Renamed: Stupid post, do not post

[In Retrospect]

This was a silly thread to have even started.

[JoeJ]

I need your most marvelous and stupid ideas, ones that are feasible in any way shape or form in this campaign. I need ideas to make the DM cry or tear his book in anger, ideas to make him sit awestruck. I need something to Break-The-Abyss.

Is that something you're sure would be fun for everyone else?

[In Retrospect]

Is that something you're sure would be fun for everyone else?

I have talked with our player group, all 6 of us, and we, the players, have decided that we love this campaign and how its going. We don't plan to mess with the journey (any more than is usual) just the end of this road. OoTA tries very hard to make one feel alone, powerless and dealing with things beyond his or her control.

We say NO.

We will show this campaign and whomever though that they could limit our power what we can really do and hilariously mess up the world in the process:smallwink:.

[TheRedTemplar]

I'd love to help you out, but frankly, the ending is the only part of the game I DON'T want to destroy simply for how balls-to-the-walls awesome the final climax is. You don't feel weak or helpless, you will feel like a god. Contrary to anything else, my group (much to my annoyance, but also my amusement) has pretty much broken (well, lets be honest here) EVERY CHAPTER IN THE MODULE THAT WE COME ACROSS. Suffice to say, our characters don't feel weak or powerless in some trippy LSD hell land, we feel like a group of anime protagonists that got the superpower (and magical item) lottery. If you want any help for breaking any other part of the campaign, I can share a bit of what my group's done, but I'm afraid I'll have to wait and see how the ending goes for our group before I can help you on that.

[Sigreid]

Just popped in to say I'm glad you're not part of my group. It's totally cool if the party gets clever and unravels the plot that's going on, but that's not what you're talking about here. You're talking about using fore knowledge and the help of strangers on the internet. There's no accomplishment there.

[Belac93]

Moon druid. Earthquake. Bring the Underdark down of they're ugly head, and then rip them to shreds as they try to tear through your animal forms. Then retreat and blast them until they explode.

Diviner wizard with Geas would be pretty funny. If you can manage to stay alive for 1 minute, you can make the demon lord auto-fail his save (watch out for legendary resistance!), and make him do something ridiculous for the next year. It would be troublesome until you can get your spellbook properly, but worth it for the finale.

Just make sure people other than you are having fun as well.

[mgshamster]

As a GM running this campaign, let me let you in on a few tips.

First, all you've learned is one possible ending to the campaign. You claim the book is linear - it is not. This is one of the most sandbox campaigns I've run, including modules like Keep on the Borderlands. There is a lot of fluidity in the game, allowing the entire campaign to shift based on the decisions of the players. If you think this is a linear campaign that guides you along a railroad, prepare to be pleasantly surprised.

While I think that particular ending is pretty cool, your ideas are also really cool ways to handle the demon lords and would be met with enthusiasm in my own game. It is by no means "breaking" the game.

As characters, your job is to save the world from the demon lords. How you do that is up to you. The book offers a couple of different ways to handle it, but you're free to come up with your own solutions.

There are a couple of key plot points in the game that will be consistent from game to game: the initial capture, the escape, meeting the dwarven King, going after the demons.

That's about it. After you escape, there are
multiple directions you could go, changing your experience of the game. If you decide to escape to the surface, your experience will be different than a group who does not decide to go to the surface. And how ou decide to deal with the demons (whether you use one of the book's suggested routes or come up with your own) can change your experience of the game.

Basically, you're not going to "break" it. Even if you decide to let the demons win, it's still not breaking the campaign.

Also, this campaign does not present you with level appropriate encounters, so if you're expecting that, prepare to roll up new characters when you don't run away.

[busterswd]

Campaign tone switches considerably on the second half of the book. As I told my players, "At first you were starving, naked, and scared. Now you're back as heroes in order to set things right."

Also, good luck stuffing Demogorgon into a bag.

