Help! My players are spooning apart my campaign!

[WhatGravitas]

Wait, wait, wait... make a dungeon, where something is sealed - something like the... Tarrasque!

It's contained in a massive block of the hardest non-adamantium alloys (hardness 15-19), and the tarrasque is constrained by manacles of magical force. If they do the dungeon correctly (without spoons), then they can get in, fetch the "insert plot item" and then go out.

If they're spooning, they lessen the structural integrity of the dungeon... and...
Yeah - let them survive and come on terms with their guilt and error.

It's not even particularily nasty, because dungeons are more then treasure chambers - they've got a in-game relevance - like locking up some things for a long, long, long time.

 

[Ourph]

Didn't you guys realize adamantine is radioactively unstable? You're keeping that teaspoon WHERE?........ Start making Fort saves.

 

[Kafkonia]

An Azer with a Beer

I'd have said an Azer with a laser, myself. Guess that shows how pronunciations can differ.

They could also get mugged by a dwarf on a wharf.

 

[Pbartender]

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

You could always set them up for a random encounter with a wild Bugaboo.

 

[Desdichado]

Looks like a fine time for a reboot to me.

Fine time to advertise for a new group.

 

[blargney the second]

The reboot may be necessary, but why not do it with a twist: take their character sheets, say "thanks for giving me some good villains", and make the new campaign all about how to stop these adventurers-cum-evil-overlords. 'Cause some of the stuff they've done is downright not nice...

 

[Mark Chance]

They could also get mugged by a dwarf on a wharf.

Or by an elf with a shelf, or by a halfling wearing lotsa bling, or by a gnome from Rome, or, while aboard a ship, by a human crewman!

 

[Nomad4life]

Something else just occurred to me. Why not have the PCs experience some kind of quasi-realistic mishap next time they go tunneling around where they aren’t supposed to?

You know, like IRL when miners tragically tunnel into a pocket full of trapped gas. Even spoons can cause sparks, I would think...

 

[helium3]

Re-booting of campaigns often leads to lost players, and these sound like players that I'd want to hold onto.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

The nice thing about D&D is it lets you try all sorts of stupid ideas and see how they turn out. The other thing is that gods are perfectly capable of showing up and dicking around with things. Thye are gods after all.

It is very plausible that they have managed to piss off a dwarven god, who can show up in avatar form, smash the crap out of the players, take away the spoons, and then send them back.

Or the god of metalurgy can choose to negate the properties of Adamantium in a fit of ego. "I give them the greatest metal in the universe, and they make spoons? To hell with them."

This can lead to an adventure when all the sudden loss of the extraordinary properties of Adamantium cause all sorts of problems (ie: perhaps the Tarrasque was held prisoner by adamantium chains, which when they lose their strength, can no longer hold it). IT can even cause the Dwarves to go to war with whomever they choose to blame for this.

The players have derailed your campaign. Your probably not going to be able to restore your campaign to what it was. So whatever you decide to do is going to change the nature of your game. If you were strongly attached to a serious and overarching plot, you may have to abandon it and start a new game.

END COMMUNICATION