Was I unfair?

[Felix]

Well, yes and no, I guess... it depends on what you consider a "chance". They didn't roll any dice to determine how powerful it was, no. However, it is obviously huge size, and they know the reach. It basically looked like a huge, feral necromancer.

Um... do you mean "huge" as in the adjective, or do you mean "Huge" as in the game term?

 

[sjmiller]

No way jose! I wrote the entire campaign before I even knew what characters they were playing, so I didn't fudge a thing.

How can you write an entire campaign without knowing the characters who will be in the campaign? That's just asking for trouble to arise. What if you put in lots of traps and locks and nobody took any classes/skills/whatever to get through them? What if you planned lots of undead but nobody made a cleric? I cannot fathom creating a campaign without knowing what characters will be in it? You cannot play to the party's strengths or weaknesses without knowing what they are first. I am, to be honest, quite surprised someone would do that.

 

[tylermalan]

I meant huge as in the game term.

As for the most recent post, that's sort of the point. The world exists around the characters, and they control only themselves. I see it as though the only way I can give them a fair, balanced, equal chance in the world is to put it in place before they get there.

 

[LostSoul]

1) I don't think any assumptions were made about this campaign - months before it started I informed my players that it was horror themed. They're all adults and they're all into fantasy and whatever; they know what horror is. How much more do I have to do to make sure my players understand what they're getting themselves into? I didn't want to railroad their character choices, so I left it open and let them choose.

Okay, no assumptions made. Cool.

Why do you think the players make the choices that they did? Have you asked them what they were expecting to happen? If they were surprised that they died? If the outcome they got (TPK) wasn't exactly what they were looking for?

 

[cthulhu_duck]

Agreed, but when the big red button makes the building explode, and the PCs push it, should the DM change it so the building doesn't explode?

If you've put it there in front of them, given them a chance to press the button, you have two choices:

(i) Let it happen. BOOOOOOMM. TPK. Roll new characters/spend fate points.

(ii) Ask: "You (character) know that pressing that will blow up the base/deathstar/underground lair, killing the party - are you sure you want to do that?" and proceed from there.

 

[Herobizkit]

I'd like to chime in and add that you were completely fair in your judgements in resolving the PC deaths. They did dumb things, and died.

Now, let me ask you this. You told them that your campaign was horror "themed"... but what does that mean? Ravenloft is horror-themed, but it's also D&D, and D&D is all about kicking in the bad guys' teeth and taking their stuff. Call of Cthulu is horror-themed, and is all about staying sane as long as possible while trying to slow (not stop) the inevitable advancement of primordial evil. Deadlands is horror-themed, but it's also western-themed...

This in mind, if I'm playing D&D, and you tell me your adventure is horror-themed, I assume lots of undead and demons/devils and other weird nastiness, but that it's still D&D and I'm expected to kill them all for the greater glory of Good (or whatever). If your intent is to run an investigative horror game, or a survival horror game, I'll take that into consideration before I decide to "go down the hole".

I'd strongly suggest buying and reading "Heroes of Horror". I'm sure it would be chock full of useful information for running a decent horror adventure.

Oh, and lastly -- if your campaign is largely role-playing based, why would you care about what spells your PCs can or can't cast?

 

[Plane Sailing]

Moderator:
Hey guys, I just wanted to say 'thanks' for turning the thread round and getting it back on track. You're the best!

Cheers

 

[GarethC]

Well, yes and no, I guess... it depends on what you consider a "chance". They didn't roll any dice to determine how powerful it was, no. However, it is obviously huge size, and they know the reach. It basically looked like a huge, feral necromancer.

OK - here's how I would have done your intro differently. Take it with a pinch of salt, and YMMV and all that.

You are doing a horror campaign, and you want to foreshadow the beastie somewhat. You intend the players to do the CoC thing of Library Use etc before actually bearding the foul creature in its lair - and possibly to determine its strengths and weaknesses, and at very best to determine A Cunning Plan to make The Final Battle happen in terrain favourable to the PCs. You've got a number of Exposition encounters planned out - finding out what the sigil means, gaining more information from the scenes of later attacks, that sort of thing. So you don't want the PCs to go haring off and frontal assault the bad guy, whom they know from the screaming to have only a minute's head start on them. So you need to give them reasons not to follow - fear is a good one. But a more substantial obstacle is probably necessary.

So, first rule - Show, Don't Tell. You hand out the sheets for the NPCs who are actually guarding the assassins, and say that the players are going to just do a quickie one-off for this evening. Then you have the fight, where you are notably short on detail about the baddy, emphasizing the poor visibility in the flickering torchlight, particularly as one of the oil lamps was put out when the floor smashed upwards. The NPCs all die, leaving the players knowing only that it's big, it's bad, and it's scary in the dark. You do it with legitimate die rolls, although the pregenned guards might be a tad weaker than the real PCs, but regardless, the *players* should have to go through a TPK where even those that try to run are brutally cut down as they scrabble to open the locked door. That should drive home the badassitude of the murderous opponent, so that the actual PCs do not need to risk actually engaging it just to determine how powerful it is.

