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

[Olrox17]

Yes, they should be wanted criminals by now. Everyone on the side of the law should be extremely wary of them, there should be posters with their faces at the local constabulary. They are enemies of the state.

However, the state probably has other enemies. Strong, established enemies, such as a local thieves guild. One of these organizations might contact the PCs, helping them out, harboring them from the law in exchange of “favors”. If the party is mostly non-good and non-lawful, they’ll probably have no problem with a deal like this.

If the party has some very lawful characters, they’ll either have to loosen their moral code or submit themselves to justice, allowing the players to roll new characters.

 

[Flamestrike]

If the party has some very lawful characters, they’ll either have to loosen their moral code or submit themselves to justice, allowing the players to roll new characters.

Thats... not how Lawful works.

My LE Vengeance Paladin would have no problem killing everyone on board out of convenience.

Other than the kids. He's not a monster.

 

[Todd Roybark]

and then if they carried on would have their alignments changed to Evil on the spot (if they weren't evil already).

If Alignment mattered, the above might mean something.

Instead, you are incentivizing even more heinous actions.
If the DM just made a big show about changing our alignments, then the players might as well go “All In” on the alignment change.

At least one can have fun, and more easily incorporate a new Ideal, Flaw, or Bond into their character’s portrayal, as opposed to just erasing CG and writing in CE.

 

[Olrox17]

Thats... not how Lawful works.

My LE Vengeance Paladin would have no problem killing everyone on board out of convenience.

Other than the kids. He's not a monster.

I assumed no evil characters. Of course LE would work differently.

 

[Flamestrike]

If Alignment mattered, the above might mean something.

It does matter. There are a number of game effects that key off alignment. Book of Exhalted deeds, a unicorns lair, the Oathbreaker class etc.

Instead, you are incentivizing even more heinous actions.
If the DM just made a big show about changing our alignments, then the players might as well go “All In” on the alignment change.

IMG, that's fine unless we have all agreed in session zero to be running a heroic campaign (and thus 'no evil').

If we're running such a game (the social contract established in session zero was 'heroic good guy campaign'), then I simply would have reminded them of that fact, and not allowed them to murderhobo. If a few insisted anyway (and not everyone in the group is down with that) the campaign ends and we can all go out for beer.

Checkmate.

If the players wish to portray themselves as evil mass murderers, engaging in mass murder out of convenience, then they're evil. That's a consequence of their choice and portrayals of their characters. They need to be aware of that, and not try and weasel out of it by having LG on their character sheets, but acting like Jeffrey Dahmer or Kharn the Betrayer.

 

[commandercrud]

Easy, the campaign changes. They're wanted criminals now in addition to whatever is left in the book, if that plotline is abandoned, the villains continue on with their plans, probably making things even harder. Let the PCs have the consequences they deserve. Maybe the NPCs' friends ally with some giants and send them after the players. A lot of things can happen. The campaign isn't ruined just because the PCs don't stick to the script.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

1) You dealt with your player 'problem' so no worries
2) bad rolls happen some time. If there are multiple ways to gain information, then it's fine that they failed one avenue. The other avenue escalated but no worries because...
3) naughty word happens. They could have knocked people out but (chose?) not to - do they know a melee attack allows you to render a person unconcious? - In any case, as previously mentioned they have a boat filled with important people. How will they deal with the situation?

If no-one has a way to contact the world outside the boat, they will show up at the dock and will probably be able to run before things get bad. The rogue's ruse will not hold up under scrutiny so even a good bluff to get them past the guards will still involve them getting arrested and taken in for questioning.

If they run, continue the adventure module but add this awesome advice:

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 conversations 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 restitution. 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.

After all my years of DMing, I never thought to do something like this. It's great.

Also, this (almost) exact thing happened to the Defenders of Daybreak. Want to know what happened to them? Read the story hour and get piles of ideas:

Defenders of Daybreak

www.piratecat.org

The 'mission dossier': can give you lots of ideas on noble houses and possible NPCs that might be on the boat: Defenders of Daybreak

TLDR: let them slip off the boat to do their mission but let this event complicate their progress until they do something to fix it. Once the adventure path is done, they might have to go back and deal with it.

OR

Let it derail the adventure while they deal with the fallout. The delay on dealing with the Adventure Path should create complications for them when they do go back to the adventure. What was were the main factions doing while the PCs were distracted dealing with the Law?


Who knows, maybe those complications will balanced with new allies. Think about the politics and the other nobles...maybe one of them wanted that Lord dead. That's convenient. Maybe they'll have other jobs or maybe an enemy of his enemy will want to help the PCs....

In any case, let it be a major Setback. Setbacks are fun and lead to new adventures and rewards.

 

[pemerton]

For something like this, I would give the players an "out" if they were smart enough to use it. A sort of side quest to get them out of the mess they have created.

