(DMing) Breaking the "One way to do things" mentality

[Silus]

I'm a fairly inexperienced DM, and I keep running into a problem with all my little plots and plans and schemes. I keep bringing whatever the plot is around to there being only really one "right" answer or way to solve things. Please note that when I say "right" I mean "good ending".

Prime example: I've been planning out the tail end of this campaign I want to run. The whole thing culminates with the players (around lvl 16-20) taking on a high powered lvl 20 Sorcerer for the fate of the world (or at least their corner of it). The idea is that they players team up with the queen of the lands (the BBEG's sister and, like the BBEG, a former deity, known to the Coalition (see below)) to off the BBEG. The problem is, the players are 1) almost all evil, 2) hate the queen for some reason (I've the feeling it's a "well she's in charge" and "the DM likes this NPC a lot" reasons). Also, there's an intergalactic magitech Coalition in the process of quarantining the planet to keep what's happening there from spreading (orbital bombardment of infectious creatures. See: Xenomorphs (kinda)).

Please forgive the bare bones explanation, the full detailed summary would take too long.

So outcomes are as follows:
1) Side with the queen, stop the BBEG, save the world and keep their corner from getting blasted into rubble/quarantined.
2) Side with the queen, then backstab her when she's weak. Results in the world being saved, but the Coalition retaliates against the PCs for killing a sitting ruler and throwing a large chunk of the world into chaos under their watch.
3) (What the players want to try to do) Pit the queen and the BBEG against each other. BBEG kills the queen, PCs offer their services to the BBEG with the intent of backstabbing said BBEG. Results in the PCs getting killed by the BBEG (Via reserve multi-person, high-fatality rate spells in a "haha, no" way), the Coalition quarantining the nation and turning the palace where the BBEG is into a 10-mile wide crater.

So I mentioned this to the players, and the general consensus is "Well there's no way to win" despite there being a clear "good ending" (Also, take into account that the BBEG is bringing about the end of the world via "Rocks fall, everyone dies, survivors get eaten". Teaming up with said BBEG does not really make sense, even for LE characters). Anyway, what can I do to resolve this in such a way that does not "punish" the players for their moral choices? And how can I, in the future, avoid a situation like this?

EDIT: Also, I suppose what I'm really wondering is that is it bad DMing if there's one "good" choice that results in victory and the "good" ending? Or should I endeavor for all the choices the PCs make to come around to some sort of "good" ending?

[Slipperychicken]

Why can the PCs defeat the BBEG, but not after the BBEG defeats the queen?

[JusticeZero]

Easy. Give them a situation. Have NO IDEA how to solve it. I'm not talking "they can do X, or Y", i'm talking "This is a cool fort. I don't know how i'd break into it."

[Silus]

Why can the PCs defeat the BBEG, but not after the BBEG defeats the queen?

I'm...not sure I understand the question.

Running in and taking on the BBEG by themselves will likely result in them dying. Letting the BBEG and the queen slug it out on their own will more than likely result in the queen getting killed, followed by the BBEG killing the PCs. Teaming up with the queen is the only certified way to come out on top, or at least give them a decent, fighting chance.

Granted they could jack a Coalition ship and use THAT, but that's a whole other matter (Wrest control of the ship, learn to use it, get a crew and then actually use it while trying to avoid getting killed by the Coalition they jacked it from).



Easy. Give them a situation. Have NO IDEA how to solve it. I'm not talking "they can do X, or Y", i'm talking "This is a cool fort. I don't know how i'd break into it."

Well the situation is "Rocks are falling from the sky carrying monsters not of this world. Civilization in crumbling around you and people are dying by the score. What do you do?" They have options for what they're able to do limited only by the amount of work they want to put into it. Wanna jump world and find a new place to live? Find a way. Wanna take over the world? Find a way (that does not result in death). Wanna save the world? Same as the last question.

[Geddoe]

So the only way they(ie the "heroes") can stand against such an impossible opponent is to team up with Mary, Queen of Sues?

[Silus]

So the only way they(ie the "heroes") can stand against such an impossible opponent is to team up with Mary, Queen of Sues?

Or bringing much bigger guns to the fight (orbital bombardment), managing to make 20 consecutive DC 28 Fort saves (DC for Mass Suffocation, which lasts 1 round/level), counter-spelling the lvl 9 spells the BBEG is dropping, or, you know, don't feed the queen (a support-based Sorcerer) to the wolves.

The queen's designed to focus on counter-spelling and buffing and less of the PEW PEW nature. She's not needed for the fight, but she'd make things far easier.

[Knaight]

Why would the BBEG immediately open fire on the PCs with their plan? It seems like a fairly arbitrary outcome, and it looks suspiciously like punishing them for going off plan.

Let the players do what they will, and don't put the kibosh on it just because you didn't think of it. Don't specifically build in workable options, and in so doing don't build in only one workable option.

[Silus]

Why would the BBEG immediately open fire on the PCs with their plan? It seems like a fairly arbitrary outcome, and it looks suspiciously like punishing them for going off plan.

Let the players do what they will, and don't put the kibosh on it just because you didn't think of it. Don't specifically build in workable options, and in so doing don't build in only one workable option.

It's much less punishing them for going off plan and more "This is the result of trying to bargain with a clearly evil quasi-deity that just killed their own sibling and chief rival while you all watched from the shadows".

Granted, the PCs may not do the whole "Let's see who wins then finish them off" plan, but thus far that seems to be the most popular option among the party.

Granted there's the "Let's steal a battleship and conquer the world" option, which I won't stop the players for pursuing. It's got it's own set of problems however, but would make the BBEG fight rather trivial.

[The Grue]

I, too, am confused as to why the BBEG wouldn't be weakened after battling with the Queen, especially if the Queen is sufficiently powerful that her assistance is required*cough* for the players to have any hope of victory.

[Kaun]

My advice would be stop trying to write the ending for the players.

Your BBEG has a goal
The Queen has a goal

Keep them working and planing towards their goals

Let the PC's do what they do and respond apropriatly

Alter Npc's plans an actions accordingly.

See what happens

I stopped trying to figure out the solutions to the situations i made for my players. That's their job.

[BMXSummoner]

Well for starters, I think you should let them do whatever they want, even if it's a terrible idea. People can be told stories from books and video games, but only in RPGs can they make their own (unless the DM doesn't let them, and in that case, well....)

Furthermore, it sounds like you're telling the party:
1. You can't win this by yourselves.
2. You need the help of this character (my character) to win.
3. You don't really get a choice.

Maybe this isn't what you intended but I have a feeling it's what they're hearing. I mean, if you were a player, how would you feel being told you aren't actually the hero and that your incapable of going in the direction you want.

So yeah, in short, you might want to revise the way you DM. A great DM makes a great world, it's the PCs that make the story. And giving them a multiple choice story (that's really only one choice) isn't really the way to go about doing it. Don't take this too negatively, you are new at this, and you might be on your way to being a great DM, but focusing more on the world and less on pushing the PCs in predetermined directions is a great way to get better.

[Silus]

I, too, am confused as to why the BBEG wouldn't be weakened after battling with the Queen, especially if the Queen is sufficiently powerful that her assistance is required*cough* for the players to have any hope of victory.

The BBEG and the Queen are siblings. The BBEG's been exiled for ~1000 years and is now back to exact their revenge and take over. The Queen still cares about their sibling and does not want to hurt them.

The Queen's bread and butter for dealing with the BBEG is non-lethal spells, counter spelling and powerful crowd control.

The BBEG on the other hand will be unleashing damaging spells left and right in an attempt to kill their sister. I kinda doubt they'd need to run through 6 Meteor Swarms or similar to do that (6 lvl 9 spells/day, 7 lvl 5-8 spells/day, 8 lvl 1-4 spells/day, before magic items). She'll be down a few spells, but will have enough AOE spells (Meteor Swarm, Mass Suffocation, Winds of Vengeance, etc) to deal with a group of 5.

The Queen is there to keep the BBEG from dropping the party-killing spells via counter spells or dispel them should they be cast. Going in without her is like going to slay a dragon and actively ignoring the +10 Keen Vorpal Dragon Slaying Greatsword lying on the front steps. Sure, you can do the fight, but it's gonna be painful.


So yeah, in short, you might want to revise the way you DM. A great DM makes a great world, it's the PCs that make the story. And giving them a multiple choice story (that's really only one choice) isn't really the way to go about doing it. Don't take this too negatively, you are new at this, and you might be on your way to being a great DM, but focusing more on the world and less on pushing the PCs in predetermined directions is a great way to get better.

So would a "Well here's the plot I've mapped out, follow it or not, I don't care" sort of mentality work? 'Cause the only other option I can think of to make this campaign moderately work without railroading is to plan a sandbox, have some plot-rails, and have the'ol plot train move on without them. It's sorta getting to the point for me where I'm not really caring if they get to the BBEG. If they do, great, if not, the story will move on without them. The BBEG will kill the Queen, the Coalition will glass the palace and proceed to lock down the country. If the PCs wanna stop it, that's cool, if not, no skin off my nose.

[Jakodee]

My suggestion would be to have more than one +1 vorperal greatsword. Give them several ways to kill the big bad.

[Slipperychicken]

Could the party still try to drop an AMF/Silence on the BBEG sibling/sorceress before pummeling her the old-fashioned way?


So the only way they(ie the "heroes") can stand against such an impossible opponent is to team up with Mary, Queen of Sues?

This is what I tried to get at before. If she's still beatable without the queen's help, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Also, is the party aware of the BBEG being a walking TPK machine?

[Silus]

Could the party still try to drop an AMF/Silence on the BBEG sibling/sorceress before pummeling her the old-fashioned way?

I don't see why not, assuming one of the 4 casters pick up the spell/s. Currently have a Magus, Cleric, Alchemist and, I think, a Sorcerer.

It's little things like this that I don't think of that would work wonderfully.


My suggestion would be to have more than one +1 vorperal greatsword. Give them several ways to kill the big bad.

I'm trying to :smalleek: but launching into a straight up fight without some way to nullify the BBEG's casting is suicide.

Seriously, this is the spell list I made up for her based off a theme as opposed to "what's the most dangerous spells I can give her?".


9th (6/day) Meteor Swarm (DC 28), Winds of Vengence (DC 28 Fort), Interplanetary Teleport (DC 29), Mass Suffocation (DC 28 Fort/Partial)
8th (7/day) Prying Eyes, Polar Ray, Sunburst (DC 27), Form of the Dragon III (DC 27)
7th (7/day) Reverse Gravity, Hungry Darkness, Lunar Veil (DC 26), Spell Turning
6th (7/day) Repulsion (DC 25), Contingency, Fluid Form, Unconscious Agenda
5th (7/day) Overland Flight, Cone of Cold (DC 24), Nightmare (DC 24), Dominate Person, Siphon Magic
4th (8/day) Call Lightning Storm (Fire damage, DMG+ at night), Dimension Door, Ice Storm, Moonstruck (DC 23), Wall of Ice (DC 23)
3rd (8/day) Blink, Haste, Displacement (DC 22), Fireball (DC 22), Call the Void (DC 22)
2nd (8/day) Glitterdust (DC 21), Blindness-Deafness (DC 21), Mirror Image, Spectral Hand, Invisibility, Frost Fall (DC 21)
1st (8/day) Unseen Servant, Expeditious Retreat, Ray of Enfeeblement (DC 20), Magic Missile, Shield, Grease (DC 20)
0th (at will) Ray of Frost, Detect Magic, Read Magic, Disrupt Undead, Mage Hand, Acid Splash, Ghost Sound (DC 19), Prestidigitation, Arcane Mark





This is what I tried to get at before. If she's still beatable without the queen's help, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Also, is the party aware of the BBEG being a walking TPK machine?

OOC? I believe so. I don't think they're really thinking in a "Ok how do we deal with this" way, but more in a "how can we murder this" way. Most of the talk is of the "Well there's no way to win" when you yourself brought up a simple way to trivialize the fight via AMF/Silence.

IC, they've no clue what's going on, they just came up from underground to witness meteor showers and general end-of-the-world'ness.

[The Grue]

This is what I tried to get at before. If she's still beatable without the queen's help, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Also, is the party aware of the BBEG being a walking TPK machine?

Let me first add that if they pit the BBEG against the Queen and the Queen gets completely owned, then the party has accomplished a goal they've set for themselves(killing the Queen) without actually getting their hands dirty. As far as the Not-Federation in orbit knows, the heroes fought to save civilization but sadly could do nothing to prevent the Queen's tragic and untimely death.

With that in mind, there are two possibilities here: either the party is reasonably capable of defeating the BBEG with their own resources, or they are not. If they are, the Queen's presence is unnecessary. If they aren't...then why are you pitting them against an enemy so powerful that they need your DMPC Queen to act as a safety net?

Nevermind that it makes a reasonably challenging fight easier to bring her along, don't rob your players of the satisfaction of overcoming that challenge on their own terms.

EDIT: By the way, a quick litmus test to see if you've got a Mary-Sue is "Do the players know that I like this NPC a lot and resent the NPC for it?" And you wonder why they want the Queen dead...

[Silus]

Let me first add that if they pit the BBEG against the Queen and the Queen gets completely owned, then the party has accomplished a goal they've set for themselves(killing the Queen) without actually getting their hands dirty. As far as the Not-Federation in orbit knows, the heroes fought to save civilization but sadly could do nothing to prevent the Queen's tragic and untimely death.

With that in mind, there are two possibilities here: either the party is reasonably capable of defeating the BBEG with their own resources, or they are not. If they are, the Queen's presence is unnecessary. If they aren't...then why are you pitting them against an enemy so powerful that they need your DMPC Queen to act as a safety net?

Nevermind that it makes a reasonably challenging fight easier to bring her along, don't rob your players of the satisfaction of overcoming that challenge on their own terms.

EDIT: By the way, a quick litmus test to see if you've got a Mary-Sue is "Do the players know that I like this NPC a lot and resent the NPC for it?" And you wonder why they want the Queen dead...

And as far as the Not-Federation knows, the BBEG has just killed the only individual that's able to keep them (the BBEG) in line and they (the Not-Federation) have to take action. Via orbital bombardment.

I have not field tested this BBEG. I've no idea how they'll perform, whether they'll mop the floor with the PCs or what, but as it stands, I'm not really seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for the PCs in a stand-up fight unless they pull some rather fabulous tricks. It's the spell casting abilities that are the BBEG's trump card. You eliminate that, you've just trivialized the fight (more or less).

Again, there are other options for dealing with this, one such option is not dealing with it and just let the'ol plot train chug along until the end of the line while they go off on other adventures or something. Or the aforementioned battleship thing.

[The Grue]

And as far as the Not-Federation knows, the BBEG has just killed the only individual that's able to keep them (the BBEG) in line and they (the Not-Federation) have to take action. Via orbital bombardment.


So in other words, you've set up a scenario where unless the players make nice with Mary Queen of Sues and make sure she doesn't die no matter how much they dislike her, rocks fall and everyone dies.

I'm sorry but...this is a bad campaign. I would not want to play this.

