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StealthyRobot
2015-10-16, 08:16 PM
I'm starting up a new dnd session, and I want to test my plans to see what way the party will subvert them. It's a level one party, and they start in the slums of a city.

Party info:
Human fighter, NG
Half Elf Bard, CN
Half Elf Rouge, CN
Half Elf Warlock, N
Gnome Wizard, LG
Tiefling Sorceror, NE (wanted)

It's gonna be crazy, I can tell that much already.
So as a session zero I got an NPC rouge (the Pc routes brother) to get them to do a heist. They will be stealing 5000 gold from the corrupt guard captain. There will only be one guard posted. The captain is said to be resting to let his burns heal. I should mention that this kingdom is almost entirely humans and magic is very rare.
*I'm expecting the heist to go flawlessly, but the captain won't be there. The gold cache is in the basement store room. When they go down they will find an empty crate with a note saying "treasure? Not here!".
So what do you think they will do here?
There are around 10 soldiers (cr 1/2) outside and in the house, and 4 guards (cr 1/4) with crossbows ordering their arrest. Obviously outnumbered they should surrender.
They will then be taken to the jail, where they will meet another prisoner who is an architect the king is trying to use to besiege castles the architect designed. The rouge employer gave his sister a secret mission earlier just saying "rescue the architect", she had no idea what he meant. He will show up an hour or so after their imprisonment. He reveals that he ratted them out, mainly to find and collect bounty on the wanted Tiefling. In thieves cant he will say the name of a city belonging to a kingdom the one they are in is at war with. He then leaves.
There is a sewer exit out of the city, and their possessions are being held elsewhere in the jail. I'm thinking that if they are there for around a week with no progress, they will be moved to a castle dungeon as a group so that an external paladin order can come and personally eradicate the Tiefling and his accomplices.
So what ways would a party like this do the unexpected? I usually miss obvious things, so the help is appreciated. Sorry for all the text!

TL;DR
The party gets rated out on a set up heist and is (hopefully) captured and must escape jail.

Fosco the Swift
2015-10-16, 08:33 PM
What are your players like? How much D&D have they played and what are their playing styles? Does anyone like to role-play, are there min-maxers and hack-n-slashers in the group? Who plays what character? And probably most importantly, what kind of a DM are you? Be honest, do you think you will railroad your players into getting arrested in order to keep them on your planned story arc, or are you willing to let them do their own thing? Try to answer all of these (and more if you can think of anything) as detailed as you can. It's hard to predict what a party is going to do if you don't know them.

StealthyRobot
2015-10-16, 09:18 PM
They have all played dnd for at least 4 years, except for the rouge who has played acouple. We're all good friends and everyone has made a pretty expensive backstory so there won't be anyone acting like the suicidal hero. We're all pretty smart too. Trying to do heavier on the roll play and do very little meta gaming.
As for me... I've only ever dm'd for two sessions before this. After receiving the first character backstory I got tons of ideas and essentially planned out the entire campaign from level 1 to 20 based off of this backstory. The players hated it and it ended in them killing eachother, followed by a harsh but helpful criticism list. So we're trying again and leaving it completely open ended. If I need to improve that's fine, I know my world enough for that. My little adventure arc goes no further than them escaping jail or being transported. I do have encounters planned that are based on characters backstories, but I am not going to force them anywhere. I'm mostly having them jailed together so they will be able to form some connection before they start adventuring. (I didn't do that last time, and with being in character I had to throw random things to keep them together.)
I hope this helps, I'm not really concerned at what exactly they're going to do, but what would anyone in general do in these given situations.
Thanks for the quick response, we're doing the session tomorrow

Thrudd
2015-10-16, 09:44 PM
If you want them in jail, you should just start there, and tell them how they each got there or ask them how they got there.
You can't depend on them being arrested during play, unless you completely railroad them. Most likely they will flee and escape, or even defeat the soldiers, they are a big party.

dps
2015-10-17, 01:24 AM
If you want them in jail, you should just start there, and tell them how they each got there or ask them how they got there.
You can't depend on them being arrested during play, unless you completely railroad them. Most likely they will flee and escape, or even defeat the soldiers, they are a big party.

The PCs are not going to surrender without a fight. Yes, they're outnumbered by more than 2:1, but from your description, their opponents will be split up, so the party has a good chance of defeating them in detail.

Fosco the Swift
2015-10-17, 06:43 AM
In thieves cant he will say the name of a city belonging to a kingdom the one they are in is at war with. He then leaves.Just to make sure I understood this, the Rogue employer tells the PC's, in a secret Thieves' language, the name of a city. That city is currently at war with the kingdom that is imprisoning the PC's.
There are two major openings in the general story: the guards and the jailbreak.

