Have *you* ever ruined your own plot hook?

[Cake Mage]

Question is, have you, as a DM, ever accidently ruined your plot hook for the PCs that you had planned?

For instance, last game I ran I had 2 hooks in place that the PCs could do in any order they saw fit. 1) Go help dwarven miner/merchant who's miners keep disappearing in his mines by unknown creature (a la Tremors, I know pathetic, but when you got notta to work with...). 2) Go to town that has rumored a powerful weapon hidden somewhere in the area (PCs had a map and everything). Well I also decided to get one of the PCs more involved in the group because as it was, he was mearly hiring the group to find the weapon. So I introduced his twin brother, who was crazy and powerful (lame I know). Anywho (lets not criticize the DM for bad plots :\ ), the twin (played by me) wound up destroying 3/4 the partys stuff and manages to piss off everyone in the group. Before the party kills him, he says he'll get their stuff back if they take him to this dangerous area thats far away. oops.

I think my problem is I don't think of the plot when I'm in character of a NPC

So any of you done anything like that?

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Yep...

Well...kinda.

The session before last, we had to wrap up in a hurry and I quickly went over the loot the PCs got. They didn't have time to write it down, so last session I sat down to go over with them what they got.

Not a problem, except I started handing out loot for an upcoming climactic battle instead of the loot they earned.

Oops.... It was bad when I had to say: "Um....scratch that. You guys don't have any of that stuff."

My campaign is a "wheels within wheels" sort of campaign that jas a very complex background. I have to be REALLY careful or I'll paint myself into a corner.

 

[BlackMoria]

Yep. I had a nice lovely plot hook all planned out. I introduced a small sidetrek adventure to add a little color and variety to the campaign flow. Damned if the players didn't find the sidetrek more compelling than the plot hook. And try as I might, I couldn't steer them back to the original plot hook as they were firmly convinced that the side trek diversion was the main event. If I tried any harder, I would be outright 'railroading'

**Sigh** So the sidetrek became the primary story plot.

Moral: Don't make the sidetrek more tantalizing than your primary plot line.

 

[Pants]

I don't write anything down for my campaign. Never, unless I'm running a dungeon, so a couple of times I have told myself before the game 'I need to introduce plot NPC hook #431 at this point in the game to provide foreshadowing or something else rather important..." Then, during the game, I forget about the NPC until after the game. Damn.
I've always been able to salvage these things, but it's usually a bigger pain in the butt to do so than if I initially introduced the character.

There have also been times when I've forgotten to hand out plot-important items to the group even when the item is written down in a list right in front of me. Yay, go me. :\

 

[Cake Mage]

come we can't be the only ones. Fess up now.

 

[Henry]

Strangely, I don't think I've had that happen before. The closest thing I've had happen was similar to Pants' story - I forgot to include a minor NPC once because I was so wrapped up in other aspects of the storyline - but nothing as dramatic as derailing one of my own plots. My players been me busy enough derailing my plots all by themselves.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

There have also been times when I've forgotten to hand out plot-important items to the group even when the item is written down in a list right in front of me. Yay, go me. :\

Yeah... Did that too.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

I accidentally told my players all the properties of a mysteeeerious magical sword they'd found. It was a (heavily modified) Nine Lives Stealer, and it had taken the soul of a PC. They ended up breaking it so they could ressurect him.

 

[JesterPoet]

Question is, have you, as a DM, ever accidently ruined your plot hook for the PCs that you had planned...So any of you done anything like that?

Ummmm, no.

Well, unless you count the 50 or so times where I have.


But other than those times, no.

 

[barsoomcore]

Oh, man, I am the KING of screwing up my own campaign. I have the same problem as Cake Mage in that my NPCs are forever getting carried away and introducing new plot elements that completely contradict what I'm hoping to set up, or I panic and make stuff up, only realising too late that I've just contradicted some massively important background info the players already know about, so they start going, "What's going on here?" and I have to figure out how to tap-dance my way back into some sort of sensible (or at least vaguely plausible) structure that includes both the material they already know and whatever nonsense I've just spewed...

I rely on the "everybody remembers events differently" excuse a LOT. My party has gotten used to the idea that there's no way to figure out what REALLY happened two thousand years ago -- they're only ever going to get various people's subjective observations on what happened.