Adventure running: when the PCs skip a step, what to do?

[Gardens & Goblins]

Personally, I'd have them succeed at a cost. The Big Bad Guy is defeated and the lair begins to collapse atop of them and the gate.

Because: Reasons.

A month of so (another adventure) of quiet and suddenly, it seems to be all starting again. But the trail of horrible creatures and their attacks are happening across the land.

As the DM, we know that an NPC - an acolyte/sage/random - has acquired one of the rods, which led them to the buried gate. Driven as if compelled by some other-worldy force, this NPC has managed resources to dig up and transport the gate to.. wherever. Their lair. A sponsor's lair. End of the world etc

While the gate is intact, its operating sporadically. The last crystal can be used to entice it into action, if only for a short while. Still long enough for horrible things to spew forth.

Now the party has the option of hunting down the NPC, attaining the last crystal and finally ending the gate, once and for all.

 

[MoominT]

Teleport room/trap, hey presto players in right place.

invent a room and stick him in it.

Really big scary monster they have to run back.

Have the second boss they missed turn up to aid the first boss.

What ever you think the players will find the most fun, be it only needing 2 rods and forgetting the missed part or making them go back. People above have put make them pay a cost why? its a game for fun glory and adventure, not about paying taxes.

 

[Shiroiken]

Depending on the amount of time this takes place in, you could have Henchman #2 discover the fate of Henchmen #1. They would then immediatly be on the alert, and hunt the complex for the intruders (either carrying the crystal rod if it has powers, or indications that he has it in his portion of the lair if it does not). A good (if railroady) method would be to have a group of underlings of Henchmen #2 (or #1 if any survived) run across the PCs, and have one flee... always staying just ahead of the party, leading them to the right area. It's easier of your group takes captives to interrogate, but I've played with many groups that don't bother.

 

[Ancalagon]

Thank you everyone for your replies. Unfortunately some of them ... don't work... because you don't know everything about the adventure (the OP would have been enormous!) but I really appreciate the effort.

Notably the outer gates of the complex open for 28 days every 27 years, so a "return" is not really possible. The PCs know about the rods and it will be quite clear (once they vanquish the big evil guy) that the 3 are needed. They are still looking, they just don't know they went by it.

IIRC this was a fault of the adventure's design. Leaving "dangling (but essential) clues" scattered without sufficient ways for PCs to discover them was endemic of older edition adventures. Heck, it's still a design flaw I see come up.

Indeed! The PCs have done quite well despite this- they know about Nigel and Madreus, they know they need the 3 crystal rods and already have one... but the adventure doesn't tell the PCs where the 2nd one is! The only way to find out is stumble upon it, or maybe force Madreus to tell you. That's... pretty slim.

I mean, if you're running this for old school nostalgia types, just play it where it lies. If they're kick-in-the door types and this is just part of an overall campaign, give them the satisfaction of a boss fight...but then have the gate make further complications in the campaign. If they're story first types and Gates of Firestorm Peak *is* the entire campaign, change the requirements to seal the gate...maybe a living sacrifice can be used instead of each missing crystal?

They are story types and the adventure is not the entire campaign. Madreus's goal is actually different, he wants to shift the gate too, but not to a safe "nowhere" spot, but to underwater - his true patrons are the Krakens, who seek to open a gate deep inside the mountains to bypass the Yellow City. Until he's 100% sure he can pull it off (and he's *very close*, days away) though, he's happy just using the mad power of the Far Realm to his own ends in the meantime.

Killing Madreus will stop the Kraken invasion, but the Vast Gate will still be open, its corrupting influence bringing blight and madness to the area (arguably better than Kraken invading...), thus will be a "partial failure" for the PCs.

I am sorely tempted at this point to have the second Rod be in the Inner Sanctum (which has about 20 rooms) instead of the maze-like Twisted Cavern. It makes more sense, and would take less time to back track...

 

[Sunseeker]

Okay, so the portal is open. Personally, I'd leave the situation as is, but work out what's going to happen if the gate is just left open.

EDIT: just saw your reply and you answer most of these. Honestly I'd leave the situation as-is. A little far-realmy fun-times makes for a great adventure. I mean, who doesn't like going slowly insane and turning into a tentacled horror?

What happens if the portal stays open?

Do bad things come through?

Do progressively worse things come though?

Does the constant connection between A and B cause some kind of growing tear in reality? An unraveling of the fabric of the universe?

Is the energy of Plane B stronger and it slowly warps reality around the gate to be more like Plane B? Expanding further and further out?

 

[Coroc]

[MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION]

I mean, who doesn't like going slowly insane and turning into a tentacled horror?




ROFLMAO

 

[5ekyu]

A lot comes down to what you want and your group expects.

My games and my players know sometimes partial successes are enough.

"We dont have to solve all the problems, just today's problem."

I once had a game where towards the end of the first phase a characters backstory intersected with plotlines to give them a "stop apocalypse at cost" option.

They chose "nope."

So, apocalypse came.

Game transitioned to surviving in an ongoing apocalypse survive and put off the inevitable overnight, instead of the patch the aftermath problems once apocalypse fixed.

Much later, the player admited they thought just not doing it would mean some other solution popped up.

My other players knew better.

It comes down to the table and the expectations and those should trump any outside considerations.

My games evolve all the time.

But a risk to the "just shift it forward" approach is that it does foster the notion of their choices not being pivotal and somthing else Will always come up if the current choice is not taken.

The key is to make sure things vary.

 

[Imaculata]

EDIT: just saw your reply and you answer most of these. Honestly I'd leave the situation as-is. A little far-realmy fun-times makes for a great adventure. I mean, who doesn't like going slowly insane and turning into a tentacled horror?

Although funny, I also agree with you. The cataclysmic consequences make for a way more exciting chain of events at the end of the campaign, and may provide an excellent starting point for a second campaign. What happens when everything goes wrong, is more interesting than what happens when everything goes right.

The adventure itself is flawed of course for not giving the players enough clues towards the other rod. Old (and new) adventures are often like that. Had this been a campaign of my own design, I would probably just have moved some of the content in the path of the players. But since its not, I honestly feel the bad ending is the better option.

 

[Ancalagon]

Part of what makes a "partial success" not very interesting though is two-fold:

1: The party isn't local. If the gate stays opened and madness keeps slowly spreading well... sucks to be you people in this mountain valley. We're going back to the Yellow City!

2: There is the gate (the portal) and the *outer gate* - a physical, impregnable door that opens once every 27 year for a 28 day period. The long term consequence of failure are there but... apart from the locals having nightmares and sheep going carnivore, not much is going to happen for 27 years :/

 

[Oofta]

The issue with partial success is ... is the partial success just random bad luck?

I have no problem with PCs "losing" if they make a bad decision. But unlike real life I prefer not to have things go sideways if it was simply out of ignorance, if that ignorance was not caused by truly poor judgement. In other words if they didn't track down the 3rd McGuffin because of bad luck, die rolls or simply inadequate hints provided by the mod then the PCs not being the heroes they mean to be leaves a sour tasted in my mouth.

Which doesn't mean bad things don't happen in my campaign. They do all the time. But the players can always look at Bob and say "This happened because you didn't believe us when we told you that the warlock Bad Evil Guy needed to be stopped and you let him go!" Actions or lack of actions have far reaching consequences, simple bad luck they could not have avoided can also have negative outcomes but I avoid the world-breaking cataclysmically bad outcomes because they didn't know they had missed anything.