In your opinion, what's the best way to make the players lose?

[jbear]

If the players are on board then no worries... how to make if dramatic... that is the question I think.

Let them gain something in the encounter which can aid them on their mission that they will be hooked into and then take away all the other things you have decided will be lost. That way it won't feel like they are totally helpless and unable to affect what is happening around them. The will affect something just not what you don't want them to be able to affect.

I don't know what is going on in our campaign... so here is an example which may not be appropriate, but you can apply the idea to your own needs.

1st obstacle: getting the artifact out of their hands willingly
How about upon retrieving something really important to their cause at the top of an ancient tower, the tower begins to crumble as the tower's guardian awakens intent on destroying the thieves. The artifact if driven into it's mouth/head/pick a place will buy the PCs enough time to make it out alive

Splitting up the PCs:
As they get near the stairs to escape, your villain appears, removes the artifact and the rumble starts again. Cackling wildly he disappears. Trouble! Got to get out fast: Skill challenge to escape. Each PC has to resolve their own skill challenge individually (complexity 1 3/3 fails); Think of lots of ways for them to be able to get out, hopefully they will choose different routes to benefit from their higher skills... magic portways for your arcane characters, climbing out the window for the athletes or leaping from one broken stairway to the other.

Taking out the kidnap victims:
The Villain has not finished with the pcs, however he's unlikely to want to risk the chance of burying himself beneath the rubble. So he's going to need some helpers. maybe something that can fly in and out of windows, blasting at the PCs will. Don't even bother with damage, Slow effect is deadly enough and then sleep. You could actually have the tower mapped out and relevant places marked where PCs are allowed to make a roll on the skill challenge. That way actual movement is involved. When you attack with your 'flying imps', go for the PCs you want first, until they 'drop unconscious'. Rough the others up as well. The NPCs, don't bother, they simply 'don't make it out' at least as far as the pcs are concerned initially. Hopefully your pcs will be too worried about themselves to be concerned with what they are doing.
Each round spent in the crumbling tower could mean taking 'falling debris damage'; allow perception, dungeoneering, acrobacy and other clever ideas counter this damage. Even suggest it to the players so they are aware it is possible. The damage could increase cumulatively. When the kindnap victims drop unconscious then the web is closed.

Escape route for the PCs who are not captured.
When the situation has reached the moment you have achieved what you desire, something happens that obliges the PCs to get out NOW!! The final collapse occurs, or whatever. Otherwise they are going to be picking people up and carrying them... but hopefully you have isolated them beforehand. Something like this: Everyone make an Intuition roll: Success: this is coming down, you need to get out now!!! Make a SThrow now; +4 if you made Intuition check. Success: give successes needed to finish challenge; you made it out (how did you do it?) Fail (things got complicated) Lose a HSurge; Dungeoneering Check to keep your head, Perception to find an escape route, Athletics to leap out of the way etc. If you succeed +2 on SThrow; success (out), Fail: repeat ; when skill challenged reaches third fail the PCs is thrown clear of tower with no HSurges left and bloodied.

Villain has artifacts, his minions have swept up the kidnap victims, and the other pcs are alive, bruised and battered but still clutching whatever it was they went there for in the first place. something important. and so despite the losses, they are still victorious.

If the pcs still manage to outwit you... I'd let it be. At least you should have guaranteed the capture of the artifact and the npcs.

 

[UltimaGabe]

Thanks for all of the helpful replies, everyone! As it happens, I actually found a (very simple) solution to my own problem, but I'll definitely use some of your suggestions in future situations. Here's how I got it to work out, and I'm kinda shocked I didn't think of this sooner:

The PCs were going to be transporting the McGuffin to a sage far away to learn more about it before they proceed with the next adventure. In order to set up a villain for further down the line, on the way to the sage, they were going to be attacked by Mr. Meany Diviner Guy who learned about this McGuffin and decided to steal it. My trouble was trying to get a way to make it work without feeling too heavy-handed, particularly since the PCs have mowed down any enemy they've encountered so far.

