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Reltzik
2016-03-16, 04:23 PM
Okay, story time.

As players OR as GMs, what are the most epic derails that have ever happened in your campaigns?

Dragoa
2016-03-16, 05:46 PM
As a Player.

Our DM set us up to go out and attack someone inside of the town as the first of a long quest chain, this person happened to be a butcher(very important detail). We get there, and our evilish tendancy party decided we wanted to kill the man, seeing an opportunity to start making some money on the side, we made some sausage out of this very unfortunate man to offer out as free samples as a bit of a grand opening of our new Butcher Shop. We then used the funds from the Butcher Shop to open a restaurant attached to our shop and we were forced to set a rival chef on fire when he wouldn't train us(or come work for us, I can't remember which it was). During the resulting kerfuffle and blazing inferno, I lead the resulting charge to stop the fire from spreading to the surrounding buildings and managed to save the town from this terrible accident.

Next, we planned for one of my party mates to become a pirate and start razing the town, and I was going to rally myself up and fend him off vaulting myself into a nigh unstoppable position of power within the town. I had a boat manufactured for my own personal use, which he was going to steal, and I'd still pay(with a little extra for the inconvenience), for out of a sign of respect to the local craftsmen, then commission a second boat so I could set out to the high seas and fight this now blacklisted man.

I'm not really sure what our end goal was looking back, beyond hiding the body, but we were determined to do whatever it was we had planned.

MrStabby
2016-03-16, 08:02 PM
Well there was the time I had a murder mystery component to a campaign. About a 3rd of the way through the investigation the party went to the pub, got drunk and turned full murderhobo and broke into anywhere they thought there was treasure - first stop by pure chance was the murderer's home. He accosted them. They killed him. There was a huge gap in my prepared material.

Fayd
2016-03-16, 08:54 PM
In a one shot, the DM planned to have us travel to a mountain hideaway to recapture stolen tax income. I was playing the tax assessor and by the DM's OWN Premade Characters, a sound mage. He gave me a Daily use of Shatter. The thief swoops in and has their young(ish) dragon grab the tax-chest in its claws and fly away.

My immediate reaction is NOT MY TAX MONEY YOU MONSTER and cast Shatter on the tax chest, spilling its contents over the immediate area and though I lose a BIT to the civilian "Free Money From the Sky" response, I manage to recover a healthy portion that would otherwise have been lost. However the DM lost his plot hook. He recovered MASTERFULLY, mind, but it was not planned for.

Fri
2016-03-16, 09:03 PM
As GM.

In a game where my players play town guard, they find a girl uncouncious on the street. They sent her to the hospital and went to discuss the event. With some really good reasoning, they deduced that some people would attack the hospital to retrieve this girl, and they raced there. They still failed to save the girl, but they actually bypassed quite a lot of investigations.

Then they decide to steal a prisoner by initiating a cattle rampage to get more clues. It was pretty great.

Another, is actually really recent that I'm not sure if I should mention it in case my players read it. But I guess it had passed. Basically they're supposed to fight a cool boss villain and defeat him, with some awesome things I've planned for the fight, but they instead manages to convince him to ally against a mutual enemy. I guess that's just expected.

On player side, I remember that in a game, another player was leaving the game so he has his character killed by sacrificing himself to shield another from a villain's attack. According to the GM villain's supposed to be an important, recurring character, and it's just his first appearance, but everyone was so angry that they use everything they got and killed him dead. I was actually kinda annoyed with it because I thought the villain would make an interesting character, but eh, apparently everyone else, including the GM. thought it's actually pretty cool and proper.

ArendK
2016-03-17, 06:06 AM
Old Man Henderson comes to mind

hifidelity2
2016-03-17, 07:03 AM
As player

Following clues from previous adventures discovered that the person we needed to question / save was a young lad at the top of a tower. DM expected us to fight our way up the tower.

We used a mixture of Dreaming, ESP and teleport to jump to the top of the tower, grab the kid and run. So what should have been a long slug fest took us about 10 mins

DM placed tower adventure back into his bag and we know it will reappear somewhere

Inevitability
2016-03-17, 07:15 AM
I'd made a campaign where pact magic featured prominently. The idea was that it'd start out as an occasionally mentioned phenomenon then slowly make its way to the foreground.

One of these mentions was a NPC who briefly showed the PC a large tome on pact magic. Note that this was literally the first time I had someone talk about it. One of the PC's grabbed the tome and refused to let go. When guards came in, he threatened to destroy the valuable book.

Eventually, he was allowed to study it for a couple of days, and that's how a PC mastered ancient and plot-relevant forbidden magic before the main story arc had even begun.

MrZJunior
2016-03-17, 08:01 AM
So, this was LARPing.

The town we were in was about to become the center of the apocalypse. The GMs foresaw two possible outcomes, I don't quite recall what they were but it was some variation on "get eaten by deamons or smited by angels."

It was the final session and the angels were preparing to end us if we didn't kill a particularly beloved NPC who had a reputation for coming back from the dead.

"You either kill him, or we kill you."

"OK," and one of the players places a gun against his head and kills him.

The GMs were completely stunned, all they could do was let us leave town.

Regwon
2016-03-17, 09:10 AM
In an evil 3.5 campaign, our party were on a misson to find the maguffin of ultimate power for an evil lich emperor. I was playing a class that could have an undead minion (from the libre mortis i believe), and my DM let me have a spectre. Our DM had prepared this costal town called Saltmarsh for us to investigate, with some clues buried within.

He expected that we would get involved in the petty squables of the town, maybe kill some people, before finally tracking down the thing. Instead i told my spectre minion to start killing the commoners at night, turning them into more spectres under my control. Exponential spectre growth later, and the few in the town powerful enough to oppose us were despatched by the ghostly horde.

Then once everyone was dead, and to save our precious time, i formed a 40 spectre x 40 spectre grid to fly through and under every building, until we found what we needed. Finally we moved on, leaving most of the spectres behind, having ruined several planned session in the space of 20 mins.

In later years in the same setting the town was renamed Ghostmarsh and nobody went there.

Brion
2016-03-17, 10:49 AM
As a player. Not a huge derail, but definitely caught the DM off-guard.

He had an assassin invisibly stalking us across this island for a couple of hours. After we are split up from a nasty fight, she uses a death attack on me (Pathfinder level 15 Oracle) and initially I would have failed the save, but cast Borrow Fortune and then made the save on the second try.I have a revelation that allows me to always act in the surprise round, so before the assassin was able to run away and try it all again, I cast Destruction. She didn't make the save. She was incinerated to ash less than 6 seconds into her antagonism. His goal with the assassin was to harry us, maybe take someone out, and make life a general pain in the backside until she comes out in full force in the boss battle that was coming up.

braveheart
2016-03-17, 02:51 PM
I was GMing Star Wars Saga when not a player, but my dice decided to derail a campaign.

The party was salvaging in an old seperatist droid assembly station that had never been brought fully online, (this is 16 years after the end of the clone wars) they find out that the station was within a few days of being brought online, and decided to see if they could take it for their own uses. this i had planned for, the party was supposed to encounter an AI that was supposed to organize the droids against the party and put them through some serious combat, but the party's face is also and expert hacker, and proceeded to never roll below 17, while my dice thought that it'd be funny to roll strictly 4 or less for about 20 bluff and hacking checks in a row. suffice it to say the party got everything they wanted out of the station and blew it up, and a character that was supposed to be my BBEG for a while is now the party's best friend.

Erth16
2016-03-18, 12:00 AM
I have a couple, both from players, once while I was the GM and once while I was a fellow player.

I'll start with the latter. The game was pathfinder, I was a gunslinger and the other player, who did the derailing was a barbarian monk. We had two npc's we were acquainted with helping us, a paladin and an oracle/ranger. The latter two were hired by an elderly man to find his gnomish daughter-in-law, and they had a lead that she was being held in a cave outside town, and asked me and the barbarian to go scout it out since we would be able to get there much faster. Once there we began clearing it and they caught up and we rescued her, simple mission. We got back in town and she had no clue who the man was, and the barbarian assumed he was also a kidnapper and murdered him. The town guard showed up, the paladin and I explained why he killed the man, and they went to go get a cleric to cast speak with dead. So then the barbarian ripped the corpse's jaw off so they couldn't do that. Well, that's one quest line we have no way of completing. Now the barbarian is arrested for murder since there is no way to prove his innocence, and he is sent to prison. Where he breaks out, is caught again, conscripted into the military, deserts, and becomes a pirate. I went back to being a courier, and now the game is very boring because we have no quest to pursue since that nation is where most of the setting was, and one of the two pc's is a kill on sight fugitive.



The other is in Fate Core, in a situation that was setup to mimic Danganronpa. One of the npc's was being really rude and annoying by constantly asking all the girls to do it with him, and one of them eventually got fed up with him hitting on her girlfriend and said yes, telling him to meet her in a secluded tunnel. When he arrives she murders him. Now murdering people is the name of the game here, the only issue is they had not yet been told they have to murder each other to get off the island. This happened at lunch and they weren't even told until dinner that night they were supposed to kill someone and not get caught if they ever wanted to return home.

sktarq
2016-03-18, 02:43 AM
Oh my. . . I've sat on this story for years. It was not my finest hour

So I had helped the DM build this world. It was supposed to be a big group game (which would be new for everyone). I was the second person to make my character, a rogue. The first had been a cleric and the third was to be a ranger. It all sounded good. I knew we were starting in a group of isles that were supposed to be a good place for characters levels 1-7 with most of it good for 1-4 with a couple gateway areas of 4-7 level type regions.

