D&D 5E 2 year campaign down the drain?

[TaranTheWanderer]

Re: Flametrike’s comment:

For the record, I had a dm who didn’t allow a lot of dawdling. He’d wait and, if a player was conflicted about his action, the dm would count down: 6...5....4....3

at 0, youR character did a dodge action.

pros: a player only has to lose their turn one time before they learn their lesson. It does speed up combat and it does simulate the chaos of battle;

cons: it can lead to frustration. Some people are just better at making split decisions better than others. And sometimes a character’s ability to make split decisions is much better than their player’s ability. So, to simulate the character’s ability to think under pressure, you sometimes have to give the player more out of game time. Also, spellcasters have so many more combat options than fighter types and this method canbe harsher for those players.

all that to say: be careful if you use that method and make sure everyone is on board and that you are not punishing some players more than others.

Caveat: players who are distracted by their phones should get the count down immediately.

 

[Guest 6801328]

To compartmentalize this: there are no in-game solutions for out-of-game problems. So if you have personal issues with players, you’ve got to deal with them (as you did with the Drow player) on a personal level.

In game, there’s some natural consequences for kidnapping and murder. I wonder if that’s a game you want to play. If not, that’s a personal issue. But if you’re okay moving forward with this situation, then how?

I propose you start tracking two separate issues and rate them on a scale of 1 to 10.

The first thing I suggest you track is “The Infamy of the Riverboat Incident.” And it’s at 10 out of 10. This means everyone knows they did it, nobody wants to deal with them, work with them, or pay them. They get the watch called on them regularly and all that good stuff. BUT - the rating goes down every time they do some OTHER deed that’s Good. Like a quest. Whatever. And it goes UP when they get up to Riverboat style shenanigans. At about 7, people are no longer hostile but they’re deeply unfriendly. At 5, they can shop and stay at the inns, and not get run out of town. At 3, their bad reputation merely comes up in coversations and at 1 it’s all in the past. You don’t tell them the rating. You just track it and play the reactions.

The other thing you should track is the amount of money on their bounty. Again 10 out of 10 to start. It’s enough money that bounty hunters are a serious problem. Wanted posters are everywhere. There’s always like a party of rangers about 2 hours behind them and they interfere whenever the party stays in place too long. The rating goes down as they pay restitutions. Of course they’ll need an interaction with a cleric or a lord to tell them how much they’d need to pay off. But as they pay down their bail or whatever, the pursuit drops. At 10 they’re pursued everywhere. At 7 bounty hunters won’t follow into dungeons. At 5 they won’t chase through the wilderness. At 3 they’re only in cities (not villages or towns). And at 1, they can go back into town.

Why two tracks? One is for social interactions only. Reputation and that stuff. The other is to complicate adventuring only. They should both be annoying. But the party can’t know the numbers or the rating. They can just know how the world changes in reaction to their deeds.

Anyhow, that’s my 2 cents. Your whole thing seems straight out of Red Dead Redemption 2, btw. So that’s fun. And that’s sort of where I got the response idea.

Once again I can only grovel in subservient awe before the might of @Bawlie’s DMing advice.

 

[Flamestrike]

cons: it can lead to frustration. Some people are just better at making split decisions better than others. And sometimes a character’s ability to make split decisions is much better than their player’s ability.

But you're not really making a split decision.

In a table with 5 other people you've had several minutes to decide what to do. You know when your turn is and have been watching the action unfold around you while you wait, thinking about what you're going to do.

Unless the player is incredibly indecisive (in which case they get a 'long' six seconds) or has had their mind elsewhere like on their phone or something (they get no mercy).

 

[Shiroiken]

Why? None of those classes have any requirement to be Good aligned, and mass murder fits within a number of Paladin oaths just fine (Vengeance and Conquest at a minimum).

I should have clarified that I meant GOOD aligned characters of those classes, since they are often associated with good aligned deities.

You're talking mass murder here, and for no appreciable reason other than convenience and 'leaving no witnesses'. That's not something that would simply 'weigh on the conscience' of a morally good person; it's something no morally good person would even contemplate. Full stop. Even a Neutral person (who might contemplate such a heinous act) would never actually do it; because they're not evil mass murderers.

IMG, any PC that tried to convince others to slaughter the whole lot, or (God help me) actually murdered everyone, would get a warning before hand, and then if they carried on would have their alignments changed to Evil on the spot (if they weren't evil already).

Honestly? Based on everything you've said so far about the PCs, I sincerely doubt any of them are actually good aligned (regardless of what it says on their sheet). They've already performed several very questionable actions, so for them to slide to the next level isn't unbelievable. They almost seem to fit the exact definition of "murder hobos."

Also, one thing that I like about 5E is that alignment has no mechanical meaning (except the sprite, which is a strange outlier). It should be used as a roleplaying tool by the player to guide them in their overall decisions. You could write CE on every single character sheet and it wouldn't make a bit of difference.