During the scene with the guards and the arrest, the PC's could do a few different things.
1. Comply with arrest and go to jail.
2. Attempt to fight their way out.
-2a. They either succeed
-2b. Get captured and jailed
-2c. Or get themselves killed.
3. Attempt to hide or sneak out.
4. The Good and Neutral players will be arrested while the Tiefling hides in the house or tries to sneak away.

During the prison scene, the main weakness comes if the PC's fail to escape. They either do not try or fail. Either way, this leads them to the Paladin execution scene. How will you handle that? To put it simply, you cannot let one of the PC's die just yet. It's too early and they really haven't made any major mistakes so far.

And if the Party does escape arrest, have some story ready. What does the Rogue employer do? Where is the plot-clue so the PC's can continue the story? A good basic idea would be to have the PC's try and hunt down the employer, if they can guess he ratted them out (maybe a sense motive roll if you want).

You sound like you have a great group, and also sound like a better DM than me so good luck with the session. Do your best to keep an open story and you should have a great game. And if you can, post the results of the session here. I'm curious to see how it all works out :smallsmile:

StealthyRobot
2015-10-17, 09:51 AM
I might just add more guards, maybe some elite ones too. They were told that most of the people they need to capture have magic, which is unkown and feared. Maybe even some who have trained to fight the kingdom of magic people. The soldiers are also on direct order not to kill unless absolutely necessary, in order for the paladins to deliver their righteous justice.
I'll be sure to tell you guys what happens. One of my favorite things about being a dm is seeing how the players interact with the world you have made.

mephnick
2015-10-17, 11:26 AM
Obviously outnumbered they should surrender.

https://media.giphy.com/media/HPvfnOuz1tOgg/giphy.gif

Fosco the Swift
2015-10-17, 05:13 PM
I might just add more guards, maybe some elite ones too.
Careful with this, as this is where railroading starts. But if you're careful, and have a good reason, your players shouldn't notice or care.

One of my favorite things about being a dm is seeing how the players interact with the world you have made. Agreed, although it is closely contested with actually building the world.

CombatBunny
2015-10-17, 09:00 PM
What could go wrong?

How about, some PCs stay to fight the guards to death while the rest split and escape? How about they don’t sympathize with the architect and kill him outright? What if they don’t embark on the mission until they have investigated what’s going on?

There is no problem with any outcome that could derive from answering those questions, but the problem I see here is that you are planning your adventure the way you would write a book or a novel. Works fine when you have full control of the characters, but works awful in RPGs. As soon as the PC’s realize they are being forced to follow a path, they will try to stay away from it just to keep their sense of free will.

When planning adventures, don’t think in terms of plots, think on terms of intentions, goals, plans, etc. Try to think of it as a blender where you add events, NPCs, villains, locations, factions, goals and then you add the PCs to the mix. You turn on the blender and see what comes out. That way not only you will be free to improvise and change the story, but your players will actually affect the game with their decisions and you will enjoy being surprised just as any other player, witnessing how the plot builds itself as the game progresses.

Bad way of planning:

“The PCs go to a mission to retrieve money from a corrupt captain. Once there, the PCs are outnumbered, they surrender and are imprisoned. In their imprisonment they will find an architect and they will escape with his help”.

Good way of planning:

“An NPC Rouge feels a grudge for the PCs because X and Y and he wants to exact revenge from them. So he plans to lure the PCs to a deathtrap, convincing them to accept a mission to steal some loot from a corrupt guard captain that has already been alerted of the PC’s intentions. Shall the PC’s discover his intentions, he will try to stab the closest character in range and flee”.

Seems almost the same, but in the second example you are just talking about intentions and goals, which leaves you plenty of room for improvisation. You are not depending on the characters doing anything at all, in fact if they don’t do anything at all, then your NPC can change his tactics as he has defined that he wants to “exact revenge from the PCs”, that they are imprisoned or not becomes irrelevant, that they accept or not the heist mission becomes irrelevant as well. You now have opened a wide range of possibilities.

The PCs do something and the world reacts, the PCs do nothing and the world reacts or keeps its flow of events without PCs intervention. Keep this in mind, and you will begin to walk the path of truly collaborative stories.

Fosco the Swift
2015-10-17, 09:38 PM
“An NPC Rouge feels a grudge for the PCs because X and Y and he wants to exact revenge from them. So he plans to lure the PCs to a deathtrap, convincing them to accept a mission to steal some loot from a corrupt guard captain that has already been alerted of the PC’s intentions. Shall the PC’s discover his intentions, he will try to stab the closest character in range and flee”.