So this was going to be a fusion party of the DM's 2 normal gaming groups/pools (which had had some people cross over from time to time). Which should have been okay. But it turned out the other kinda pushed the DM to do al sorts of new things like Psyonics. . . . .which he (the DM and frankly anyone there) had never played with before. I'd didn't know and only found out when the group was assembled which turned out as the following

A: Me: Elf Rogue named Ty with Knowledge Local secondary skills through the roof to since I know the world so well
B: A Fighter: Played by a girl-who apparently the DM had a crush on. . . and who may have had thing for me after this-or it may have been in the GM's head-either way it caused issues. And had never played before in spite of knowing the DM for years.
C: A ranger-with the falconer kit: This guy never rolled below a 15 to hit. few of his characters had any ability scores below 13, and this time had rolled for two wild talents. . . yup two. . . wildshape? and something else -oh teleport-and was attached to circle of wilderness protecting druid/rangers of noble blood.
D: A rogue: Who I had met but never played with-because this was his second game.
E: another Rogue: Who I had never met
F: A bard with the Jester Kit: I knew this player somewhat-he had been a decent player
G: A Psyonicist- pretty normal I guess -never met the guy before
H: This guy had was a psyonisist with multiple personalities - each one had it own alignment and own powers. I had never minded the person but having played with him a couple times found him to be a powergaming nit who always wanted to be something more (he was very like the DM this way)
and the Cleric who was my best friend? He had pneumonia and couldn't come.
The brother of the cleric's player? Not going if his brother wasn't as his mother would not drive only one-especially as he may get sick from sharing a room with said brother
And due to a reschedule another member of our side of the regular game group was away at his father's cult. (sooo wish I was kidding)

So I had basically been put in with one member of my regular gaming pool-C who had actually started in the other pool but moved to ours over time because of timing issues and parental discord.


So during time between meetup and playstart things were BAD. They treated B like crap for being female and wanted to try to play "our", "boy" game (we were 13-15). Things were also not good as it was obvious that the DM didn't know how to actually RUN psionic powers. As in he was reading the rules apparently still confused about what a power check was.

So the game starts with us camped out two or three days north of the nearest town a couple hours from the coast of on an island that the north half of which is one of those places for the 4-7 level characters to go. As the town was the only thing we were told about it was agreed we would go there and then the DM decided to ask "what we each do" to actually start the game. I happened to be first so I said "Break Camp". We had no background, no intro, no reason to be together. Then only about half the group broke camp the other half decided to make breakfast, polish armour etc. So it took a 1/2 hour of game time for everyone to actually decide to break camp and make for the coast so we would have a clear route to hike. On the way E, F, and H started to trip and hit each other. And then hit B and D who didn't hit back. . . so there was a trail of people following me and trying to trip each other on the way to the beach. . . This was not what I had signed up for. So when we got to the coast I said that the was the town to the south was 3 days away and there was a city to the north 5 days away which would probably have better adventure hunting opportunities. . . This was a lie. The north was dangerous. So we went north because everyone knew I knew about this land because I had built it. Technically there was a ruined city 5 days north. So we went north because I was pissed off. When we made camp I went to get firewood after hanging my hammock in a tree. When I came back I found the party had attacked a giant boar because the Neutral good environmentalist ranger "wanted his tusks as they are worth tones of gold". I thought this was just a horrible thing-totally against character. So I just said screw it and went up the tree. . .

In part because a good chunk of the party was off collecting firewood things didn't go well. It didn't help that a round took 20+ minutes with all the going over special weapon rules, new initiative order every round, badgering each other (trying to create status via knowing the rules better -which led to the two newbies being near abused by C and H). B seemed to be trying to do well and was better conversation than C who I was seated between for awhile. I spent the time teaching her THAC0 rules and the like. So when she got taken down to 2hp by a big boar hit I was okay in lowering a rope to save her characters life.

So since I "saved her character's life" and being unused to what the social norms were she was fine when I woke her up and started force marching south in the middle of the night away from the group. I had thought to go alone but she had a good head on her shoulders and having a good sword arm would be nice and only C's was better and since C and I were the two "leader" type of people I figure he would be instantly leader and while probably using loaded dice (or dark magics) he was an okay if totally over aggressive player.