As for no good character or neutral character acting on mass murder... in normal circumstances you are absolutely correct, but there can be extreme circumstances where that is the only option of survival (not that this is the case), and that would weigh on a person for the rest of their life. If you can find one, ask a Vietnam veteran, assuming they'd be willing to talk about it (my friend's dad wouldn't, but we could tell).

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I say go with what most people are suggesting - follow where the player's actions and decisions have led the game. In particular, I like Bawylie's system. It's genius.

But ONLY if you are willing to drop SKT (which is only slightly better than a "meh" adventure) and create your own thing. Otherwise, be straight with your players and say - in fiction, you can't see how they could continue to find the Storm King and do all that with the entire Sword Coast searching for them so they have a choice - retcon that last session, and instead they don't do entire murder hobo-ing; or that campaign is over.

 

[S'mon]

That's what I'm talking about! Let's get this thing off the rails and flying into the crazy ditch. Let it roll like the magnificent train wreck that it is. Trust me - it will be more memorable than following the A.P.

Yes, it is much better to run with it than to try to get back on the rails.

 

[jasper]

jasper also wrote a book entitled: How to lose friends, and not influence people

The OP’s best friend was pushing the boundaries by suggesting and advocating strategies, the OP found “questionable”. The player was not using Charm Person to force compliance with the other players, was not engaging in PvP....he was persuading people in real life on how to coordinate the party’s actions.

When confronted by the OP, the bard player stopped.

My friends in real life are closer to me then blood relatives in many cases. So for each time a friend might annoy me in game, they are also just as likely to cause me delight.

The mighty sentient artifact, The Ban Hammer, must be really difficult to resist.....Just Ban them All.....play parcheesi instead!

I don't ban right off but generally any time a wall of text of a problem game shows up, it generally a best friend who does not get along with the dm while the Dm is running. Glad you only limit yourself to playing with your best friends. (Snark removed)

 

[dave2008]

Yes I had a zero session explaining how I was running the campaign originally. I do like the idea about the timer in combat.

We use a timer. 30 seconds to resolve your turn: declare actions, roll for success, roll for damage all in 30 seconds. Keeps things moving at our table.

 

[pemerton]

I presume you had a session zero where you explained your expectations for the campaign to be heroic.

Why did you just sit back and let them murder people?

Thats the last straw after session zero (explaining alignment and my interpretation to them, and gaining consensus), and warnings pre evil acts in game.

I mean, for me to pack up and quit as a DM it takes blatant undermining or wilful disregard of the social contract established at session zero (this campaign is intended to be a heroic campaign), followed by ignoring the not so subtle hint when the DM pauses the game and explains to you that 'murdering these townsfolk is an evil act' (as if such a thing needed to be explained).

<snip>

If a player sits down at a table and the DM explained that the campaign was a heroic one, explained his interpretation of alignments, and even paused before you committed an act that was totally beyond the pale to remind that player that 'yes mass murder/ rape/ torture is evil, and its against the session zero outline for this campaign' (as if such a thing needs to be explained to anyone other than an immature twit) that player is either a total disruptive asshat (and should be sacked from the game) or you need to find a different group to DM.

You really seem to be talking about GM stipulations rather than a genuine social contract.

I think it makes sense to discuss with players - perhaps in advance, perhaps at the time - what is tasteful or not, and what one does or doesn't want in the game. But then the GM has to honour that. If the GM is running a game that is based heavily around violent conflict as the preeminent means of conflict resolution (which D&D is), that defaults to death as the means of resolving violent encounters (which D&D does), and then frames a situation pregnant with violence (by having - one gathers armed - guards, hostile to the PCs, turn up in the scene) - well, the outcome is fairly predictable and frankly I don't think the players have done anything wrong.

If the GM didn't want to escalate to violence there were many other options available. It was the GM who involved the guards - and hende made it a scenario about the implicit threat of violence rather than something else - at every turn.

 

[Bawylie]

You really seem to be talking about GM stipulations rather than a genuine social contract.

I think it makes sense to discuss with players - perhaps in advance, perhaps at the time - what is tasteful or not, and what one does or doesn't want in the game. But then the GM has to honour that. If the GM is running a game that is based heavily around violent conflict as the preeminent means of conflict resolution (which D&D is), that defaults to death as the means of resolving violent encounters (which D&D does), and then frames a situation pregnant with violence (by having - one gathers armed - guards, hostile to the PCs, turn up in the scene) - well, the outcome is fairly predictable and frankly I don't think the players have done anything wrong.

If the GM didn't want to escalate to violence there were many other options available. It was the GM who involved the guards - and hende made it a scenario about the implicit threat of violence rather than something else - at every turn.

Eh, maybe.

There’s some context you may be overlooking (or perhaps concluding isn’t important). The situation was a party boat, loaded with civilians/normies, and a check-your-weapons-at-the-door kickoff. The overwhelming signal here was “this isn’t gonna be a fight scene. Ocean’s 11 this beeotch.” So the players aren’t blameless bulls in china shops here. They have agency and they arguably drew down way too early.

Otherwise, yeah there’s an amount of DM responsibility to attempt to de-escalate when the party starts whipping out the weaponized polar bears.