Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="drnuncheon" data-source="post: 1894670" data-attributes="member: 96">Here are my questions, and a bit of backseat DMing:  Did the crated PCs have any chance to notice the betrayal?  It would seem to me that they'd be able to notice the other crates being loaded, people walking around the warehouse, etc - and when they weren't loaded it should have been obvious fairly quickly.  Now, would they do anything in time? That's a different question - they'd have to weigh the possible consequences of getting caught popping out too early with those of being possibly betrayed.  Was this turnaround 'out of the blue'?  Well, clearly the DM thought it made sense.  It's not like the LG church suddenly turned around and betrayed them - that would have been out of the blue, rather than a group of people that they have had problems with in the past.  Whatever hong or tac-9-7 or swrushing or fusangite or I says, we don't have all the data, and this is purely an opinion question.  Was it bad DMing?  Apparently Hong thinks that Indiana Jones should have been able to pull the ark up out of the Well of Souls and take it back, because the 'climax' - finding the ark - had already happened.  Except that finding the ark wasn't the climax, no matter how much you expected it to be.  You can't identify the climax until you've seen the whole thing, and we and the players haven't seen the whole thing.    This could just be the scene where Marion and Indy have to break out of the Well of Souls after Belloq takes the ark, or where Indy goes after the Nazi convoy on horseback, or where he dives off of the freighter and lashes himself to the periscope with his whip.  Would Raiders of the Lost Ark have been nearly as good a film without any of that?  So, suspend judgement here until it really is over.  Now, what should you do? I disagree with tec-9-7 that you should reset - that never goes well and it just opens the door for everyone thinking about it as an option every time something goes wrong.  On the other hand, it behooves you to bring a quick end to this storyline if the players aren't having fun - I'd tell them out of game that that is what you are going to do.  It's a lot easier to live with something for 3 sessions than it is to know it's going to last for an indefinite time.  I would say it's time to (spoilers cos the players read this thread) [spoiler]bust out/'borrow'/buy/whatever some carpets of flying (or similar - they've got to have some way of getting to and from this floating city) and take off after the gnomish ship (which is slowed by the artifact enough that they can catch up).  While on the ship - or maybe even before going there - they discover that the head gnomes of the expedition are being secretly controlled by the infernal faction, who was behind the betrayal all along! They are forced to try to defeat the gnomes without harming them unduly, breaking the infernal control, and then they can go on with their original plan.  At somepoint, though, you need to reach payoff, which ought to be the Macguffin being used for whatever it's going to be used for, by somebody.  Preferably not the demons.  I don't know what the dwarven prophecy is, or how it relates to the aims of the LG church, but if the two can coincide that might be a good path to work towards. [/spoiler]  After this, definitely run a lighthearted, non-serious adventure to cool down.  No fate of the world, no dark plots - if you think you can pull off something comic, do it.  If not, give the players an easy opponent so they can feel good about their abilities - maybe somebody out of their past who gave them trouble the first time they met that they can now beat handily, showing how much they've improved and grown.  J</blockquote>

Verification