And chaos ensues

In the morning our disappearance is discovered and the Ranger wildshapes via his wild talent (no power check) into an eagle and finds us after several hours (duration issues were brought up but the DM was tired of checking the book he said and didn't like "that chapter") So I level with him that I thought the other group were idiots who couldn't play and bailed hoping to start a smaller more interesting game. So he joined us.

The rest needed his leadership apparently as they all started to do their own thing. One rogue E continues to go north. Everyone else heads south at max speed. Since we were using every optional rule we could lay our hands on (see using rule knowledge to prove status above also see glacial pace of the game noted above) the bard D and the multi-personality psionisist H had movement 15 (due to stats and race issues instead of size) while the final rogue and other psionisist (F & G) had move 12. . . So the fast players left them behind. Even though the psion's neutral good pacifist personality who believes in love and lassos was in charge.

So when my party get to the town we "steal" the two chargers and a spirited horse (see optional rules on war horse quality) which all the horses with bonus es in the horse traders coral (I left him gold (well gems) for mine and B's but C didn't want to pay NG). And took off for the large town across the island the narrow way (it was a thin N/S island).

Now the players who were not active ATM would hang out in another room while we waited our turn. This made it obvious that this mix of people brought out the worst in everybody. Young men who had seemed nice were making jokes about how we must have gotten past the town guards by having B sleep with them. The idea we had two sneaky types and a falcon and chakraam for distraction (B was using a 1st level Xena look alike with a punch dagger hidden in her cleavage as her first character) wasn't a challenge for teenage obsession with sex.

So booking it out of town we get accosted by a couple orcs-my first reaction was to check for an ambush-thus spotting the archer array setting up/breaking cover above us. So I charge the orcs blocking us and gallop through the ambush zone-we have a couple volleys aimed at our back and one horse got hit but not badly.

Around this time (the next night) the Bard/Jester and Psion H got to town. They managed to steal one nag and ride off together on it. To the homosexual jokes of several people (I was really not enjoying myself). They also had to stop for food while we had a bunch of that boar (due to insane encumbrance rules of having C's 18/~70 strength). So I figured our lead was growing Also: The lone rogue E turns around and starts heading South too when he hits jungle and has a couple encounters up there that don't seem "city nearby". The other Psion and rogue thought that camping on a swampy islet in a river was "safe" and got hit with leeches, mosquitoes, a lack of sleep and some version of exhaustion/fatigue.

So by now the DM was starting to break down in his ability to keep track of what was going on and things started to get weird.

Each time someone had to deal with the orcs the orcs got frustrated and brought in reinforcements. The Jester/Bard and (currently evil armored) Psion (did I mention his personalities switched on PLAYER command only) took on the group of ten orcs and just barely killed them. The Psion G and Rogue D rode their stolen oxen (not kidding-the security around the horses was apparently thick) as fast as they could and got pincushioned (but alive) for their trouble. And E we will get back to.

So ABC (as in A,B,&C) saw what appeared to be a griffon flying in the distance on the high grass fields (as in as tall as a horse's eye). The ranger sends his falcon to investigate and the griffon kills it. This sends the ranger in a tizzy because he now has penalties (due to the kit extra connection) and the griffon now sees and spots us. Knowing that griffon's like horsemeat I switch our gear to two horses and send the third away-thinking that was the end of it-but as soon as the griffon goes after the horse the ranger wild talent teleports onto his back and runs his sword through its neck. . . Rolling a 20 on his to hit (because of course he does) for instant kill. Still no PSP's or Powercheck rolls have been used but why not it was a cool image and we canter away after finding a ring that "reeks of magic" in its gullet (we also had found other things here and there-a bunch of tiny rubies I used to pay for the horses for example)


Now the Psion H had a tracking power that takes a PSP per round that after several days was still working. And also space and time give up the host as the Jester and nuts Psion H now have two horses and have somehow caught up to the party ABC despite being slower to start, on a single horse that was 1/2 the speed of our slowest horse after two days and needing time to heal. . . This happens at dusk as we entered a region of the high grass noted for werewolves. So I figure this is all bulldroppings and just roll with it. I draw my short sword for the first time of the game point it to the hill we were heading toward anyway and say "Tallyho" (the Psion H is in evil mode however and uses his infinite Psp's to boost his strength and mace me in the head (convenient as the peaceful bola and lasso using nice personality had been the one tracking me). Any way I die. This causes C to wildshape into a wolverine and take out H -who knocks out C on matched initiative-and during that fight the oxen pull up with the bandaged wrapped shells of D and G. Who get into a slapping contest with the Jester about leaving them behind. And then E shows up with over a dozen arrows from the orcs (two days ride away that he had just dealt with seconds before- timey whimey much?) and in negative HP territory. They stabilize him just as night properly falls and howling can be heard.

