When the Session goes Pear Shaped

[Tale]

Some of you mention puzzles and riddles. I'd be curious to know the specifics.

 

[ExploderWizard]

It came across very limp, and was in general a waste of time.

Sounds like you could use better fluff.

 

[Daern]

Looking back the biggest fail I've had as a DM was the Night Below campaign. I still dig the box, but the trek into the underdark became this long linear slog and by the time they finally got down to the Sunless Sea I remember having no good way to really run that assault on the city and it all falling flat. I dunno if we even finished. Of course it didn't help that my players were drunk and would fall asleep mid session...
I learned two things: Don't allow bottles of wine and 40s at the table, and don't put campaigns into long tunnels underground that take months of gaming time.

 

[Janx]

One of the flops I ran was an encounter modeled off of B5's the gathering.

The Paladin was the commander of an island city, and an ambassador was kidnapped. He has a lead as to where the bad guy was, so he went down there to confront him.

The bad guy sees him, says a a few words, and moves to attack (with initiative being rolled). The paladin player continues trying to talk to the bad guy for several rounds, taking damage, but not fighting back. It wasn't until he was nearly dead that he finally started attacking.

I had to have the ambassador sweep in to rescue him, just as he fell unconcious (went below 1HP). Not the feel I was going for...

One of the mistakes I had made, was in a pre-campaign talk with the player, explaining how this campaign would require more diplomacy and delegation, than just going in chopping. He took that to an extreme. I had meant for him to "issue orders to investigate/accompany" to felllow PCs (much as in StarTrek:TNG, Dr. Crusher goes on away missions because she showed up on the set that day of filming). Instead, he'd delegate to NPCs (ignoring perfectly capable PCs sitting at the table), and he'd try to talk to bad guys when it should have been painfully obvious that he needed to be chopping...

The other mistake was in how I had structured that encounter/adventure. I assumed it would be a hack-n-slash with a few dying words encounter. I had completely negated diplomacy as an option.

I standby the fix to bring in an outside assist. The player/PC knew they lost, no sense killing them and ruining a longer story arc. If an encounter's going bad and you want to spare the PCs, you have to bring in an external event or party to change the nature of the situation, so they can escape, parley or win. The trick is to not be deus ex machina about it.

One thing to ponder, if the current encounter is going south, it is probably not worth adhering to the rest of the adventure, especially when the next encounters is more of the same. It's time for the dragon to not be home, and for enemies of the current encounter to be in the area for some "enemy of my enemy assistance". I'd be really hesitant to follow the original adventure if the first encounter nearly trashed the party, and they haven't gotten any new advantage. Something's gotta change, or defeat is obvious.

 

[Armadillo]

I had one session go south when I totally failed to anticipate how the players would react to a situation. While en route on a mission, the PCs encountered some bandits who were mostly monstrous humanoids. The PCs negotiate with the bandits and get taken to their camp. This is a large bandit group of more than two dozen and clearly more than the PCs are capable of taking on.

The bandit chief, a minotaur, invites the PCs to stay for dinner, and he provides the PCs with information about their objective further in the mountains (the purpose of this whole encounter). Only, I describe how the dinner is served by the human captives of the bandits.

The next morning, the PCs leave and start up the road into the mountains. They stop almost immediately, though, and go back to free the captives. I go over with them the number and clear strength of the bandits. The players say they are going in anyway. They get into a fight with a portion of the bandits, have a few bad rolls, and we're in a near TPK with only one PC still alive and not captured.

This brought the campaign to a halt. The players said that there was no way that they would have left the captives there, no matter how tough the bandits were.

The next week we rebooted, but they insisted that I had to run the new campaign in order to learn from my mistake.

 

[Jack99]

I hope you can be OK with my game. I may not do the most epic of boss battles. And I have pulled punches in the past, as I'm ever the softy who errs on the side of the PCs. But damn if I want to slay one in a straight up grudgematch. Grrr.

I am fairly easy as a player. As long as I occasionally get to kick down some doors and take some loot, I am cool.

 

[The Ghost]

So I want to hear about you guys: how have things went south for you? Where the ball seriously was dropped, and how you managed to get it back (or not!).

So, a near-TPK doesn't have to be bad. If the PCs are clearly outmatched I expect them to realise this and retreat.

A few months ago I was running a 3.5 D&D campaign with four 5th level characters: Wizard (illusionist), Paladin, Ranger, and a Cleric. The party had heard a rumor that there was a band of orcs raiding farmsteads close to an inn that the party was staying at and took it upon themselves to rid the people of this threat. After investigating some of the farmsteads and talking with the farmers they determined that there were a half dozen to a dozen orcs and, at least, one of them was a spell-caster.

After a few hours of wandering through the wilderness the PCs spotted the orc campsite. The Ranger scouted the surrounding terrain and they determined what their best course of action was. They set themselves up on the battlefield and I rolled a couple of Spot/Listen checks to see if the orcs noticed them. The party took their surprise round and charged in whiffing on all their attacks. A couple more attacks rolls later (one hitting for middling damage) the orcs got to go. The orc cleric cast bless and the rest of the orcs moved into position swing their falchions - five attack rolls, five hits, three potential criticals, two confirmed. Two rounds later I had three dead PCs, one dead orc, and a Ranger running for his life. Gruumsh truly smiled on this combat.

The orcs let the Ranger escape back to the inn. There, by fateful chance, were three new adventurers (my players three new PCs, a Favored Soul, another Wizard, and a Knight) looking for, well, adventure. The Ranger explained what had happened to him and the new adventurers all agreed that this menace must be stopped. The following morning they set out for the orcs campsite.

