When the Session goes Pear Shaped

[Rechan]

Things went very amiss recently.

This weekend I ran a game. I had intended for the players to battle three powerful members of Tiamat's church, and then a dragon.

I had balanced the encounter for six players - and then one dropped out, and I ended up running the character of a player who didn't show (and then dropped out later).

Mid-way through the battle, it became obvious that the PCs were outmatched. I either made the enemies too tough, or they were rolling terrible (their paladin could hit NOTHING, for instance). The PCs could have won, if they threw everything they had at the enemies - leaving them utterly empty for the dragon.

So I had the dragon storm out, furious at both sides and finally decide to just negotiate with the PCs. It's a complicated situation, but basically it was a loose and uncomfortable alliance the Dragon had with the Tiamat followers, and she had aided them in something she felt sorrow over. And for story purposes, the paladin refused a battle to first blood with the dragon, because of a quest he was on. To accommodate the story, the dragon eased up on that.

Iin the end, the too-tough encounter turned into an almost comical situationw here the dragon gave the PCs what they wanted and left.

The point of this thread is not to dwell on the "Heh, I screwed up" or "Man I am a bad DM" but, more, I just was very amused how bad the situation ended up, from behind the DM screen, and how I had to scramble to salvage it, and the end result.

So I want to hear about you guys: how have things went south for you? Where the ball seriously was dropped, and how you managed to get it back (or not!).

 

[Piratecat]

Do you feel you had the option of having the PCs fail, and have to return later?

I ask because I generally feel cheated when this happens to me as a player. I'm curious how it worked out for you guys.

------

And to answer your question, I clearly remember the worst session I've run in the past ten years. It was during my last campaign where I had this great image of a fairy-tale-inspired demiplane where the PCs could make great sacrifies to gain essential information about their foes. In my head it was epic and scary and moving --

-- and in practice it was embarrassing, scorned by one player and just not good.

I sucked it up, winced, and went on; the at-one-time-serious ramifications of the session ended up being written off and later largely ignored. I had structured the whole thing poorly. At least I got some lessons out of it!

I had a bad 1e game, too. There was a great Dungeon module I really wanted to use, so I shoehorned it into what the PCs already had planned. I then ignored the visual signs of their disappointment. The bad guy (a magicuser/monk) ended up being pretty tough, and 4/5ths of the way through the adventure they all gave up and trooped out of the adventure. They then explained - rather politely, I thought - why it wasn't working and what the problem was. Embarrassing, but another good lesson.

 

[jdrakeh]

In your particular situation, I would have let the dice fall as they may, hoping that the PCs would exercise some intelligence and run away (indeed, I might have had the PC whom I was controlling run away to suggest that such action was viable). Too often players expect to win every encounter. Sometimes, stuff just doesn't shake out that way and, I think they need to learn that. As for my own games. . .

I recall a dungeon with a maze composed of rooms with one way doors. I made it far too complex, so much so that the players had trouble mapping it and started to argue with one another OOC over where they were in the maze. That was totally my bad. Luckily, I had planned for this possibility (if I hadn't, things would have ended differently).

Beforehand, I had created a small map that displayed one portion of the maze. This map could, with a little deductive reasoning, be used to determine the current location of the party and complete a map of the entire maze. I handed it out sometime during Session 2 of the door maze. It took them a little while to find one of the rooms on the map, but once they did they were able to map their way our of that section of the dungeon.

Oh, and I recall a campaign that was started In Media Res with one player whose character was a fallen Paladin (well, a Paladin who was framed for the assassination of a royal and subsequently disowned by his church, but not his god). The game started with his character in the gladiatorial arena of a neighboring kingdom, battling Death Knights (the match was obviously rigged). The Paladin did manage to kill a Death Knight, but its fireball attack took him out, and the player threw a huge fit.

I tried to explain that he, in fact, wasn't dead (the idea was to kill him in front of the gods and everybody, then Res him to serve as a kind of 'secret agent'), but he wouldn't have it. I finally had to end up spilling pretty much the entire twist right then and there to keep him from walking out of the game. Again, totally my fault. Most of my players trusted me implicitly and wouldn't have had an issue with that kind of introduction, but the player in question was new to the group and genuinely thought that I had killed his character dead with no intention of letting him play it.

 

[Rechan]

Do you feel you had the option of having the PCs fail, and have to return later?

It was partially a quest that had consumed the majority of the game thusfar, it was our first session back from a month Hiatus, and there were things that we just wanted to Get To. Besides, I'd been building up to this, and then it went sideways. I wanted to move the campaign along.

Besides I have the feeling they would have went down in a blaze of "Not gunna surrender!"

The player whose quest this was commented, "Well, while this turned out less satisfying, it really was the best end-result for everyone involved". He didn't really want to slay the dragon/anyone else, he just wanted to retrieve something the Dragon/Tiamat guys had took.

