Failed DM Experiements

[Pyske]

One of the fun challenges of DMing is trying to keep things fresh and interesting for players who have already seen just about every trick in the book. Sometimes, you tweak things a bit, pull everything together, and the players love every minute of it.

This thread isn't about those times.

When have you seen the rules or setting tweaked, and things just didn't work the way the DM planned?

The first example that springs to mind for me was an experiment in trying to bring some metagame considerations into the game world. I tied the old "don't split the party" axiom to the PCs with a curse / geas, which caused serious penalties to PCs when they were farther from each other than a certain radius. This was generally far enough that the PCs could sleep in separate rooms with a little planning and furniture moving, and could function normally in combat that wasn't at very long ranges, but they couldn't easily wander off to pursue their own agendas, research, etc.

The plan was to promote some interesting roleplay as the PCs were forced to be constantly in each others' business ("Could y'all come outside a moment? I need to use the privy."), make them hate the villain, and keep the party together and able to participate / be entertained. The plan was for the PCs to hate it.

They did. So did the players. I actually had people talking about killing and raising their characters to experiment with whether that ended the curse.

I had also given one of the PCs an item which could "suspend" the curse for a short period of time. Naturally, real life intervened, and he quit the game without any of them ever discovering what the item did.

The campaign continued for a little while longer, but this was the beginning of the end.

How 'bout y'all? Any horror stories of the time the DM just wanted to "try out something a little different?"

. . . . . . . -- Eric

 

[Desdichado]

Luckily this was just a one-shot, but I tried to run an Aliens themed game one time. I gave everyone two characters because I knew mortality was going to be high, for a total of twelve PCs running around an abandoned space ship. A few hours later, one lone PC made it back off.

I guess it worked OK, but I didn't know the players tastes very well yet; we had only been playing together for a short while, and I know a few of the players were really frustrated with the whole thing. In particular, one of the players was frustrated if she couldn't just jump right into combat and kick some @$$, so she really had a hard time with the game.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I learned the hard way not to expect my players to do something.

I built the entire second half of my campaign around a single, innocuous event. See, the bad guys were going to assassinate the king in such a way that it looked like the PCs did it. They were also going to trap his soul so he couldn't be ressurected. The PCs then would have to locate the hidden base, go on an adventure to find the item to get them entry to said base, recover/destroy the gem holding the soul, and on-the-way find tons of hints about the Doomsday Device the bad guys were going to set off.

My mistake was hinging all of this on the single, innocuous event mentioned earlier. A more experienced DM would have been able to handle this on-the-fly, but not me...

The Heroes had just completed a big quest for the King and were on their way back for their reward. On the way they had a "random" encounter where they killed some warrior trolls and discovered in the treasure a Glove of Storing. It was cursed/trapped so that when it touched the king it would disintigrate him (The king is well-known for shaking the hands of his heroes in congratulations). It was a one-shot effect and it would look like the PC had just killed the king with some sort of touch-spell.

The only problem was that none of the players thought the glove was useful enough to bother with. Not only were they not going to wear it, but they were going to sell it in the next town! I panicked. The entire rest of the plot - the next few months of gaming - depended on them being framed for the king's death. I didn't know what to do.

I ended up (and this is pathetic) contacting one of the players and telling him the glove was a major plot item and somebody had to put it on. Next game, his character developed a "sudden" desire to possess the glove of storing, and the plot was salvaged - at the price of the free will of a character.

Never again will I assume my party will do something!

 

[barsoomcore]

Oh, man, somedays I feel like my WHOLE campaign is a "Failed DM Experiment". Those are bad days.



Lessee, there was the "Overwhelm D&D players with Cthulhu-style horror" experiment ("Why should we even bother? Everything can just kill us in one blow? This sucks!"), the "Give XP awards for in-character writing" experiment ("Hm, the guy without a job has a character three levels higher than everyone else. Great."), not to mention the ever-popular "I bet they're all as interested as *I* am in this incredibly cool NPC" experiment ("No.").

But you know, this relates to something I tell everybody that works for me:

"You should be screwing up. I want to see you regularly reporting false bugs, I want to see you writing incorrect test cases and generally making mistakes. If you're not screwing up on a regular basis, you're not trying hard enough."

Experiments, by their nature, are unpredictable, and a certain number are bound to fail. If you don't have any failures in your past, you're not trying very hard.

 

[MarauderX]

As a DM, I butt heads with the munchkins all the time as I change the rules/monsters around "without telling him". One thing included Infravision (remember that?) that could see invisible creatures. He threw a fit when his PC wizard was heard then seen by a pack of hobgoblins and refused to run away, claiming that if he didn't move they couldn't get him. He had about 3 chances to run away and I felt he should have gotten the hint when I said things like "they turn to look right at you", "they are starting to walk your way" "they are about to surround you". He never cried for help from the party and didn't do ANYTHING when offered advice from the Peanut Gallery, like CAST A SPELL dimwit, or RUN AWAY, or SHOUT FOR HELP because my PC can't see you to help!