This in turn has its own problems. During the sessions where I DM'd, I tried this tactic out, knowing that my players would refuse to be railroaded, but it failed because it lacked atmosphere and background. For this to work, you need to be brilliant when it comes to improvising. By trying to improvise everything, you probably won't have map information, pre-made encounters, descriptions, or otherwise any true detail in the game. You can only wing so much. To fix this, you had to do a lot of extra work. Basically, do what you are doing. Think about the things the PC's could do? Create notes for as many of those possibilities as you can. If you have the time, create as much of your world as you can. Buildings, NPC's, cities, dungeons, geography: create this before hand is the only way to truly be ready for anything your PC's do.

Jay R
2015-10-17, 10:39 PM
I'm starting up a new dnd session, and I want to test my plans to see what way the party will subvert them.

This thread won't help you. They will subvert your plans in their own unique way, different from how any of us would do it.

Look at all the threads trying to predict what the Order of the Stick will do next. Not only do we fail to predict what they will actually do, we don't even agree with each other.

Similarly, we won't agree with your party. Run the game, and be ready to adjust to what they do, not what we predict.

The essential skill for a DM is extemporaneous adjustment, not careful planning.

Fosco the Swift
2015-10-18, 08:56 AM
This thread won't help you. They will subvert your plans in their own unique way, different from how any of us would do it. This really depends on how well you know your players. I know that my players tend to get silly, and are bigger pyromaniacs that Belkar. So any encounter or scene I make, I plan for any possibility that involves them blowing something up.

Similarly, we won't agree with your party.Which is hardly a bad thing for this thread. Each of us can think up different possibilities and events so StealthyRobot can be ready for them.

Run the game, and be ready to adjust to what they do, not what we predict.

The essential skill for a DM is extemporaneous adjustment, not careful planning. This is completely true, you cannot be a DM without being a master improviser. You cannot plan for every nuance, but you can get the most likely ones. Careful planning and extemporaneous adjustment are BOTH essential skills for a DM. One gives atmosphere, background and in-depth characters and events, while the other allows the DM to not strangle his players every time they play :smallbiggrin:

StealthyRobot
2015-10-18, 04:14 PM
Thank you all for the helpful tips! Now, the results!

They started off in a tavern talking amongst each other before setting out. They find only one guard and cast sleep on him and tie him up. The tiefling sorceror goes to find The captain but he isnt there. 3 of them go down to the basement and find the empty chest. The people still on the first floor then see soldiers and 3 knights begin surrounding the house. The ex-soldier recoginzes the knights as troops specifically trained to counter the magic using soldiers of another kingdom. They all surrender and are handcuffed, the casters are given special cuffs that dont allow them to cast somatic spells. as an oversight by them (not me, of course) they dont think to gag them as well.

They are each put in individual cells, and the architect ignores them and they ignore him, for the most part. The rouge employer comes in and receives a pew of insults before giving a small speech. In thieves cant he says the name of the other city and mentions the paln. The party rouge tells the rest of the group. They also learn that they are being charged with conspiring with a demon, associating with a demon, and aiding a demon. Some paladins will be there in a few days to get them. A bit later the Captain runs in and they learn that thier employer used them as a distraction to rob the bank.

They brake out by using command while the fighter was using the rest room and knocking out a guard. The bard then disguises himself and they put another guard to sleep. They manage to avoid waking up other guards and find thier gear. They find a torture room and a room used to dump bodies. (They have released the architect too.) The body room has a grate in it for drainage, and the use that to get into the sewers. It leads out of the city.

They travel a few days, doing some hunting. They are allowing the architect to follow but arent feeding him, so he has been finding berries and bugs. They get to a farming village and buy some overpriced bags of grain. In another few days they get to another town and are ambushed by bandits. The fighter is dropped to 1 hp while inside a house with two bandits so the bard puts them all to sleep. A third bandit with a crossbow downs the gnome wizard, who then rolls a one for a death saving throw. Before he has the chance to fail another he is stabilized, and they kill off the rest of the bandits.

Thats where we ended, which is good because I have nothing else planned for the time being. The villages and bandits were improv as is, but the party was getting bored so I threw them some action. They all enjoyed it, much more than the last campaign where I pretty much said "Choo choo! All aboard, or get left behind!" where they did get on but promptly threw some dynamite in front of the train while moving. Im hopeful for this campaign, and the cast of characters is much better.

CombatBunny
2015-10-19, 08:44 AM
I'm very glad to read you had a very good game =)

Congrats!