It also let me demonstrate some of the plot/story elements, like the Dragon's discomfort/dislike of the Tiamat guys, the purpose of the item's stolen nature (since it's very relevant to the metaplot), drop a little bit of information about things to come, and lets me return the Tiamat guys at a later date because the paladin wants to put his sword into their faces.

Either way, I made my call, and now I have to live with it, and move on.

Now I want to hear about you guys.

 

[Timeboxer]

My current Eberron game is very political, and the most recent storyline has involved my PCs on the run from various shadowy governmental and extra-governmental organizations due to possessing two artifacts that everyone involved thinks will either allow them to win a theoretical future Post-Last War or would allow someone else to win. One of these is the Seed of Winter, which one of the PCs was using as an implement. (It was also whispering alarming things to her and causing the other PCs to become Very Suspicious, but never mind that.)

This ultimately culminated in a very tense three-way battle between the PCs, the Trust of Zilargo, and a renegade House Deneith organization, each of whom of course considers themselves on the side of good. I expected the PCs to blow through the encounter and head back on the road, probably to another country.

What I didn't realize, however, was that one of the monsters I had prepared, the lead member of the Trust, was equipped with a power that inflicted Dominate. And once I realized that, well -- the only sensible thing for him to do was to dominate the PC holding the Seed of Winter and say the following command:

"Walk over here and give me the Seed of Winter."

The battle erupted into chaos after that, with various unsuccessful attempts due to unlucky die rolls to retrieve the Seed before the Trust could get away with it. And I ended up scrapping my plans for the next session.

 

[Daern]

Well I can't think of anything I've run sideways off hand (I will though), but I wanted to comment that vis-a-vis not giving players the option to fail vs. killing them when an encounter went south... it sounds like you had a pretty solid solution.
The REALLY unsatisfying thing would have been if you confessed to the party that just killed the dragon and its allies that you fudged all those 1s the dragon rolled. Instead it sounds like the negotiation expanded upon the story and left more options on the table than it closed down. I often find the encounters that do not end in total annihilation more satisfying and memorable.

 

[fba827]

it happens frequently when i dm. more so it turns up because players have a nasty habit of trying things i hadn't even considered :shakes angry fist at players: - thus, resulting in some result that dramatically slopes favor either for or against the PCs to the point of making the actual combat itself somewhat one-sided and rediculous (sometimes).
I just try and roll with it (as you did here) and see how it works out. Sometimes the justification i make up on the fly for something ends up adding a fun twist to some other plot hook for down the road...

 

[S'mon]

Well, some sessions are 'meh', and a few are not good. My worst game was the one where I introduced a new, super-realistic, diceless mass battle system, and bored the players rigid for 4 hours. Running 'Necropolis' by EGG was a disaster, nearly a campaign-killer, but we realised that and abandoned it pretty swiftly. 'Meh' episodes where the written adventure is playable but not great are fairly common - notable recent-ish disappointments include DCC 'Dreaming Caverns of the Duergar' (dull, pointless caverns each with a duergar or derro); and the finale of X5 Temple of Death (the scenario includes a flying ship that short-circuits the adventure).

OTOH I had a game where there were several no-shows in the 4th session of the adventure, where the PCs faced the hobgoblin king in his throneroom. It turned into a bloodbath with dead PCs scattered everywhere and the last PC standing, the party Cleric, locked in a desperate embrace with the last hobgoblin, stabbing at each other with their daggers. The PC triumphed, standing in the throneroom awash with blood and corpses, then dragged out the body of the one still-living but unconscious fellow PC, returning to the daylight. It was grim but awesome.

So, a near-TPK doesn't have to be bad. If the PCs are clearly outmatched I expect them to realise this and retreat. I have always been reasonably generous to fleeing PCs, but I expect them to realise they can't win every fight.

 

[S'mon]

In the first session of my current 4e campaign, the town was being raided by hobgoblins and in the second combat the 1st level PCs were getting their butts kicked by a hobgoblin warband, by their Warcaster in particular. Luckily I had planned for this eventuality and the town guard turned up in the nick of time to drive off the hobs and save the day. That turned out ok. Usually though I expect the PCs to pull their own fat from the fire.

 

[Wik]

I never make mistakes. I'm the best GM ever, though. ;P

I had one a while back that sort of turned out poorly - the PCs were to be set upon by a lot of bandits led by an Eladrin criminal involved in poisoning the drow (long story - but basically, this makes him a bad guy, not a good guy!). I thought the fight would be tense, because instead of using minions, I'd be using low-level monsters!

Except... the low-level monsters really couldn't hit the PCs (and if they did, it was for piddly damage)... and the PCs could almost one-shot the "minions". It got to the point where they were actively moving away from these guys, knowing that the eladring "bandits" couldn't hit them.

And they took out the big bad guy in about two rounds - with the second round consisting of "tying up the unconscious body". It was a surprisingly easy fight, and one that fell flat to me. But, the group enjoyed their victory, so I let them have it.

I've had my fair share of "d'oh!" Moments, though. Can't think of any offhand, though.