Best Game Derails

[Lord Zardoz]

From time to time as a player, you will often get an idea in your head to go and do something in game that has little or nothing to do with what the DM has planned. Sometimes your DM will get an inkling and work your idea into the adventure. Other times you simply take the game so far from what the DM had planned that at least for that game, he has to throw away his notes and wing it.

Maybe you surrendered to the BBEG rather than fight him. Maybe you managed to find a clever gap in his logic and circumvent a series of encounters. Or maybe you just decided that saving Drellins Ferry from the Red Hand of Doom would not be as fun as going somewhere else entirely.

So what de-rails can you think of that you pulled off as a player that actually worked out quite well for all concerned?

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[Blue]

This was from a campaign I was running. Group came across "The Sundark" (their name), an artifact that could create a solar eclipse that a band of powerful vampires were hunting. They knew it could do it, they didn't know if it was temporary, or if it could undo it if it did it.

The group had been working with an order of paladins specifically tasked to kill vampires, which is how they met up with them. They also had several allies, including a clerical order devoted to healing that had massive protections about it's headquarters.

The dwarven cleric decides that the human kingdom isn't competent enough to handle it, and pulls the entire campaign to bring it to Ironholm, the capital of the Dwarven lands, where it could be properly guarded by a Dwarven order that basically locks away all things having to do with magic, including running dead-magic "asylums" for any dwarf found using arcane magic (except bardic, considered from a different source).

Ignore that they are in the human kigdom, and end up passing through the capital on the way to the dwarven lands. Forget the order of paladins. Forget the clerics. Forget everyone else - go to the dwarves.

Basically ignored every side quest during that time, and truncated/pulled out of a number of existing plots.

Grand fun was had by all.

Cheers,
=Blue(23)

 

[moritheil]

Only as a player? I derailed my campaign once as a DM to railroad everyone into another plane of existence. They got to overthrow a tyrannical regime and tie up lost plot threads (mommy was an adventurer.)

Once they saved a demipower from an artifact that was leeching away her essence, they got a free trip back, too!

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I have two derail stories.

One was from an Eberron game I was a player in over the summer of 2006. My character was a Changeling Rogue with maxed per level ranks in Disguise, Bluff, Sense Motive, and Forgery. I had decided that is own personal goal was to convince the world at large that there was a long forgotten ancient religion that was becoming active again. It was called the Unholy order of Dagon (Yes, I know where that name came from). This cult was founded on utter bull crap, and I put a surprising amount of effort into promoting it. This motive became the catalyst for a few incidents that had nothing to do with what the DM was going for.

We were supposed to investigate the source of some abnormal scrolls. This entailed entering a tomb. The tomb had all the requisite markings of having something to do with the war effort. We found what we were looking for. But i figured, hey, here is a nice creepy tomb. Why not repurpose it? I had earlier dug up the grave of a dwarf who had tracked down, that had died near the tomb obtaining the scrolls. I cut his body up and placed it on the unholy altar. Then I planted some face writings regarding Dagon. Then I decorated the place with a bunch of goofy magical chalk that had a tendency to glow in the dark, and wrote lots of creepy crap about the power of Dagon. Then I left.

Placing the body on the alter resulted in a bunch of Undead attacks in the area. We did our best to ignore that. Since we were traveling through some theocracy, I chose to disguise myself as a priest. When we stopped for the night at some military outpost, the men were happy to see a priest, hoping we would help them defeat the undead. I promptly told them that the locally favored god had been driven from this place by the taint of Dagon. I also told them that the keep was now a forsaken place, and that we had best set the place on fire to purge the evil with sacred flames. They decided this was not a winning plan. Ultimately, the barracks sent away for someone 'more qualified' to help them out.

The next game resulted in us being hunted by inquisitors working for the theocracy wanting to know who was responsible for spreading blasphemy and causing a bunch of undead to attack.

I had to change jobs shortly after that, however, which is a shame. I was having quite a bit of fun.

The other incident was from a Harn 1 shot at a small game convention in Saskatoon, posted in this thread:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=219445

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