[Malifice]

I am playing my first published campaign, OoTA, from Wizards of the Coast and am really enjoying it so far. However, I accidentally came across some spoilers while looking through some forums and instead of blot these out of my mind I have decided to use them to the fullest extent and (without the DM's knowledge and the help of a few players) break the campaign, derail it utterly from its linear path and "win" a game that's supposed to be a beginning for demons, not their end.

So... you've decided to cheat, spoil the adventure for yourself and the other players, ruining it for them as well... and now you want to also ruin your DMs campaign that he has probably invested a lot of time and effort into, by intentionally derailing his game using information about the adventure gained OOC and then shared with the other players?

That you somehow see this as 'winning' tells me a lot.

Enjoy your game.

[mgshamster]

Actually, I've changed my mind. Here's how you can break the campaign:

Refuse to escape from the drow. Stay a slave the entire campaign and play out the game doing manual labor before your character dies for the amusement of the drow.

[joaber]

congratulations, you're the wort type of player.

[mgshamster]

derail it utterly from its linear path


OoTA tries very hard to make one feel alone, powerless and dealing with things beyond his or her control.

These two quotes tell me that you really have no idea about this campaign, at all.

[Malifice]

congratulations, you're the wort type of player.

At least he won at something.

[In Retrospect]

The best course of action, it seems, it to let the adventure play out and enjoy the experience as it goes along.











I am still going to try and get a massive bag of holding.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

These two quotes tell me that you really have no idea about this campaign, at all.

To be mildly fair, you do rather feel overwhelmed and out of your depth in the beginning stages of the adventure (and this is a very good thing). Later on... not so much.

[TheRedTemplar]

The best course of action, it seems, it to let the adventure play out and enjoy the experience as it goes along.

This is basically it. You basically cannot 'derail' the plot the moment you get out of the jail-and honestly, unless your entire party and your GM is on board with trashing the module (like mine was, sadly), it's kind of a **** move to do that in the first place. This is by far the best module I've ever played, and I've played a lot, trust me. It's basically a sandbox world where you can get away with almost anything (including being the voice of reason to a bunch of murderhobos, but you shouldn't have to get stuck in that situation).

[mgshamster]

To be mildly fair, you do rather feel overwhelmed and out of your depth in the beginning stages of the adventure (and this is a very good thing). Later on... not so much.

Fair. But that lasts only until you reach any of the first three cities you could go to and figure out what's going on. So basically only until level 4, which is really fast. My own group was unusually long considering they dragged out the escape from Velkynvelve for 3 sessions (I had planned on one session), and then dragged the travel to Gracklstugh on by another 5 sessions (I had planned on 2).

At session 11 and level 5 (I had planned on them reaching this point by session 6 or 7), they know what's going on, they have a clear plan for what to do next, and they're starting to make far reaching plans for how to stop it all. And they haven't even made it to the surface yet.

The campaign goes to the mid teens, so that's approximately 1/4-1/3 of it where you feel overwhelmed and under equipped in a strange foreign environment. Which gets back to your point - it's fair to say the players will feel this way in the beginning.

But it also means that if that's as far as you've got in the campaign, then you really don't know what's going on and you don't know the campaign well enough to make conclusions for how to break it.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

Fair. But that lasts only until you reach any of the first three cities you could go to and figure out what's going on. So basically only until level 4, which is really fast. My own group was unusually long considering they dragged out the escape from Velkynvelve for 3 sessions (I had planned on one session), and then dragged the travel to Gracklstugh on by another 5 sessions (I had planned on 2).

At session 11 and level 5 (I had planned on them reaching this point by session 6 or 7), they know what's going on, they have a clear plan for what to do next, and they're starting to make far reaching plans for how to stop it all. And they haven't even made it to the surface yet.

The campaign goes to the mid teens, so that's approximately 1/4-1/3 of it where you feel overwhelmed and under equipped in a strange foreign environment. Which gets back to your point - it's fair to say the players will feel this way in the beginning.

But it also means that if that's as far as you've got in the campaign, then you really don't know what's going on and you don't know the campaign well enough to make conclusions for how to break it.

Indeed. Incidentally, if one really wants to break the adventure, all one needs to do is find a certain object and hope for a roll of 09-10. Always a classic, that one.