[Jacob.Tyr]

So in other words, you've set up a scenario where unless the players make nice with Mary Queen of Sues and make sure she doesn't die no matter how much they dislike her, rocks fall and everyone dies.

I'm sorry but...this is a bad campaign. I would not want to play this.

Yeah this part is really, really bad. "Oh, you killed my DMPC, well now the Deus Ex Machina is going to kill everyone."

Don't do that. Hell, let them fight the evil queen. If they win, maybe they can get a message off to stop the orbital bombardment. If they lose, maybe set your next campaign in the wasteland that is left behind with a new set of characters.

[Silus]

So in other words, you've set up a scenario where unless the players make nice with Mary Queen of Sues and make sure she doesn't die no matter how much they dislike her, rocks fall and everyone dies.

I'm sorry but...this is a bad campaign. I would not want to play this.

Well look, I'm sorry, but I'm struggling here. Had I known the players would all make evil characters in a campaign I designed for good/neutral (Again, new DM here, didn't consider alignment restrictions) then this would be less of an issue.

Humor me and tell me how I should instead resolve this situation:

BBEG comes back after a 1000 year exile, bringing an Elder Evil extinction level event with them. The BBEG's goal is to off the Queen, one of the only individuals that would be able to stand up to them, then take over the world and rule it with an iron fist.

The Coalition arrives when the BBEG starts dropping Akata laden rocks into populated areas. Akata breed via implanting their young in hosts via bites. They begin to spread. If it gets out of hand (which it is rapidly beginning to) the Coalition will glass areas of obvious infection ("Nuke it from orbit. it's the only way to be sure").

The Queen and the Coalition have worked together in the past and the Queen is really the only thing standing in the way of the Coalition from dropping chemical weapons on infested cities to keep said infestation contained ("There are still civilians in there").

The Coalition and the BBEG are aware of each other. The Coalition, at the request of the Queen, have not moved against the BBEG. The BBEG has their sights locked on the Queen's head.

So if the PCs fail in stopping the BBEG from killing the Queen, then what do you propose happens?

'Cause at the moment, it's:
A) Stop the BBEG, stop the rocks falling, Coalition sends in ground forces to clean up and contain.
B) Stop the BBEG but Queen dies, Coalition mops up a bit more broadly than expected. Cities will burn.
C) Fail to stop the BBEG, Queen dies. Coalition takes over and moves against the BBEG, resulting in massive destruction. Nation classified as "lost" and quarantined.

[SassyQuatch]

So... the best solution for the PCs is to walk away and start over somewhere else.

Or is there more railroading in place to stop that option as well?

[Mr Beer]

Yeah, this is a problem you've created by ensuring there is one way only for the players to "win".

You let them know how hardcore the BBEG is and now it's up to them to think of a way to defeat her without your Mary Sue.

Maybe they can hire some gullible adventurers or call in some evil allies or trick an angel into assisting. Let it be their choice.

As far as the fight goes, if they don't bother tooling up properly or making a clever plan and they get stomped, have them resurrected, perhaps weaker or minus some of their choicer equipment. Perhaps an Archdevil brought them back for the lulz or because he has beef with the BBEG. Either way, they are going to pay for the favour he just did them.

Or whatever, this is just one way to approach it. Point is, more saying 'yes' and less 'no if it's not that exact way it can't work'.

[BMXSummoner]

So would a "Well here's the plot I've mapped out, follow it or not, I don't care" sort of mentality work? 'Cause the only other option I can think of to make this campaign moderately work without railroading is to plan a sandbox, have some plot-rails, and have the'ol plot train move on without them. It's sorta getting to the point for me where I'm not really caring if they get to the BBEG. If they do, great, if not, the story will move on without them. The BBEG will kill the Queen, the Coalition will glass the palace and proceed to lock down the country. If the PCs wanna stop it, that's cool, if not, no skin off my nose.

Well, different players have different wants, but if it was me, this would be exactly what I would want. That doesn't mean you don't have room to be creative. Maybe Mr. BBEG sends some goons out to pillage towns in the area, and the PCs just happen to run into them. Maybe these guys start a fight with the party, maybe they try to recruit them, who knows? If I was a PC and suddenly found myself in a massive war, in a semi-destructed continent, I'd think it was pretty cool (blasting the PCs to death from space, much less so). Either way you get to play out the world you've created and the party gets to react to it. And if that plot keeps impacting the players (and I imagine a BBEG trying to take over the country would have far reaching impacts the party would certainly be affected by somehow). As well as any other subplots, be they connected to the BBEG or not, that you want to put into your world for them to potentially experience.

IMO, as a DM making a living breathing world with fascinating things happening within it (which can certainly include evil sorcerers taking over the world) is how you make great campaigns, how the PCs react to, or not react to, this stuff is up to them. So yeah, I think this will make your players happy, remove yourself of the burden of finding a 'right choice', and give you freedom to let the world you've created breathe. Good luck.

[The Grue]

Unfortunately I have to agree. You've sort of painted yourself into a corner here. Unless you're willing to change some of these premises on the fly(ideally in such a way as the players don't notice), I would seriously consider declaring the campaign a wash, chalking it up as a learning experience and starting again.

[Silus]

So... the best solution for the PCs is to walk away and start over somewhere else.

Or is there more railroading in place to stop that option as well?

Well it's one option. This is all just what I can think of. If the players can come up with something that leads to the same "good" outcome, I'll run with it.


Unfortunately I have to agree. You've sort of painted yourself into a corner here. Unless you're willing to change some of these premises on the fly(ideally in such a way as the players don't notice), I would seriously consider declaring the campaign a wash, chalking it up as a learning experience and starting again.

I had been thinking this for a while now. Jump ahead, assume that things didn't go well and that things are quarantined. Less plot, more freeform adventure and tomb raiding. If they ask for a proper plot, I'll mock up something about about breaking the long standing quarantine or something.


Yeah, this is a problem you've created by ensuring there is one way only for the players to "win".

You let them know how hardcore the BBEG is and now it's up to them to think of a way to defeat her without your Mary Sue.

Maybe they can hire some gullible adventurers or call in some evil allies or trick an angel into assisting. Let it be their choice.

As far as the fight goes, if they don't bother tooling up properly or making a clever plan and they get stomped, have them resurrected, perhaps weaker or minus some of their choicer equipment. Perhaps an Archdevil brought them back for the lulz or because he has beef with the BBEG. Either way, they are going to pay for the favour he just did them.

Or whatever, this is just one way to approach it. Point is, more saying 'yes' and less 'no if it's not that exact way it can't work'.

Aye, if I do continue with this campaign, I'll see about throwing them some bones now and again. Though if they did get outside assistance, would it be...bad...to make the assistance com from someone that cannot be double-crossed? 'Cause I swear to God that's their answer for all socio-political situations.



Well, different players have different wants, but if it was me, this would be exactly what I would want. That doesn't mean you don't have room to be creative. Maybe Mr. BBEG sends some goons out to pillage towns in the area, and the PCs just happen to run into them. Maybe these guys start a fight with the party, maybe they try to recruit them, who knows? If I was a PC and suddenly found myself in a massive war, in a semi-destructed continent, I'd think it was pretty cool (blasting the PCs to death from space, much less so). Either way you get to play out the world you've created and the party gets to react to it. And if that plot keeps impacting the players (and I imagine a BBEG trying to take over the country would have far reaching impacts the party would certainly be affected by somehow). As well as any other subplots, be they connected to the BBEG or not, that you want to put into your world for them to potentially experience.

IMO, as a DM making a living breathing world with fascinating things happening within it (which can certainly include evil sorcerers taking over the world) is how you make great campaigns, how the PCs react to, or not react to, this stuff is up to them. So yeah, I think this will make your players happy, remove yourself of the burden of finding a 'right choice', and give you freedom to let the world you've created breathe. Good luck.

HAHA! I'd forgotten I'd mocked up the BBEG's minions. Granted they're each CR12s and essentially just refluffed Shining Children from Pathfinder, but still. Have the minions recruit the party, send'em after the Queen and the Coalition and play out the "bad" ending (Bad on the alignment scale that is). Could work I suppose.

[The Grue]

Aye, if I do continue with this campaign, I'll see about throwing them some bones now and again. Though if they did get outside assistance, would it be...bad...to make the assistance com from someone that cannot be double-crossed? 'Cause I swear to God that's their answer for all socio-political situations.

I'm struggling to think of a reason why any character would have a magic Cannot Be Betrayed shield, so yes. Betrayal is an example of player agency at its most basic level. You never want to take that away. There should always be consequences, but there should never be an NPC who has Immunity: Betrayal.

[nedz]

Unfortunately I have to agree. You've sort of painted yourself into a corner here. Unless you're willing to change some of these premises on the fly(ideally in such a way as the players don't notice), I would seriously consider declaring the campaign a wash, chalking it up as a learning experience and starting again.

I agree with your analysis, but not your conclusion.
Nothing is set in stone until you have run it, which means everything can be changed.

I'm not sure what to suggest, but adding in more factions or having your NPCs fight to a stand off are options. It's not too late to re-spec them.

Adding in more variables could lead to a Xanatos pile up with unpredictable results. This might be fun.

But it strikes me that what you have brewing here already has the potential for a mexican standoff between the two NPCs and the party.

Also: Do not underestimate high level PCs. They are often more capable than they realise themselves.

[Silus]

I'm struggling to think of a reason why any character would have a magic Cannot Be Betrayed shield, so yes. Betrayal is an example of player agency at its most basic level. You never want to take that away. There should always be consequences, but there should never be an NPC who has Immunity: Betrayal.

Less "cannot be betrayed" and more "It would be wise to not betray this guy". Taking the Archdevil for example, should the PCs betray it, what's to stop it from making the character's lives a living hell?



I agree with your analysis, but not your conclusion.
Nothing is set in stone until you have run it, which means everything can be changed.

I'm not sure what to suggest, but adding in more factions or having your NPCs fight to a stand off are options. It's not too late to re-spec them.

Adding in more variables could lead to a Xanatos pile up with unpredictable results. This might be fun.

But it strikes me that what you have brewing here already has the potential for a mexican standoff between the two NPCs and the party.

Also: Do not underestimate high level PCs. They are often more capable than they realise themselves.

I'll see what I can do on the faction-front, but adding more variables...I can see that creating some very unpredictable situations and I'm struggling with these players as it is. These guys have years of GMing experience on me and, if the first part of the campaign is anything to go by, they're gonna run me through the wringer again with the second half. My main problem, now that I think about it, is that I'm trying to manage the chaos they're bringing to the table by restricting what they can and cannot do down to levels that I as a new DM can manage. It feels less like DMing at this point and more like damage control.

[DMfromTheAbyss]

I have a solution.

Intergalactic war!

If things haven't gone quite right with your plot, and things look grim as a GM who has painted themeselves into a corner you have an additional tool.

Escalate.

Not in the bad make your players hate you OOC kind of way. Introducing new characters and factions that change the nature of the conflict is always an option.

One of the big problems is this Coalition with space ships who can glaze the BBEG, right? What if they suddenly had literally bigger fish to deal with it. "The Intergalactic Emperium" or some other space based steller player who has a major bone to pick with them, and who may or may not have some mysterious interest in the planet. (From finding out the lost princess is hiding there to a hey that lost mystic/tech relic we need is there.)

Another potential route would be to pull an Akuma (ala street fighter) and have somebody else kill, or almost kill the original BBEG to further his own goals, entering a whole new villain to mix things up.

So the party is being suffocated and things all appear lost, the last thing the party sees is the gloating face of the villain, and then they wake to find themeselves forgotten where they lay and later find out some apparent opportunistic Bigger BBEG has offed their opponent, and has his own evil plans.. dun dun dun. Bonus points if the original BBEG somehow survived and then attempts to hire the PC's.

Bonus Bonus points if the PC's somehow convert the former BBEG into recounciling with his sister and uniting against this "outside" threat.

I wouldn't hold by breath on that last one but when you give the PC's some slack you can get some pretty bizarre and unexpected results, as a GM my suggestion is to enjoy not knowing how things will turn out.

[nedz]

I'll see what I can do on the faction-front, but adding more variables...I can see that creating some very unpredictable situations and I'm struggling with these players as it is. These guys have years of GMing experience on me and, if the first part of the campaign is anything to go by, they're gonna run me through the wringer again with the second half. My main problem, now that I think about it, is that I'm trying to manage the chaos they're bringing to the table by restricting what they can and cannot do down to levels that I as a new DM can manage. It feels less like DMing at this point and more like damage control.

Ah, then I'd avoid adding more complexity.

Embrace the Chaos perhaps ?

Your job is to create problems for the players to solve, not the other way around. Throw some stuff at them from out of the left field, stuff they aren't expecting. Listen to their conversations and foil their pre-conceptions.

You have to be able to wing it a bit and then just write the plot up afterwards.

I was slightly wrong earlier in that Nothing is really ever set in stone, even after you've run it.

[jindra34]

The problem starts when you plan out the ending. A better plan (regardless of whether your running a 'follow the plotted line' or sandbox campaign), is to plan out the major forces/players, their personalities, goals and motivations. And maybe potential plans. Then let everything flow rationally. Keep a session (relatively) controlled during it, then review consequences later.

Also a good ending is one the players decided on and are happy with. Not one that ends up all okay in the end.

[Airk]

It's not so much planning the ending - it's usually okay to plan "There will be a confrontation between the PCs and the guy who wants to rule the world." Though even in that sort of case it's usually best to make sure you don't have a party full of self serving, evil, bootlickers who would take the idea of "How would you like to run a city under my regime?" seriously.

It's that you've planned how the ending will GO.

Don't do that. =/

Can we assume lesson learned here?

[Jacob.Tyr]

I recall reading a campaign log where the DM only escalates things when the players do. So, if they keep falling to betrayal, well, they want a campaign world with lots of betrayal? Fine, that will be what they get. It is a two-way street, though.

Personally I'd enjoy sitting back while the palace gets glassed, and then exploring the ruined country for treasure, monsters, and glory.

[banthesun]

I'll see what I can do on the faction-front, but adding more variables...I can see that creating some very unpredictable situations and I'm struggling with these players as it is. These guys have years of GMing experience on me and, if the first part of the campaign is anything to go by, they're gonna run me through the wringer again with the second half. My main problem, now that I think about it, is that I'm trying to manage the chaos they're bringing to the table by restricting what they can and cannot do down to levels that I as a new DM can manage. It feels less like DMing at this point and more like damage control.

So, the first thing I want to point out is that any group will do this to the GM, it's just part of the medium. (Well, there are some players who just want to follow a story, but I find these even trickier to deal with, since you need to push them into everything.) It's really a 'no plan survives contact with the enemy' situation. For prep work, I find asking them what they're planning next before closing a session a good tactic. You only have to prep for what they're actually going to do, and they get to spend a week (or however long) anticipating the next part of the campaign.

Secondly, when you are planning an overarching story, always plan for if the PCs kill/side with the 'wrong' characters. Consider it this way, if a corridor in a dungeon lead to unavoidable death, you'd consider that bad design. If the players storyline choices lead to unavoidable death, that's just as bad.

