Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Anax" data-source="post: 2637961" data-attributes="member: 19868">I don’t think I’d be happy with that situation at all... it smacks too much of “No matter what the characters do, somebody is going to get whacked.”  Characters shouldn’t ever die (or be saved) just because it fits the DM’s story nicely.It’s kind of like the rules for mystery stories that someone (I forget exactly who) suggested a long while back.  It’s not good for the main character in a mystery to solve the mystery based on clues that were never revealed to the reader: everything has to be in plain sight, even if the reader is unlikely to connect the dots until the solution is revealed.  It must be possible to connect those dots, or it detracts from the reader’s enjoyment trying to figure out what’s going on... it’s just not fair.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I feel the same sort of thing applies to a role-playing scenario like this.  On the one hand, I must admit that with the mess they’ve stirred up, the players should be expecting something to follow them.  But it’s less clear to me that they have a reason to expect anything like that kind of threat.  If I were in that situation, I’d be more inclined to think that a large invasion force would be on its way soon.Which implies to me that the players should be given some hints—not big smacks with the cluehammer, but enough that they have a chance to figure out that they’re in danger from more covert agencies as well as the overt ones.  Things like a chance to spot footprints in the snow outside of camp after they’ve been on watch all night.  Seeing shadows that aren’t there when they look again.  Strange patches of silence in the forest’s background noise.  (And, most likely it’s too late for this, but the chance to hear rumours about some sort of assassin types existing... but those rumours having happened long enough ago in the game that they won’t immediately connect the rumours with the footprints or silence.)Then when you stick it to them with the silenced boomstick, it won’t feel unfair.  It will feel like “Oh man!  It all makes sense now!  The stalker in the woods, the quiet patches in the forest, those assassins we heard about way back when!  We should have expected something like this...”Anyway, that’s my take on things.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Being evil is fine, but you have to be sneaky enough about it to be evil and make the players feel like it’s their own damned fault.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification