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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chimera" data-source="post: 1875903" data-attributes="member: 2002">I know I've posted this before in previous threads, but one more time, eh?My last campaign, begun about 5 years ago under 2e rules.  Played with a group of people who were mostly long-time friends, but are not now, and I'm grateful that I am no longer associated with them for many many reasons.Starting document describes how their home village of 1200 (actually a training camp) is over-run by an army of Trolls, Bugbears and Beholders led by Wizards on Dragons.  An overwhelming and total defeat.  Is made abundantly clear that there no survivors.  The senior and older warriors sacrifice themselves so that some of the children (the PCs being among them) get away - barely.The PCs run until they're exhausted and collapse in a patch of woods.  They are awakened by an NPC the next morning and silenced by him as he points to two dragons circling overhead and a party of careless morons around an open campfire about 100 yards away.  Dragons (with Wizards) come down and wipe out careless moron NPCs.Thus we begin the game, with the atmosphere set.  The PCs are 'on the run' from an overwhelming force and had better use all their wiles to escape.  They regularly have to hide from flying dragons overhead, who are searching for survivors such as the PCs.Their first decision.....we want to go back and see if there were any survivors.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /> "hhhhhhhhhhooooookkkkkkkkaaaayyyyyy.  You folks read the setup, right?  You know that there probably aren't any survivors and it's a Spectacularly Bad Idea(tm) to go back there, right???   RIGHT???"An hour or so of arguing later, with me firmly banging my head on the wall in frustration, I finally complete lose my temper and yell at them that if they're going to be that f'ing stupid, we might as well not play at all.  I invite them to leave my house and go do unnatural things to themselves.They don't get it.  Dim bulbs all.  Don't understand why I'm so upset and blame me for reacting badly.  But they reluctantly decide "Ok, we'll go north" (parallel to the 'front lines'.)  They keep insisting that they want to go back and look for survivors, or barring that, look for magic items.  No matter how many times I tell them that not only will neither of them be found there, but that they'll be committing suicide by trying - and that I simply WILL NOT let them carry out this extremely stupid course of action.Dwarf Ranger gets separated from party and walks over hill.  Sees the back end of a Beholder about 50' away.  CHARGES!!!Me (completely exasperated):  OK, you can either roll up a new character, go home, or decide NOT to do that.Him:  Why?Me (Just stares at him.)Him:  What?  I figured you'd never give us an encounter we couldn't handle.At this point the entire room was looking at him in shock.  Where the heck was he (mentally speaking) when all the previous arguing took place???End of Day 1.  Group camps.  They decide to light a campfire.  NPC reminds them of what happened to the other group.  They insist.  NPCs threaten to attack anyone trying to light a campfire.  They still insist.  NPCs walk away shaking their head and calling the party suicidally stupid.  Players decide to argue with me about it.Why I didn't end the session and tell them all to get the hell out of my house and never come back, I'll never know.  Well, OK, I do know.  They were friends and I was a very forgiving guy.  To the point of self-damage.No more.  The next group that does this, gets the firm boot out the door.</blockquote>

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