Then it occured to me. It would make perfect sense (since the PCs themselves are actually part of a larger group- think of it as a guild- and the other members are usually doing unspecified things offscreen) for the PCs to, rather than travel to this sage immediately and then go ahead with the next adventure, instead go straight to the adventure and leave the sage-visiting with some of their NPC buddies. That way, while they're off killing some orcs or whatever, the snatch-and-grab can happen offscreen, to be relayed to them by the one survivor of the attack.

That way, if any railroading needs to be done, all that needs to happen is for me to convince the players (by whatever means) to go ahead with the adventure instead of visiting the sage. And that, in my opinion, will feel far less sucky for the players.

 

[Jack99]

Good suggestion there. Area attacks and on-going damage will bring them down.

Too much ongoing damage is a poor idea if you want to subdue people. They might die from it ;I

As a side note, a good way to handle such things, if you do not want to handwave things, is to use drow poison or something similar. Although, depending on your players, you might need a really good explanation why their characters aren't just killed while out.

 

[Mesh Hong]

That way, while they're off killing some orcs or whatever, the snatch-and-grab can happen offscreen, to be relayed to them by the one survivor of the attack.

That way, if any railroading needs to be done, all that needs to happen is for me to convince the players (by whatever means) to go ahead with the adventure instead of visiting the sage. And that, in my opinion, will feel far less sucky for the players.

Of course with this solution you are screwing your group off camera. This will probably teach your group to never leave anything with their allies ever again, and to carry anything vaguely important with them at all times.

I havn't got a problem with that, the general rule is usually "if you turn your back on something don't expect it to be there when you turn around two minutes later".

This mentality has lead to my group carrying all sorts of things in their bags of holding, at the moment they have:

- 2 sections of the "Sunder Stone of Erek'Hus" artifact (one of which is magically reduced in size which cost them 100,000 residuum).
- The dormant remains of "Second Skin" (a creature from the far realms that bonds with a host in order to survive)
- The severed head of the Raven Queen (actually they have recently found a safe place for that, but they borrow it from time to time to help them with rituals)
- The Wand of Orcus
- A large glass 'control rod' filled with Primordial Residuum

They are paranoid about leaving anything where it can be stolen, and quite rightly so as I would love to steal ALL of those things, and I have quite a selection of NPCs that would be foolish enough to try.

 

[Hazard_53188]

How about this:

The evil diviner determines that the PCs have the artifact he desires. He makes a pact with a Succubus and engineers a fake encounter where a number of bad guys are attacking the helpless Succubus in human form. He hopes to either destroy the PCs outright or if that fails use the Succubus to infiltrate their ranks. The heroes battle it out with the attacking creatures. Assuming they win the Succubus rewards one of the PCs with a kiss. She then waits for the PCs to rest and when the dominated and enthralled PC is on watch he simply walks off with the artifact leaving the other PCs to wake up with him, the Succubus, and the artifact missing and not knowing what is going on. The Succubus delivers the artifact and PC into the hands of the evil diviner, collects her rewards, and leaves.

This provides the PCs with an encounter to overcome but ends with a bit of mystery and has the effect you desire.

 

[Amaroq]

Part of my personnel rules of DMing is that, as DM, I reserve certain rights. One of the rights I have reserved (and I made this clear to all players, even gave them a printed document of the rights I reserved unto myself) is that I am allowed to suspend players and move the story along as I see fit.

... The important thing is its not so bad, as long as your players understand what you are doing and why. Its a plot device, not a draconian imposition

Exactly.

First, there needs to be a lot of trust between you and the players.

Second, you don't have to have every action involving the characters happen on-camera. For example, one of Piratecat's Story Hours includes a sequence where the party were heading towards a village to do such-and-such at the end of one session. Session two started with them heading away from the village, having done such-and-such ...

[sblock]... only to figure out that they hadn't, and that somebody had given them some kind of hypnotic/psionic false-memory of having done it.[/sblock]

... with a very memorable outcome.