They don't just get a free pass, so they still take the game seriously

<snip>

I find side quests like this are labor intensive enough that the players want to avoid it, but still fun enough that they don't feel like they are being "punished"

At least to me, it doesn't seem like there's any issue with the players not taking the game seriously. They seem to have declared actions precisely because they were taking the game seriously, and so wanted to get the information they wanted from the Lord's private sanctum.

I don't think that a side quest is a very good idea - it will just drain away the evident momentum that has been created. I'd run with what's happening!

Point 3, your party killing a few NPCs. This, for me, is a fairly straightforward problem. As a DM, I would ask myself: Do the players feel that they should get away with what they did? If so, then I'll go along with it too, even if it stretches my own suspension of disbelief, because it's more important that the fiction make sense to the players than it is for it to make sense to me. So the party crashed a party, caused some mayhem, then made its clever escape, never to be seen again... If that's the story the players want to tell, then so be it.

Unfortunately you have eight (8!) players, so there might not be consensus on this point. Some players might think that the party deserves to suffer some consequences for their criminality, others might think that the party handled the situation cleverly enough to deceive the witnesses and cover their tracks. Either way, it all comes back to this question: What will be the most fun for everyone? If you can answer that question, then you'll know what to do.

I think an alternative here is to use the action resolution mechanics. That's what they're for, after all!

Anyway, I think this idea that the players will be wanted criminals, unable to go anywhere without being hated, etc is overstated. In the real world organised criminals (mostly involved in the drug trade, in my country at least) are able to live their lives, enjoy hanging out at hotels and casinos, etc.

In a fantasy game things can be at least that wild, and maybe wilder. Queen of the Black Coast is one of th most highly-regarded REH Conan stories, and that story starts with Conan having done the same sort of thing as happened here. It didn't stop him going on to be a revered king of Aquilonia!

 

[noko]

This may contain SPOILERS for SKT. If you haven't played it or are a player in my session PLEASE STOP READING NOW!!!!



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Hey all! I'm a Dm for about 3 years now and have been doing a 5e run of SKT with some friends. We started as a group of 5 and grew over 2 years to a group of 8. Through that time my adventurers were going through the story making mostly good decisions. It was some players first D&D campaign so it took some getting used to as far as being in a world with repercussions. Initially our Drow Rogue stabbed and killed a horse because he thought the owner was being unfair to the player. Needless to say the group used all of their gold to buy the horse and left the town. Since this was early in the campaign they watched over him with caution (and all being RL friends we didn't want to kick him out of the campaign).

Well the campaign went on and the group went through the adventure. There was a point when the Drow Rogue was bit by a werewolf and the party needed to leave him in the service of a priest while they gathered the materials to cure the Lycanthropy. After he was cured, and realized the party went out of their way to help him, his demeanor changed. He began working with the group instead of against them. This continued until one of my longest friends, who I might add is a player that tries to test the limit of the game world, joined the game as a Bard. As a side note he was the first person I played D&D with years prior (I knew the way he played but decided to involve him because I figured he would see the way my game was being run and act accordingly with the players at the table). Of course that decision turned out to bite me in the ass as he began dismantling the game piece by piece. He began taking over all aspects of the game, when it came to decision making, what the optimal path would be, theft, lying and cheating whenever possible. He began to bully the other players into following his path and recruited the Drow Rogue to be his side kick. He would continue to crack jokes, not listen to narrative, use his phone and get drunk at the table. I would joke with my other players that "Maybe this session the Bard would mysteriously vanish" hoping one of them would speak out about what he was doing. But that never happened. He was sabotaging the game and I didn't want to kick him out of the campaign because I thought it would put a strain on our RL friendship. I didn't know what to do.

This went on for a few sessions until one night after the session the rogue, my wife and I had a talk with him. He claimed he didn't realize he was causing such discourse at the table and began to try to blame others. I know I was also to blame because I was creating this atmosphere of "DM v. Player" every session and not addressing the real issue. Eventually we came to an agreement that he had 4 levels of "Madness" and he needed to be cured in order to stop acting out. The party was able to conclude that the Bard was not acting right and they took him to a wizard to restore his sanity. This seemingly worked and we continued through the story with minimal bumps in the road.

My latest session was tonight, where the party needed to sneak onto a gambling riverboat dressed as noblemen/noblewomen, to find information about where the missing giant king was being held. The players tried to convince everyone that the Barbarian was nobility to gain access. They continued through the town and purchased fine/noble clothing and waited till the evening to board the ship. When they asked me if they could bring weapons and gear on the ship, of course I said "The guards wouldn't allow such things on the ship". There was an hour long discussion about how they were going to go about this and the players came up with this plan: They would put their weapons in a bag of holding, and carry their armor to the ship. When the guards told them they couldn't bring the armor on, they would try to deceive the guards (Which succeeded) that the inn was not secure enough for nobility and they would pay to keep their belongings on the ship (2g per article), they also bluffed what was in the bag of holding by pulling out gold and convincing the guard that It was their heavy coin purse. While the Drow Rogue Slight of Handed 2 daggers on his person... "just in case".

