Last night's session was rough.
The party has just reached level 8, so the beginning of Tier 4. We had our first Tier 4 fight, which was "balanced" by the math. It was a solo kraken, a bruiser, and six minions. It was over in two "turns" - essentially the kraken got two sets of activations before it was destroyed.
A little anti-climatic but fine.
What went terribly wrong wasn't system, but it was style versus player type and personalities.
One of the characters is in service to a trickster god who they have discovered has been behind a lot of the problems in the campaign. He's been defeating and imprisoning the souls of other gods in an attempt to become more powerful. The party has come to his realm to recover the spirit of the god of life. They find the trickster. The party has done some favors for him and asks him to give them the god's spirit orb so they can do a ritual to save the world.
He offers them a spirit orb, which the party deduces is the wrong orb, which would have disastrous consequences. (They used a combination of rolls, clues from me, and checking their notes.) His ruse discovered, the trickster god didn't want to fight the party on his home realm where he could be permanently destroyed. He gave them the life orb and said "the affairs of humans don't concern me."
The players were disappointed in this. They said they felt cheated out of a climax. I told them in Daggerheart they have some freedom to change the narrative. Work with me to tell me what's a satisfying ending. Do you want to fight him? Do you want to return to your realm and try to do the ritual?
I had one player get belligerent and raise his voice to another and say she's overthinking things and making them not fun. That player started crying and saying she didn't want to kill her god - and she was trying to undo the damage her character's father started (IRL, the player's Dad passed away like a year ago - and maybe she's working through it.) Another player, traumatized by growing up with parents who argued a lot, got triggered and had to leave the table.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to remain calm. I put my dice away and close my books, signaling the end of the session. I tell them I'll figure out something for next time.
They were all in agreement that this was essentially my fault. I shouldn't have given the party a choice like that. They didn't like having that much narrative control. And they thought I was giving up on a challenging situation and asking them to make it hard on themselves.
I'm not happy with my group this morning and trying to think about what I did wrong, if anything.
