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<blockquote data-quote="Vegepygmy" data-source="post: 4704166" data-attributes="member: 40109">On this point: I played in a campaign once where our just-starting-out 1st-level characters were exploring a mysterious cave.&nbsp; At the back of the cave was a magic vault that had been sealed for eons.&nbsp; One of the PCs (for reasons we never discovered) was able to open it, though no one else could.&nbsp; Inside the vault was something that we suspected could eventually bring phenomenal power to the possessors.&nbsp;At this point, the DM had a much higher-level (and evil) NPC show up.&nbsp; His idea was that the NPC would take over control of the vault from us, and that the rest of the campaign would focus on us trying to stop the evil NPC and his allies from using the power obtained from the vault.&nbsp; He dropped all sorts of hints that this NPC was beyond our pitiful 1st-level powers to resist, and that it would be crazy for us to do anything other than submit to his demands.&nbsp;All of the players were following this &quot;script,&quot; until the DM foolishly had the NPC enter the vault to examine its contents...at which point one player decided to slam the door shut, trapping the NPC inside.&nbsp;This was a possibility the DM had never considered: that even though the NPC was a wholly level-inappropriate challenge, and even though we knew the NPC had allies in the world who would look into his disappearance, almost certainly find him (and us), and would exact horrible revenge on us for daring to thwart him, we would do it anyway.&nbsp;The campaign's story then became &quot;we're running and hiding from enemies vastly more powerful than ourselves, and trying to find a way out of this mess we created,&quot; rather than what the DM expected the campaign to be: &quot;stop the bad guys from taking over the world&quot; (or whatever it was supposed to be).&nbsp;That campaign was incredibly fun for all of us; much more fun, I have no doubt, than it would have been if the DM hadn't thrown a &quot;level-inappropriate&quot; encounter our way, and if we hadn't handled it so differently than he expected us to.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Vegepygmy, post: 4704166, member: 40109"] On this point: I played in a campaign once where our just-starting-out 1st-level characters were exploring a mysterious cave. At the back of the cave was a magic vault that had been sealed for eons. One of the PCs (for reasons we never discovered) was able to open it, though no one else could. Inside the vault was something that we suspected could eventually bring phenomenal power to the possessors. At this point, the DM had a much higher-level (and evil) NPC show up. His idea was that the NPC would take over control of the vault from us, and that the rest of the campaign would focus on us trying to stop the evil NPC and his allies from using the power obtained from the vault. He dropped all sorts of hints that this NPC was beyond our pitiful 1st-level powers to resist, and that it would be crazy for us to do anything other than submit to his demands. All of the players were following this "script," until the DM foolishly had the NPC enter the vault to examine its contents...at which point one player decided to slam the door shut, trapping the NPC inside. This was a possibility the DM had never considered: that even though the NPC was a wholly level-inappropriate challenge, and even though we knew the NPC had allies in the world who would look into his disappearance, almost certainly find him (and us), and would exact horrible revenge on us for daring to thwart him, [b]we would do it anyway.[/b] The campaign's story then became "we're running and hiding from enemies vastly more powerful than ourselves, and trying to find a way out of this mess we created," rather than what the DM [b]expected[/b] the campaign to be: "stop the bad guys from taking over the world" (or whatever it was supposed to be). That campaign was incredibly fun for all of us; much more fun, I have no doubt, than it would have been if the DM hadn't thrown a "level-inappropriate" encounter our way, and if we hadn't handled it so differently than he expected us to. [/QUOTE]

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