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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 644757" data-attributes="member: 63">However, more on topic, there have been some times when the games have just sucked, because I suppose my players aren't quite as cinematic as I am.  They assume that they have to stop everything, and of course they don't believe there's such a thing as a fight they have to run away from.  Buggering idiots.Anyhoo, one such example occured about a year and a half ago.  A group of Orcs in a fleet of ironclad ships were doing a lightning-quick invasion of a major city so they could gain hold of the city's magic school and library.  There were hundreds of Orcish ships all ramming their way through the frozen winter harbor of the city.  The PCs new that the Orcs were trying to find information about the location of a powerful artifact, long-ago buried in a heavily guarded tomb.  The Orcs wanted the city so they could find in the library and the school the location of that artifact.The artifact was a magical torch that, when lit, allowed everyone seeing the flame to teleport wherever the bearer wanted to travel.  It was used millennia ago by an Orcish empire that ruled the world, transporting hundreds or thousands of soldiers around the world instantaneously.  With the torch, the Orcish invasion force would be able to teleport its entire army from their home country to the captured city, or to anywhere else it wanted to attack.I'd intended for the PCs to try to head off the Orcs, getting to the tomb before the Orcs could, and I'd planned all kinds of niftiness to go on during the course of the quest.  The first stage on that quest was to rescue some of their friends who were on a ship in the harbor (and thus right in the path of the invasion fleet).  But instead of heading out to round up their friends and teleport away, or maybe even try to free the ship, instead the party spellcasters (Wizard 17 and Cleric 17) both start summoning water elementals: some elder, some greater, even some just huge ones.  Then they send the elementals out to start capsizing Orcish ships.  Checking the rules in the monster manual, I found out that it was indeed possible for these guys to knock over even really big Orc ships, but I figured that, at best, the elementals would take a minute or so to reach the ironclads, and then could only capsize one or two before the spell would end.  I explained this to the players to let them know it was a valiant effort, but they could probably only stop 10 or 20 ships out of the whole fleet."That's right," said the party wizard, and then he turned to the party's rogue/bard.  "Harley, go tell the wizard school to send all its casters out here to start summoning elementals.  There's easily a few hundred students there, so we should be able to stop 'em all."I admit that I lost my composure there.  Sure, I was used to PCs taking out dozens of monsters at once, even taking on a trio of Red Dragons in one adventure.  But stopping an entire invading force of several thousand warriors.  That grated on my nerves.I managed to maintain control long enough to figure out that an invading force of Orcs probably had magic users of its own that could dispel some of the elementals, so eventually the players decided to 'give up' (grumbling that I wouldn't let them win) and they went to go on with slightly less disruptive heroics.  I know the mantra of a good DM is to take what the PCs do and run with it, but some activities just strain my sense of drama.  To me, having two characters stop an entire army (without even having to wade into the fray) is just as silly as the whole whirlwind attack-great cleave-bucket of snails trick (which was my idea in the first place).The next few hours of the game went well, and we ended on a high note with the PCs getting into an aerial dogfight aboard a pair of airships, resulting in the PC's flying caravel ramming into the Orcish armored zeppelin, with a gloriously huge fireball engulfing both ships.  Then the next day we continued, with them traveling to location of the tomb, where they fought a guardian and then fell victim to a trap that sealed them in a tomb filled with anti-teleportation magic (to make sure that the torch wouldn't somehow teleport itself out, and to keep looters from teleporting in).  The PCs managed to get the torch, and get out of the tomb just barely alive, exhausted from the traps and guardians, when a second Orcish zeppelin appeared overhead. And then three-quarters of the group left.  It was the evening of the pre-screening of "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back," and one of our players was going back to college the next day.  And the players could have gone to see the bleeping movie the next day, but noooooooooo, they had to see it that night, and leave our game on a cliffhanger that was never resolved, because one of the players moved away and never came back.That's my most bitter gaming moment.  I still blame my players for killing one of the nicest games I'd ever planned.</blockquote>

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