So, I've made a mistake, how do I fix? (DM Help)

[Metahuman1]

Ok, so, my IRL gaming group has a member who talked me into running a kill team mission for a session. I agreed, since I unlike him am not really into Warhammer 40K, to let him actually run the session and since the player running our cleric was MIA that session due to collage finals, and that I would just run an NPC healbot cleric of no real story importance.


The mission outline was that there were three factions, Ogres, Hags, and Goblins, were forming an alliance which would have allowed them, had they gotten it off the ground, to over run the local area. The party needed to get in, quietly, and break up the alliance by any means necessary, with out getting caught.

So, they sneak in, and start picking off the leaders and framing the other factions for it. Body's here, arrows there, that sort of thing.

Here's were it get's troublesome.

The Guy DMing throws this tower that is being guarded by Goblins and pings super evil when the party paladin goes detect evil on the map. Ok, not a big deal since we figure maybe the goblin leader is in there. Then the oger leader starts moving toward the center of this brawl that the party set up between the factions rank and file to cause Chaos to help cover there movements along with his escort.

The party takes out a small group of goblins, and, form a covered position, fires a quick volley, arching up, at the ogre leader and his escort. The guy DMing tells us that we killed one member of the escort and wounded a couple of others, but that that was enough to convince the Oreg leader he's been double crossed, and he charges the tower I mentioned earlier and breaks it open, which ends up releasing, are you ready?, A shinto Pantheon Inspired God of Death, who starts reeking havoc. In a mostly generic western fantasy part of the world there in. In a game that's been, up till now, mostly episodic in tone owing to a need to teach the party the basic's of the game. A party that is only JUST STARTING to get there footing on the mechanics. A party that I had actually planned to have wrap up the game there with in another couple of levels and then hand off DMing to the guy who DMed this one session so he can run his epic story adventure that the party just didn't have the gaming skill/experiance to enjoy, now suddenly has to figure out how to seal/slay a greater god. There presently 8th lvl.



And I can't just remove the event form having happened cause the party LOVED it when the God came out.


So, i, a not terribly experienced and originally reluctant DM who has been entertaining himself mostly with doing wacky adventures so that he'll keep scheduling sessions to run for these guys, now have this mess on my plate.

Thus, I come to you Playground. How, with out railroading or other DM Tabooing, do I set up this party to fix this mess, preferably within a couple of levels? I need any advice or input or ideas you can throw at me!

[Aegis013]

Alright, as long as it's not necessary that they deal with the deity immediately. It should be relatively easy. First you need to find a way to introduce some "forgotten lore" or something into the group. Perhaps they stumble upon an old tome or something, it could be anything as long as they get it.

The tome tells them of a number (up to you) of magical macguffins that when combined/used together/what have you, have the ability to lull even a greater god into a thousand year slumber. Or banish them into the unknown or something. Whatever you want, whatever fits with your setting.

Then you have the party go and quest for the macguffins. This story is pretty typical really, but it's a classic way to handle such a problem. They can gain experience and wealth so they level up enough to actually stand a chance of not getting instantly annihilated by the deity while questing for the macguffins.

[Exirtadorri]

My first reaction to reading this is "hey (insert guys name here) can i galk to you outside?" Once the door closed,to avoid degrading him in front of others, id rip into him for not only derailing your current story, but for also introducing something so astronomically outrageous in a rather fresh group of people. I would then hand him the dm cloak and tell him to fix it or prepare his dm dice until the issue is resolved.

As for how to resolve the issue as the dm? I would do a collection quest as well as a ressurection ritual for the gods antagonist. A Hercules type of character if you will. While it doesnt solve the overall abduction of your game that was done...it does allow you a future npc that is grateful for his second chance at life along with someone who the pcs can call a favor from.

[Flickerdart]

Why would they need to kill it? A god of death doesn't just kill people randomly. A god of death is responsible for stopping people from getting immortality, raising/destroying undead (depending) and ushering people into the afterlife.

A god needs worshippers, too. This one's new. He doesn't have a church of anything. The PCs are perfect candidates to become his priesthood!

[krai]

It would be worth asking what he expected would happen next. If he had no plan then you are within your rights to say to the party that what he said happened is not what happened.
Instead of a god being released it was some kind of giant with levels in blackguard or something (if it is big) or like a vampire (if it was not big). Either could deal some major damage to a town. An 8th level party without much experience would have some trouble with these things but it would be able to take them on (possibly with some casualties).

[navar100]

"It was all a dream".

If too lame . . .

"It was all a prophetic dream. Now try to stop it from happening."

Still ream the substitute DM a new one for sabotaging your campaign.

