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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pulakhell" data-source="post: 7974458" data-attributes="member: 7023469">This may contain SPOILERS for SKT. If you haven't played it or are a player in my session PLEASE STOP READING NOW!!!!------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------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?!</blockquote>

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