On the other hand, don't be afraid to throw PCs into situations that you can't think of any possible escape from, as long as you're not actually intending to kill them. Most of the time, they'll presume you've hidden an escape route for them and come up with ideas you could never think of to get out of it. It might be risky, but generally find it's less risky than throwing them into carefully controlled situations of fake risk. The number of times I've had my players tear through the most carefully crafted safety nets I could manage to get each other killed has far exceeded the times they've struggled to find a way out of unescapable doom.

In your campaign, I find it a bit hard to believe that the BBEG knows that he's going to be destroyed if he kills the queen, and hasn't taken any steps to prevent that. You could have the threat of mutually assured destruction stalemate the conflict, or have the villian prepare some kind of shield or escape route after the fight (which the PCs could potentially hijack). I'm sure you could make an interesting scenario about trying to survive as the entire countryside around them is bombed into oblivion, if things get to that point. :smallwink:

Finally, I have to say I'm a fan of DMfromTheAbyss's solution. If your story is really frustrating your players, the cure-all solution really is to blow it all up and raise the stakes. The worst that can happen is your players still don't like it, in which case nothing's lost. But if it does work you're left with a shocking twist your players will remember for a long time. So if you've got nothing left to lose, go nuts! :smallbiggrin:

[Thrudd]

Well look, I'm sorry, but I'm struggling here. Had I known the players would all make evil characters in a campaign I designed for good/neutral (Again, new DM here, didn't consider alignment restrictions) then this would be less of an issue.

Humor me and tell me how I should instead resolve this situation:

BBEG comes back after a 1000 year exile, bringing an Elder Evil extinction level event with them. The BBEG's goal is to off the Queen, one of the only individuals that would be able to stand up to them, then take over the world and rule it with an iron fist.

The Coalition arrives when the BBEG starts dropping Akata laden rocks into populated areas. Akata breed via implanting their young in hosts via bites. They begin to spread. If it gets out of hand (which it is rapidly beginning to) the Coalition will glass areas of obvious infection ("Nuke it from orbit. it's the only way to be sure").

The Queen and the Coalition have worked together in the past and the
The Coalition and the BBEG are aware of each other. The Coalition, at the request of the Queen, have not moved against the BBEG. The BBEG has Queen is really the only thing standing in the way of the Coalition from dropping chemical weapons on infested cities to keep said infestation contained ("There are still civilians in there").
their sights locked on the Queen's head.

So if the PCs fail in stopping the BBEG from killing the Queen, then what do you propose happens?

'Cause at the moment, it's:
A) Stop the BBEG, stop the rocks falling, Coalition sends in ground forces to clean up and contain.
B) Stop the BBEG but Queen dies, Coalition mops up a bit more broadly than expected. Cities will burn.
C) Fail to stop the BBEG, Queen dies. Coalition takes over and moves against the BBEG, resulting in massive destruction. Nation classified as "lost" and quarantined.

What is the coalition's real goals here? Do they really care if the Queen dies, so long as the infestation is stopped? Does the BBEG not know about the coalition and their ability to nuke him from orbit? What if the players learn about the coalition and inform the BBEG what is about to happen? It seems he is doomed to die no matter what he does, so what is his real goal here? Could he stop the infection to get the coalition off his back, and then deal with the queen some other way? Could he find allies that are a threat to the coalition to drive them away or distract them?
Your BBEG needs to make sense. Is he just a sociopath driven by an irrational desire for revenge and destruction, so much so that he is willing to die so long as he takes the queen and the rest of the world with him? Or does he actually want to rule and have some kind of power over the world, which would mean he not only needs to defeat his enemies but also survive and have a plan to consolidate control, or at least have a kingdom left to rule.
Also, what are the motives of the PC's? Why do they care about whether the queen or the bbeg is ruling the kingdom, what will it mean to them? Do they even care if the whole kingdom gets nuked? Is there any reason for them to get involved?
You need to give the characters opportunities to learn all the relevant information so they can make informed and strategic decisions. Through your sessions, give clues and opportunities to learn important facts. They could learn about the coalition, it's motives and abilities and the severity of what will happen if the infection isn't stopped or if the Queen dies or both. They could learn something about the Queen's abilities and the BBEG's abilities and their motives. Then they will select the best way to act. As evil characters, I would expect them to select the way which gets them the most profit with the least amount of personal danger, and includes killing people they don't like if at all possible. But whatever they choose, let it happen, even if it is a "bad" choice. Hopefully the characters have some motive to get involved in the whole affair, so that your preparations won't go to waste. But hey, sometimes that does happen, and when it does you need to roll with it and come up with something new.

[Rhynn]

I'm a fairly inexperienced DM, and I keep running into a problem with all my little plots and plans and schemes. I keep bringing whatever the plot is around to there being only really one "right" answer or way to solve things. Please note that when I say "right" I mean "good ending".

[...]

EDIT: Also, I suppose what I'm really wondering is that is it bad DMing if there's one "good" choice that results in victory and the "good" ending? Or should I endeavor for all the choices the PCs make to come around to some sort of "good" ending?

First off, there's nothing wrong with plot-heavy campaigns in themselves... if you can pull them off without railroading. (And even then, if your players don't care, what else matters?)

But speaking theoretically, and from my own tastes and observations:

Don't create plots and stories. Create settings, and characters with motivations and plans. Create chains of events that are set in motion, and that the PCs can change or disrupt. Let the players determine, through their PCs' actions, what happens, and let them decide what they think is a good ending. Let go of narrative control, and allow the PCs to take things where they want.

It's not at all uncommon: you read books and watch movies, and you want to create stories like that. But RPGs, while they can be bent into shape to do them, aren't meant for them. RPGs are about emergent stories: elements (PCs, setting, GM adjudication, rules) interacting to create stories that no one saw coming. The story is the narrative you create from the events of play.

Once I got this down, I found myself taking much less time to create better play experiences; very importantly, they were more fun for me, because they were unexpected and surprising. After creating a basic setting (which I widen and deepen during play), I just set things in motion and only prepare for things one session ahead of time: after every session, I sit down for a few hours and sketch out what I'll need next time (after having consulted my players on what they're going to be doing next time, of course!). When I have extra time, I create more setting elements that I can throw in where ever they fit.

It's a hard transition. It took me some 15 years of GMing (90-95% of the sessions I participated in) to come around to this method, largely because it's hard to let go of the idea of creating a story that goes "just so."

Now I create premises, settings, and elements within the settings, and see what happens. I love it. But it's no coincidence that my favorite computer games generally aren't Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and the like, but Dwarf Fortress, Natuk, and other open-ended or "plot-light" games.


So I mentioned this to the players

Why? Let them do what they want, based on the information their characters have.

One important element of the approach I've taken is to accept that the PCs don't always win. Sometimes, a party dies ignobly exploring a dusty dungeon for nothing more than treasure. Sometimes, they die gloriously.

Alex Macris (creator of ACKS) just posted, the other day, the final entry of a campaign log for his latest in-house campaign; the heroes, who had fought a long campaign and many terrible battles against their terrible enemy, finally confronted him in his sanctum-dungeon, and they were wiped out. Those who did not die escaped too crippled or altered to ever adventure or do battle against evil again. They lost, very totally. But it's an awesome story, especially as part of a huge setting where campaign after campaign is set.


Edit: A "setting" doesn't have to be an entire world, either; it can be quite narrow, such as a series of cities in a series of countries that will be directly involved in the events you're interested in. If your players aren't intentionally jerks, or you aren't really bad at dropping clues, they'll be fairly easy to limit to the relevant areas.

[jedipotter]

EDIT: Also, I suppose what I'm really wondering is that is it bad DMing if there's one "good" choice that results in victory and the "good" ending? Or should I endeavor for all the choices the PCs make to come around to some sort of "good" ending?


You need to avoid One Way plots. When you sit down and say to the players ''you must do A and then B and then C '' that is boring. It is no fun as a player to say ''well lets go do A as we have too''.

[Slipperychicken]

One important element of the approach I've taken is to accept that the PCs don't always win. Sometimes, a party dies ignobly exploring a dusty dungeon for nothing more than treasure. Sometimes, they die gloriously.


As a player, I like this more than guaranteed winning all the time. It's much more exciting when I know that my character could very well get brained by the spear of some nameless goblin.

tl;dr: Real threat of death => More exciting combats.

[Grek]

In order to salvage your game, introduce any or all of the following three artifacts into the campaign world as alternatives to siding with Queen Mary:
1. The legendary Voiceeater, which steals the voice of anyone who touches it. If they could strike the Evil Sorcerer with it, it would silence him and stop him from slaying them all with his spells. It is located within the Caverns of Silence, where no incantation is possible.
2. An Archon Cage. The Evil Sorcerer has imprisoned a Solar for some sort of unspeakable ritual. If they can steal the key to the lock and free it, it could protect them in battle instead of the loathed Queen.
3. A secret army of Iron Golems, buried under the Capitol and bound to a Ring of Power. With the legion of magic immune golems, they could certainly defeat the Evil Sorcerer! Unfortunately, the Ring of Power fell into the sea long ago...

[Rhynn]

As a player, I like this more than guaranteed winning all the time. It's much more exciting when I know that my character could very well get brained by the spear of some nameless goblin.

I don't just apply that to combats, but entire campaigns. It's also one reason I don't do those "the entire world is in danger of being destroyed!" type things - either the campaign is a one-off, or has no effect on a long-running setting (which I generally prefer), or the PCs are guaranteed to succeed. That's dull.

The main reason, of course, is that "the entire world is in danger of being destroyed!" is such an overdone plot to start with...

But this all goes along with the fact that my preferred context is an ongoing setting, where previous campaigns become history (or occur simultaneously somewhere far away, or are far to the future). Some things, of course, work best as one-offs...


get brained by the spear of some nameless goblin.

For players of RuneQuest, it's a rite of passage to have a character killed by a lucky critical impale from a trollkin's spear. (Trollkin being the little guys here (http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1372984.jpg)). Indeed, here (http://moondesign.glorantha.com/library/eurmal/rurik.gif) is a picture of Rurik the Reckless, the quintessential RuneQuest rules example character, about to get his... (Obviously a rune-level by his armor - which impales entirely ignore...)

[Silus]

Well, instead of just quoting over and over, I figure I'll summarize some changes I'm gonna enact on the campaign.

1) The BBEG is optional. It's kinda gotten to the point where I'm just mentally throwing my hands up in surrender. And, well, let's face it, the players probably won't deal with the BBEG unless I force the issue.
1a) As it's optional, the BBEG will still go with their plan as per-usual. I don't really see the need to scrap the plot, even if it's not gonna be followed.

2) Assuming the PCs do try to engage the BBEG and fail (Has to be a spectacular failure), they'll get a "get out of death free" bone in the form of a newer BBEG that ganks the previous (the Akuma thing from earlier in the thread). As the players are (mostly) all evil, it'll likely be a Big Good instead. Someone they can actually go around wanting to kill without the "Let's kill the queen" fallout.

3) Due to previously established story stuff, planar gates will start opening, disgorging new factions vying for control of the world. Sooooo a planar invasion from, well, mostly everyone is likely going to happen (The world had been shunted over a dimension and a half and cut off from the other planes. Now that it's back, all the souls are up for claiming).

4) Expand on the initial BBEG's and the Coalition's motives. Possibly scrap them both, or just make the BBEG some sort of bodiless force whose presence is felt but never engaged in combat or something. Finish'em off by, I dunno, "gather the x# MacGuffins and do a ritual" or something. *Shrugs* I dunno.

5) Attempt to work around/with the player's decisions without being a pushover about it (a problem I had with the first half was "Sure, you can have that" which proceeded to bite me in the butt later on). Generally be more flexible.

6) See if I can get one of (vastly more experienced) players to Co-DM with me. 'Cause hell, I'm in over my head as it is with these guys and I could use the help.

7) If all else fails, scrap the campaign (and the world), tear it down and build it from the ground up with assistance. 'Cause let me tell ya, trying to form a homebrew world from scratch, on the fly in some cases, for a game where 4/5 of the players all have more than twice the gaming experience on you per person is...well, it starts to burn ya out pretty quickly.

[nedz]

You do seem to be over awed by their experience. I've gamed with some people for decades who could never put a game together and DM — it's about more then xp.

[Silus]

You do seem to be over awed by their experience. I've gamed with some people for decades who could never put a game together and DM — it's about more then xp.

Aye, true. Honestly they come off more as trolls than the RP vets I sometimes see them as. Giving the newbie an unrelenting hard time when he's trying to run his first homebrew world :smallannoyed:

But, they've dealt with the problems I'm facing, so I'll defer to their experience as it suits me.

[Brookshw]

I understand that the Queen has the trust of the coalition, but is there any reason the party can't interact with the coalition? They seem to lack any agency with them that is severly limiting the options available.

Agreeing with an earlier poster, a campaign world where events continue if the party chooses to ignore them I consider desireable and can help create nice tension.

Edit: what's the party makeup/level?

[Silus]

I understand that the Queen has the trust of the coalition, but is there any reason the party can't interact with the coalition? They seem to lack any agency with them that is severly limiting the options available.

Agreeing with an earlier poster, a campaign world where events continue if the party chooses to ignore them I consider desireable and can help create nice tension.

Edit: what's the party makeup/level?

Honestly, with their party, they're more likely to jack a ship and go on a rampage than try to work with the Coalition. They have a very "stick it to the man" mentality when it comes to authority figures. But I don't see why they couldn't interact with the Coalition in a meaningful way. They just, ya know, got to get their heads out of their butts.

The party is (I think, it's been a while) lvl 10 and is comprised of:
Human Werewolf Fighter (NE)
Human Undead Lord Cleric (LE)
Drow Vampire Sorceress (NE) (Tweaked Drow)
Half-Elf Magus (LN)
Human Alchemist (LE)(I think)

I deeply regret giving them the Werewolf and Vamp templates. Seriously, you've no idea. It's made things that much harder.

[Evo_Kaer]

I don't know if you still need or want it, so can just ignore my advice and/or ideas if you have made up your mind.

If you are interested here are my two cents:

First I want to try to explain how I see the DM - player relationship:
Imagine the players being a group of blind people. They found you - you can see - and drag you along this world wherever they want. And you tell them what you see along the way.

Other than that, I think everything I could say has already been said.

Now my idea on what you could do with your original non-modifed campaign idea (before your 7 changes. But I have to say 6. is probably a good idea in your position anyway):

Let the players just do what they think they want to do. And should the queen fall and the coalition decide to nuke everything, well they didn't think BBEG wouldn't know about their plans, now would they? What stops the BBEG from sending agents to infiltrate the coalition ships and planting this infestation you were talking so much about?
When the countdown for orbital bombardement starts, hell breaks loose on each ship as monsters crawl out of everywhere, killing everyone.


One possible solution to let the planet survive, even if the queen doesn't. Also now the players should all be like 'holy crap. I think we got a problem with this guy'.

DMing demands a lot of creativity. And often on the run since players can be vastly unpredictable. But that come swith time and experience. I myself are still not that good at it.