Third, the plot can happen with or without the characters' permission. Sometimes, you do need to "script" a "defeat", and its acceptable to have it happen deus ex machine, for example, while the party are asleep, etc.

What isn't typically acceptable is having the characters make choices without player input, or having permanent irrevocable outcomes happen while the player is not able to give input.

(That's why its typically a bad idea to kill off a character when the player isn't present, for example, or make a crucial decision .. but its a perfectly acceptable thing to kidnap said character while player is absent...)

 

[jcayer]

It was staring us in the face all along. Villain kills and replaces the sage. The party happily turns the artifact over and the villain returns to his normal form and teleports away. There is no reason he couldn't just randomly take a few players with him. Or he could ask to see those specific characters in another room, subdue them, and poof, gone.


One thing I did was we had a player leaving. She played an archer ranger. So one encounter, about 1/4 of the way in, she was in the back alone. I gave the guy playing her a note, she doesn't act for the rest of combat. Everyone wondered what happened and when they figured out she was kidnapped, they weren't real happy, but it worked well both in and out of game. They eventually found her and she opted not to return to the party,.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Thanks for all of the helpful replies, everyone! As it happens, I actually found a (very simple) solution to my own problem, but I'll definitely use some of your suggestions in future situations. Here's how I got it to work out, and I'm kinda shocked I didn't think of this sooner:

The PCs were going to be transporting the McGuffin to a sage far away to learn more about it before they proceed with the next adventure. In order to set up a villain for further down the line, on the way to the sage, they were going to be attacked by Mr. Meany Diviner Guy who learned about this McGuffin and decided to steal it. My trouble was trying to get a way to make it work without feeling too heavy-handed, particularly since the PCs have mowed down any enemy they've encountered so far.

Then it occured to me. It would make perfect sense (since the PCs themselves are actually part of a larger group- think of it as a guild- and the other members are usually doing unspecified things offscreen) for the PCs to, rather than travel to this sage immediately and then go ahead with the next adventure, instead go straight to the adventure and leave the sage-visiting with some of their NPC buddies. That way, while they're off killing some orcs or whatever, the snatch-and-grab can happen offscreen, to be relayed to them by the one survivor of the attack.

That way, if any railroading needs to be done, all that needs to happen is for me to convince the players (by whatever means) to go ahead with the adventure instead of visiting the sage. And that, in my opinion, will feel far less sucky for the players.

Well, it makes a huge difference whether or not PCs are getting kidnapped in my opinion. If that isn't a factor then just script it however you want. Its more reliable if it happens when the PCs aren't around simply because they won't have a chance to muck with things of course. Things happening outside of the player's control isn't really railroading, its just the world working the way it works. The players still have a choice, they can go after the McGuffin or not as they please.

 

[Kablump]

So the antagonist has "Cronies" as you put it and is after an artifact that will make him powerful?

Maybe he can hire some mercs, a fairly large amount of weak ones with high stealth, and they can ambush the players as they walk through a forest, maybe so many that the odds are slim but possible to fight off the other force. Of course the enemy leader will be in the assault and his forces will completely surround and outnumber the party, making a direct attack on him nearly impossible without abandoning the support healer (Which most parties should have), it could be possible that a powerful crowd control enemy joins the DM's forces. Making something that could be impossible if the players can't play for crap and would be nearly impossible if the players knew what they were doing.

If they win maybe the quest could be completed by the death of this antagonist and therefore you still don't have to deal with those characters any more

 

[Argyle King]

My advice is to have a backup plan. Even if you think capturing them is a sure thing, somebody might do something to surprise you. If they figure a way out of it, have a general idea about how the game will play out that way instead of trying to force the issue.

Also, even if you've set things up in such a way so as to make it virtually impossible for them to get out of it, it's still a good idea to maintain at least some illusion that they have a chance to not get captured. This prevents a player from feeling completely hosed.