Skipping time - "... and then six months later..."

[Someone]

You instead could start the adventure directly in the jail, with the meeting with the councillor, and play the fight as a flashback.

 

[Taneel BrightBlade]

what if the PCs slaughter all the guards and flee the city also what does the six months have to do with anything make it a day or two at most I say 'cause any longer an you have a prison brake with the druid in bear form, the cleric with bull strengh, andthe raging barbarian busting the bars off the wizard casting disinigrate on the door the rogue picks the lock the newly created wererat walking out, ect. well out secend thought fun idea try to a likely extent to make them do what you want but not to hard. And do it that way also make it hard but posible to aviod going to jail.
PS: that makes good campain

 

[S'mon]

Wow. Am I the only one who loves this concept? It's like Indiana Jones or Van Helsing, both starting with a huge action sequence - and then getting to the exposition later. Very filmic - and probably perfect for Eberron.

Those are stories, not games. Don't railroad the player characters in-session without the players' specific consent. Scenario start conditions are a different manner, and you can describe the werewolf fight as a cut scene "You remember the battle..." but DON'T inflict a predetermined-outcome scene on the PCs while presenting it as a free-will scene.

 

[S'mon]

I love the idea, I've done something a bit similiar in my campaign. After the party escaped from a well guarded orcish prison in Midnight and were feeling mighty good about themselves we stopped for that week. Next week I started the session by telling them that after their escape every orc in the surrounding areas was mobilized to search for them, they had to run for the mountains and now six months have passed in which they've been hunted ceaselessly, starving and cold...

That'd be fine with me - I've done this in my 'Conan' game - assuming running-for-mountains was plausible for the PCs, which in Midnight it normally would be. In Midnight I wouldn't like being told, in mid-campaign, "after being captured by the Shadow, your LG Sarcosan Freerider PC thought about it and decided that realistically the only sensible thing to do was to cooperate and join their forces..." - this might be justifiable as mind-altering magic but not as a "free PC choice".
An issue like this did come up recently in our Midnight game - our Midnight GM is brilliant, but I freaked out at some fairly mild railroading involving our PCs having decided to do something pre-session (enter a time-loop to help some elf ghosts so they'd stop killing people, knowing we'd lose our memories while doing so), and the session thus starting with us having IC no memory of our decision, and OOC no knowledge of it - my problem was that I didn't think my PC would have made that decision in the first place, and this caused big problems. It would have been a brilliant short story, as a game session, dealing with a fragile player-ego (mine), it had major flaws IMO that required lots of patience and work by the (wonderful) GM to rectify.

 

[Thanee]

I guess it could be done without too much railroading. You just have to make the decisions plausible enough for the players, so they decide to kill the werewolf and come with the guards.

Start off with the PCs facing the werewolf, make sure during the battle, that the werewolf is going to get killed. If they are trying to subdue him, they should get into trouble quickly (just make the werewolf tough enough).

Or start the fight, with the PCs already wounded, right in the middle of combat, maybe they have struck one or two wounds to the werewolf already. Setting the right mood this way. It should evolve into a him or us situation.

Once they have killed him, there are sounds in the ally behind them, and they hear a woman scream, the militia arrives shortly thereafter.

Full knowing, that they have done nothing wrong, they go with them probably (the guards won't call them murderers, just politely ask them to come with them), and then you can continue with your story and let the campaign begin 6 months later.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Hypersmurf]

PS: that makes good campain

I don't disagree.

But this isn't a campaign. It's a one-shot adventure, that begins in the prison cell.

Making it possible to avoid going to jail defeats the purpose of the werewolf fight in the first place

-Hyp.

 

[Ricochet]

It's a good idea, and I can tell you by experience that it WORKS.

 

[Daniel Knight]

Those are stories, not games. Don't railroad the player characters in-session without the players' specific consent. Scenario start conditions are a different manner, and you can describe the werewolf fight as a cut scene "You remember the battle..." but DON'T inflict a predetermined-outcome scene on the PCs while presenting it as a free-will scene.

Sorry - my error. And here I was thinking D&D was a stroytelling game.

Hypersmurf, DO inflict this predetermined-outcome because it's no worse than the predetermined-outcome that says the entire party starts in a tavern. Except this one is more exciting and at least allows the players some input to what their characters were doing before the game began. In fact, I would argue that starting the players in a tavern is far more railroading than the option presented

 

[Thanee]

Sorry - my error. And here I was thinking D&D was a storytelling game.

You must be confusing it with the world of darkness.



Bye
Thanee

 

[S'mon]

"storytelling"

Sorry - my error. And here I was thinking D&D was a stroytelling game.

It's definitely not a "storytelling" game - not any D&D game I'd ever play in or run. I agree w EGG that stories are what you tell about games, not what happens at the table. And if there's "Story Now", as Ron Edwards describes Narrativism, it's story-creation as interaction between players and GM, not as an act of story-telling by the GM.