Don't love your villains (or "How I screwed up, and how I fixed it")

[Abraxas]

I try to not have these types of PC decisions happen at the end of a session. In other words, I would have ended the session when they found the room - before the decision to plunge the sought after sword into the golem's heart.

I do this because at the end of a normal gaming night there is a certain amount of gaming fatigue coloring the way they run their PCs. It has been my experience that players make the worst decisions at the end of the night.

I also have to be very careful that the master plans of my villains are really based on what they know about the PCs and not what I know about the players.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

They knew she specifically wanted the sword to power a golem... And so they decided to stick it into the one inactive golem (thus the one in need of being "powered") that they find?

I'd say they had some warning there. Certainly that's not a "we had no way of knowing" situation.

Still, it seems you handled it well through the communication afterwards, so well done.

 

[malcolypse]

The only thing I would have changed in any of it would be to eliminate the fireworks.

The sword would have been drained and the golem empowered without any outward sign.

The players would have left with all the gold, not knowing that not only had they just empowered a super enemy, they also depowered their awsome magic sword.

The fact that the next time they get in a fight his sword doesn't glow should be their first hint that they may have screwed up.

Meanwhile, a few hours after regaining consciousness, their new golem overlady should regain the ability to move after being aware that they stole her loot. Then the plotting begins.

The plot, the set-up, and the e-mail were all inspired. They rolled with it, so everything turned out ok in the end. Well done.

 

[Piratecat]

To be clear, the problem wasn't that it happened. The problem was that due to pacing they were way less cautious than they would have been.

Had they stabbed the heart with any other weapon, it would have been dead Tanis.

 

[howandwhy99]

Player fatigue might have been a factor. If this wasn't the end of a one-shot, then stopping after killing her might have staved off some rash actions on their part. Looting and dividing treasure can be tedious too, so that could have at least been one rationale.

Besides the clues Umbran mentioned, what other clues did you drop around the final area to tip them off? That might help in simplifying the challenge for future adventure design.


For my own experience,
I had trouble with an adventure built around illusions. It was centered on a town with a nearby fairy mound. Some drow had stolen a magical, spherical artifact and went to find a safe place to escape pursuit. This ended up as tunneling into the cavity of the fairy mound. There they attempted to crack it open, which only led to a partial opening for the avatar of a demigod of illusions to use her powers through. The entirety of the cavity became a grand illusion inimical to the drow. One did escape however by tunneling out to above ground. Eventually the townspeople found the entrance and slowly were caught in the illusory trap as well.

The adventure ran as the mystery of an oddly emptied town and the discovery of the fairy mound. There was quite a bit to both with townsfolk starving while entranced in a massive and varied faux fairy festival. It kept getting more and more implausible with the illusory reality warping to cajole the PCs into finally releasing the demigod. They sealed it instead, but while there were many consequences in the game world from actions taken when in the illusory the overall effect was anticlimactic.

The players weren't happy as much of the treasures gained and the monsters fought were illusory, but even more so it was felt they had no reason to suspect an illusion especially one so vast. These was the first sessions of a takeover campaign, so all of my world was understood to be a little different anyways. In effect I 'it was all a dream'd the adventure the moment I began it. The ideas were good and so was the set up, but I needed more clues and an understanding that this was far too complicated and too deceptive to begin with. Not to mention that starting with an illusory world makes beginning sessions irrelevant.

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

I had a similar situation where the PCs had won a hard fought and gruelling victory, and were resting. The camp where they rested had a trio of Jinn performers who would regularly use magic to make others do funny things, albeit at their own expense; in this case they made the noble and uptight paladin cluck and dance around like a chicken. The timing of this encounter, and the "helplessness" on the part of the PC was poorly done on my part, leading to the PCs attacking and killing the performers, leading to great ire on the part of the Prince they were a guest of...and the demise of the said campaign.


Fortunately, that was long ago, and was a very good learning experience, especially after we talked about it later.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Personally I don't think players are entitled to always have things play out exactly as they expect, or to have their preferred denouement at the end of the session. As long as the result was the result of their voluntary actions (albeit planned for by a smart villain with a Thanatos Gambit) and not railroading, I can't see it as bad GMing. I almost never use Thanatos Gambits myself, but I reserve the right to do so.

Let me get this straight...

You know your enemy makes golems, and you know the sword can be used to power one. After you kill her, you find one more golem, deactivated, but with her still-beating heart in it, in the treasure room rather than in a lab. And you claim you had "no way of knowing"?

I'll accept that they were caught up in the moment, but I think you telegraphed that pretty well. What more did they want, a neon sign blinking, "Don't plunge the golem-powering sword into the heart of the inactive golem, it may not do what you think it will!" I mean, really?

I'm actually with S'mon and Umbran (plus a few others) here - although it is a shame that the players were put out, it was a reasonable plan of hers, in keeping with someone of that nature and who was that desperate.

Didn't they enjoy Terminator, when they thought it was dead in the exploding truck, all was over and then suddenly it appeared again (and again after that)?

I think the original plan was a good one, it certainly wasn't a railroad for the PCs. It was actually nicely rat-bastardy.

I think it is a shame that you had to make it come to nothing in the end because the players (sorry beloved players!) had come to the meta-game conclusion that it was all over.

Cheers

 

[Pentius]

I hope you are happy, piratecat. Now my mind is ablaze with the fun I could have by introducing a golemcrafter, right at a time when I had a slot open for something interesting to be put in.

 

[LostSoul]

TL;DR version:
Communication makes it much easier to recover from a ban gaming mistake.

Have you guys run into something similar in the past? How'd you handle it?

Totally agree with that. I make mistakes all the time as a player and a DM. Talking it over (preferably over beers) really helps the campaign roll on.

 

[Mrbongos]

What would have happened if they'd used a different weapon on the heart?

Personally I don't think players are entitled to always have things play out exactly as they expect, or to have their preferred denouement at the end of the session. As long as the result was the result of their voluntary actions (albeit planned for by a smart villain with a Thanatos Gambit) and not railroading, I can't see it as bad GMing. I almost never use Thanatos Gambits myself, but I reserve the right to do so.

I'm in frank agreement here. My own players have learned that sometimes it's alright to expect it all to be done, and other times they know they need to think like a chess player. In 3rd ed, I'd created a villain who was on a Monk basis, and so used Anti-magic field creating devices to similar effect.

I've also, in 4E made a villain who had two possible gamble methods to culminating his plans (though neither were thanatos gambles), and the players walked right into the obvious one. So sometimes players spank themselves, sometimes they realize it, and sometimes they say the GM is 'cheating'. It all comes down to how the situation in handled.