What are some examples of "How bad do you want it?" from your games?

[Rel]

I'm working on a writing project and one of the concepts I'm discussing is obstacles that aren't really there to stop the PC's but instead are designed to pose the question "How bad do you want it?" The simplest example I can think of is a locked door that requires a specific key to open. The PC's could go on a side quest to obtain that key or they could just leave the door alone. It depends on how badly they want what's on the other side.

Do you have any examples of this kind of thing from your games? I'd love to hear some.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

In a 2nd Ed. AD&D module our group came across a doorway that was completely black and we couldn't see through. If you walked into the doorway it acted like a portal and you ended up walking back into the hallway instead of into the room. We tried tossing items into the doorway and sometimes they went through, sometimes they popped back out. We spent the rest of the afternoon (at least two hours) trying to figure out what the riddle was for getting through the doorway. In the end we figured out (maybe with a strong hint from the GM--I can't remember) that the only way things could enter the room was by going through backwards.

We kept at it because we desperately wanted to solve the riddle and because eventually we put in so much time and effort that we couldn't walk away empty handed. Our effort was well worth the time because we found a journal that explained the backstory to the plot AND we found a pile of all of the junk we threw through when testing the doorway!

 

[Umbran]

Heh. I love this one from my Deadlands game...

The party goes to Denver, following a clue from an old book and a dying priest, that they might recover a prophet, a figurative Holy Grail.

In Denver, they also discover that a BBEG is digging up some funny rocks. So, they muck with BBEG's plans, and commandeer the rocks.

In response, the BBEG commandeers the prophet, and offers a trade - rocks for man. Which do you want more? The party makes the trade, and rocks are shipped East on a train.

Here's the funny part. The party then leaves the prophet in Denver, unguarded and alone, to take off after the train, waylay the BBEG's minions as when they remove the rocks from the train, and steal the rocks back. The party takes the rocks back with them to Dodge City, never looking back.

If you are asking, "Well, what happened with the prophet?" you're a couple steps ahead of the party - they haven't asked that, and it is about to bite them on the behind. At a wedding.

 

[Richards]

This is more a "be careful what you wish for" story, but I remember my little brother telling me about a one-on-one D&D game he was running for a friend of his in high school. Said friend was running a fighter, I think, and demanded that he be given an NPC cleric and an NPC assassin as followers to aid him in his goals.

So my brother gave him what he wanted. The cleric's name was "Findor," and the assassin's name was "Keepor," and they snagged up all of the magical loot and most of the gold that the trio discovered in the course of their adventures. And both Findor and Keepor were too high-level for the fighter PC to be able to take them both on at once, so he had to live with the consequences.

Johnathan