[Silus]

Let the players just do what they think they want to do. And should the queen fall and the coalition decide to nuke everything, well they didn't think BBEG wouldn't know about their plans, now would they? What stops the BBEG from sending agents to infiltrate the coalition ships and planting this infestation you were talking so much about?
When the countdown for orbital bombardement starts, hell breaks loose on each ship as monsters crawl out of everywhere, killing everyone.


One possible solution to let the planet survive, even if the queen doesn't. Also now the players should all be like 'holy crap. I think we got a problem with this guy'.

DMing demands a lot of creativity. And often on the run since players can be vastly unpredictable. But that come swith time and experience. I myself are still not that good at it.

Well the infestation is/was really just the first wave of bombardment by the BBEG. Droppin' space rocks with Akata and other similar monsters into population centers. The reason the Coalition is there is because of the initial bombardment of Akata laden rocks.

Infiltration would work I think...Ya know, I do believe I'll run with this. Coalition ship on the horizon, closing in on some location.. Suddenly, an engine explodes and the **** begins crashing. Things can be seen between the gashes in the hull, things not human, or even humanoid. Whatever it is is tearing the ship apart from inside.

Or something >.>

And the planet will survive. The BBEG wants a place to rule and vengeance against whoever stands in their way. Destroying the world would go against their interests. The only difference between the Coalition glassing the planet and the BBEG taking over is mostly atmospheric and a few different monsters.

[ElenionAncalima]

I see two major mistakes that have been made:
1. You have planned the winning outcome.
2. That winning outcome hinges on a DMPC.

For future campaigns, I would do the following:
1. Do not plans solutions to anything you create. Create problems, then let the PCs figure out a solution.
2. If your campaign hinges on the PCs not being evil...tell them that before they make their characters. Or, if your players only want to play evil, figure that out in the beginning and design accordingly.
3. Never force the PC to side with an NPC to win. You are always going to risk that they don't like the character...and more importantly, the players should be the main characters of your story. There is nothing players hate more than having their thunder stolen by a pet NPC of the GM.

For this campaign:
1. Realize that allowing player agency, doesn't mean letting the PCs kill themselves if they don't want to do things your way...It means letting the PCs take control of the story...even if it is not the story you set out to tell.
2. Realize that evil characters have different motives. If the party doesn't the stop BBEG, tons of people will die...but perhaps they don't care about that. A good outcome for them could just be ensuring that they survive. Heck, they may even rather siding with the BBEG if it will keep them alive and get them money and power.
3. Before you respond, "There is no way for them to survive the attack" or "The BBEG would never work with them", remember that you created this campaign. Nothing is set in stone. You can decide to make the BBEG's plan survivable just as easily as you decided it wasn't.

[Delta]

2. If your campaign hinges on the PCs not being evil...tell them that before they make their characters. Or, if your players only want to play evil, figure that out in the beginning and design accordingly.

This is really the starting point of the problem. It's not bad to script out a "good" ending, in my opinion, IF you want the players to be the "good guys" in a setting where good and evil are clearly defined opposites.

If Star Wars was my campaign, I don't think there's any fault in saying "Okay, I want for my players to defeat the Empire and kill the Emperor in the end", but then of course I would also tell my players that they will play characters taking part in a rebellion against an evil empire.

So either you have to give your players clear guidelines (and sometimes it can help to talk about this at the player level and not just set some clear rules on the character level like "no evil characters!", that will just lead to the True Neutral rogue who does whatever he wants and will backstab the rebellion for money or just fun, rather just tell them you want them to play "the good guys" and leave it to them to figure out what kind of good guy they'd like to play) or you have to live with what they create, and if they do create evil characters that means they like to play for team evil, so you better make that a viable option.

It's not a bad thing to set limits or make guidelines for PC, not every campaign or group is suited for every PC. Communication is key here, I never understood why so many GMs think talking to players at all about what kind of campaign they want to run is a bad thing.

[Thrawn4]

OOC? I believe so.
[...]
IC, they've no clue what's going on, they just came up from underground to witness meteor showers and general end-of-the-world'ness.

See, they have a lack of information. It is difficult but vital that your players know what they run into.

Also: When your characters are evil, why can't they just join with the BBEG and turn it into an evil campaign? The queen could be stronger than anyone thought, or maybe she can teleport away when defeated and find some allies?

[Joe the Rat]

Was this pitched as a "Save the world" campaign from the get-go? If so, why did you leave Evil on the board for alignment options? If Evil Campaign was the plan, having 90% of the party ideas be "Kill everyone" is par for the course.

You've got NPCs with Goals, the consequences of stopping or not stopping them (in a variety of orders), and several possible outcomes. You've given the Players most of the pieces. Let them figure out what they want to do, and if the party eats it, the party eats it. If they end up raining destruction upon the land, so be it.


If you want to avoid single option outcomes in the future, design a series of problems, and a stack of tools, figure out what will happen if the players don't get involved, and let the players decide how they deal with it.

[GungHo]

If Star Wars was my campaign, I don't think there's any fault in saying "Okay, I want for my players to defeat the Empire and kill the Emperor in the end", but then of course I would also tell my players that they will play characters taking part in a rebellion against an evil empire.
Yeah, that's not rail-roading. That's scoping. While I've seen people say "hey, yeah, just make whatever you want and I'll figure out how to put it all together", that's just asking for someone to say "I'm a rebel", someone else to say "I'm a stormtrooper", and a third person to say "I'm a monkey lizard".

[ellindsey]

Yeah, it's sounding to me like the best thing to do would be to allow the players to continue being evil and uncooperative, and have the game world be destroyed as a result. Then start a new campaign from scratch with new characters, incorporating what you've learned here into the campaign planning and what characters you'll allow your players to play.

[Red Fel]

My first observation upon reading the OP was, "Why do the players have to involve the queen at all?" That's been addressed, so I'll leave it be.

But here's my thought. As others have mentioned, you've painted yourself into a corner. By your current paradigm, the players must do what you've described in order to beat the BBEG.

So break your paradigm. I don't mean a slight shift, I mean sledgehammer-to-the-support-beams-and-arrow-to-the-knee shatter the thing. And here's how I'd do it. I'd ask the PCs, very simply, "What do you plan to do?" I'd give them fifteen minutes to discuss it amongst themselves. I'd listen to what they discuss and take notes.

And at the end of that time, whatever their answer is, that's the right answer.

I'm not saying you make it an automatic success, or that you make it easy for them. But whatever plan they come up with, design a way to accomplish it. They want to rob the BBEG of his power? Create a mystical object (a la Voicestealer, above) that does it. Want to diplomance his minions away from him? Find a propaganda outlet. Give the players the reigns to attempt anything, and make it at least possible - not guaranteed, but possible - for them to succeed.

What I propose is pretty extreme, I admit. But here's why it works. You got to this point, painted yourself into a corner, by having such a clear, precise, narrow vision of how you wanted the campaign to end. In essence, you squeezed the plot so tightly it almost suffocated. So do the opposite. It will be a good experience for you. Play it a little by ear. Let the players run roughshod. It may bruise your ego to see your plot abused, but it'll be good for you in the long run.

Now, looking at your proposed changes:


1) The BBEG is optional. It's kinda gotten to the point where I'm just mentally throwing my hands up in surrender. And, well, let's face it, the players probably won't deal with the BBEG unless I force the issue.

This should, in my mind, always be the case. No piece of the plot, no event or NPC, should be mandatory. Plot points can be important - and this guy certainly qualifies - but if the players decided they wanted to spend the apocalypse in a tavern instead of saving the world, as a DM, I would let them. (Of course, it would probably devolve into the D&D equivalent of Shaun of the Dead at that point.)


1a) As it's optional, the BBEG will still go with their plan as per-usual. I don't really see the need to scrap the plot, even if it's not gonna be followed.

Naturally. Even if the players don't engage your story, the story goes on. That makes sense.


2) Assuming the PCs do try to engage the BBEG and fail (Has to be a spectacular failure), they'll get a "get out of death free" bone in the form of a newer BBEG that ganks the previous (the Akuma thing from earlier in the thread). As the players are (mostly) all evil, it'll likely be a Big Good instead. Someone they can actually go around wanting to kill without the "Let's kill the queen" fallout.

This, I don't like. On the one hand, I get that you've created such a monster that the PCs will probably need help to beat it. You feel guilty, and if they get owned, you want to show mercy.

Don't.

They had their warnings. You told them how dangerous he was. Don't rob them of a meaningful (or meaningless) death by having them saved at the last minute by the Stu in Shining Armor. If they choose to die, let them. Warn them, but let the dice fall where they may.


3) Due to previously established story stuff, planar gates will start opening, disgorging new factions vying for control of the world. Sooooo a planar invasion from, well, mostly everyone is likely going to happen (The world had been shunted over a dimension and a half and cut off from the other planes. Now that it's back, all the souls are up for claiming).

That sounds fun. And a new plot hook. So if they don't want to take on the BBEG - or they feel too weak to do so - this will give them something else to murder do.


4) Expand on the initial BBEG's and the Coalition's motives. Possibly scrap them both, or just make the BBEG some sort of bodiless force whose presence is felt but never engaged in combat or something. Finish'em off by, I dunno, "gather the x# MacGuffins and do a ritual" or something. *Shrugs* I dunno.

Expanding on your NPCs is great, if you can do it without monologuing. Forcing the players to sit through a detailed history of politics or emotions or whatever can be dull, but three-dimensional NPCs are wonderful.

Scrapping existing NPCs or factions mid-game is not so great. It's moving the goalposts. Don't do that. You can get it both ways, if you're careful. For example, the BBEG is engaged in a massive planar-rifting ritual, the PCs interrupt him - not trying to beat him, just trying to disrupt the ritual - and something goes wrong, and he's incinerated. And the PCs move on, but later discover there's this "bodiless force," as you describe, acting on the world - guess who's back?

The thing to remember is that anytime you come up with an NPC that's not statted, a la "bodiless force" or the Lady of Pain or what-have-you, the players may feel stymied. They have the tools to deal with a variety of threats, and when you inform them, "those tools won't work now," you're just dumping them back on the rails. Requiring a ritual that involves putting the Sacred Stones in a Mystic Circle on top of the Mountain of Pain beyond the Plains of Despair during the Vernal Equinox as the crow caws three times is exactly what got you into this mess to begin with - a problem with only one solution. Don't do that.


5) Attempt to work around/with the player's decisions without being a pushover about it (a problem I had with the first half was "Sure, you can have that" which proceeded to bite me in the butt later on). Generally be more flexible.

This, 100%.


6) See if I can get one of (vastly more experienced) players to Co-DM with me. 'Cause hell, I'm in over my head as it is with these guys and I could use the help.

This is a fantastic suggestion, and I heartily endorse it. It takes a strong DM to realize his or her limits and ask for help. Everyone will benefit if you take the time to learn from experience.


7) If all else fails, scrap the campaign (and the world), tear it down and build it from the ground up with assistance. 'Cause let me tell ya, trying to form a homebrew world from scratch, on the fly in some cases, for a game where 4/5 of the players all have more than twice the gaming experience on you per person is...well, it starts to burn ya out pretty quickly.

Let me start by saying that I'm reluctant to scrap a setting just because it's hard for the DM. The game in general, and homebrew in particular, is a collaborative artform between players and DMs, and if the show can go on, it should; the side having problems should be able to ask for some help and consideration from the other.

That said... If you really feel that you're in over your head, that your players will run rings around you and you'll struggle to keep up... You may need some help on this one beyond just the advice you get on forums. Get a co-DM like you suggest. Work with the players. And if that means you need to shelve this game, at least for the time being, then do what you have to.

Frankly, I think it's salvageable. I say go for it.

And as a last note, in the future, pre-screen character concepts. Don't necessarily limit them, but know what your players are playing in advance. If you were planning on undead horror, and everyone's playing Clerics, the challenge is gone. If you were placing low-magic, and everyone is Wizards and Druids, there's an issue. And if, as here, you expected heroes and got villains... You see the result. Be aware of what your players plan to be, and plan accordingly.

[ElenionAncalima]

Yeah, it's sounding to me like the best thing to do would be to allow the players to continue being evil and uncooperative, and have the game world be destroyed as a result. Then start a new campaign from scratch with new characters, incorporating what you've learned here into the campaign planning and what characters you'll allow your players to play.

My problem with that is that it punishes the players for the GM's mistakes. It sounds like the players were never told that they couldn't be evil, so making them lose the game because they aren't good seems a little unfair.

I would say either try to fix the campaign (as it sounds like the OP is trying to) or have an honest conversation with the players about why the evil thing is causing problems.

[Jay R]

You have too many ways to win. You built one, so they have no options.

Don't invent ways to win. Invent situations. Let them invent ways to win.

That way, they are trying to be creative and imaginative, instead of trying to read your mind.

[Rhynn]

Yeah, that's not rail-roading. That's scoping.

That's a good term for it.

Even when creating open sandbox campaigns, you need to set a scope. I wouldn't ever run a game where the entire planet or world is immediately "in play"; even a sandbox is only so big, after all.

This is all the more important in a campaign with a story focus of some sort. Even in my free campaigns, I frequently give a scope for the players, for PC generation: while in my ACKS Dark Sun campaign, the scope is physical ("I've mapped the Tablelands, so we're focusing there to start with"), in my Dragon Pass campaigns, it goes beyond that ("You're all Heortlings from this tribe, this clan, and this bloodline").

[Silus]

That's a good term for it.

Even when creating open sandbox campaigns, you need to set a scope. I wouldn't ever run a game where the entire planet or world is immediately "in play"; even a sandbox is only so big, after all.

This is all the more important in a campaign with a story focus of some sort. Even in my free campaigns, I frequently give a scope for the players, for PC generation: while in my ACKS Dark Sun campaign, the scope is physical ("I've mapped the Tablelands, so we're focusing there to start with"), in my Dragon Pass campaigns, it goes beyond that ("You're all Heortlings from this tribe, this clan, and this bloodline").

I tried presenting something like this to the players for an alternate campaign I was going to run instead of the one presented here (to give me more time to plan and map out and stuff).

"Ok, you guys'll be members of an inter-planar MIB/Texas Rangers organization, solving planar problems." with the intention of general free reign while within the confines of the mission and a monetary bonus for completing optional tasks like "no excessive killing" or "retrieve X object". Very much a "Here's the problem, how are you going to solve it? Ok, give that a try, we'll see where it goes."

What I got from the players (I kid you not) was a general "Well why are we part of this organization? What if we don't want to be part of this organization?" Valid questions (at least the first I feel) but has the feel of "Let's make the DM wrack their brain to try and conform this to us instead of us working within the scope that the DM has laid down". Like the Star Wars example. The DM says "Okay, I want for my players to defeat the Empire and kill the Emperor in the end" and the players respond with "Well why do we have to defeat the Empire? Why can't we work with them?" and every answer you give them (Human rights violations, totalitarian form of government, genocide, etc) is either not good enough of just seems to urge them to join the Empire.