I quietly prevail on B to swipe the ring and dagger of fire that E got up north and head in the opposite direction to the group all of whose members are bleeding and have livestock with them. She doesn't have a pack of werewolves on her tail (the others do) when the game ends.

It turned out that the DM had a plan for us starting at level 3 but no adventure planned for the first levels....so I'm not sure this would technically be a derail but more of a nonrailed no-steering-wheel mess but I still think it counts. He also didn't tell anyone what else anyone was playing so that's how we ended up with no divine or much arcane magic (only H's nice side and the Jester had any heal potential even short term) B also apparently liked my playstyle and still wanted to play in the groups that the DM ran with me and my friends but not the other group - he took this as having a crush on me (I don't know but I think not treating her poorly may be the reason she was still interested in playing). I wanted her to join our main group so that the one girl in our group didn't feel so awkward and because she was good company and showed promise as a player. And yes she was pretty but I was holding a torch for the girl in our main group. We did a similar game a year later-it went somewhat better after an old man ran up to give us "the map" (it was labeled as such) to "the dungeon". Better but not good-if he was planning a dungeon crawl type game setting up two people (a cavalier kit horseman and an aarakokra) for outdoor combat seems bad planning.

I am so glad this game happened. Lessons of planning for what you have, shaping character choice for the party dynamic, tracking systems, keeping allowable rule choices simpler as party size expands, finding out seeming nice people can be $#!+ to new players and so many more lessons started in this game. I wasn't without blame myself in this story-I should have done something different to deal with how mean people were being to the newbies (especially B for being new and female *gasp*) instead of have my character run off looking for a better game. . . But that was part of my learning experience too.

Knaight
2016-03-18, 04:28 AM
As a GM:

The players are all playing members of the alchemists guild of the port city of Alhabri. The game starts with a dock fire blamed on the guild, and I'm pretty much expecting the guild to go down and the party to go do the whole traveling adventurer thing. The guild does go down (accelerated more than a bit by some questionable PC decisions), but the group stays in the city, forming a small criminal organization that's looking for revenge on the enemies of the guild. So, a completely different campaign with a very different focus is kicked off instead. That's fine, I have the improvisational skill to roll with that, and had sufficient notes on the city ahead of time anyways. A few sessions later, the group has made a few more enemies and moved themselves up on the priority list of existing ones.

So they decide to flee the city entirely, going to another that only exists as a background element of one of the characters, and even then only as a "I want to play a foreigner who's basically a ninja" thing that was included more on a "sure, what the heck" basis than anything else. So, now there's a completely different situation, in a new area, with no prep. It ended up an interesting arc, but it also would be derailing the first derail, because of players playing really unpredictably - which is where I do my best GMing.

They later decided to go back to Alhabri, having left their new area in a state of civil war they had some part in creating, with significant resources that come from being major players in that situation. This isn't as much of a derail, but it was a pretty sudden switch - it was just an expected one, as there were old foes left in Alhabri that were doing very well for themselves, and this group has a bit of a vindictive streak.

Rakoa
2016-03-18, 08:37 AM
I was playing a Chaotic Neutral Bard, 3.5 edition.

I was playing in public, my first level self. I spotted a man who seemed to be on the rich side but pretending not to be. I surreptitiously cast a little Charm spell, and approached him, asking if he'd like a private performance. He agreed, and from the safety of his inn room I blasted him with a little Sleep spell. I was just intending to take his hefty coinpurse, but instead I found a letter bearing the seal of the king, inviting him to the castle, secretly. Needless to say, I gagged that man and headed off, a disguise kit use spent, his signet ring in my pocket right next to that letter, upon his very own horse. I made sure to leave him penniless so that he'd have a hard time getting a horse to pursue when he woke up later.

I arrived, and the King greeted me warmly. Once we were privately situated, he explained that an Orcish army was bearing down on the kingdom border, and he had kept it a secret so as not to stir up panic with the people, especially since his rule was already an unpopular one. He was tasking me with bringing my impressive connection to bear in keeping the people distracted while helping I also helped him raise a larger army with my persuasion and deep pockets. Needless to say, I graciously accepted.

I assume everything so far was to the DMs plan. Too bad I had my own.