[Vladislav]

The deity is still weak and unstable after its prolonged imprisonment. It wreaks havoc on the materal plane for a while, then departs to the lower planes where it belongs. To plot a return for later, of course. When the PCs are ready. Readier.

[Metahuman1]

Well, the only reason's I'm not Vetoing the death-god-abomination-rampaige-thing is that the party got really, really, really excited all of a sudden at the idea of having to deal with it somehow. I don't want to kill the buzz. And there wasn't actually that much story to derail. It's been kept, by me, very episodic. Isolated Adventures for the most part. I was doing this originally to try and keep the game as free ranged as possible for the players so that they'd feel encouraged to try things other then "I walk up and roll dice to kill it with X". Which they actually just recently started playing around with.

My intention was to cut the game off at 10th lvl before the only two experienced players got way too far out of the rest of the party's league, then run then through another sort of "Practice" game. After that, I might tag out with another DM for a while just to show them some of the finer points of some of the sub systems like Tome of Battle or Psionics, and then maybe use one of those to also show them what high level game play looks like.

Then, having had time to practice, we got to go to the Sub DM going into full DM mode, which we tried originally but the party proved not familiar enough with the game system to funtion in that campaign in a way they were gonna enjoy, and do his epic/crazy things.




Though I gotta tell yeah, I'm sorely tempted to troll them by letting the damn thing TPK them and then having an NPC Bad guy, A Kobolt Joker-inspired Bard, turn out to be PunPun and wipe the thing off the map because the urge hit him. I will not ACTUALLY follow through with doing that, but it is tempting.

Though the idea of him pointing them toward the Muguffian is suddenly amusing to me. :smallamused:

[tyckspoon]

If you want to do it, the Banishment spell is basically designed to be used with a Macguffin-collection quest; every item you have that is specifically anathema to the subject when you cast the spell gives +1 to beat Spell Resistance and +2 to the save DC. It might seem a bit weird to use that spell to banish a god, but then, the line between gods and D&D's devils/demons/angels/assorted Outsiders is a bit blurry in Shinto anyway.

Personally, I'd probably make it so that what was released from the tower is just a fragment/shadow/avatar/whatever of the real deal, and it doesn't have enough power to sustain itself on the Material plane for too long- it's the kind of thing that would be summoned by a cult or similar to destroy their enemies, and without a power source like that it'll fade away in a bit. The immediate challenge for your party is to distract it/evacuate the area/let it beat on them long enough to limit the damage it does before it disappears. But the real thing *does* exist, and releasing the avatar woke it up from its slumbers in its timeless prison demiplane.. and now it knows there's a leak in the prison. Better find out what's going on before it shows up personally.

(If you wanted to build off what you were doing before, the Hags would be the most appropriate monster group to know about this stuff- maybe they intended to use the god's avatars as the heavy muscle behind their world-domination schemes, since Ogres and Goblins don't really have the power to stand up to adventurer intervention?)

[Spuddles]

It doesn't have to be a literal god. A nightwalker or vampiric dusk giant or gestalt barghest//warlock could easily have been what was in there. There are all sorts of sweet monsters you can build that were put in there.

I like the idea of making it have a macgiffin exploitable weakness, like anaethema and the Banishment spell.

[Roguenewb]

Frankly, the D&D verse is already running smack full of incredibly evil gods of death and slaughter, what's one more? If, however, you are playing a more agnostic game (such as Eberron, Dark Sun, or most designed in the last decade) then a real live god is a *problem*. My solution:

A strong (like, the players are scared of this guy strong) wizard the players know 'ports in. He says "Friends, I'm glad to see you yet draw breath! My divinations have suddenly been riven by scenes of great evil here, I came to finish it. Stay behind me and you will be safe till I can destroy it!" The wizard engages. The death god shrugs it off and goes on the attack. Batman and the God go toe to toe, and very quickly Batman is on death's door. The powerful wizard can't handle it? Oh NO! The wizard uses the last reserves of his magic to toss a stone with magic writing on it to the Party. "The Command is 'Marteth' (The elven pandora figure or similar), use it if you want to live!" The wizard says and turns back to the death god. There is a huge burst of light, and a mushroom cloud-type explosion, the players hit the stone to get out before the cloud engulfs them, the last thing they see is the death god cackling at the explosion. The stone deposits them in a random direction 1200 miles distant. The Stone says "Seek Master Quingard at the Library of the Spheres. The password is 'Darkened Candle' tell him 'Marteth'".

From there you can have a whole campaign. What organization Quingard and the wizard have, why the death god has a Pandora like name, how it's defeating, what needs to be sought out...and so on. While this is building, you can go through demo-y adventures to "get quingard a reagant", "Escort a sage to the tower" and so on. When they hit level 17/18, and pick up all your macguffin weapons and spells, it's time to avenge everything that died.

Good hunting!