Game Masters: Shooting Your Own Campaign in the Foot

We often hear stories about some of the interesting choices made by PCs which makes the game go in an unexpected direction. But sometimes game masters make choices that end up taking their campaign in unexpected places. For example, giving your D&D group a Deck of Many Things to play with.

A few years back, I made a grave miscalculation regarding what I expected a PC to do and it changed the course of the campaign. I was running Deadlands: Hell on Earth (post-apocalypse United States), and the players were based out of Junktown (formerly Salt Lake City). There was a very wealthy well loved man who kind of took the PCs under his wing providing them with jobs and handsomely rewarding them for it. One of my PCs was a mafia hit man before the bombs fell, and some of his old contacts reached out to him about assassinating this nice guy.

What I expected to happen: The PC agrees to the job, but tells the rest of the group and tries to find out who is ordering the hit.

What happened: The PC took the money and murdered the nice guy. He became a fugitive and was hunted down by his former party members. This nice guy was vital to the success of the city and his lack of presence contributed to the destruction of the city at the end of the campaign.

I'll own that one. I messed up with that. Anyone else?

You gave the players choices and they acted in a way that had a direct impact on the world they interacted in. I dont see a problem at all. Now it would be a problem to say, sorry no you guys cant do that. Why couldnt the group have just relocated to say to say Las Vegas or Los Angeles and the campaign continue? Did they all die? If they did I'd just have had them roll new PCs and pick up in the wake of their old PC's.

I don't think I've had a campaign derail this way. I do recall a few instances where such a thing might have happened but I employed Force to prevent it.

Given the changes I've made to how I run games these days, I can't imagine such a situation occurring. Largely, this is because the situation requires that I have a plan for the campaign I'm unwilling to change, so such events derail my plans. I don't have campaign plans that I'm unwilling to change anymore, so it's a situation I expect I'll never face again. This change to my approach also has the impact of me not needing to use Force anymore, either. I have infinite dragons (or cyborgs, or zombies, etc) so I don't need to become attached to this dragon.

R_J_K75 said:

Why couldnt the group have just relocated to say to say Las Vegas or Los Angeles and the campaign continue?

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Every sandbox has walls to hold in the sand.

Umbran said:

Every sandbox has walls to hold in the sand.

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Pithy, but doesn't actually explain anything. When the "walls" are arbitrary, stating they exist as a reason for anything doesn't do anything to explain the arbitrary reason why.

Hm. I have a good example that I played in, rather than run.

The game was Mage: The Ascension. Through bad luck when using a really large magical working, much of the party was tossed into a Paradox Realm, basically a little pocket universe. The pocket universe looked and acted almost entirely like the real world - determining the difference was not easy.

The GM had more than one way for us to escape back to the real world - the basic one was for us to realize on our own, through the buildup of subtle cues, that we weren't in the real world, and it would dissolve away. Classic trope.

Unfortunately, a member of the party broke into the bubble from the outside, and told us what happened. He didn't know when he did this, but it negated the "easy" way out. Now, the GM said that we had to enact another major magical working to forcefully destroy the bubble. And the only way to gather the magical energy for this was to actively sacrifice many of the inhabitants of the bubble and use them as energy.

The GM expected that we would say, "Yeah, well, they aren't real, so... distasteful, but okay." Instead, every one of us just said, "No. We are not killing these people." There was no argument among us, we each came to that conclusion on our own.

And, now, the GM was stuck. He had created a couple fixed paths out of the situation - we had accidentally closed one, and had refused the other.

We came up with ... 11 other things we could do that, by the general metaphysics as we understood them, would allow us to escape. None of them fit the limits the GM had set, so he rejected them.

And we said, "Okay, GM, then maybe we need to consider new characters, because these characters would prefer to live a quiet life in a bubble universe than become mass murderers. No, we are actually serious. We're willing to make new characters. Should we do that next session?"

It is a basic question for a GM as to what to do next in this situation - do you hold the players to your stated rules, and have them create new characters due to their choices, or do you relent and let a thing you didn't intend work to preserve the current continuity?

Ovinomancer said:

Pithy, but doesn't actually explain anything.

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Sorry, I thought it would be clear. Maybe as a kid you didn't actually play in a literal sandbox? If you leave the box... there's no more sand!

When the "walls" are arbitrary, stating they exist as a reason for anything doesn't do anything to explain the arbitrary reason why.

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They are arbitrary to start, but then.. the GM fills the box with sand. The GM does not have infinite sand on hand - it takes a lot of time and effort to create sand. There is no Las Vegas sand at this time.

If you don't like that analogy, let's try another one:

GM says, "Hey, folks, how about we gather at my house for dinner. Here's the menu..."

Players agree, and come over and eat the first course. But then, they turn up the heat on the oven and burn the entree. I'm sorry, that dinner party is over. The host didn't shop to have multiple dinners available for you tonight. Maybe the players should go home, and the GM can decide on what the next dinner party might be.

Umbran said:

Sorry, I thought it would be clear. Maybe as a kid you didn't actually play in a literal sandbox? If you leave the box... there's no more sand!



They are arbitrary to start, but then.. the GM fills the box with sand. The GM does not have infinite sand on hand - it takes a lot of time and effort to create sand. There is no Las Vegas sand at this time.

If you don't like that analogy, let's try another one:

GM says, "Hey, folks, how about we gather at my house for dinner. Here's the menu..."

Players agree, and come over and eat the first course. But then, they turn up the heat on the oven and burn the entree. I'm sorry, that dinner party is over. The host didn't shop to have multiple dinners available for you tonight. Maybe the players should go home, and the GM can decide on what the next dinner party might be.

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well gee a REAL GM would have made sure I couldn't touch the stove. OR at least spring for specific pizzas for each of us. I take a meat lovers with steak, green peppers, and chicken. (evil grin)

jasper said:

well gee a REAL GM would have made sure I couldn't touch the stove.

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Sorry, making it so you can't do so has already been rejected. It seems a REAL PLAYER has to consider the consequences of their actions in the context of their campaign, and act accordingly. Funny, that.

This isn't actually an issue of blame. It is a simple nature of gaming - campaigns have limits. You agree to those when the game starts. Step outside that agreement, and you are no longer entitled to your own individual pizza.

The West Marches is an example of a sandbox with walls.

"The game was set in a frontier region on the edge of civilization (the eponymous West Marches)... PCs get to explore anywhere they want, the only rule being that going back east is off-limits — there are no adventures in the civilized lands, just peaceful retirement."