. My fiancee and I arrived at the store where the regular group had started early in an attempt to complete an 8-hour module in one sitting. The only other available players were a pair of 12-year old boys and one slightly older, maybe 14-year old boy. From experience, I know that gaming with younger kids can be challenging, so I'd hoped to play my paladin, but the module chosen was one my paladin had already played (The Drowned Tower), so I instead pulled out my warlock with the Actor feat, thinking that at least I'd be able to serve as the party 'face'.
The first part of the adventure went surprisingly well. We got through the initial combat, then quickly finished the initial investigation part of the adventure. The kids got a chance to try to bluff their way into the seedy bar without paying the seven copper cover charge, but we got the info we needed and took a short break before heading out to the main meat of the adventure.
Things started to go south after we reached the tower. One of the kids, playing a dragonborn barbarian, decided to head in a different direction from the other two kids, so me and my fiancee followed him, even as he started descending farther into the tower before the other characters had finished getting through the first level. Then, one character triggered an encounter, and before we knew what was happening, the rogue was down and making death saves. The DM allowed me and my fiancee's characters to hear the rogue's cry as he was knocked down, and my fiancee's dragonborn headed back up the stairs to help.
It was at that point that the dragonborn barbarian remembered that he'd been inflicted with Megalomania (from the chart in DDAL 3-6, No Laughing Matter), and decided that the directive, "Anyone who doesn't do exactly what I say doesn't deserve to live," meant that my warlock had to die for telling the barbarian to go back to help the rogue. He attacked, and my warlock responded by casting Crown of Madness on the barbarian; it stuck, and the warlock ordered the barbarian to come along and help. The barbarian quickly shrugged off the spell, but not until my warlock had re-joined the rest of the party -- the wizard had summoned a gargoyle to delay the monsters that had dropped the rogue, but hadn't been able to get to the rogue to aid him. It certainly looked as though we were going to have a TPK right there on the first level.
Eventually, the barbarian lost interest in hunting the party, and the wizard's spells ended up handling the encounter, so we settled in for a short rest to try to recover from the misadventure. The barbarian decided to head down the stairs he'd gone down, triggering the next encounter, and getting quickly dropped. The rest of the party eventually followed and cleaned up the encounter, but we left the barbarian unconscious, uncertain whether he'd try to kill us if we revived him. Pushing as quickly as we could, we managed to finish the four-hour adventure in just under six hours, just as the store was closing, so we didn't have time to resolve some of the outstanding plot issues hanging over our heads (such as pooling to buy the barbarian a Greater Restoration to cure his madness).
As we were leaving, I thanked the DM for the game, but over the next day, the more I thought about it, the more I was irritated about how the game had gone. In the end, everybody got XP, and I even got the magic item, but I have to think my fiancee and I would have had more fun sitting at home and playing Dungeon Siege on her X-Box.
As noted, there's a lot of blame to go around:
- The AL takes some blame for including an option in an adventure which allows a character to 'act' Chaotic Evil even though such an alignment is prohibited from the game. It's one thing to say that 'it's what my character would do' doesn't enable disruptive play, but when the personality trait is given in an AL adventure, rather than being chosen by the player, the AL has to take some blame for enabling the abusive behavior.
- The barbarian player takes some blame for intepreting, "this character who offended me doesn't deserve to live" as "I will kill that character". One could argue that a more mature player would be able to make that determination, but again, the player was 12, and a very small number of 12-year olds likely have the maturity needed to handle that kind of character option. This one clearly didn't.
- The DM takes some blame for not correcting the player, and not taking control of the session when it became obvious that the game was close to going completely off the rails. I will give the DM credit, though, once the game got back on the rails, she kept everything running smoothly until the end, finishing the mod before the store closed.
- I take some blame for both planting the seed in the barbarian player's mind that splitting the party was an OK thing (since we did it successfully in the exploration part of the adventure), and then arguably escalating the PvP by casting a spell on the barbarian after he attacked me (though, in my defense, the spell was meant to get the barbarian back on track, as well as to prevent him from attacking me, as the spell applies the Charmed condition). If I had the chance to go back in time, I'm not sure what I'd change rather than simply letting the barbarian head downstairs to be punked by the cultists waiting there.
--
Pauper
