Plots that have gone wrong...

[broghammerj]

A Ravenloft adventure Night of the Walking Dead went horribly bad. I decided to allow my players to have firearms since they were from a more technologically advanced realm. They traveled to the more medieval setting where the adventure took place and ended up scaring the locals by using thier "thunder sticks". A few moments later a lynch mob is outside the church where they have the priest held hostage at gunpoint. They ended up fighting to the death, so we "rewound" the adventure and they played it more judiciously. We had a blast with that one.

 

[Nailom]

Wheel of Time Campaign

My party stormed the Tower of a Lord who was a Shadowfriend. They killed the Lord in his chamber. On his table was a large map of town (A3) which I gave to the players. They folded it whitout even looking at it.

-This map contained the plans for an attack on the town about to happen in the next 2h. On the map you could see where the attack would come from end that some Shadow Friends would lay fire for confusion & would strike to open the citygates but the players didn't even took a look and barricaded themself in the room against attacking guard. They didn't even realized that something was going to happen in town when they saw burning buildings in town. So the city felt to the shadow cause there was no one to alert the guards.

 

[Rystil Arden]

That is beautiful.

There's a lot more crazy hijinks involved. Turns out that Dhistan's father wasn't even dead. He figured out that Dhistan summoned the succubus using Analyse Dweamour, then racked up humongous debts and staged his own death. When Dhistan returned, they told him that he would inherit his father's wealth (and Dhistan knew his father was a powerful wizard, so he agreed), causing him to become hundreds of thousands of gold in debt. Anyway, Dhistan's father Tarinthel eloped with the succubus, whom he had treated with Wisdom-draining poison and then saddled with a helm of opposite alignment. Dhistan eventually got back the elven souls from the Abyss, but Bel opportunistically grabbed a bunch of them, so Dhistan agreed to sacrifice souls to Bel for a 2:1 exchange rate. Then, Dhistan decided to take on a dragon alone to pay his debts and died. Playing as his cohort, he made a plan to bluff the dragon into giving back the black sapphire containing his soul. He pretended that his cohort (an erinyes) was a minion of Bel (which she was, originally; Bel had sent her to spy on him as part of his earlier agreement) who was making a transaction for Dhistan's soul. Unwilling to forge the signature in case the dragon spotted the fake, he got the real Bel to sign the contract. Not the best idea.....maybe I should write a story hour of all this? Anyway, years later the group decided to team up with the cult, since the cult had become too entrenched to defeat at that point, and they needed some help against the Vandolian Empire...

 

[Nathal]

If you know you want to run certain types of adventures, tell your players so they can make up their characters appropriately....most notably "This will be a grim and gritty campaign involving character of dubious morality. Don't bring a paladin to the table."
If that doesn't happen, you're just going to have to follow along with the characters. Don't build or buy an adventure the characters have no interest in.
If some characters are interested and not others, let the party work it out amongst themselves. Just don't then whack the characters who were convinced to stretch themselves with alignment violation penalties.

Yep, I agree. I usually have my players pick from a list, one or more things that they hold in common with other PCs:

1. A common ideology spurs actions, providing a sense of purpose.
2. Common allegiance to some patron, noble or ecclesiastic.
3. Compatriots in a common network, organization, guild, or recognized adventuring party.
4. Related by blood, preferably friends as well.
5. Met at the tavern and now friends. Easy enough, if a trifle uninspired.

 

[Nathal]

That's a perfect example of the sort of thing I'm talking about.

Another one for me was when I had a message delivered to a PC; a missive from an old enemy challenging him to meet for a showdown. I never thought that PC would take the challenge so personally that he leaves his adventurering group behind, telling nobody about the note or where he is going, and immediately setting out to meet the enemy...

Silly me, I thought the GROUP would take it as a challenge together.

Wheel of Time Campaign

My party stormed the Tower of a Lord who was a Shadowfriend. They killed the Lord in his chamber. On his table was a large map of town (A3) which I gave to the players. They folded it whitout even looking at it.

-This map contained the plans for an attack on the town about to happen in the next 2h. On the map you could see where the attack would come from end that some Shadow Friends would lay fire for confusion & would strike to open the citygates but the players didn't even took a look and barricaded themself in the room against attacking guard. They didn't even realized that something was going to happen in town when they saw burning buildings in town. So the city felt to the shadow cause there was no one to alert the guards.

 

[Nathal]

That sounds like an entertaining background. And it didn't sound like your campaign "went wrong" in any real sense, did it? You just know how to juggle, apparently. Do you players ever get bewildered by all of these interactions?