They were allowed on board and then the night began. The boat was filled with nobles, guards and the NPCs that they needed to interrogate. The group introduced themselves to the Lord who was in charge of the establishment as well as his bodyguard. The Lords only purpose for running such an operation was to further his rank politically, so when the Barbarian failed his Deception check to show interest in what the Lord is doing, he immediately lost interest in the groups affairs and told the guards to keep their eye on them. They tried to speak to the Lord and bodyguard again but to no avail because they kept rolling below DC10 on their checks. (Now looking back I feel like I should have just fudged the reactions so they didn't get to the point I'm about to describe) So they devised plan for the Druid and our other Arcane Trickster Rogue to infiltrate the room where they knew the Lords chamber to be. The Druid shape shifted to a fly, while also casting Pass Without Trace and the Arcane Trickster Rogue cast Invisibility. They make it to the room, without trying to check if the Lord was in there or not, and walk in. The Lord WAS in there and was startled. For some reason the Arcane Trickster Rogue began to throw books on the floor (I guess to scare him), to which he ran downstairs to his Bodyguard for help. She accompanied him upstairs, all while the Druid and Arcane Trickster Rogue stayed in the room to search it for any information. The Lord and Bodyguard got back to see the room has been gone through. The bodyguard casts Detect Thoughts and detected the Druids thoughts as he tried to flee as a fly. This spiraled the entire night into chaos.

The Arcane Trickster Rogue picks up a rapier in the Lords room and tried to attack the bodyguard. While this was going on the Druid shape shifted into a Polar Bear and killed the Lord in one attack. (The lord had all of the information about the disappearance of the Giant Lord) All of the guards at this point, knowing to keep an eye on the players who were acting weird the entire time on the ship, began to run to the sound of a giant Polar Bear roar on the second floor of the ship and needless to say the party manages to kill all but one guard, the captain and the bodyguard that all jumped overboard. The only PC that thought to use non lethal damage was our Fighter, to which he knocked out 2 guards and saved them for questioning. Meanwhile all of the nobles were terrified of this act aggression thinking they were going to be killed next. Our "quick thinking" Drow Rogue decided to use Deception to tell all of the guests that this was all the work of the cult of Elemental Evil by saying "Don't worry! We will release you all. Just remember this was the work of the Prince of Evil Airs!" Though he thought he was being witty, he didn't realize he was calling at least 2 of the PCs by their REAL names in front of all of the nobles! While this was all happening they decided to search the room of the Lord, to which I let them find his diary (That I made up) so they could figure out where the hell they needed to go to finish this campaign! They left the boat and at that point I called it a night.

Now here's where I am mentally. WHAT DO I DO?! I mean I try to run my game with integrity and logic. I ask myself "What would happen if this decision was made" then go with it. All of the decisions that the PCs made led them to this point with my thought process. But was I too harsh on those decisions? I feel like if I just let them succeed these rolls then they would think the story doesn't matter and not take anything seriously. Now I'm left in this story where our party murdered 4 guards, a Lord, kidnapped at least 50 nobles and 30 commoners, and commandeered a ship outside a major trade city! I mean wont they be wanted criminals now in every major city? The witnesses saw their faces and they heard 2 of their names. Any advice on how to salvage this campaign... at least until the story is over?!

You know, eight is a really big table to manage. Just by the law of averages, you are going to be ending up with players who's playing style doesn't jibe well with what you thought your campaign was going to be. I get the impression you feel the Drow Rogue player is a bit of a problem and that is probably true. Chaotic players are like that and that is why a session zero is vital to make sure everyone is agreed at least on what sort of a game you envision playing. Next time, try to resist temptation and keep the table down to half that number.

I would call this a bit of a trainwreck at the moment. But, fear not! I agree with the others that you should just let the chips fall where they may. I might inject a bit of a Keystone Cops element there with them chased by what appear to be overwhelming numbers through town until they are deftly saved by a character in a side street in the nick of time who turns out to be a minor crime boss impressed by their idiotic chutzpah that wants a cut of the action. At that point, I would potentially drop a second session zero into the game as they make up their minds to take or reject that offer to allow for this very large group of players to actually discuss where this is all going. There very little likelihood they have all discussed it beforehand.

If they choose the evil route, so be it, go nuts with having them pal up with the underworld, and have fun with it. The game never does seem to finish where you think it will anyway and that's a huge part of the fun for the DM. If they choose redemption, the boss withdraws the offer and kicks them out at a slightly different location where a worthy opponent of the boss might just offer a quite tough quest for redemption. The game may never quite get back on track either way but that's not what D&D is all about. Consequences and changes in goals abound.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Hey! Another, or additional, idea: tie one of those very influential nobles to the main plot. Maybe there’s a subplot or main NPC later down the road that a noble has a tie to. This noble uses his political clout to make the PCs problems go away (at least temporarily) if they agree to help him with a task.

this will let you put the game back on the rails, introduce a different plot element and create a potential complication and/or ally after the module is done.