My problem with that is that it punishes the players for the GM's mistakes. It sounds like the players were never told that they couldn't be evil, so making them lose the game because they aren't good seems a little unfair.

I would say either try to fix the campaign (as it sounds like the OP is trying to) or have an honest conversation with the players about why the evil thing is causing problems.

When I started the campaign, it was the first time I had gamed at all with the group. My previous group were generally cool with following a plot and didn't make overly disruptive characters. So I didn't feel alignment restrictions were needed. Turns out they were. I'd never dealt with evil characters (it was a general rule in the last group that nobody played evil characters). And now in a campaign that I had created for Good => Neutral characters, almost all the party is evil in one way or another. It was my fault, and in the future there'll be more restrictions during character creation (which the players have actually suggested to me).

I've got about a one or two game wait in the DMing rotation I'm in, so I'll probably be starting this campaign sometime in the summer or fall, so I've got some time to try to fix this, open the plot up and plan for most player choices (most, if not all revolve around "let's avoid the plot").

[Jay R]

From the creator of DM of the Rings:

No matter how difficult or absurd you make a puzzle, your players will find an even more impossible and preposterous way of solving it.

[Raum]

Anyway, what can I do to resolve this in such a way that does not "punish" the players for their moral choices? Lose your expectations of a "good" ending. Realistically, those expectations should have gone when you allowed evil characters. ;)


And how can I, in the future, avoid a situation like this?
a) Discuss and explicitly decide on shared expectations for the system, setting, campaign, and characters before you begin. Then create characters as a group during the first session.
b) Plan NPC goals and resources rather than results or static events. This makes reacting to PC actions much easier. After all, you know what the NPCs wants to accomplish and what resources they have...dealing with surprises is just a matter of asking "What will X do in this situation?".


EDIT: Also, I suppose what I'm really wondering is that is it bad DMing if there's one "good" choice that results in victory and the "good" ending? Or should I endeavor for all the choices the PCs make to come around to some sort of "good" ending?Depends on group expectations - this is one of those things you discuss up front.

One other thing...be willing to make mistakes, apologize for them, and attempt to correct them. We all fail at new things, if we don't we aren't challenging ourselves.

[MonochromeTiger]

I tried presenting something like this to the players for an alternate campaign I was going to run instead of the one presented here (to give me more time to plan and map out and stuff).

"Ok, you guys'll be members of an inter-planar MIB/Texas Rangers organization, solving planar problems." with the intention of general free reign while within the confines of the mission and a monetary bonus for completing optional tasks like "no excessive killing" or "retrieve X object". Very much a "Here's the problem, how are you going to solve it? Ok, give that a try, we'll see where it goes."

What I got from the players (I kid you not) was a general "Well why are we part of this organization? What if we don't want to be part of this organization?" Valid questions (at least the first I feel) but has the feel of "Let's make the DM wrack their brain to try and conform this to us instead of us working within the scope that the DM has laid down". Like the Star Wars example. The DM says "Okay, I want for my players to defeat the Empire and kill the Emperor in the end" and the players respond with "Well why do we have to defeat the Empire? Why can't we work with them?" and every answer you give them (Human rights violations, totalitarian form of government, genocide, etc) is either not good enough of just seems to urge them to join the Empire.

there's the thing though..it's still a valid question. just because a group or cause has "good" painted on it in big sky blue letters doesn't mean every single person feels the need to join it. just because the big overwhelming force has "evil" in the same fashion but blood red doesn't mean people will always think "well they're mean so I, as a logical person, will risk my life for the minute chance of stopping them". if you allow evil characters this way of thinking is even more likely (unless you get one of those players who seems to play evil as "misunderstood anti-hero"...oh how I hate that) and the only way you're likely to solve it is presenting a way that actually piques their interest such as the organization being a means to personal gain and power or or the empire and emperor being very openly willing to crush any competition on the evil front.

when DMing you have to understand sometimes players will ask these questions because there really isn't that much of a reason for their characters to do something. why WOULD they work with this organization if they have no personal stake in it, why WOULD they go against the empire and its super weapons with a badly outnumbered fleet and a couple of space-monks who already got their entire order wiped out when joining with the empire means they're on the side with all the equipment numbers and power.. and the answer needs to be something other than "well if you don't then orbital bombardment wipes out you and everyone you love for not following my plot". throw in some personal incentive, play to their egos, give them a hint at a power play they could try to come out on top if both sides really go at each other.

heck your original scenario has some things I have to question in this line of thought. if the queen is holding back orbital bombardment to keep the BBEG from being hurt out of some badly placed concern why is she helping the PCs who are very clearly going to have to kill said BBEG to solve the problem get that shot. if she's gotten to the point of confrontation why have the coalition forces who are apparently so concerned with her safety that it's all that keeps them from glassing the area not sending down troops to keep her safe and make the fight more even? if the BBEG is so set in world domination that they go for the biggest threat to them they know (and apparently are completely able to defeat it no problem) why do they not notice the ships overhead with death rays aimed at their face and deal with those accordingly...heck how is there even a threat if those death rays are able to so completely deal with the problem anyway? just sitting back out of splash range and watching the fireworks solves every problem they have. this is not "let's make the DM wrack their brain to try and conform with us instead of working within the scope of the campaign" this is "the DM keeps saying this is the logical conclusion so why are so many parts of this not accepting logic".




When I started the campaign, it was the first time I had gamed at all with the group. My previous group were generally cool with following a plot and didn't make overly disruptive characters. So I didn't feel alignment restrictions were needed. Turns out they were. I'd never dealt with evil characters (it was a general rule in the last group that nobody played evil characters). And now in a campaign that I had created for Good => Neutral characters, almost all the party is evil in one way or another. It was my fault, and in the future there'll be more restrictions during character creation (which the players have actually suggested to me).

I've got about a one or two game wait in the DMing rotation I'm in, so I'll probably be starting this campaign sometime in the summer or fall, so I've got some time to try to fix this, open the plot up and plan for most player choices (most, if not all revolve around "let's avoid the plot").

actually from what you've said of "let's let the two fight it out then kill the winner" or "let's join the BBEG then backstab them when they're done killing the queen" that's not avoiding the plot at all, that's just dealing with the plot through less morally accepted means. just because it's evil doesn't mean they've completely ignored your story or are trying to ruin it it just means they aren't going with the "you're all good guys despite your alignment and ways of acting" approach you seem to have set up.

a plot is fine but you have to be prepared for strange and unprepared solutions to what you set up. let's say you have a scenario for good characters where they need an item held in a castle by a group of paladins, you set it up so that they have plenty of opportunity to be invited to the castle and discuss with the paladins why they need the object and then get sent on a series of tasks to prove their worth, you have a detailed backstory for the leaders of the paladin order and some history for the tasks and trials set up for the players...but at least one of the players is evil, they need the item now and by placing it in front of them you've given them a target for their planning, now they go around all of your planning and scale a wall to reach the room with the item and simply take it. if you ask them what they're doing the answer will still be "we're getting the item" even if they didn't jump through hoops to do it, you never specifically stated "you have to get the item without stealing" or "you need to get the item by doing exactly what the paladins say" or even "you need to be good aligned to do this campaign because evil characters don't make sense for it"..you just said "you need to get the item".

and all of it can be solved simply by sitting down with your group before you start your campaign and asking them what they want or expect to play, if it doesn't match with what you want ask them if they'd mind trying out what you set up instead, at least until you have more experience with DMing and with them, chances are by sitting down and talking with your players BEFORE either of you makes assumptions of what's going to happen you can deal with issues like badly fitting alignments or thinking the campaign is more open to choices than it is.

[Angel Bob]

In the midst of all the "Deus ex Machina" and "Mary Sue" criticisms, I do have one bit of positive feedback: you did well recognizing that there were problems with your plans and coming to the forums for help. :smallsmile:

That said, it does seem like you're placing too much power and emphasis on the Queen and the Coalition. I don't know how much the world revolves around these NPCs, or whether the PCs were given this information -- but in general, I'm opposed to including any NPCs so powerful/plot-integral that the PCs have no chance without them. It begs the question of why the "Mary Sue", if you will, isn't themselves the hero of the story.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is: the PCs are the main characters (even if they're Evil or, in my case, the southern end of Neutral). The story should revolve around their lives, their choices, their adventures -- with special emphasis on that second one. The players have to feel like they really do have a say in where the plot goes, and have the right to just ignore obvious plot hooks. (Of course, if your PCs are predictable enough, the DM can simply ensure that the choices they are likely to make will lead to the more interesting adventures. :smallamused:)

If all of that was too longwinded, then the gist of it all is thus: the PCs are the main characters. Let the story revolve around them. :smallsmile:

[squirrelenst]

I'm going to strongly contest what I've read on the first page of replies here. I even registered just to do so.

Your story sounds awesome. I would love to play such a game. 4 level 16 spell casters could find a way to kill anything if they fought it own their own terms, so its super unlikely that the fight is unfair. They have time to prepare and everything.

You gave them an adventure hook that leads to victory (the NPC queen) but you also gave them a word full of options.

Off the top of my head, they could use shrink object on a few thousand giant rocks, summon monsters to carry them to the BBEG and craft some contingency items that cast antimagic field when the creature carrying it dies.

Then, while he fights the queen they send the creatures in and when one dies in the crossfire both the queen and the BBEG get smashed with so many rocks that they cant use any spells with a somatic requirement, plus how ever much damage it is.

This in one plan of a possible thousand that only requires some level 6 and 3 spells!

While its your job as DM to make a cool challenge, its their job as players not to whine about the world you've put them in. Anyone with that many caster level has more options than I can list here. If they want to be evil super-heroes they need to start acting like it.

Also, contacting the space police upstairs is another great option. They don't even have to play nice. I assume one of them has ranks in bluff and diplomacy?

[CombatOwl]

I'm a fairly inexperienced DM, and I keep running into a problem with all my little plots and plans and schemes. I keep bringing whatever the plot is around to there being only really one "right" answer or way to solve things. Please note that when I say "right" I mean "good ending".

Prime example: I've been planning out the tail end of this campaign I want to run. The whole thing culminates with the players (around lvl 16-20) taking on a high powered lvl 20 Sorcerer for the fate of the world (or at least their corner of it). The idea is that they players team up with the queen of the lands (the BBEG's sister and, like the BBEG, a former deity, known to the Coalition (see below)) to off the BBEG. The problem is, the players are 1) almost all evil, 2) hate the queen for some reason (I've the feeling it's a "well she's in charge" and "the DM likes this NPC a lot" reasons). Also, there's an intergalactic magitech Coalition in the process of quarantining the planet to keep what's happening there from spreading (orbital bombardment of infectious creatures. See: Xenomorphs (kinda)).

Please forgive the bare bones explanation, the full detailed summary would take too long.

So outcomes are as follows:
1) Side with the queen, stop the BBEG, save the world and keep their corner from getting blasted into rubble/quarantined.
2) Side with the queen, then backstab her when she's weak. Results in the world being saved, but the Coalition retaliates against the PCs for killing a sitting ruler and throwing a large chunk of the world into chaos under their watch.
3) (What the players want to try to do) Pit the queen and the BBEG against each other. BBEG kills the queen, PCs offer their services to the BBEG with the intent of backstabbing said BBEG. Results in the PCs getting killed by the BBEG (Via reserve multi-person, high-fatality rate spells in a "haha, no" way), the Coalition quarantining the nation and turning the palace where the BBEG is into a 10-mile wide crater.

So I mentioned this to the players, and the general consensus is "Well there's no way to win" despite there being a clear "good ending" (Also, take into account that the BBEG is bringing about the end of the world via "Rocks fall, everyone dies, survivors get eaten". Teaming up with said BBEG does not really make sense, even for LE characters). Anyway, what can I do to resolve this in such a way that does not "punish" the players for their moral choices? And how can I, in the future, avoid a situation like this?

EDIT: Also, I suppose what I'm really wondering is that is it bad DMing if there's one "good" choice that results in victory and the "good" ending? Or should I endeavor for all the choices the PCs make to come around to some sort of "good" ending?

Any plan that relies on PCs making use of an NPC are doomed to failure unless the party specifically went out looking for the NPC first.

In short, the story should be about the PCs and their choices and actions--not the DM's Cool Story Idea.

[qwertyu63]

I deal with the "one way" problem by not even making up a way. I just make up the problem and trust that my players are clever enough to find a way to deal with it. Saves me a lot of prep work too.

[Calen]

Also, I suppose what I'm really wondering is that is it bad DMing if there's one "good" choice that results in victory and the "good" ending? Or should I endeavor for all the choices the PCs make to come around to some sort of "good" ending?

Yes and No. PC's should be allowed to make bad choices…and suffer for them. They should also be allowed to make choices that you don't anticipate and that might bring about a good ending.

Maybe they can find a new faction to help the queen. Trick the BBEG into doing something bad for himself. Whatever.

[Knaight]

there's the thing though..it's still a valid question. just because a group or cause has "good" painted on it in big sky blue letters doesn't mean every single person feels the need to join it. just because the big overwhelming force has "evil" in the same fashion but blood red doesn't mean people will always think "well they're mean so I, as a logical person, will risk my life for the minute chance of stopping them". if you allow evil characters this way of thinking is even more likely (unless you get one of those players who seems to play evil as "misunderstood anti-hero"...oh how I hate that) and the only way you're likely to solve it is presenting a way that actually piques their interest such as the organization being a means to personal gain and power or or the empire and emperor being very openly willing to crush any competition on the evil front.

It's a questionably valid question. If the core concept of the group is "members of organization X", you make characters who do fit within that. That there are a bunch who wouldn't be motivated to be in said organization is relevant, you just don't make them as your PCs. The only reason it is even questionable is that it could be a poor way to couch the actually valid question of "what generally motivates people to join this organization?".

[MonochromeTiger]

I'm going to strongly contest what I've read on the first page of replies here. I even registered just to do so.

Your story sounds awesome. I would love to play such a game. 4 level 16 spell casters could find a way to kill anything if they fought it own their own terms, so its super unlikely that the fight is unfair. They have time to prepare and everything.

you're making the assumption they're all spell casters when what was said was "the whole thing culminates with the players (around lvl 16-20) taking on a high powered level 20 sorcerer". the only confirmed spell caster there is the sorcerer and apparently the queen set up to counterspell everything.



You gave them an adventure hook that leads to victory (the NPC queen) but you also gave them a word full of options.

all of which were set up to be varying degrees of failure and loss.



Off the top of my head, they could use shrink object on a few thousand giant rocks, summon monsters to carry them to the BBEG and craft some contingency items that cast antimagic field when the creature carrying it dies.

Then, while he fights the queen they send the creatures in and when one dies in the crossfire both the queen and the BBEG get smashed with so many rocks that they cant use any spells with a somatic requirement, plus how ever much damage it is.

This in one plan of a possible thousand that only requires some level 6 and 3 spells!

and if there's no crossfire? if the fight is simply a series of counterspells until the BBEG gets tired of it and starts stabbing? or even more likely, if the group doesn't have those spells and resources set up ahead of time because they aren't optimizing for the fight?