There's a lot more crazy hijinks involved. Turns out that Dhistan's father wasn't even dead. He figured out that Dhistan summoned the succubus using Analyse Dweamour, then racked up humongous debts and staged his own death. When Dhistan returned, they told him that he would inherit his father's wealth (and Dhistan knew his father was a powerful wizard, so he agreed), causing him to become hundreds of thousands of gold in debt. Anyway, Dhistan's father Tarinthel eloped with the succubus, whom he had treated with Wisdom-draining poison and then saddled with a helm of opposite alignment. Dhistan eventually got back the elven souls from the Abyss, but Bel opportunistically grabbed a bunch of them, so Dhistan agreed to sacrifice souls to Bel for a 2:1 exchange rate. Then, Dhistan decided to take on a dragon alone to pay his debts and died. Playing as his cohort, he made a plan to bluff the dragon into giving back the black sapphire containing his soul. He pretended that his cohort (an erinyes) was a minion of Bel (which she was, originally; Bel had sent her to spy on him as part of his earlier agreement) who was making a transaction for Dhistan's soul. Unwilling to forge the signature in case the dragon spotted the fake, he got the real Bel to sign the contract. Not the best idea.....maybe I should write a story hour of all this? Anyway, years later the group decided to team up with the cult, since the cult had become too entrenched to defeat at that point, and they needed some help against the Vandolian Empire...

 

[Rystil Arden]

That sounds like an entertaining background. And it didn't sound like your campaign "went wrong" in any real sense, did it? You just know how to juggle, apparently. Do you players ever get bewildered by all of these interactions?

Heh, I'm a good juggler, I'll admit. Its my only appreciable DMing skill (other than being able to quickly assemble high level NPCs in my head if necessary).

And you're right that the adventure didn't go "out of control," but it probably would have if I hadn't been good at improvising. For instance, if I wrote up my original plot as a module and an inexperienced DM bought this module and the PCs did what my PCs did, the DM would be screwed.

My players don't get bewildered by all this. They love all the interactions, and they like being in the middle of a power matrix where they can do whatever they want and have their actions felt among all the various factions. And this isn't even the crazy stuff from my campaign yet (that prize would have to go to the alternate dimension-hopping through the shadow plane or the time jumps that caused the character who had a once-every-10,000years quest to become confused when the "impostor" was legitimate [she was his great-great-great-great...granddaughter who was trying to complete the task, as she came from 10,000 years in the future], although there was another impostor who truly was a fake...)

Truly though, what became a 1st-20th level campaign was just meant as a 3-session adventure against the cult. Boy was I wrong

 

[Evilhalfling]

Lets see -
Players know of a powerful magic items are hidden. That can be used to defeat thier archvillians (from the Far Realm.) Instead they decide to attack the cyst directly. They bring along in a NPC local druid The villians are 13-15th level all sorcers or wizards the part is 8-9th. They sack some of the cyst and find out that the leader is out, but he sends a sending telling them to leave before he comes back and kills them all. The PCs decide to stay for 3 days and wreck the cyst. Then the villians arrive, using a scry buff, teleport. Nearly a TPK -

The survivors flee, and collect one of the three items that would help them, they also get the help of the area's Archdruid, not mentioning the other usefull items. They attack again and get the Archdruid killed - (he was turned insane and stuffed into a BoH while in pidgeon form) and the PCs decided not to let him back out, the bag rips and he is destroyed. With the death of a PC druid as well. Now the whole country is running low on High lvl druids. A PC makes another druid, coming from far away, and is warned that if he dies as well the whole druid hiearchy will collapse.
Finally they round up one more item and try again - this time I am ready and a teleport trap (stolen from WoTC adventures page) diverts them, allowing them time to gain another level and more allies - Finally they take out the Kaorti -

 

[Hypersmurf]

If you know you want to run certain types of adventures, tell your players so they can make up their characters appropriately....most notably "This will be a grim and gritty campaign involving character of dubious morality. Don't bring a paladin to the table."
If that doesn't happen, you're just going to have to follow along with the characters. Don't build or buy an adventure the characters have no interest in.

Heh. My DM tells a story like this.

In another game, his DM said "This will be a grim and gritty campaign. Make a band of mercenaries."

Every player rolled up a bard.

In response to the DM's horrified expression, one of the players clarified. "We're a band. 'The Mercenaries'."

-Hyp.

 

[tetsujin28]

If by "gone wrong", you mean "didn't turn out the way I expected/hoped", then all of them. I've since realized that means not to bother with plot.