Help! My players are spooning apart my campaign!

[jgbrowning]

Any advice how I could stabilise the situation? I have tried everything!

Mirrors of Opposition! Let them be faced by their spoony opposite-alignment selves.

joe b.

 

[Kafkonia]

Surely the dwarves -- some dwarves, at least -- don't look too kindly on the long-lost weapon of one of their heroes having been turned into spoons, and are likely to be proactive about rectifying the situation. And when it comes to tunnelling and underground combat, who do you think wins when it's a handful of PCs with spoons vs. society of dwarves?

Nevermind the fact that these adamantine spoons have surely piqued some curiosity amongst less savoury types who might elect to relieve the PCs of them -- can't dig your way out of a poisoned dagger at the inn, can you?

 

[EricNoah]

Maybe the ghost of the dwarven hero will return, enraged that his weapon has been destroyed. He curses them with the Midas Touch -- every metal they touch turns to gold. For a while. Until the spoons are gone.

 

[Jim Hague]

You've managed to create a gaming situation where the players have started spontaneously generating plot hooks and are taking an active role in developing the story. Most DM's would give their teeth for a situation like that.

I suggest you run with it and let the players have their fun until they get bored. Build the adventures around what they're trying to do, rather than trying to get them to do something else.

Hi! Perhaps you missed the part where the campaign isn't fun for the DM?

Worst suggestion ever.

This isn't plot hook generation, it's idiotic, rampant silliness that makes no sense. As other posters have pointed out, the PCs now have the most durable tableware in existence. Woohoo, that's the true spirit of heroism. Creesus, even Dox Quixote had a damn lance. Nope, the DM doesn't have to do anything here except say:

"I've looked over the rules, and while adamantine weapons and armor do these things, tableware simply doesn't cut it. Anything. And thanks to you breaking the hammer down, it's now lost its magical properties, and, oh yes, the descendants of the dwarven hero? They want to have words with you. Strong, hurtful words. And fists."

Lets the players down easy and restores control of the flow of things so everyone can have fun.

 

[Liquidsabre]

Oh yes, too late to establish that the adamantine spoons wouldn't work (really, they shouldn't) but you'd mess with far too much continuity at this point. So, as a few others suggested, take this and run with it. Use fewer physical obstacles and challenges as logn as it's believable. Though I imagine carving through a section of dungeon only to discover the vast underground lake would definately put a damper in the groups activites. Capitalize on the spoon's existance, let word get out and have the spoons much sought after. Folk are constantly trying to either buy the things from the characters or steal them. There are vendors trying to sell knock-off versions that function poorly, other townsfolk frown upon the spoon-wielding charcters as hucksters and charlatans. Have lords and ladies wishing to remain safe and secure in the strongholds and noble manors outlaw the cursed things.

Finally, after the party of heroes has long sought after and eventually defeated a long-standing foe who they now deliver unto law and life imprisonment to the joy and celebration of the entire nation! Later, the party discovers that the vile fiend has escaped it's incarceration!! But how can this be!?! With the use of a specially concealed spoon...

If you'd prefer to take the campaign in a less humouress vein (that is, if not many in the group is having fun with this. If everyone is, then yea have fun and run with it), just have the spoons only work in this manner for a short period of time as the lingering magical enchantments of the dwarven hammer eventually wear off. Leaving the spoons as normal functioning and very expensively wrought spoons.

 

[Agent Oracle]

1. Do any of them have "utensil proficiency: Spoon"? If not, it's a -4 to all spoon-related checks. additional penalties are applied for

2 -using an undersized weapon

3. -attempting to perform a prison-tunneling exercize.

Okay, if you ARE letting them keep the things as they are...

Teaspoons are rotten for digging purposes, as any convicted felon can tell you, they do nothing special against rock. If they can get sufficient force behind the spoon to chip the rock, it's probably going to only be a fraction of an inch that thye can get the poorly-shaped spoon into the stone (spoons are shaped for scooping, NOT digging)

Rule that they can extract one eighth of a spoonfull of rock from a wall every round. If these are standard teaspoons, it will take them 384 rounds of chisseling away at the wall to make a fist-sized indentation (roughly one cup of rock) or roughly 14 and a half cubic inches of rock removed. So, if they don't give up after half an hour of digging... make them start rolling for every attempted scoop. allow a removal of an extra sixteenth of a teaspoon on a natural 20. this is a test of will, and you have the rights to win.

Bring a steel spoon to the table, and a hunk of 2x4. any player who contests your ruling that if he can dig through normal wood with a stainless steel spoon in less time, you'll concede to his superior abilities.

Incedentally, it seems as if you got yourself a party filled with loonies. I reccomend you start playing the game according to their logic. Start throwing surreal encounters at them. Include an enemy who isn't there, etc. Make the next campaign a plot by wigmakers to overthrow the throne. whatever floats your swim bladder, you know?

 

[EricNoah]

Another option: talk to the most reasonable player(s). Ask them to help come up with a fun way to get rid of the spoons. Explain that it's eithr that or the "final solution": "Campaign's over. You guys won! Congratulations!" And then roll up new characters.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Surely the dwarves -- some dwarves, at least -- don't look too kindly on the long-lost weapon of one of their heroes having been turned into spoons, and are likely to be proactive about rectifying the situation. And when it comes to tunnelling and underground combat, who do you think wins when it's a handful of PCs with spoons vs. society of dwarves?

Yeah, the great-great-great-grandson of the hero who originally owned the hammer is likely alive and not amused.

And wouldn't it be interesting if he wasn't the swell guy his ancestor was? Say hello to an angry level 15 dwarven warrior/blackguard, guys ...

I wouldn't end the campaign over this. The response when players get invested in the world and come up with clever twists shouldn't be to take your ball and go home. It should be to bounce the ball off their clever heads a few times.

 

[F5]

If your players are taking the initiative to break down artifacts into spoons, it's pretty obvious what kind of a game they want to be playing. It was pointed out earlier that pickaxes and shovels would have been a better choice for this kind of thing; the fact that they are getting a kick out of digging through stone with unbreakable spoons says that they're in the mood for a silly, low-pressure kind of goof game. So give it to 'em. A particularly chaotic and crazy faerie court becomes aware of their "ingenious" inventions, whisks them off to the faeries' home plane, to reward their cleverness and set them to some imposible task, and wackiness ensues. Let them get the silliness out of their system, if they ever will, and take a break from the main campaign storyline.

 

[Eva of Sirrion]

"Why spoons guys? Why not an axe or a knife? A sword?"

"Because they're DULL, you twit, they'll hurt more!!!"

Come on, like none of you were thinking it.