As soon as I returned to my room, I rang the bell for a servant. A redheaded lad entered, and asked what I needed. After repeatedly bashing him with a sap, I disguised myself as him and left him unconscious in the corner. Waltzing into the room I had just left, I find the king still sitting there. I explain to him that I was listening at the door, and unless he pays me a huge amount of money, my contact in the castle will spread word of the Orcish army far and wide across the kingdom. In dismay, the King pays me an enormous fortune, red in the face with anger. I take it, run back to room, and after redressing the servant I dump in the hall. I hear the guards pull him off, screaming his innocence, while I scale the window outside and escape into the night...to go fund an Orcish army, with me at the head.

The kingdom was unprepared, I knew that much, so I knew the Orcs had a good chance of winning if I led them right. I could plunder much more than what the king gave me and still have plenty to show for it. And that was the story of how I started my quest, which led from leading an Orcish army, to being bribed to abandon them by an incredibly power thieve's guild in the kingdom. They granted me roughly a dozen of their own men to serve me as I saw fit, as well as a great amount of gold. I took them, and set my sights on another kingdom, starting up a bit of a mafia-type system of extortion and profit. This eventually led me to the service of a dark deity known as the Shadow Lord, who empowered me and so forth, until I eventually overpowered him and became the new Shadow Lord.

It was a dark time for the world. Needless to say I did not keep my Chaotic Neutral alignment for long.

Tiri
2016-03-18, 10:32 AM
As a player.

My group is currently playing the Sunless Citadel. The goblin sorcerer first completely bypassed the kobold fight by offering the kobold queen 250 gp, then got together the goblins who were unhappy with their leader and started spreading dissent. Then he went to negotiate the terms of the prisoners' release with the goblin leader in exchange for a magic necromancy whistle. By this point everyone was pretty much resigned to the fact that there would be no fighting, but then, when they went to release the prisoners, the sorcerer screamed for the goblin leader's head and the party attacked, followed by a goblin army. So now the sorcerer is the goblin prince and the evil druid is going to find himself facing a whole goblin tribe.

Jormengand
2016-03-18, 04:19 PM
As a DM, I've had players grab the epic artifacts of ultimate doom and try to use them, rather than destroy them, so they're currently fleeing from pretty much every authority existent, and about to have a dwarf psychic warrior follow them to the ends of the earth.

Hbgplayer
2016-03-18, 05:33 PM
As a player in a Star Wars game, the Correlian Corvette we had...liberated...from it's former owner was captured by Vader's own Star Destroyer, the Executor.
When we were in the hold of Executor, my character, a Droid, decided to see if I could circumvent the Imperial code and override the systems lock out. I could, just barely.
So while the rest of the party fought their way to one of the Destroyer's escape pods, I set the main engines to ignight on a one minute delay. My character got caught up by a squad of stormtroopers, and I radioed ahaead to the party to leave without me and that I would try to find another way off the ship. They launched the pod just in time for the Corvette's engines to start up. The resulting inferno completely melted the hangar deck, and caused Executor's reactor core to go critical. Which then caused the hyperdrive to go critical.
So, in the end, we destroyed half of Death Squadron, made a formerly prosperous mining moon uninhabitable, and I had to roll up my third character for that campaign. Oh, and Vader in the movies? Totally a clone that had memories implanted to make him think he wasn't a clone.

Reltzik
2016-03-18, 09:04 PM
Okay, thread's got a good head of steam going so I should probably tell my story.

We're playing Pathfinder in Forgotten Realms, an interesting war-of-spies storyline where none of us knew what was really going on under the surface.

We had one player, a cleric, quit after the first session because she didn't like the group. This disappointed the DM as he'd tried to tie her into the backstory, so she became a villainous NPC.

Our party then consisted of:

Me, the dumb muscle (various iterations thereof, mostly due to getting killed).
An oracle.
A summoner, who was also the adoptive sibling of the now-NPC cleric.
A... something, I forget the class, who was devoted to exploration in all forms.

At about the time of this derail I wound up on my third tank: King Guurnderk, a nigh-invulnerable barbarian with a depressing lack of common sense, a sanguine personality, and an approach to planning that prioritized how awesome a plan would be if it worked rather than how plausible it was for it to work. (All I had to do to make the group facepalm was declare that I had a Plan. The group wouldn't go with the plan anyway, but just listening to it would cause every player at the table to take int damage.)

The DM sets up what is supposed to be a non-violent encounter at the end of a dungeon with the "villains" of the piece (who I THINK were the good guys trying to clue us in on the villanousness of our superiors, but I was never clear on that point). The oracle decides to fly ahead at max speed, leaving the party behind. She enters that room in a rush and triggers crossbow traps. My barbarian decides that combat's started and charges even as the talking's begun. (Hey, they shot at her.) The summoner freaks because we were supposed to talk and find out what happened to his sister.