While its your job as DM to make a cool challenge, its their job as players not to whine about the world you've put them in. Anyone with that many caster level has more options than I can list here. If they want to be evil super-heroes they need to start acting like it.

they aren't whining though. they set up a plan, the DM doesn't like the plan, whining players were not mentioned at any point of it. nor was it mentioned that they want to be "evil super-heroes" (again, why must people assume that evil alignments are anti-heroes for some reason? it's insulting.) you're going by what you would do when you've actively admitted you would enjoy the plot heavy campaign that the OP is talking about trying to change.



Also, contacting the space police upstairs is another great option. They don't even have to play nice. I assume one of them has ranks in bluff and diplomacy?

the space police that are holding back because of good will with the queen who would then proceed to glass the place so the problem doesn't spread? the place the PCs are still in the blast radius of? when that was stated as one of the possible endings that was still a loss?



It's a questionably valid question. If the core concept of the group is "members of organization X", you make characters who do fit within that. That there are a bunch who wouldn't be motivated to be in said organization is relevant, you just don't make them as your PCs. The only reason it is even questionable is that it could be a poor way to couch the actually valid question of "what generally motivates people to join this organization?".

it's a valid question when it's stated as the setting but you don't have any alignment or character restrictions set up by the DM ahead of time, which is the case with the first campaign mentioned. if you're not told "no evil characters" and you play an evil character what reason do you have to deal with the organization past getting whatever you can out of them and leaving? if the DM doesn't explain that the campaign is going to go along a certain plot with certain pre-made choices the players have to make they're going to think of ones the DM didn't set up. when that happens it's not the fault of the player for thinking out their character's actions in the setting without aiming straight towards the railroad tracks.

[Delta]

"Ok, you guys'll be members of an inter-planar MIB/Texas Rangers organization, solving planar problems." with the intention of general free reign while within the confines of the mission and a monetary bonus for completing optional tasks like "no excessive killing" or "retrieve X object". Very much a "Here's the problem, how are you going to solve it? Ok, give that a try, we'll see where it goes."

What I got from the players (I kid you not) was a general "Well why are we part of this organization? What if we don't want to be part of this organization?" Valid questions (at least the first I feel) but has the feel of "Let's make the DM wrack their brain to try and conform this to us instead of us working within the scope that the DM has laid down". Like the Star Wars example. The DM says "Okay, I want for my players to defeat the Empire and kill the Emperor in the end" and the players respond with "Well why do we have to defeat the Empire? Why can't we work with them?" and every answer you give them (Human rights violations, totalitarian form of government, genocide, etc) is either not good enough of just seems to urge them to join the Empire.

To be honest, that sounds even more problematic and like a breakdown in communication or players just being contrarian just because they can. "Why are we part of this organization?" is not a valid question in my opinion, you just told them why, because that's the game you want to run, after that, it's their job to come up with characters who fit into the campaign (of course if they need help coming up with a concept that's another question, but I don't feel that's the problem here)

If they don't want to be part of such an organization, well that's a different matter, then it sounds like they don't want to play in your campaign. Again, that's a completely different animal, if they don't want to play the Rebel Alliance and take down the Empire, then you have to either offer them something else or ask them what they want (which should always be part of the equation, really). "What if my character doesn't want to do x?" isn't really an argument if the campaign hasn't even started yet, the character doesn't want anything but what he's designed to want. It's a question of what the player wants.


And now in a campaign that I had created for Good => Neutral characters, almost all the party is evil in one way or another. It was my fault, and in the future there'll be more restrictions during character creation (which the players have actually suggested to me).

I've got about a one or two game wait in the DMing rotation I'm in, so I'll probably be starting this campaign sometime in the summer or fall, so I've got some time to try to fix this, open the plot up and plan for most player choices (most, if not all revolve around "let's avoid the plot").

So if I understand this correctly, the campaign hasn't started yet and won't do so for several months at least? Then why not ask them to make different characters?

Personally, I'd recommend sitting down with the whole group at least once before the campaign starts, talk to them about the campaign you want to run, and ask them what they want. Then see if they can come around to make a group of good guys, or adjust your campaign for the evil characters if you think you want to run it. (which is important! A GM isn't just a service provider, if you want to run the "good" campaign and you feel running a group of evil characters is no fun for you, you're well within your rights to say "No I don't want to GM for those characters)

And again, giving out some information about the campaign in advance is not a bad thing. I know that especially as a new GM, it's very tempting to keep the whole plot one huge secret, but being upfront and honest with the players can go a long way to help them get into the campaign and create characters that fit in.

[Thrudd]

there's the thing though..it's still a valid question. just because a group or cause has "good" painted on it in big sky blue letters doesn't mean every single person feels the need to join it. just because the big overwhelming force has "evil" in the same fashion but blood red doesn't mean people will always think "well they're mean so I, as a logical person, will risk my life for the minute chance of stopping them". if you allow evil characters this way of thinking is even more likely (unless you get one of those players who seems to play evil as "misunderstood anti-hero"...oh how I hate that) and the only way you're likely to solve it is presenting a way that actually piques their interest such as the organization being a means to personal gain and power or or the empire and emperor being very openly willing to crush any competition on the evil front.

I think the point is, these things should get hashed out between the players and DM before the campaign even starts.
If you have an idea for a campaign, it is reasonable to ask the players to create characters that will have a reason to participate in that campaign together. If the players don't like your game concept and don't want to make characters which conform to your idea, then you need to come up with a new idea. Hopefully you haven't already spent a lot of time planning the adventure.

It is a bit crappy if the group never wants to play anything that you (the DM) wants to play and always shoots down all your ideas. If you know your players are likely to do this, it may be smart not to spend too much time designing adventures and stories that they likely will never want to participate in. Just create a sandbox world, let them make what characters they want and go to town.
In the case of the OP, it sounds like these are the types of players he has. They want to do what they want to do and aren't in the habit of participating in stories or planning their characters together. It doesn't sound like they reacted well when they were asked to participate in his campaign idea.

In the case of the star wars example: "why would I want to join the rebellion?" is a question the player has to answer, not the DM. The DM tells you the characters are going to be rebel operatives. The players need to design characters that are rebels, and explain their motives for being such. Your players don't want to make rebel characters? Then the discussion turns to: "Someone else will have to DM, then, because the campaign I have prepared is for rebel characters." or "What characters do you want to make? They need to be able to work together. Give me a couple weeks and I will come up with a campaign for them."

edit: I see Delta said the same thing as me at the same time.

[veti]

This is why you don't build weaknesses/solutions into your campaign. You build problems, obstacles, scenarios. It's up to the PCs how they handle those, and whether they succeed or not.

In this scenario, I suggest you need to rewrite part of your setting. Delay the BBEG's plans. Come up with some reason why it just doesn't want to force a confrontation at this point. Heck, just making it aware of the not-Federation should give it pause. That will buy you time to do more radical rewriting.

As for the queen - sorry, but she's irredeemable in her present form. Your options are, basically, to let the PCs kill her, or otherwise write her out. I would suggest: knowing she can't win the fight, she surrenders to the BBEG, which takes its captive and vanishes, who knows where, to avoid the nukes. (Gives you a plot hook for a future campaign, if you even want one.) Then let the players come up with their own plan to contain the outbreak, and give them a chance to present that to the coalition to prevent the Rocks Fall part of the ending.

[MonochromeTiger]

I think the point is, these things should get hashed out between the players and DM before the campaign even starts.
If you have an idea for a campaign, it is reasonable to ask the players to create characters that will have a reason to participate in that campaign together. If the players don't like your game concept and don't want to make characters which conform to your idea, then you need to come up with a new idea. Hopefully you haven't already spent a lot of time planning the adventure.

It is a bit crappy if the group never wants to play anything that you (the DM) wants to play and always shoots down all your ideas. If you know your players are likely to do this, it may be smart not to spend too much time designing adventures and stories that they likely will never want to participate in. Just create a sandbox world, let them make what characters they want and go to town.
In the case of the OP, it sounds like these are the types of players he has. They want to do what they want to do and aren't in the habit of participating in stories or planning their characters together. It doesn't sound like they reacted well when they were asked to participate in his campaign idea.

In the case of the star wars example: "why would I want to join the rebellion?" is a question the player has to answer, not the DM. The DM tells you the characters are going to be rebel operatives. The players need to design characters that are rebels, and explain their motives for being such. Your players don't want to make rebel characters? Then the discussion turns to: "Someone else will have to DM, then, because the campaign I have prepared is for rebel characters." or "What characters do you want to make? They need to be able to work together. Give me a couple weeks and I will come up with a campaign for them."

that's part of what I'm pointing out though, player opinion and DM expectations are both failing to get across here. in failing to restrict alignment to the ones the campaign was set up for the players choosing actions anywhere south of good shouldn't have been surprising, yet because in this case the DM THOUGHT they were going to stay with the previous group's standard of no evil characters instead of setting the rule up ahead of time it causes this disparity between what they will do and what will give a "win".

if the DM is actually saying "this is the campaign, here's what you're doing, make characters that fit that" and the players are saying "ok we agree and this sounds like a campaign we want to play" then yes it's the player's fault for immediately going outside of that and messing with the plot..but when all they get is the setting with nothing to actually work with that's not being told "here's what you're doing make characters that fit" it's being told "this is the world I made, all ready? yes? no? maybe? good".

seriously every single part of this can be solved by discussing with the players BEFORE making the campaign, getting a rough idea of how they play, letting them understand what you as the DM are willing to put into the game. all of it could be solved by a simple talk that didn't happen.

[Excession]

What I got from the players (I kid you not) was a general "Well why are we part of this organization? What if we don't want to be part of this organization?" Valid questions (at least the first I feel) but has the feel of "Let's make the DM wrack their brain to try and conform this to us instead of us working within the scope that the DM has laid down".

Those are valid questions, but it's not up to you to answer them. It's their character, making up that reason is on them. You present the scope of the game, and the players make characters that can fit. That said, a certain amount of flexibility is good. If most of the players want to play ex-cons in your Texas Rangers game, you might just end up playing Breakout Kings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_Kings).

At some point though if your players don't want to play in that scope they can leave. And if you end up with no players then either the scope needs adjustment or you need new players.

[NichG]

So, wait. The PCs are evil, and the outcome of 'let the BBEG kill the queen' is basically 'interplanetary fleet takes care of the problem and glasses a few cities'. Why is this actually a bad ending for them, assuming they're out of town at the time? Its not 'interplanetary fleet glasses the entire surface of the world' after all.

I mean, I don't see how its a good ending either, but it just seems more like 'why should the PCs care either way?'.

The #1 thing to do is start from what the PCs care about and let things flow from there. If the PCs are evil, it may take a little extra work, but you actually have the tools already. Just think about all the things that get them fired up, and then you can lead them around with those things. The players will put a lot more creativity and effort into pursuing the things they're actually interested in than into the pre-defined 'endings' and such.

For example, the PCs resent authority. Fine. This means it'd be really easy to make the interplanetary coalition the enemy. Of course, a huge coalition isn't a target that PCs like this will likely understand, but a figurehead or a single visible target NPC would easily earn their wrath. They will put much more effort into making that NPC's life miserable/short than they would trying to counteract some world-wide problem.

What I would do with PCs like these is give them lots of NPCs to hate, who are difficult to attack at first (mostly because they're just not directly present - the commander of the quarantine force, sending a projected image down to the surface), but which the PCs can play ways to access. As a result of doing what they need to in order to access those targets, the PCs will naturally gain more mobility, more versatility, more options, and so it will be harder to end up in a 'stuck' state.

That doesn't mean you have to throw out the BBEG plotlines and stuff, but instead of being center-stage, they're scenery. The stuff becomes gossip, bad stuff happens in the world, the world becomes more and more of a crapsack place. It gives the PCs an option to decide 'yeah, we don't like this' or alternately to decide 'not our problem'. Its also a good way of rendering out the importance of the PCs' actions and show them that they can affect the world.

The key to this though is not to have everything bad in the world 'come home' immediately. If some city gets glassed, its halfway across the world. Maybe at the closest its someplace the PCs were in a month ago, and they hear 'oh yeah, that place is gone now - everyone died'. But it shouldn't generally be 'you didn't stop the BBEG, so now the city you're in is getting glassed' unless they seek that out. The world gets worse and worse on the whole, things get more brutal (for example, some guards of what was once a fairly good-natured kingdom are seen shooting a couple wanderers on sight for showing signs of infection, out of fear that the coalition will glass their city), but it isn't the DM punishing the PCs, its the DM describing the progression of the world.

Once its about 'punishing the PCs', its going to go sour. So you have to avoid that at all costs.

[TriForce]

ok, well a lot of people have responded already, so im probably gonna repeat stuff, but here is my 5 cents:

first of all, a campaign (in my opinion) should be centered around the PC's. their actions, their decisions, etc, should be the interesting part of the story thats created. the first problem you have, is that you created a story already, and only then considered the PC's in it. the fact that your queen is such a important part of the story means that the story is about HER, and not your PC's. this might even be a reason why they dislike her to begin with. NPC's are window dressing, just like a house, a painting, a road or a field of grass. the way i understood your story, the pc's are only there to make the queen look awesome, so i cant really blame them for going against it.

then, your BBEG. sounds like you designed him to be impossible to defeat without help, something i dislike, becouse of the same reasons as above. make the bbeg a challenge, make it so that they need help GETTING to the bbeg, but for the love of god, dont make it so that they cant defeat him without direct help of a DMPC.

what i usually do in my campaigns is the following: i make a general world, with some quirks. people from one city only wear blue clothes. there is a city where almost everyone is a (low lvl) mage, they encounter a creature that REALLY has no reason to be at the location they find him, etc, go nuts, make random stuff up, but dont do TOO many of them at the same time. i dont plan for WHY things are like that, and most of the time, i dont even have a clue when my players encounter things like that. when the players ask me OOC, i just awnser "what will your character do in order to find such a thing out?" some of these things will get ignored by my players, but others will be investigated. thats how i figure out what their characters are interested in, and i will usually make something up on the spot, sometimes the speculation of the players themselves gives me ideas, the point is, from that point on, i can build the campaign bigger, using the small thing as a sort of basis

[Mr Beer]

Less "cannot be betrayed" and more "It would be wise to not betray this guy". Taking the Archdevil for example, should the PCs betray it, what's to stop it from making the character's lives a living hell?

I am a firm believer in consequences as a result of player agency. Sounds like you are shying away from the idea of a powerful entity assisting the PCs because they will inevitably betray him and he'll punish them for it. To me this sounds like a fun reason to hammer home obvious truths to an evil party that thinks they're immune to consequences.

The trick is to hit then where it hurts, as opposed to just obliterating them all. If they're good and pissed off and want revenge, well then you have a plot hook.

[Rhynn]

I tried presenting something like this to the players for an alternate campaign I was going to run instead of the one presented here (to give me more time to plan and map out and stuff).

[...]

What I got from the players (I kid you not) was a general "Well why are we part of this organization? What if we don't want to be part of this organization?"

