Lord Pendragon said:
Because the PCs can't quit. If the geas wheren't there, now that the artifact's been stolen, the PC's could say "oh, well, sucks that those gnomes backstabbed us. Let's go check out the Tomb of Ancient Loot and see if there's any left."
It had not crossed my mind that anyone would react this way. Obviously, if the artifact is taken you have to recover it and complete the quest. Who would want to write-off all their work simply because at one point the quest faced an unexpected challenge. I mean these are heroes, right?
But because of the geas, the PCs can't do that. They have to set out to look for the artifact again. This completely invalidates the campaign for the last year+ of real time.
How is that the case? Have you ever read a story in which there is a setback in a quest? Let me rephrase: have you ever read a story in which there is not a setback in a quest?
They didn't have the artifact then, and now they don't have the artifact again, and they must find it again. Or die.
They don't need a spell to compel them to do this; simple commitment to the storyline should suffice.
And then after possibly another year of real time tracking the thing down again, they have to hope
So, on what basis have you concluded that the GM has that it will take a year to recover the artifact from the gnomes? Does he strike you as crazy? He seems sane to me so why would he restructure the campaign in this way?
that another group of NPCs doesn't miraculously have 30+ ranks in Bluff (which I'm willing to wager none of the gnomes actually did,)
Let's wait until we hear from the GM about how the Bluff/Sense Motive contest actually went. The person making the statement may not, himself, have intended to steal from the characters. He may have used a Potion of Glibness. Let's see what actually happened first.
There are multiple issues here. In-game justification, In-game mechanical fairness, and out-of-game campaign satisfaction.
If your only purpose as a GM is to please the players from minute to minute, you're not going to be a very good GM. Some players supported the GM; others did not. The role-playing world is full of people who have different tastes in gaming. Some players felt the GM did the right thing. Some did not. Gming isn't about pleasing all of the people all of the time. It is about creating a believable story in a believable world. A world full of flat NPCs with no agenda of their own is not that kind of world.
The gnome's actions might have been fair, but were they mechanically fair? (Where bluff checks rolled vs. sense motive, did the gnomes have reasonable scores not meant to screw the PCs, etc. etc.) Possibly not.
Right. But you have no evidence for the accusation you are making all of a sudden based on the fact that people were under a geas spell. I just don't get it. How does a geas spell cause you to change your view on this?
And as for out-of-game satisfaction, clearly there is a problem here. The fact that the geas prevents the players from dumping the quest rather than repeating a year of real-time progress is one of the problems.
How could people have found abandoning a quest half-done after working on it for a year more satisfying than finishing it? An abandoned half-done quest is not something that produces "satisfaction."
With a Diplomacy of +30, Neutral NPCs you meet automatically become Friendly.
Regardless of making a high Diplomacy check, how could the PCs preemptively persuade the gnomes not to rob them? A generalized Diplomacy check does not cause NPCs with an agenda to suddenly abandon it.
A PC with that kind of score should be able to be reasonably sure that most NPCs he encounters are going to like him, and want to do well by him, unless they're already Hostile.
You know
Charm Person is a spell because you need to do actual magic to pull all the NPCs you encounter onto your side.
A lot has changed, and you'd have to be on glue not to see that. Before, we had no understanding of why the players would be willing to quit the campaign, when the scenario seemed so standard.
Right -- the scenario seemed standard because the scenario was standard. We were asked about whether the NPCs behaved in a realistic way in the context of the scenario. They did. There are various ways a GM can redirect a campaign towards something the players find more compelling; running NPCs in an unrealistic way is not one of them.
Arcane Runes Press said:
It sounds to me like tedium has set in, and that the players are just ready for this whole thing to be done.
We have heard from two players. One has taken that position; the other has not.
35 sessions can be a loooong time, particularly when you feel completely trapped by a seemingly never-ending quest. As Noeloni said: "Its not like the quest was over, either. The artifact had to be repaired and we had to find a way to get it to the Gods themselves. Not a minor undertaking."
Indeed. But what evidence do we have that the gnomes getting hold of it will thwart this process? For all we know, the gnomes are the people most capable of repairing the artifact. There may be a delay of 1-4 episodes; there may be no net loss of time. It depends on how the GM adjusts the overall storyline in response to the NPCs' actions.
So, at this point, it's likely the players are feeling that the last 35+ sessions served no real purpose, and that the finish line isn't any closer than it was before.
I don't see how you view a setback in the quest as restarting the quest. How many movies have you seen where the good guys lose the object of their quest just before the climax? Isn't this event a recurring trope in the modern quest genre?