My barbarian gets put down in one round by someone eight levels higher than us (negative hit points but I stabilize due to awesome con), a very brief talk happens, but not much. They withdraw through artifact-level magical portals (think Stargate) which shut off behind them. The summoner is not satisfied and declares he's using UMD to activate the portals blindly and follow. The DM says, "The DC is going to be very high, are you sure?" The summoner is desperate enough to try anyway and not thinking clearly because he's desperate to find his sister.

My Barbarian aids-another. With 0 ranks and a -2 modifier. Because it would be awesome if it worked. The summoner rolls pathetically.

A portal opens up to... somewhere else. The DM is quite explicit -- everyone knows that this is Not Working Right and Who Knows Where We'll End Up. We could end up anywhere in Faerun. We could end up on an elemental plane, or another material plane, or-

The oracle promptly shouts "CUTE TENTACLY MONSTERS!" and the player moves the mini through the portal with a "zip" sound.

The summoner says "But it MIGHT lead to my sister!" and moves his mini through the portal.

The explorer shouts "NEW WORLDS TO EXPLORE!" and moves his mini through the portal.

I shout "AWESOME!" and move my mini through the portal.

The DM just stares at all of us, totally dumbstruck at the fact that our merry party of the insane all had perfectly characterful motivations to jump into a Portal To Anywhere Except The Plot.

There followed about ten sessions of wandering around Krynn randomly with no real goal in mind, before the Grand Theft: Spelljammer incident eventually led us back home.

Inevitability
2016-03-19, 01:49 AM
Okay, thread's got a good head of steam going so I should probably tell my story.

We're playing Pathfinder in Forgotten Realms, an interesting war-of-spies storyline where none of us knew what was really going on under the surface.

We had one player, a cleric, quit after the first session because she didn't like the group. This disappointed the DM as he'd tried to tie her into the backstory, so she became a villainous NPC.

Our party then consisted of:

Me, the dumb muscle (various iterations thereof, mostly due to getting killed).
An oracle.
A summoner, who was also the adoptive sibling of the now-NPC cleric.
A... something, I forget the class, who was devoted to exploration in all forms.

At about the time of this derail I wound up on my third tank: King Guurnderk, a nigh-invulnerable barbarian with a depressing lack of common sense, a sanguine personality, and an approach to planning that prioritized how awesome a plan would be if it worked rather than how plausible it was for it to work. (All I had to do to make the group facepalm was declare that I had a Plan. The group wouldn't go with the plan anyway, but just listening to it would cause every player at the table to take int damage.)

The DM sets up what is supposed to be a non-violent encounter at the end of a dungeon with the "villains" of the piece (who I THINK were the good guys trying to clue us in on the villanousness of our superiors, but I was never clear on that point). The oracle decides to fly ahead at max speed, leaving the party behind. She enters that room in a rush and triggers crossbow traps. My barbarian decides that combat's started and charges even as the talking's begun. (Hey, they shot at her.) The summoner freaks because we were supposed to talk and find out what happened to his sister.

My barbarian gets put down in one round by someone eight levels higher than us (negative hit points but I stabilize due to awesome con), a very brief talk happens, but not much. They withdraw through artifact-level magical portals (think Stargate) which shut off behind them. The summoner is not satisfied and declares he's using UMD to activate the portals blindly and follow. The DM says, "The DC is going to be very high, are you sure?" The summoner is desperate enough to try anyway and not thinking clearly because he's desperate to find his sister.

My Barbarian aids-another. With 0 ranks and a -2 modifier. Because it would be awesome if it worked. The summoner rolls pathetically.

A portal opens up to... somewhere else. The DM is quite explicit -- everyone knows that this is Not Working Right and Who Knows Where We'll End Up. We could end up anywhere in Faerun. We could end up on an elemental plane, or another material plane, or-

The oracle promptly shouts "CUTE TENTACLY MONSTERS!" and the player moves the mini through the portal with a "zip" sound.

The summoner says "But it MIGHT lead to my sister!" and moves his mini through the portal.

The explorer shouts "NEW WORLDS TO EXPLORE!" and moves his mini through the portal.

I shout "AWESOME!" and move my mini through the portal.

The DM just stares at all of us, totally dumbstruck at the fact that our merry party of the insane all had perfectly characterful motivations to jump into a Portal To Anywhere Except The Plot.

There followed about ten sessions of wandering around Krynn randomly with no real goal in mind, before the Grand Theft: Spelljammer incident eventually led us back home.

This is awesome. Your DM is awesome, you guys are awesome, have a bunch of cookies.