The various clues are left as required, if necessary by an extra NPC whom you play and who /just bleeds to death/ just before the real PCs enter, but not before quickly scribbling the salient points in his own blood on the floor. When the giant finally retreats down the hole, it certainly collapses the tunnel behind it. You don't want the PCs going after this murderous killer in the dark when it lives down there and they are non-optimised for the adventure. If you haven't tailored the adventure to their eventual characters, then you have to cut them a break, or they will just all die - it's the way of D&D, which is a heavily metagame-dependant tactical system that your game is using the tactical elements of. No optimaxed builds means you cannot expect the PCs performance to be anything but below par when compared to the EL vs CR metric - and as a GM, you go to war with the party you have, not the party you might want, if I can paraphrase. So, rocks fall, everybody lives!

The PCs *can* dig through the rockfall, but it will take time in which the giant will leave the immediate area - and perhaps the NPC guard captain will offer to get a work crew in to do the excavation, which will miraculously be finished just about the time the Library Use is complete, and the PCs find the next killing, and maybe have had a chance to slot some passing goblins or something and maybe level up or pick up a natty scroll or two of some 2nd level spells that might be useful...

 

[Schmoe]

I tell them that though there will be combat, I emphasize role playing

As for the characters themselves, the classes aren't optimized, but that's not what I think makes them bad - its the fact that they seem to be perfectly NOT optimized.

The bard/sorcerer took the bard class for the perform skill, so he could more accurately hurl insults. Terrible.

There's your problem. You told the players that you would be emphasizing role-playing, yet you criticize them for making role-playing decisions with their characters. Frankly, the characters weren't bad at all, IMHO. Every combination there was viable.

Anyway, its not that I don't LIKE the characters or their backstories, its that the backstories are not what I would consider "good writing" - they're tired, old, cliche, make little sense, and give little to no vision on what that character is really all about.

Instead of being critical and condescending about the characters' backstories, perhaps you could have provided some suggestions to come up with something that fit the campaign better. Not everyone is a "good writer", and you shouldn't expect it.

As other posters have noted, it's not surprising that a group of players would want to do the heroic thing by following the creature down into the sewers. I think you are absolutely correct, in that they did not do it intelligently (didn't ask for advice, ignored clues, split the party), but there are things on your end that you could have done to "clue the party in" without compromising the integrity of your setup. Another poster's idea of having the giant stalk the party with deadly hit-and-run attacks may have worked. After one or two of them had been slaughtered and carried off into the darkness, perhaps the others would flee. Maybe one of the detectives could blurt out that the most critical thing is to protect the orphanage, as the creature likes to feed on children, and a blind chase through the sewers will lose valuable time. This or another such diversion might have re-directed the party away from what you felt was inevitable slaughter.

To summarize, I think you were unfair in your assessment of the characters, especially given the expectations you set at the beginning of the campaign; I think you were fair in your handling of the situation; and I think you were a little unfair in your expectations of the party's actions.

 

[gizmo33]

I tell them that though there will be combat, I emphasize role playing, and getting experience will depend on how much the PCs attempt to play their chosen role.

Sounds easy.

So what do they do? They make the worst. Party. Ever.

And AFAICT they then played the worst party ever. Sounds like they have some XP coming their way.

So, they’re guarding a building that is being used by a group of volunteer adventurers (much like themselves) to interrogate witnesses to an assassination, at night.

You're right, that's a horrible backstory.

THEY GO DOWN INTO THE SEWER! What?!

That's why they call it adventuring. They should have stayed out of the dungeon and just hugged each other in fear.

I thought I made it clear that this thing is dangerous, but apparently not.

If they took weapons with them when they went into the sewer, then I'd say you got your point across.

Ok, so, metagaming, this thing in the sewer is a Phaerlin Giant from Monsters of Faerun with the Hooded Pupil temple from Libris Mortis added to it. They are all level 3, this thing is CR 4. I wanted a dangerous, scary opponent to hound them throughout the game, but I wanted them to know where it probably was (the sewer) so that when they got powerful enough and tired of the attacks, they could go get it, or try.

I wouldn't think a CR 4 creature would be that big of a deal to a level 3 party - in fact all they need to do is gain a level and it becomes an encounter of only moderate difficulty.

On that note, I was going for freedom. The whole “the world exists aside from the PCs, who simply live in it and can affect it” was what I was going for. If they never do, it attacks them during the big climactic fight near the end.

So you can choose either A or B.

They all rolled new characters, with more cohesion.

How does character class determine cohesion? Is it the paladin's code of honor to go shopping? Oh well, live and learn (the players, that is, obviously not their characters)

So I ask you, was I unfair?

I'm assuming a tarrasque ate them in the sewers, in which case the answer is yes.