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Your WotBS: How Did YOur Group Surprise You?
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<blockquote data-quote="jeffh" data-source="post: 5693690" data-attributes="member: 2642"><p>Nice to see the odd friendly "face" from my Usenet days.</p><p></p><p>I had a guest co-DM during the Fire Forest adventure to, among other things, play Tiljan, and a romantic sub-plot between her and the bard developed. (Vuel/Deception had told her something beautiful was to be found in the abandoned village, as far as she was concerned it was him.) It was mostly just flirtation until the end of that adventure.</p><p></p><p>The party split up for the final showdown, despite the fact that the unwisdom of doing so is so established it's a running joke with us - some went directly to Indomitability and others stayed in the Seela village. The bard was in the latter category, and the co-GM decided Tiljan would want to be one of the trio singing the Song of Forms at that point. It becomes clear to those onshore that things in the lake are going pear-shaped - the cleric gets tossed from their boat and fails an attempt to use a rope to, essentially, water-ski on Indomitability; the latter is approaching the shore at an alarming clip. With two PCs essentially riding him (the dwarf warblade is still struggling to pull the sword entirely clear, and the bronze dragon, yes you read that right, is just hanging on for dear life). Having described him as much further out in the lake than the adventure says, I decide those on shore have three rounds to decide what to do about this.</p><p></p><p>The bard uses the first of those rounds to try to persuade the three Seela to stop singing. Hurried diplo checks get one to stop. Tiljan falls under my rule that PCs can choose whether to be affected by such things, and keeps singing.</p><p></p><p>The second round he uses some sort of spell, I forget what. Another stops singing. Tiljan makes her save.</p><p></p><p>The third round, Indomitability arrives, leaps atop the tower, and tries to throw the bard off. He bull rushes the bard but rolls for crap and doesn't quite get him off the tower. It's the bard's turn, what does he do?</p><p></p><p><em>Kisses Tiljan.</em> End of Song of Forms.</p><p></p><p>(Notwithstanding the co-DM's half-joking "Can I use Ventriloquism?", to which the reply was "I'll have to consider you grappled".)</p><p></p><p>So, the dice and unexpected player actions conspired to give that one a <em>very</em> memorable and rather poetic ending.</p><p></p><p>================================</p><p></p><p>Happy ending at the player level too. The guest GM stayed with the group and rebuilt Tiljan (actually, with the help of an update to the race description from this site) to be her PC for the forseeable future, though she's got another one in the hopper as well. (Two bards, most unoptimized party ever you'd think... actually, tonight they showed themselves quite capable of dealing with an encounter of CR = party level x2).</p><p></p><p>Most other plot deviations have been my doing. Hating the number of potential DMPCs in this series, I killed off Torrent about 15 minutes into the first session and Haddin shortly before the above events - or rather, let the party finish him when he decided teaming up with Kazyk was the way to go. Krystin is more interesting trying to figure out what to do without him than she is under his thumb. Katrina, I must say, has been an unqualified hit with the group.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="jeffh, post: 5693690, member: 2642"] Nice to see the odd friendly "face" from my Usenet days. I had a guest co-DM during the Fire Forest adventure to, among other things, play Tiljan, and a romantic sub-plot between her and the bard developed. (Vuel/Deception had told her something beautiful was to be found in the abandoned village, as far as she was concerned it was him.) It was mostly just flirtation until the end of that adventure. The party split up for the final showdown, despite the fact that the unwisdom of doing so is so established it's a running joke with us - some went directly to Indomitability and others stayed in the Seela village. The bard was in the latter category, and the co-GM decided Tiljan would want to be one of the trio singing the Song of Forms at that point. It becomes clear to those onshore that things in the lake are going pear-shaped - the cleric gets tossed from their boat and fails an attempt to use a rope to, essentially, water-ski on Indomitability; the latter is approaching the shore at an alarming clip. With two PCs essentially riding him (the dwarf warblade is still struggling to pull the sword entirely clear, and the bronze dragon, yes you read that right, is just hanging on for dear life). Having described him as much further out in the lake than the adventure says, I decide those on shore have three rounds to decide what to do about this. The bard uses the first of those rounds to try to persuade the three Seela to stop singing. Hurried diplo checks get one to stop. Tiljan falls under my rule that PCs can choose whether to be affected by such things, and keeps singing. The second round he uses some sort of spell, I forget what. Another stops singing. Tiljan makes her save. The third round, Indomitability arrives, leaps atop the tower, and tries to throw the bard off. He bull rushes the bard but rolls for crap and doesn't quite get him off the tower. It's the bard's turn, what does he do? [I]Kisses Tiljan.[/I] End of Song of Forms. (Notwithstanding the co-DM's half-joking "Can I use Ventriloquism?", to which the reply was "I'll have to consider you grappled".) So, the dice and unexpected player actions conspired to give that one a [I]very[/I] memorable and rather poetic ending. ================================ Happy ending at the player level too. The guest GM stayed with the group and rebuilt Tiljan (actually, with the help of an update to the race description from this site) to be her PC for the forseeable future, though she's got another one in the hopper as well. (Two bards, most unoptimized party ever you'd think... actually, tonight they showed themselves quite capable of dealing with an encounter of CR = party level x2). Most other plot deviations have been my doing. Hating the number of potential DMPCs in this series, I killed off Torrent about 15 minutes into the first session and Haddin shortly before the above events - or rather, let the party finish him when he decided teaming up with Kazyk was the way to go. Krystin is more interesting trying to figure out what to do without him than she is under his thumb. Katrina, I must say, has been an unqualified hit with the group. [/QUOTE]
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