It's one thing to play out the Lord of the Rings, it's quite another to feel that it's you, not Frodo, carrying the one ring around your neck.
So LOTR would be a
bad story if it were played as an RPG. Funny… I thought it was the ideal everyone was striving for.
Get the quest done, or at least let the tedium of finding it end, and get the party running towards the payoff. A good payoff will probably help the players feel more invigorated, and replace frustration with fun.
Why have you assumed that they're not near the climax or that the GM isn't already on this track? All the narrative signs indicate to me that this is the very point the campaign is approaching. Generally, in Hollywood quest movies, the object of the quest being seized by the bad guy is a sign that the climax is imminent.
Raven Crowking said:
The level of responsibility the PCs have for their actions is directly related to the level of leeway that they have in those actions. Who cast the Geas? Why didn't the Geas caster forsee this problem, and provide some guidance?
Let me get this straight: the caster of the geas is supposed to anticipate the PCs making bad judgement? How would the caster know, inadvance, what errors of judgement the PCs were likely to make in the course of their quest?
My guess is, barring further information, that the PCs were on a "Mission...from God" as the Blues Brothers put it. If that were the case, then doesn't it seem reasonable that they expect a little divine providence?
So, what you're saying is that the geas should function as some sort of blessing making NPCs more favourably disposed to the PCs? I really don't buy this.
Wouldn't the gnomes seem like divine providence under the circumstances?
No. I don't imagine that being naïve and unsuspecting was how they recovered the artifact in the first place. I don't get any evidence for a good faith belief on the part of the PCs that the gnomes were somehow, unlike all the other NPCs, agents of a benevolent deity.
The gnomes have the right to stack the deck against the PCs. The DM should not. In 25 years of DMing, I have never relied on Geas or Quest spells to force the PCs to undergo certain actions. Personal preferences, I know, but I have always thought that this stacks the deck.
I've never used the spell either but I have played in a campaign where it was used to good effect.
However, your point (a) does not take into account the fact that, simply put, it is harder to screw over charismatic people than it is to screw over people you find loathsome. In D&D, things like Charisma and the Diplomacy skill are used to sway attitudes. If the DM doesn't allow Charisma to do this, the PCs might as well all go put that high stat somewhere else.
Agreed. But I don't think having a Charisma of 20 is sufficient to passively cause NPCs to take on your interests and priorities in place of their own. If someone is planning to rob you if they get the chance, a preemptive general diplomacy check will not stop that.
Look at the enchantment spells in the PHB: it takes magic to make people who are planning to exploit you abandon their interests in favour of yours. So, I just don't buy that passive or generalized diplomacy checks can prevent a robbery.
Charismatic individuals are obviously not impervious to robbery, but do you honestly believe that if a group of people decided to steal some jewels, and then they discovered that stealing those jewels would bring harm to a beautiful and charming individual, not one of the group would consider tipping the beauty off, even if only in hopes of a more personal reward?
Consider, yes. Certainly do: no.
Are you actually suggesting that how you are perceived has no bearing on how you are treated?
No. I'm suggesting that a +4 charisma bonus does not confer
Protection from Theft 30' Radius as a spell-like ability useable at will.
Are you suggesting that how you treat others doesn't affect how they treat you?
See above.
Do devious people take pity on individuals because they are subject to a geas, quest or curse? If devious equates to evil, then not necessarily. But in my campaign at least, even evil people can feel some degree of empathy.
Empathy isn't the only human emotion. Greed is a well-known emotion too.
(1) We now know that the PCs deliberately went out of their way over a period of time to change the gnomes' opinion of them, and were given reason to believe that they had succeeded, and
No. We don't know that. I'm not aware of any lengthy campaign to make the gnomes love them. I'm aware of a Sense Motive roll, a short conversation and a diplomacy check being made.
(2) As even you note, the Sense Motive check(s) turned up nothing.
Yep. Let's see why that is. There are a number of possible explanations -- perhaps we should wait to hear them before we condemn the GM for doing something irregular. I have run NPCs who are bards, have potions of glibness or done various other things to mislead the PCs.
There is also the general sense from the Noelani that this is not an isolated incident within the campaign. My first response included the caveat that the players shouldn't be betrayed so often by NPCs that they conclude that "They are all against us", so, in a sense, my opinion has not changed. What has changed is my understanding of the circumstances, and therefore, the meaning of "this" in the question "Is this unreasonable?"
Accepting the word of one player against the word of the GM and another player does not seem to me to be a wholly reasonable approach. Three people have given us their perspective on the campaign; you are taking the minority opinion as gospel and rejecting the other two opinions that you have.