I took the dead players character sheets and looked over their possessions and spread some of their items around the orc horde, a healing belt for one, an amulet of Natural Armor +1 for another, etc. A few hours later the party came to the orc campsite and began making preparations for battle. This time, though, the orcs heard the PCs coming and readied themselves. Five rounds later I had three more dead PCs, four dead orcs, and a Ranger running for his life - again!

At the end of the day we were all rolling on the ground laughing at the ineptitude of those particular PCs.

What did we learn from this? Be wary of the DM when his dice are hot!

 

[evildmguy]

My worst mistakes involved homebrew riddles and puzzles. I realized very shortly that I just don't reason things out like my players, and what makes sense to me, and what conclusions I draw are not necessarily the same as where my players arrive at.

I hope this makes you feel better.

I have only run ONE session where riddles worked. Every other time, the players, who are the ones actually forced to figure out the riddle, either knew the answer right away or had no clue what it meant. In general, I have found that to be true in life. If you are in the right place and mindset for riddles, they aren't too bad. If you aren't expecting one, and get hit by it, they are not fun and usually bring the game to a halt.

As for my own blunders as a DM, here are a few. (I keep thinking of Red Dwarf's smeg ups and Kryten saying, "It's not that there are many. However, this is the first in a thirty volume set . . . " )

2E: I made an adventure that was supposed to be characters running away from a superior defense point, a tower with archers, a forced road to it and lots of traps and tunnels. The players assumed they could defeat anything so instead of doing the scouting, as I intended, they kept attacking and were frustrated they couldn't take the tower. I eventually had to tell them they were only supposed to scout it and the next part was them taking part in the siege. They didn't like that.

I had a huge battle for high (17+) level characters planned out and they looked at it, made some thoughts and then guessed where they thought the main bad guys were. They ended up blasting that place to tiny pieces with spells and items. It killed the main bad guy. I congratulated myself for making it possible to guess where the big bad was and on them for figuring it out. I figured they would be happy as the rest of the forces decided not to fight but it meant the climactic final battle was over after their first action.

4E: I am still getting the hang of the system. I created a fight for 9 PCs by having two dragons. Unfortunately, the dragons had too many hit points and high enough defenses that although the group was wearing the dragons down, I don't know what would stop the dragons from flying away. After two hours, and all of us tired at the grind, I ended it and faked my way to get back on track.

So, after the dragons, I made a fight with lower level monsters but then it was too easy as non minions couldn't take more than two hits before going down.

In fact, in general, it's weird how things work out at time. I ended up going with the full stats of a monster nine levels higher with some extras, and they nearly walked through it easily. The next session, I had a fight with 2x the party number with a more level friendly set and it almost overwhelmed them. A few bad die rolls by them and a few good ones by me could have reversed their fortune. (This is specific to 4E but fits most editions of DND, imo.)

I made a fight with Frost Giants that used some abilities to great effect. However, after they did it once, and it was something they could do at will, the players shut down the giants by dividing them with zones and walls and attacks. The giants never managed to pull that attack again and the rest of the combat, from my perspective, was a joke in that it was only a matter of time before the PCs won it.

World of Darkness: I had this really big idea. It is set in Chicago and I had the parties genealogy back twenty generations, including the ones who arrived in Chicago. The idea was to send them back in time to help their family, preferably by not interacting with them at all or not having their ancestors realize who they were. They would also help set up the modern vampire prince and get on his good side for the fight in modern day. It ended up being a big joke as none of them could take it seriously. What was supposed to last six sessions I killed in the same one I introduced it! Did not work. (If I could do it again, I would use the examples from DMG2 and do vignettes and have them play their ancestors. Alas, I got it three weeks later, too late to do anything with it.)

This is really only a small sampling of them. However, I have finally forgiven myself for any bad sessions prior to '95, as I was young and inexperienced.

edg

 

[Iron Sky]

The final battle of one of my best campaigns ever (my last 2E game I ran) was kinda anti-climactic. The whole game to that point had involved the players trapped in a magically-warm valley deep in some snowy mountains. The pass out of the valley was only open for a couple months out of the year, so the party was stuck there for a while.

They ended up doing the usual stuff - fighting mountain goblins, tracking down an errant necromancer using undead to mine for some evil magic item, investigate the disappearance of some village girls, etc. Throughout it all, they sensed that something wasn't quite right with the local nobles.

Eventually, the ruling duke became ill and when the PCs discovered that it was actually poison, the blame seemed to fall on the innocent captain of the guard - who was also one of the party's friends.

They didn't believe it, so led a revolt and captured the "castle" (more like a wooden fort) only to find the big bad had slipped away. Then they tracked him down...

A quick note about the party composition. I had three regular players: a human cleric, an elven mage, and a halfling rogue. I also had three players that showed up every few sessions, all fighters of various flavors. I could usually expect one of the fighters to show up, so I'd eyeball the fights on the assumption that there would be a party of 4.

Of course, for this session, for the first time ever, all three of the fighters showed up. It was a last minute thing and some of them arrived as the session was underway, so I didn't have the time (or then, the skill) to change things. When they caught him, they took out the big bad in the first round and his bodyguards the second.

I had an epic hit-and-run battle through the woods planned, culminating with an exciting cliff-side battle. Needless to say, that didn't happen.

Still, was one of the best campaigns ever, even if it did kinda fizzle out a few sessions after the party left the valley.

 

[Jhaelen]

I took the dead players character sheets and looked over their possessions and spread some of their items around the orc horde, a healing belt for one, an amulet of Natural Armor +1 for another, etc. A few hours later the party came to the orc campsite and began making preparations for battle. This time, though, the orcs heard the PCs coming and readied themselves. Five rounds later I had three more dead PCs, four dead orcs, and a Ranger running for his life - again!

Yeah, that's a sure recipe for disaster. I remember similar situations very well - back in my 1e/2e days.