D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Micah Sweet]

So can we retcon all the blatant railroading? lol.

The players made their own decisions, and doubled-down on the attitude when the DM requested an explanation. You make your bed, you don't turn back time so you don't have to lie in it.

 

[Flamestrike]

This is a problem as old as the game: How does a DM get the players to stop just outright slaying all NPCs, but more specifically the "good guys". Assuming that the PCs are at least sort of good, or at least want open access to good/neutral civilization.

If you have good aligned PCs acting like Ted Bundy and murdering everyone left right and centre, you have bigger problems.

Id simply tell them 'No'. Then discuss what 'good aligned' means. If they tried again even after having that chat, I'd let them, change their alignment to 'Evil' and have them hunted down by a Champion, a War mage, a War Cleric, a few Knights, and enough Town guard to make it a Deadly x 5 fight (using all the divination magic at my disposal, plus Zone of Truth etc), and likely then having them publicly hung for murder. If they somehow won that battle or escaped, the next wave coming after them would be even more deadly (the local Lord posts a 25,000 gp reward for the PC in question, dead or alive) such as Assassins and the like, or powerful (good aligned) adventuring parties.

If they rage quit the campaign afterwards, it's a win for the table.

If they instead pull their heads in, it's a win for the table.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The players made their own decisions, and doubled-down on the attitude when the DM requested an explanation. You make your bed, you don't turn back time so you don't have to lie in it.

Dude, its a game. The GM (admittedly not his design) was handed a railroad to enact, there was only one ACTUAL choice, and a world of punishment, possibly game ending, if you don't make that specific choice. I'm at a loss for words to be perfectly frank.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yeah, there didn’t seem to be much agency involved in the game prior. And the current state is seen as undesired. So just call a mulligan and do it over, and skip the part where they have to evade the guards.

 

[Mort]

If you have good aligned PCs acting like Ted Bundy and murdering everyone left right and centre, you have bigger problems.

Id simply tell them 'No'. Then discuss what 'good aligned' means. If they tried again even after having that chat, I'd let them, change their alignment to 'Evil' and have them hunted down by a Champion, a War mage, a War Cleric, a few Knights, and enough Town guard to make it a Deadly x 5 fight (using all the divination magic at my disposal, plus Zone of Truth etc), and likely then having them publicly hung for murder. If they somehow won that battle or escaped, the next wave coming after them would be even more deadly (the local Lord posts a 25,000 gp reward for the PC in question, dead or alive) such as Assassins and the like, or powerful (good aligned) adventuring parties.

Why give them a "false choice?" If your intent, if they say no, is to beat them into submission, why not just say - sorry no evil PCs here and stop. Punishing the players (because that's what's happening) doesn't really contribute to anyone's fun.

If they rage quit the campaign afterwards, it's a win for the table.

How is it a "win" to lose the ENTIRE gaming group?

It's unfortunate that there was a clear clash of styles. Presumably the group was going ok with the prior DM.

If they instead pull their heads in, it's a win for the table.

These kinds of things can't be "won," they can be navigated.

Here, IMO and from the OPs post, the group just goes into KILL EVERYTHING mode when initiative is rolled. A weird quirk, but I've seen weirder. The DM can easily roll with it and not put the group in conflict with "the good guys," as that clearly doesn't go well. Steer clear of that (and also unwinnable fights) and the group will likely be fine.

And if the DM doesn't like running that kind of game? Then he and the group are not a fit. It happens.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, there didn’t seem to be much agency involved in the game prior. And the current state is seen as undesired. So just call a mulligan and do it over, and skip the part where they have to evade the guards.

Yeah, I don't really get what would be the problem with this, the players obviously have zero other choices but to follow the rails, so just put the Rube Goldberg Machine back to its starting point and run it again! lol. I think the problem here is it kinda makes the total lack of agency a bit too obvious, maybe?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Here, IMO and from the OPs post, the group just goes into KILL EVERYTHING mode when initiative is rolled. A weird quirk, but I've seen weirder. The DM can easily roll with it and not put the group in conflict with "the good guys," as that clearly doesn't go well. Steer clear of that (and also unwinnable fights) and the group will likely be fine.

Maybe they simply mistook the situation for what logically was intended to be scripted next and simply acted. While we can ask in all seriousness why good people might go crazy and kill other good people, these are just fictional characters, it can be a minor misunderstanding, a whim, or maybe even a signal that the players are tired of playing railroad cars. I don't really know, but I wouldn't even say it rises to the level of a quirk, its just today's action at ye old table. I'd point out that when there's low buy in to the PC's personalities to start with, because they probably just went along with whatever the GM threw at them, they might not even really have any specific commitment to being 'good' or 'evil' (and alignment is just something that got written on a character sheet). These might be fairly recently created PCs too.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, I don't really get what would be the problem with this, the players obviously have zero other choices but to follow the rails, so just put the Rube Goldberg Machine back to its starting point and run it again! lol. I think the problem here is it kinda makes the total lack of agency a bit too obvious, maybe?

I don't see it as loss of agency. They didn't have to agree to be arrested, they didn't have to agree to the shadowy figure's deal, they didn't have to escape in a way that would get everyone's attention (the OP said this straight up), and they didn't have to kill every guard they came across as they escaped. Those were all choices they made. If it led them to a place they don't want to keep playing from, then scrap it and start a new campaign. I just don't see this as a big deal.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't see it as loss of agency. They didn't have to agree to be arrested, they didn't have to agree to the shadowy figure's deal, they didn't have to escape in a way that would get everyone's attention (the OP said this straight up), and they didn't have to kill every guard they came across as they escaped. Those were all choices they made. If it led them to a place they don't want to keep playing from, then scrap it and start a new campaign. I just don't see this as a big deal.

Right, they don't have to agree to be arrested, they can break the whole game and apparently threaten to end the campaign instead! I mean, oddly, to my mind its less impacting their autonomy to just say "well, you got framed and you are now in jail" than it is to play out all the non-choices leading there. Its not like jail is, narratively, a bad situation to be in, lots can happen that is fun and interesting, many possible choices!

Again with the shadowy figure's deal, exactly what are the choices here? I mean, sure they 'have a choice', and as every player in this sort of game knows, the expected 'choice' is to go with what the GM obviously prepped! The players certainly didn't choose to be in this situation, its a total railroad.

Did they KNOW that the escape choices actually meant? The problem here is you assume that players understand many things that often are pretty opaque at best. It SEEMS obvious to the GM, but quite often its not at all obvious to the players. And again, they clearly DID NOT have a choice, as the way they approached it is now derailing the whole campaign! That is not a choice.

The fact that you all see this as 'no big deal' or 'player choice' IS what leaves me at a loss for words, to be perfectly honest.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The only choices I see in the OP were the choice to surrender (though we don’t know all the details of how this went down) and then the botched attempt to escape quietly.

Everything else seems to have gone according to “the plot”. It’s even described in the OP as “per the plot”.

Given the heavy handed nature of this, I don’t know if the players were making choices so much as trying to do what they were “supposed to do”.