I generally agree with you that this...

has the feel of "Let's make the DM wrack their brain to try and conform this to us instead of us working within the scope that the DM has laid down".

However, there's an important caveat for scoping: you should run a campaign you want to run and the players want to play. That's a pretty important balance to strike.

Also, while I generally think that level of scope-setting is fine, some players dislike being told what choices their characters have made, or having their choices limited. Usually, I set scope by laying down some things that aren't choices the PCs made (like all being born in the same city or to the same tribe), or set a physical scope.

But ultimately, if your players want to be inconsiderate and go outside of the scope of the game, you're going to be in a pickle.

You could start by presenting some settings or setting ideas, both pre-published and ones you've come up with. Talk to your players and choose one working with them. Then, consult them on what they, as a group, want to do in the setting (in SW, do they want to play Jedi, Sith, elite Stormtroopers, smugglers, Rebels...). The key here is that they have to agree on something as a group - that's their responsibility. They can't expect you to run a good or coherent game if all of them insist on different things. And you have a veto power, but use it judiciously: ultimately, your veto comes down to "well, I'm not running a game unless..." and that's very final and can come across petulant or petty. ("I'm taking my ball and going home!") Even when it's not.

Personally, I've been spitballing campaign ideas (all for one system) lately, and I've come up with something like 10 I could start developing, just on spare time over the last two weeks. Next week, I'm going to present these to my players, let them choose what they think sounds best, and then work with them to set the scope: where do they want to play in the settings, and what do they want to do in them?

[Haggler]

I must say i find this whole conundrum pretty facinating. First off be sure that your players will always find a way to paraphrace Jeff Goldblom from Jurasic Park. And that way will often be nothing like you expected.

Now to the problem at hand. Let´s look at it from other perspectives than the PCs for a while and if the PC can figure that out it can be done to solve a lot of trouble.

The Queen´s options/outcomes

1. Try at stop sister (BBEG) herself and save her life, know she will probably fail and die. In which case Interplanatary coalition (IC) kills thousands upon thousands as well as the BBEG.

2. Get helped by PC to kill her sister. Sister dies and noone else, except a PC or two.

Obviously the Queen will chose 2 if she is good and just and have the option as it would save her subjects and herself and the sister dies in both outcomes.

In case no PC want to help, the Queen is most likley to try and talk the IC out of glassing her country and instead send a black ops team to do the PCs job with her help.

But now to the real fun part, the sisters (BBEG) options/outcomes

1. Fight her sister and win, get glassed

2. Fight her sister and the PCs and lose, get killed

If we assume the PC have knowledge of the IC, and they must for the question about if they can chose a "good" ending to be relevant. Then all they reasonably have to do is convincingly point out to the BBEG about the posible outcomes and that should make her put her evil plans on hold until she can figure out a way to not get glassed by the IC. Possibly they can offer to help her defeat them and then when she is weakend from the fight killer her themselfs. No BBEG and no IC. Or they can persuade the Queen that this is a way to save her sister and thay they will help her defeat the BBEG non leathaly if she agrees to help as well. Sisters united with PCs v.s the IC.

This since the IC seems to be a bunch of people that are willing to kill thousands but don´t seem to have a group capable of doing the PCs job and on top of that have oppinions on who are to ruel a soverigin state even if the PC have proved themselfs capable of stoping the same problem that the IC considered the queen a necessety to keep in line. It would in other world be more than possible to persuade such a ruthless bunch of not nice people that the PC are actually better than the Queen as the rulers since they are as evil and ruthless as the IC and will do what is needed to keep the pease and order (No risk of them being softhearted and failing to kill of future threats).

To sum up, some good old diplomacy between Queen, BBEG, PCs and IC can end up in a lot of new situations.

[Silus]

you're making the assumption they're all spell casters when what was said was "the whole thing culminates with the players (around lvl 16-20) taking on a high powered level 20 sorcerer". the only confirmed spell caster there is the sorcerer and apparently the queen set up to counterspell everything.

Actually, the party consists of a Magus, a Sorcerer, an Alchemist, a Cleric and a Fighter.



So if I understand this correctly, the campaign hasn't started yet and won't do so for several months at least? Then why not ask them to make different characters?

Personally, I'd recommend sitting down with the whole group at least once before the campaign starts, talk to them about the campaign you want to run, and ask them what they want. Then see if they can come around to make a group of good guys, or adjust your campaign for the evil characters if you think you want to run it. (which is important! A GM isn't just a service provider, if you want to run the "good" campaign and you feel running a group of evil characters is no fun for you, you're well within your rights to say "No I don't want to GM for those characters)

And again, giving out some information about the campaign in advance is not a bad thing. I know that especially as a new GM, it's very tempting to keep the whole plot one huge secret, but being upfront and honest with the players can go a long way to help them get into the campaign and create characters that fit in.

Well the whole thing with the Queen and the Coalition and the BBEG is all for Act 2. I've already run Act 1 and it was a major headache, partly due to the players (intentionally giving the new guy a hard time, or so it seemed) and partly my fault (I made quite a few mistakes that they still tease me about. The Pink Mist covered in the link in my siggy is a big one). And I admit, I did try to keep a good deal of the plot secret for a cinematic sort of twist/surprise. That and to try and impress them :smallredface: like "Wow, I didn't see that coming. Holy crap."



This is why you don't build weaknesses/solutions into your campaign. You build problems, obstacles, scenarios. It's up to the PCs how they handle those, and whether they succeed or not.

In this scenario, I suggest you need to rewrite part of your setting. Delay the BBEG's plans. Come up with some reason why it just doesn't want to force a confrontation at this point. Heck, just making it aware of the not-Federation should give it pause. That will buy you time to do more radical rewriting.

As for the queen - sorry, but she's irredeemable in her present form. Your options are, basically, to let the PCs kill her, or otherwise write her out. I would suggest: knowing she can't win the fight, she surrenders to the BBEG, which takes its captive and vanishes, who knows where, to avoid the nukes. (Gives you a plot hook for a future campaign, if you even want one.) Then let the players come up with their own plan to contain the outbreak, and give them a chance to present that to the coalition to prevent the Rocks Fall part of the ending.

Well the option will be on the table, I'm sure of that.

Party rolls up to the palace, gets to the throne room to witness the BBEG gripping the queen by the throat. They get there just in time to hear the queen's surrender. Roll initiative, inform the players that their actions will determine what happens next. Set general outcomes (this being for the things I can initially think and plan for):

1) Attack the BBEG (Any of the PCs), the BBEG ports the Queen away (burning a lvl 9 Interplanetary Teleport spell) and engages the party. I suppose going easy on them and not fighting as tactically as I'd normally run it. No first round Meteor Storm or Mass Suffocation (or possibly either spell at all) or, well, any lvl 9 spell. Maybe drop their level down so they don't have access to lvl 9 spells or something. Seriously, THOSE are what make the fight hard.
2) Attempted diplomacy. Let that play out to whatever end it plays out to. I've the feeling it'll, like most things, bite me in the butt later and lead to endless amounts of "Haha dude I can't believe you allowed us to do that".
3) Do nothing. Either uncertainty or inter-party squabbling about what course of action should be taken. After two rounds (I'll use a timer if I need to) the BBEG and the Queen Interplanetary Teleport away. What the PCs do after that is up to them (likely raid the palace).

Then I suppose I'll improv it if they decide to pull something I'm not expecting.

[Delta]

And I admit, I did try to keep a good deal of the plot secret for a cinematic sort of twist/surprise. That and to try and impress them :smallredface: like "Wow, I didn't see that coming. Holy crap."

That's fine, but always remember that a twist/surprise has no "dramatic worth" on its own. A surprise means giving someone something they did not expect, in place of something they did expect. So you better make sure that they like what you give them more than what they had gotten instead.

For example, I once had a GM pull a rabbit on me after first declaring we'd all be playing characters in a "wizards' academy" setting and we all loved it, I put real work into my character, give him friends and background, we even cooperated between the players because we wanted to have some social depth to this setting.

First session, the GM drops us through some kind of portal and most of the campaign takes place on some weird other plane. That's one case where I (and most other players) would've preferred what we had expected to the surprise.

Now this is not supposed to sound like a lecture, I have no idea about the details of your plot and what kind of surprises you are going to spring at them, it's just something that took me years to really figure out, and it's just my opinion that if you feel like the players aren't making the "right" characters for what you're trying to run, sometimes telling them a little bit more about what you're trying to run can go a long way.

[Silus]

Now this is not supposed to sound like a lecture, I have no idea about the details of your plot and what kind of surprises you are going to spring at them, it's just something that took me years to really figure out, and it's just my opinion that if you feel like the players aren't making the "right" characters for what you're trying to run, sometimes telling them a little bit more about what you're trying to run can go a long way.

Well in the campaign I'm planning there's not going to be any foreseeable surprises on my part. The players are too difficult for me as a new DM to manage while keeping things all secret to spring on them later. What I think would be "OMG WTF HOLY CRAP" surprises seem to just get reduced to "...huh" which kinda takes its tole on both my ego and creativity.

[Driderman]

"Ok, you guys'll be members of an inter-planar MIB/Texas Rangers organization, solving planar problems." with the intention of general free reign while within the confines of the mission and a monetary bonus for completing optional tasks like "no excessive killing" or "retrieve X object". Very much a "Here's the problem, how are you going to solve it? Ok, give that a try, we'll see where it goes."

What I got from the players (I kid you not) was a general "Well why are we part of this organization? What if we don't want to be part of this organization?" Valid questions (at least the first I feel) but has the feel of "Let's make the DM wrack their brain to try and conform this to us instead of us working within the scope that the DM has laid down". Like the Star Wars example. The DM says "Okay, I want for my players to defeat the Empire and kill the Emperor in the end" and the players respond with "Well why do we have to defeat the Empire? Why can't we work with them?" and every answer you give them (Human rights violations, totalitarian form of government, genocide, etc) is either not good enough of just seems to urge them to join the Empire.


To be honest, your players sound like trolls to me. Not saying you haven't gotten a lot of good advice in this thread, cause you have, and of course you should provide some decent background for players to build their characters from when you set an initial premise for the game, but that being said, players also have a responsibility to try and work with the initial premise of the plot. Maybe they're used to massively detailed backgrounds for their setting/organization and felt yours was a little light?

[GungHo]

If they want to be contrarians and refuse to stay in scope, say to them, "ok, since you guys have worn me down, you guys tell me what you want to do. I am going to go get coffee. Please come up with a plan you guys wish to agree on by the time I get back." You run the game, but that doesn't mean you're there for them to beat on. If you come back and they haven't come up with a single idea, then move on with the game you've planned. If they have, run that idea as best you can and have fun with it. If it goes off the rails, they picked it.

Honestly, there are times where my own guys are a bit onery and I've pushed all the DM tools over to them and said, "the DM position is now vacant. Your turn." They thought I was kidding. I was not. We now rotate in our group.

[Driderman]

Most of us have probably tried being there, where for one reason or another you feel like the GMs justifications for his background or initial premise is sketchy, or simply just bad, and as a result you start act out much like the players in question are described.
I know it happens to me from time to time, and others in my extended gaming circle, and the number one reason for it is usually homebrew settings and campaigns that feel unpolished, unprepared or seem to mainly be made to showcase off stuff that the GM thinks is totally awesome, with no regard to whether his or her players are actually interested in his Anime/Twilight/Whatever Mary Sue Theme Park.

[Segev]

Okay. So the players have indicated to you what they want to do: They say they want to sign up to work FOR the BBEG with the intent of backstabbing her after she kills the Good Queen.

I'm guessing they've made clear enough to the Good Queen that they don't much care for her. So, from her perspective, they are not a good choice for people to work with to stop her sister, the BBEG.

Two options, here:

1) Have the Good Queen recruit a party of good, heroic NPC adventurers to play the role you'd originally cast for the PCs, and let the PCs work for the BBEG to run interference on the Good Queen's Champions. After all, they are planning to sign up to work for the BBEG; have the BBEG give them marching orders.

2) Have the BBEG recognize that she can take on the Good Queen and win. She may not care too much if the Coalition bombards the planet, but she probably would PREFER a planet more intact than less. Also, if they bombard HER location...well, she doesn't want to die, does she? So, what you have her do is use her teleportation magics (which she of course has; I know you posted her spell list, but you can probably edit it if needs be) to send the PCs up to infiltrate and disable the flagship of the fleet in orbit, with instructions on how to get from ship to ship and orders to disable orbital weaponry, etc.

In the first case, the PCs have the option of playing it out straight (and maybe being backstabbed by the BBEG when she doesn't need them anymore), or of playing it in a way that will arrange for the Good Queen's Champions to have an edge, and pull their betrayal of the BBEG by conserving their own resources and deliberately weakening the enemy party enough that, when the PCs turn and make their move on the BBEG, they are the nearly-fresh party against the exhausted NPCs.

They should, ideally, make the BBEG expend her horrid death magics on the enemy NPCs or the Good Queen's counterspells.

But don't force them down this path, either. Just give them opportunity to do what they say they want to do, and see how they take advantage of the situation to achieve their ends.

In the second case, it shifts the campaign a bit: they're no longer participating in that BBEG fight; instead, they're doing a dungeon run. They might just decide to hijack the ship. Or they might fail. Or they could succeed, and then need to stay out of the victorious BBEG's way if that BBEG is going to backstab THEM.

Again, don't force anything, though in sending them to the ship, you narrow possibilities to what can be done in that dungeon crawl.


Finally, depending on where you are in the plot as you play the game, there's a third option: extend the game. Let the PCs level up on adventure after adventure, building their own power until they're high enough level that the BBEG is not "suicide" to take on.

[NichG]

Generally when pitching the initial scope, if its something limited, then I phrase it in a character-building based way.

So instead of 'you guys are Texas Rangers', I say 'okay, you guys should bring characters that would join a secret organization of good guy cops'. That puts the onus on them to figure out how to make a character that would buy into the premise rather than the onus on you to convince them that their already-planned characters would do this arbitrary thing without knowing anything about those characters.

Sometimes players will have problems with something even as clear as this, but at that point you basically put a simple test of it in the first session and send any characters that fail the test off, and ask the player to make a new one. For example, I ran a campaign where the initial scope was 'Your characters, for various reasons, will decide to join a secret occult espionage organization that captures and secures magical artifacts. Decide what those reasons might be, and we'll run your recruitment scene'.

One player initially brought a character who basically kept trying to negotiate special treatment that a recruit at an espionage agency wouldn't possibly be able to get (e.g. 'I'm French nobility, so if I'm going to work for the British secret service, you can't send me on missions that might harm France and its interests, or expose my identity publically. Oh, and I can't work on Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. And I get to veto any mission you send me on.'). So I basically had the recruiter say 'ah, thank you for your time, we'll get someone else then' and said OOC 'it was your job to make a character who could take this offer; I won't force your character to take the offer, but this is the gateway to the rest of the campaign'.

They came up with a slightly altered concept for the character that did work with the whole thing, and continued on with that character. If the conflicts between the premise and character had sat unspoken for 15 games it would have been a disaster.