On another occasion I decided to shift the rules concerning days it took to heal that caused some concern when they were without a cleric. It went from 1 HP/level/day to 1 HP/8 hours rest. They said it felt like I was slowing them down since it took them longer to rest and complete adventures, and when I tried to put them on a time-critical adventure they refused to do it, claiming it was much too risky although they would try. It never occurred to them to get into a fight without starting at maximum hit points, so they always rested until every last point was healed. I kept trying to push them with urgency and beratements like "what a pack of sissies", but it was no good when the most paranoid player remarked it was my rule that was slowing them down. Meow, meow, King Friday, meow!

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

Oh, man, somedays I feel like my WHOLE campaign is a "Failed DM Experiment".

I feel that way far too often.



I have a couple of similar "failed experiments."

"Offer special magic items for developing backstories for characters." Result: Got a nibble, but mostly ignored.

"Encourage the players to help develop the world around them." Result: Can coax girlfriend into doing something if she's bored enough, but can't center much around her without the favorites card possibly being played.

"Offer xp for in-game writings." Result: Mixed. Most prevelant vibe was just done for leveling their character before the next game.

"I have an interesting idea. I think I'll develop an adventure around it." Result: Frustrated players.

"Introduce some silliness into an otherwise overly serious campaign." Result: Annoyed players.

"Introduce plot device to get players to speculate and give me ideas for future adventures." Result: Frustrated players.

"Introduce well thought out villans and lairs." Result: Frustrated players.

"Switched to 3.5 (specifically the new magic item costs)." Result: Annoyed players.

"Advanced 'Root of All Evil' from WOTC's Monster Mayhem." Result: Two dead PCs in 3 rounds and almost a tpk.

"Introduce NPC who tries to blackmail party into doing his bidding to get party invovled in stopping a more evil person." Result: dead blackmailer (well... that was their intent. He was actually able to flee via teleport before they killed him, though he was greivously injured).

The list goes on and on.

Still, I keep trying new experiments, though. Some of them are bound to work.

Yeah, that came off a tad grumpy. Can you tell my campaign is in a downward spiral? Oh well.

 

[Ruined]

The biggest one I had was to allow one of the players to run a session of the campaign. To quickly put in perspective: it was a custom world for a DC Heroes game. The player in question had helped me come up with the original world concept, but I had moved way beyond that and he had remained a player. The session did not affect his character at all, but it totally changed the focus of the PC group (went from govt-working agents to fugitives in one fell swoop).

Otherwise, most of my experiments have worked well. The ones that haven't, I like to refer to them as 'store-bought modules'.

 

[fuindordm]

I always find that the more interesting the NPC, the less likely they are to survive.

In an old Fantasy Hero game I developed an alchemist character who was, if not insane, definitely getting there. He wasn't playing a major role in the plot or anything, but he was fun to role-play and I was hoping to use him from time to time to give the party quests in exchange for juicy rewards.

Their first quest's reward was to be a potion that increases one of their stats permanently, but I was very careful to play the NPC so that he was clearly unbalanced and promised only that such potions were one possible reward.

When the party got back, he gave them a modified prisoner's dilemma, taking them into a room one by one and giving each the choice of white or black stones. If you chose a white stone, you would get a potion for every black stone chosen by the party. If you chose a black stone, you would get 500 gold for every white stone chosen by the party.

Well, they griped and grumbled but submitted to the game. All of them chose white stones up until the last player, who thought a little more deeply and selflessly and picked black. The result was that she got a lot of gold and everyone else got a single potion; I also intended for the more selfless players to get favored status with the alchemist in future encounters.

The intent of this game was to foster some interaction and bonding experience between the PC's, put a spotlight on their character, etc.

The result was that as soon as the party got their potions, one of the PCs drew on the alchemist and killed him with a called shot to the head. I was shocked and appalled; the alchemist had no combat skills or defenses to speak of. The action was certainly in character for the PC (a viking type with a temper), and I pulled a death curse out of my ass for that character (the blow wasn't quite hard enough to knock him out instantly). The rest of the party was also rather surprised, but didn't make too much fuss; and I think the event overshadowed any interparty bonding that I was hoping to foster.

Lesson learned, however: NPC's should know better than to deal with adventurers without backup.

--Ben

 

[Numion]

Assumed that escaped slaves coming from the neighboring kingdom to the PCs kingdom, and rumours of an evil and sadistic tyrant ruling that land was an enough of a plot hook for a group with an LG cleric and a paladin in it.

No go.

Cleric reasoned that since the tyrant is the lawful ruler of the land they'd better not intervene.

Well, I sharpened the plot hooks some more, and within two sessions they did deal with the situation. I got the last laugh though, because they had to dispose of the tyrant twice - the 'real' tyrant was really the family heirloom, a sentient sword. They were pretty surprised when the tyrants son started to show evil tendencies too in a couple of months ..

 

[barsoomcore]

I sharpened the plot hooks some more

That is a brilliant metaphor. I say so.