Adventure Hooks: Prophetic Dreams, Feelings of Betrayal

[ptolemy18]

Speaking of the railroading debate...

In my current campaign, I'm using a mixture of rules from TESTAMENT and AFRICAN ADVENTURES, basically incorporating "prophetic dreams" and "omens" into the game. So ever since the first session, the clerics, and some wizards, have been receiving the occasional prophetic dream or weird omen ("you see two yellow and two red lizards fighting with a dog", etc... that's not a real example), which I usually let them either puzzle out or resolve with a Knowledge roll.

However... the characters' adventure had them matching wits with the servants of a high-level wizard. The wizard was offstage, but I was reading through the spell list, and I discovered the spell "Dream," which has unlimited range. "Aha!" I thought. "If this is a world where prophetic dreams exist, then clearly a smart bad guy would know enough to use the "Dream" spell to generate FALSE prophetic dreams!" So in addition to the occasional TRUE prophetic dreams, I had the players start receiving recurring dreams about going to a particular location (which, in fact, was the location of an ambush).

I thought this tied in with the rules in TESTAMENT, too... because in TESTAMENT, in the rules for the "Dreamer" feat (which one PC had), it warns "Evil spirits may sometimes attempt to send you false messages in your dreams. You can identify these false messages by making a Knowledge (religion) DC 15, but the roll isn't automatic; you must specifically think to question the source of the dream."

Unfortunately, the player who had the "Dreamer" feat didn't read the feat description closely enough, I guess, and nobody ever considered in-character whether the dream might be false, so... they all went to the false location and fell for the horrible ambush. (Which was what I wanted all along, but anyway. ) In the process of kicking their asses, the bad guys said stuff along the lines of "Ha ha, you fools, you fell for our false prophetic dreams!" The players eventually won, but it was a close battle.

The problem is that now, the players are all burned on prophetic dreams, and no one will listen to them! It's starting to tick me off! Agghh!

As a solution, I'm thinking of adding more real, truly helpful prophetic dreams, and making their benefits obvious in hindsight if the players are so suspicious that they choose to ignore them.

(As far as I'm concerned, though, the real moral of this story is: PLAYERS, READ THE DESCRIPTIONS OF YOUR FEATS.)

Jason

 

[VirgilCaine]

The player deserves what they get, IMO.
What kind of player takes something and doesn't know how it works? I'm not talking about minutely squeeze every advantage out of a mechanic, but knowing the basics of how the feat or spell or whatever works.

Have a good guy--deity or powerful cleric or wizard, whatever, send them two or three dreams on a particular subject--go here and kill these enemies, obtain this MacGuffin, whatever.
After the PCs ignore the dreams, have them contacted via telepathy, when the person is hundreds of miles away asking "Why did you ignore the dreams I sent you? Now theres even MORE work to be done!" (because the PCs delay has allowed enemy forces to entrench or get the item before the PCs, etc.).

 

[ptolemy18]

The player deserves what they get, IMO.
What kind of player takes something and doesn't know how it works? I'm not talking about minutely squeeze every advantage out of a mechanic, but knowing the basics of how the feat or spell or whatever works.

Your idea is really good!

Actually, that's a recurring problem with my campaign -- my players just aren't interested enough in the rules to pay even the minimum attention to feats, etc. In the last session one player was trying to do "called shots", shouting "I try to hit the griffon in its wings!". Two sessions before that, he was shouting "I try to hit the giant bee in the wings!"

It's probably my own failing that I didn't play along (I politely said "Called shots don't really mean much" and he missed anyway, so it didn't matter), but for god's sakes, people, this is 3rd edition D&D. There aren't any friggin' called shots.

Another example:

DM: "Okay, you injure the wolf and it runs away from you, howling."
Player: "Great! Now I fire a sling stone at him!"
DM: (calculates 40' base speed, x4 run speed) "Okay, but the wolf's already about 160 feet away, so it's going to be a tough shot."
Player: "What?! He was just in front of me!"

Let this be a lesson: the player who doesn't understand the "rounds" system will be publicly mocked on an Internet messageboard!!! :/

We've been playing for about 10 sessions. IMHO, after playing for four years in a campaign much more rules-lawyerly than the one I'm now running, I've decided it's probably better for the game if the players *ARE* as rules-savvy as possible. As long as they can role-play when the situation calls for it, as long as there IS some role-playing, they SHOULD be trying to squeeze the most out of the rules in non-role-playing situations like combat. IMHO, role-playing is role-playing; but combat should be brutally tactical. The only advantage of this situation is that, since they don't know the rules very well, they're less likely to notice my own rules mistakes.

But on the other hand, maybe I'm the one who's making the mistake, and I should just adjust my campaign style to the style of my players. If they're not interested in game mechanics, I should make them less central, and everyone will be happy. But it's something to complain about...

Jason