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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6096425" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'd probably handle it similarly.  If the Grell was now being treated by the players as being more important than the current storyline, then I'd probably take this as a sign the current storyline wasn't very fulfulling compared to this (heh heh heh) "Quest of the Holey Grell" they'd initiated and try to improvise a new story line surrounding this Grell and what he was doing in the dungeon, and his larger role in previously unexplored faction in the game world.  Maybe the Grell was a member of a cult to Azertaxus, the God of the Black Void, and the players would be lead into a story line about Nihilist cultists trying to unmake the world via summoning creatures there were never meant to be from beyond the edge of creation.  Maybe there was a whole invasion of Grells, and the one they encountered was merely a scout for the tentacled God Brain and the reason he fled was he was under orders not to draw attention to the incursion until after the portal being constructed in the Accursed Black Pyramid was completed.   Then if the party flipped back to the first story line, I'd already have in place a story line option to follow up the first major story arc with if the players wanted to continue playing.   The point is that I'm willing to roll with just about anything that the players propose their PC's doing.   I'm not easy to surprise and not many IC propositions just throw me off balance.   I don't really have a reliance on any thing in particular happening.   For example, the PC's are going to be in position to kill the campaigns major villain about 6-7 levels ahead of schedule.   I don't think it likely that it will happen, but it certainly could happen (despite the major villain being about 10 CR higher than they are right now).   If the PC's come up with some clever and aggressive action and get lucky or get NPC assistance, I'm not going to stop them from killing the villain.  It won't ruin my campaign.  I'm not going to be surprised for it.  I have no less than three layers of contingency planning for that event.   If it happens, then great.  I love having clever players.  It's much much harder for me to have contingency plans in place for player stupidity because I'm omnipotent, but if I confer plot protection on the PC's, then the players are right to feel let down because I'm 'just letting them win'.   Players taking absolutely bone headed actions are really hard to recover from, and leave me agonizing what I should do and how I should run the scene.   When players 'surprise' me by defeating problems easily, that's never a problem.   There are always more things to do.  When players surprise me by getting stuck on a problem, that's a game stopper and recovering from that gracefully is soooooo hard.But a player attempting to break or take over the proposition-fortune-resolution cycle.  I can't deal with that at all.  Game over.</blockquote>

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