So in your Texas Rangers case, if the players say 'we want to go off and join the empire' then say 'okay, you do so', collect their sheets, have them make new characters that could join the rangers, and use their old characters as villains. Don't get into an OOC argument about why 'their characters would do X' - its their responsibility as players to come up with characters who buy into the initial premise.

That said, if the players actually hate the premise, game will not be fun. If no one wants to play a good guy, then you shouldn't run good-guy plotlines for them, because it simply won't work. They'll end up being "good" guys who just do the usual horrible stuff and then argue OOC about it.

[veti]

Set general outcomes (this being for the things I can initially think and plan for):

1) Attack the BBEG (Any of the PCs), the BBEG ports the Queen away (burning a lvl 9 Interplanetary Teleport spell) and engages the party. I suppose going easy on them and not fighting as tactically as I'd normally run it. No first round Meteor Storm or Mass Suffocation (or possibly either spell at all) or, well, any lvl 9 spell. Maybe drop their level down so they don't have access to lvl 9 spells or something. Seriously, THOSE are what make the fight hard.

I wouldn't shy away from using Meteor Swarm on round 1. It should be perfectly survivable at their level, but it'll rub home to them nicely that this opponent is not to be trifled with. The trick is: having made its point, the BBEG won't hang around to finish the fight. (Why would it? Why does it even care?) It'll fight for a couple of rounds, tops, before bamfing out. It's not going to hang around to risk being glassed.


2) Attempted diplomacy. Let that play out to whatever end it plays out to. I've the feeling it'll, like most things, bite me in the butt later and lead to endless amounts of "Haha dude I can't believe you allowed us to do that".

The key to that is to work out in detail just what the BBEG does want, what it would regard as Shiny, and what it really doesn't give a rat's backside about. Category 1 it will insist on, category 2 it will insist on, but might be persuaded to give way if the players offer something else equally significant (to it, not to them) in exchange - although of course, that will also probably cause it to up its demands, if they point out the existence of some Shiny that it hadn't previously thought of - and category 3 it will give way on, grudgingly and with much show of condescension. Ideally, the players will walk away thinking that they've won, but holding only category 3 concessions, and preferably having given up some Cat 2 or even 1's of their own.


3) Do nothing. Either uncertainty or inter-party squabbling about what course of action should be taken. After two rounds (I'll use a timer if I need to) the BBEG and the Queen Interplanetary Teleport away. What the PCs do after that is up to them (likely raid the palace).

This would be a good point to have a Coalition emissary of some sort appear (I suggest using a holographic projection or some such), and tell the players to make their pitch for not simply nuking the whole area right now. Obviously the Coalition won't be swayed by considerations of collateral damage, but if the players can come up with a sufficiently convincing alternative plan, they might be talked into staying their hand.

If the PCs are as evil as you say, they might prefer to simply teleport themselves away and let the rest of the area take its chances. That's OK, if that's what they consider a win then let them have it. If they stay long enough to loot the palace, however...

Edit: Actually, I'd have this happen next in any of these scenarios. The moment the BBEG vanishes, this dude appears and gives them someone new to be afraid of/mad at.

What I'm getting at is, it looks like you've tried to railroad the players and they've revolted. That's past history, and I guess you've all learned from the experience, but the way forward from here is: "OK, if you do things your way then here are the consequences. What are you going to do about them?"

[Silus]

Well, got the weekly game today, so I'll endeavor to bring up some things to the group:

1) A general "Ok, so after the initial unavoidable dungeon (escaping a city) what is the party's plans?" question.
2) A request for a co-DM to A) help with the inevitable damage control from the PCs blindsiding me with something out of left field, and B) to help keep my bad/misguided DMing under control.
3) See about getting a short list of things that should be clarified about the campaign world that can or may come up (Still building the setting as I go, soooo yeah). Again, the blindsided thing applies here.

Anyone else have any suggestions on things that ought to be brought up to the players? I'm not running the game today, so the little thing about my campaign would have to be brief and not take up longer than, say, five minutes.

[Raine_Sage]

Well, got the weekly game today, so I'll endeavor to bring up some things to the group:

1) A general "Ok, so after the initial unavoidable dungeon (escaping a city) what is the party's plans?" question.
2) A request for a co-DM to A) help with the inevitable damage control from the PCs blindsiding me with something out of left field, and B) to help keep my bad/misguided DMing under control.
3) See about getting a short list of things that should be clarified about the campaign world that can or may come up (Still building the setting as I go, soooo yeah). Again, the blindsided thing applies here.

Anyone else have any suggestions on things that ought to be brought up to the players? I'm not running the game today, so the little thing about my campaign would have to be brief and not take up longer than, say, five minutes.

Since you've been having trouble getting on the same wavelength as the group maybe ask them some sample questions about different possible scenarios and make a note of what they focus on in order to try and gauge future responses.

For example while you're asking what they want to do after escaping the city throw out some potential examples of options they have open to them. Given what you've aid about you're group, they're likely to ignore the options you present them with and hone in on X Y And Z instead. However since they're doing this outside of the actual campaign, it gives you time to prepare notes for the next one. Did they seem keenly interested in economics? A strange fascination with beet farming? A desire to tame small fluffy animals? Having a week in advance to get everything sorted can be a godsend sometimes.

However you should remember it's always ok to say "I'm not sure" or better "Your character isn't sure" when confronted with a question or plot hole. If a player says something doesn't make sense, agree with them and move on. There's no shame in going "Yeah my bad guys."

Conversely, nothing about your setting should be written in stone. If there's something in Canon that's getting in the way of fun cut it out. You can always change canon, the coalition remembers another reason they shouldn't gas everyone or the BBEG catches wind of being nuked and decides burning revenge can take back seat to basic survival. Not for this campaign necessarily since you've already decided on a course of action but just for future reference.

[Silus]

Well, asked the players what plans they had for the campaign after escaping the infested city they're in. Basically ran down like this:

Cleric: Create a Necropolis, resource gathering, world domination
Alchemist: Golem body?
(Vampire) Sorcerer: Go with the flow, rank up bounty, cash in on said bounty
(Werewolf) Fighter: Drop Vampire in the ocean via chained coffin. Obtain a+5 weapon. Turn into a Graveknight, lead Cleric's army.
Magus: Forge a mythic level artifact.

Kill the queen
Work with, side with then betray the Coalition
No opinion on the BBEG.

:smallannoyed:

I've the feeling I didn't explain what I was looking for well enough. However, what I've got should be good enough to work with. Maybe. Somehow drop hints and rumors and plot hooks for locations that may or may not have equal parts stuff for their little personal quests and fluff. Also, possibly have the Alchemist as a co-DM, though he highly suggested that I scrap and retool the campaign, though I feel that I've come far enough that it would be better to see it through to the end at this point.

[Driderman]

Well, asked the players what plans they had for the campaign after escaping the infested city they're in. Basically ran down like this:

Cleric: Create a Necropolis, resource gathering, world domination
Alchemist: Golem body?
(Vampire) Sorcerer: Go with the flow, rank up bounty, cash in on said bounty
(Werewolf) Fighter: Drop Vampire in the ocean via chained coffin. Obtain a+5 weapon. Turn into a Graveknight, lead Cleric's army.
Magus: Forge a mythic level artifact.

Kill the queen
Work with, side with then betray the Coalition
No opinion on the BBEG.

:smallannoyed:

I've the feeling I didn't explain what I was looking for well enough. However, what I've got should be good enough to work with. Maybe. Somehow drop hints and rumors and plot hooks for locations that may or may not have equal parts stuff for their little personal quests and fluff. Also, possibly have the Alchemist as a co-DM, though he highly suggested that I scrap and retool the campaign, though I feel that I've come far enough that it would be better to see it through to the end at this point.

So basically, you got 5 players that aren't really interested in a common story, but just wants to do their own thing? That makes it really, really hard to create a coherent story based on the party's actions as a group. As far as I'm reading it, your campaign story is basically a chore that the players feel they are forced to deal with, while they actually want to be doing something else entirely.

Next time you run a campaign, either tell the players the premise beforehand, as already suggested (this story will be about of group of good-aligned people who decide to join up with an organisation to do/prevent [plot hook]) or sit down and figure out what they want the story to be about, and design the campaign from that.

[TriForce]

i think the players understood the question wrong. you wanted awnsers to the question "what will your characters do after this part of the campaign?" and you got awnsers to the question "what will your characters do after the campaign? "

[Silus]

i think the players understood the question wrong. you wanted awnsers to the question "what will your characters do after this part of the campaign?" and you got awnsers to the question "what will your characters do after the campaign? "

Aye, that's what I was thinking. Gonna broach the question to the party again next week while I plan up monsters this week for the dungeons. Most are gonna need to be homebrewed/altered creatures (Like taking a CR25 and dumbing it down to ~16-18)

[Oko and Qailee]

So outcomes are as follows:
1) Side with the queen, stop the BBEG, save the world and keep their corner from getting blasted into rubble/quarantined.
2) Side with the queen, then backstab her when she's weak. Results in the world being saved, but the Coalition retaliates against the PCs for killing a sitting ruler and throwing a large chunk of the world into chaos under their watch.
3) (What the players want to try to do) Pit the queen and the BBEG against each other. BBEG kills the queen, PCs offer their services to the BBEG with the intent of backstabbing said BBEG. Results in the PCs getting killed by the BBEG (Via reserve multi-person, high-fatality rate spells in a "haha, no" way), the Coalition quarantining the nation and turning the palace where the BBEG is into a 10-mile wide crater.



TBH you did create a "no win scenario" for them. If they want to be evil and pit the BBEG and Queen against each other... well there's no reason this can't be an evil campaign where evil wins except for the fact that you don't want evil to win.

[Angel Bob]

You know, in keeping with what the above poster just said -- it could be interesting to let the Evil PCs have their way with the world and end the campaign with them victorious, having created their necropolis, viciously slain their enemies, and just generally broken all that is good and holy in the world.

Then you convince your players to run a Good campaign for a change of flavor... and set it in this world, a few decades after the Evil PCs thoroughly messed it up. :smallamused:

[Silus]

You know, in keeping with what the above poster just said -- it could be interesting to let the Evil PCs have their way with the world and end the campaign with them victorious, having created their necropolis, viciously slain their enemies, and just generally broken all that is good and holy in the world.

Then you convince your players to run a Good campaign for a change of flavor... and set it in this world, a few decades after the Evil PCs thoroughly messed it up. :smallamused:

Aye, the current plan is to let the players do...more or less what they want. I can always run the campaign again for a new group and retcon this train wreck.

[Angel Bob]

I know where you're coming from with players going off the rails. I started my players off in a city with extensive notes on the vibrant NPCs and intriguing locales, with not a few different adventure hooks that I dangled in front of them. I expected the group to stay in the city, get to know and love the diverse cast of NPCs, and 'Course, in the second session, they decided to ignore the obvious clues and just set off questing for the Helm of Seven Deaths.

I was a little disappointed, but ah well, the most important thing is to let the players influence the plot just as much as the DM, else they'll feel like they're just playing a video game. So I adjusted my approach and came up with a few dungeons for an on-the-road campaign, and we've all been having good fun ever since. :smallsmile:

I would recommend doing the same: learn to live without your epic, overarching plot between the Queen and the BBEG. It will be hard, don't get me wrong. But there's no reason you can't still have an epic story -- it's just that it will be a story of the triumph of Evil. Your story will feature the gloriously tragic fall of the noble Queen's empire, even as a kingdom of death rises to replace it. If your players cooperate, the endgame of the campaign could even feature a dramatic confrontation between the sorcerer and the werewolf who schemes to kill him (IIRC). You just need to change your approach: keep in mind that the PCs are the main characters, and build the story around them, with the Queen, BBEG, the Coalition, and all other NPCs as supporting characters. :smallwink:

[VBoheme]

My advice would be stop trying to write the ending for the players.

Your BBEG has a goal
The Queen has a goal

Keep them working and planing towards their goals

Let the PC's do what they do and respond apropriatly

Alter Npc's plans an actions accordingly.

See what happens

I stopped trying to figure out the solutions to the situations i made for my players. That's their job.


^^^ This. In combination with the one below that post (about how your NPC is needed to win) and one before, about more or less winging it.

Give them a task, see how they respond (ie: break into the fort). They'll start taking the story in the direction they want. Sure, it may not be the way you THOUGHT you wanted it. But if everyone has fun, why not?

ProTip: as others have said, you're pigeonholing yourself into certain endings, which amounts to painting yourself into a corner. There's only so much you can do with that. Or hey, sit 'em down and ask what they want to do. In suitable DM subversiveness. Listen to their plans without giving away the story.

Edit: The above kinda got my brain working. The whole "Triumph of Evil" = the story. It doesn't HAVE to be "Evil" in just one sense. Evil triumphs, sure. But what if Evil isn't evil? What if it's sort of morally gray?

[Thrudd]

I would recommend doing the same: learn to live without your epic, overarching plot between the Queen and the BBEG. It will be hard, don't get me wrong. But there's no reason you can't still have an epic story -- it's just that it will be a story of the triumph of Evil.

There's no reason the PC's necessarily need to triumph in the end, either. It would be a completely fitting end for the characters to betray and kill each other (it sounds like this is brewing between a couple of them), or overstep their abilities and fall ignobly to a powerful evil rival or a force of good. Being evil can be hard...you find there are so few people you can trust and you tend to make a lot of enemies. When you can't rely on anyone to protect you or have your back, personal power is everything. There's always somebody (or something) stronger, faster, smarter than you, and the stronger you get, the more you tend to attract their attention...

So long as whatever end is brought about by the players' choices and not by DM plot device/railroading, it should all be good.

[squirrelenst]

and if there's no crossfire? if the fight is simply a series of counterspells until the BBEG gets tired of it and starts stabbing?



Then they need to make a plan for that too. My suggestion wasn't "the right plan." It was one off the cuff random idea. I could not possibly list every crazy plan 5 evil masterminds could think of. The point is that mid to high level PCs have a huge number of options. The ones the OP listed are not all of the options. They are just the options listed. Do you really think that anyone who's not thinking outside the box should survive an encounter with a level 20?




or even more likely, if the group doesn't have those spells and resources set up ahead of time because they aren't optimizing for the fight?



Then they deserve a TPK. This isn't a random encounter. Its an end of story-arc boss fight. Plan for it or die.





the space police that are holding back because of good will with the queen who would then proceed to glass the place so the problem doesn't spread?



It does not matter why they are there, or doing or not doing things. They are there, and therefore a resource to a clever party. Just suppose that the PCs contact the space police, and tell them a stupid lie about a relic that keeps several suns alive being hidden on the planet. One good bluff check and suddenly you have away parties loaded with tech items to steal just roaming around on the surface, as well as more borrowed time before the bombardment. This is just one of hundreds of plans the PCs could try before saying they don't like the plot. Why aren't they teleporting the monsters onto the spaceships? That kind of chaos would give them all the cover they need for any plan, and if they're smart, the could even get the BBEG to pay them for doing it.

Don't like the plot? Use your character to change it!

The DM is not the only story teller in a given game.