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Game Masters: Shooting Your Own Campaign in the Foot
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<blockquote data-quote="p_johnston" data-source="post: 8075349" data-attributes="member: 7016849"><p>So my group had what we refer to as "the iron flask incident."</p><p></p><p>So when I first started Gming one of my players asked me for a cursed magic sword at first level. I though this was a great idea and decided to give one to each character. The problem was that as a new GM I was very bad at balancing encounters, escpecially for level one characters. Fast forward a couple of party wipes (entirely my fault) and I'm starting to run out of ideas for magic items. So I give one of my players (we call him Lucky) a degraded iron flask that radiates powerful energy from the being within. Every single player at the table tells him "do not open the flask. DO NOT!" At the end of the session Lucky takes me aside and says "I want to go about 30 minutes into the woods and open the iron flask."</p><p></p><p>It is worth knowing that I did not know what was in the iron flask. I figured I'd have at least a few sessions before curiosity overcame common sense to figure it out. So after his announcment I just stare at him for about 10 seconds and describe how a Balor comes out of the flask and starts to monologue about "it is wonderful to finally be free so that I can wreak havoc on the world again MWAHAHAHAH!!" The session ended two hours late with two people retiring their characters, a third person wanted by every person in the country, and the capitol city in flaming ruins.</p><p></p><p>It worked out though. I ended up turning that Balor into a trapped demon prince and one of the main reaccuring villians of the campaign.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="p_johnston, post: 8075349, member: 7016849"] So my group had what we refer to as "the iron flask incident." So when I first started Gming one of my players asked me for a cursed magic sword at first level. I though this was a great idea and decided to give one to each character. The problem was that as a new GM I was very bad at balancing encounters, escpecially for level one characters. Fast forward a couple of party wipes (entirely my fault) and I'm starting to run out of ideas for magic items. So I give one of my players (we call him Lucky) a degraded iron flask that radiates powerful energy from the being within. Every single player at the table tells him "do not open the flask. DO NOT!" At the end of the session Lucky takes me aside and says "I want to go about 30 minutes into the woods and open the iron flask." It is worth knowing that I did not know what was in the iron flask. I figured I'd have at least a few sessions before curiosity overcame common sense to figure it out. So after his announcment I just stare at him for about 10 seconds and describe how a Balor comes out of the flask and starts to monologue about "it is wonderful to finally be free so that I can wreak havoc on the world again MWAHAHAHAH!!" The session ended two hours late with two people retiring their characters, a third person wanted by every person in the country, and the capitol city in flaming ruins. It worked out though. I ended up turning that Balor into a trapped demon prince and one of the main reaccuring villians of the campaign. [/QUOTE]
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