When Players Ruin Your Evil Plans

[Chainsaw]

I don't have any such plans in the first place, since I run a sandbox campaign. My NPCs might, but I assume nothing about my players' reaction to those plans. When my players' characters got involved the NPC would react depending on the circumstances. Unfortunately in you're NPCs case he was incapable of reacting because he was unconscious. So the question is does this guy have any allies? How do they react to his death? How do other NPCs react to the situation? Perhaps the PCs end up wanted for the death of the noble by people back in the kingdom proper. Perhaps, depending on whether or not the constable survived, the people of the village might suspect the PCs for not only the noble's death, but possibly the constable's as well.

Bingo...

 

[Henry]

My favorite was an internet story I heard of a Call of Cthulhu game:

The PCs hear their front doorbell ring. One PC, dangerously low on Sanity, unloads both barrels of his 10 gauge shotgun THROUGH the front door. The guy ringing the doorbell was secretly the major villain of the adventure.

GAME OVER in 3 minutes real-time.

 

[malcolypse]

so no one in the village had a problem with the party murdering an unconcious man instead of turning him over to the proper authorities?


it's not like they would have had to drag him all the way back to civilization. just down the street to the nearest cell.

 

[malcolypse]

and to date, probably the best player initiated plot destruction was in a star wars game, where the party were intended to be pirates.

the characters were sent to deliver some jewels to a "friend" of the captain. on the way down to the planet, two party members playing mandalorian warriors convince another party member to negotiate a higher price, as they had decided that the captain was dishonorable and they should get their own ship and get into business for themselves.

she blows the negotiation roll (since the price was set between the captain and his friend ahead of time, the chances of success were microscopic anyway) and is told by the friend that "batting your eyelashes won't work, you're not that cute," and orders his men to take the goods. she shoots him in the face and all heck breaks loose. the end result is that the friend and his men and their ship are slag, we have the jewels, the money they brought for the transfer, and bad news for our captain.

on the way back to the ship, one of the mandalorians gets on the comm and tells the captain what went down. the captain orders him to execute the negotiator. the mandy says, "I thought you might say that," pulls a little box out of his belt and pushes a button which sets off the explosives he hid in the main ship's engine room before we left (we had wondered what he had taken the storyteller away for at the beginning of the night).

we jump into lightspeed and out of the st's plotline forever. good times.

 

[TheClone]

Yep, that's life with clever players! Although in this particular case you could have considered saying, "Okay, you've finished casting Gentle Repose. What would you like to do next?" Do you HAVE to tell the cleric that Gentle Repose isn't going to have the effect he thinks it will here, since it's not targeting a corpse? The cleric could rightly be indignant if the villain came back as undead after having cast Gentle Repose, but hey, never dead in the first place is not a problem!

So you do not only ruin players initiative and trying to manage a encounter, you also lie outright in their face. What do their learn? To stop clever thinking next time. The DM will handwave the plot anyway and clever ideas make no difference. If my DM would do that, I would have some serious words with him on first occasion and on second quit playing in the group. Surely, some players might like that but this group obviously not, because they do not expect the plot/DM to work things out, but think about the challenge and try to solve it. Forever. I love what the players do (same for the Star Wars story). Players initiative is really cool, but tends to die out once you show them that it's not worth a penny.

To OT: I tried to railroad players in the beginning of ma GM "career" but I wasn't even able to get them to the point where there expectations to miss. They had MUCH more rpg experience at that time. Today I avoid thinking about what the players might do. I try to keep my plotlines open. All those attempts to do some "Hollywood drama scenes" never work.

 

[Wolf1066]

Savor the moment. Players outwitting you should be something to cherish - let them hear you brag them up to other DMs. My very favorite moments are when they do things like that.

So true. Sadly can't give you XP at the mo'.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Although in this particular case you could have considered saying, "Okay, you've finished casting Gentle Repose. What would you like to do next?" Do you HAVE to tell the cleric that Gentle Repose isn't going to have the effect he thinks it will here, since it's not targeting a corpse? The cleric could rightly be indignant if the villain came back as undead after having cast Gentle Repose, but hey, never dead in the first place is not a problem!

Yeah, I agree, the PC doesn't necessarily know his spell has worked.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I no longer even bother to think up solutions to the problems that I throw at the PCs.

That's something that only occurred to me fairly recently, running my last campaign. Just think up problems, not solutions. It has two benefits:

1) Ensures plenty of player freedom as there's no 'right answer' to begin with.
2) Far more importantly, it saves me a bunch of prep time!

Three clue rule? Screw that! More like a no clue rule.

 

[Mesh Hong]

I no longer even bother to think up solutions to the problems that I throw at the PCs. It's their whole JOB to ruin the evil plans of my NPCs. However they eventually do that was the correct way to do that.

Yes this is the approach I try to use as well. Sometimes I get a bit carried away in my planning and make assumptions of what my PCs will do, and when I do this I am always wrong, and it always screws me over.

It is much easier to roll with the punches and makes things up as you go along when you yourself have no preconceived idea how a scene should go.

As to having one BBEG that a plot hinges on, don't do it, or if you must then don't put the BBEG in a position where the PCs can get at him......ever.

 

[Wolf1066]

As to having one BBEG that a plot hinges on, don't do it, or if you must then don't put the BBEG in a position where the PCs can get at him......ever.

And definitely don't have him go up and ring their frigging doorbell.