Arbane
2016-03-23, 11:57 AM
For those of you unfamiliar with it, here is The Tale of Old Man Henderson (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Old_Man_Henderson), who killed Hastur, won at Trail of Cthulhu, and derailed the campaign so badly that a scale of derailment was named after him. (Warning: Site has NSFW stuff, but that page is OK.)

MrZJunior
2016-03-23, 02:55 PM
I was playing a Chaotic Neutral Bard, 3.5 edition.

I was playing in public, my first level self. I spotted a man who seemed to be on the rich side but pretending not to be. I surreptitiously cast a little Charm spell, and approached him, asking if he'd like a private performance. He agreed, and from the safety of his inn room I blasted him with a little Sleep spell. I was just intending to take his hefty coinpurse, but instead I found a letter bearing the seal of the king, inviting him to the castle, secretly. Needless to say, I gagged that man and headed off, a disguise kit use spent, his signet ring in my pocket right next to that letter, upon his very own horse. I made sure to leave him penniless so that he'd have a hard time getting a horse to pursue when he woke up later.

I arrived, and the King greeted me warmly. Once we were privately situated, he explained that an Orcish army was bearing down on the kingdom border, and he had kept it a secret so as not to stir up panic with the people, especially since his rule was already an unpopular one. He was tasking me with bringing my impressive connection to bear in keeping the people distracted while helping I also helped him raise a larger army with my persuasion and deep pockets. Needless to say, I graciously accepted.

I assume everything so far was to the DMs plan. Too bad I had my own.

As soon as I returned to my room, I rang the bell for a servant. A redheaded lad entered, and asked what I needed. After repeatedly bashing him with a sap, I disguised myself as him and left him unconscious in the corner. Waltzing into the room I had just left, I find the king still sitting there. I explain to him that I was listening at the door, and unless he pays me a huge amount of money, my contact in the castle will spread word of the Orcish army far and wide across the kingdom. In dismay, the King pays me an enormous fortune, red in the face with anger. I take it, run back to room, and after redressing the servant I dump in the hall. I hear the guards pull him off, screaming his innocence, while I scale the window outside and escape into the night...to go fund an Orcish army, with me at the head.

The kingdom was unprepared, I knew that much, so I knew the Orcs had a good chance of winning if I led them right. I could plunder much more than what the king gave me and still have plenty to show for it. And that was the story of how I started my quest, which led from leading an Orcish army, to being bribed to abandon them by an incredibly power thieve's guild in the kingdom. They granted me roughly a dozen of their own men to serve me as I saw fit, as well as a great amount of gold. I took them, and set my sights on another kingdom, starting up a bit of a mafia-type system of extortion and profit. This eventually led me to the service of a dark deity known as the Shadow Lord, who empowered me and so forth, until I eventually overpowered him and became the new Shadow Lord.

It was a dark time for the world. Needless to say I did not keep my Chaotic Neutral alignment for long.

That is wonderful!

5ColouredWalker
2016-03-24, 06:03 AM
Game I joined later, but in a low magic world being colonized by a higher magic one, where all the old Mithral mines were tapped out, the players stumbled upon Mithral (Getting lucky on a 'Found a metal seem' roll) while travelling underground to do a major quest.

The next two months was spent sitting in one spot organizing everything to get a mine running, with several characters promptly retired as millionaires.

KnotKnormal
2016-03-24, 01:56 PM
This is by far the most epic game i have ever had the honor of DMing, i posted a derail i had mid campaign and you guys helped me put the game over the top. here is what happened in detail with a link to the original post that first posed the problem.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?424179-As-a-DM-I-think-I-did-something-awesome-And-I-have-you-to-thank&p=19456579#post19456579

eru001
2016-03-24, 02:11 PM
As DM

Setting homebrewed Fallout Tabletop: Fallout New Texas

The players were Texas rangers, the mission was simple, turn in a bounty in San Antonio, they rode off in completely the wrong direction, met up with a rogue agent of the Brotherhood of Steel, aquired a nuclear warhead and blew up Galveston Bay.


As a Player

We were supposed to defend the docks from a small force of rebels, simple enough. The party's vampire opts instead to betray the emperor and attempt to negotiate with the rebels with an eye towards an assasination plot and taking over the empire. (Note that we were located in a hindquarder end of nowhere colony town thousands of miles from the imperial capitol, with nowhere near the levels or manpower required to remotely attempt such a thing.) A single party member (Me) remains loyal to the original mission and manages to contact high command, who deploys a strike team of high tier NPC's to do battle with the party and secure the docks, they manage to arrive at exactly the wrong moment, convincing the rebels that the whole negotiate and murder the emperor thing is a ruse, and a lovely chaotic battle begins. during which heavy casualties are taken by the rebels and the party, the docks are nearly destroyed, and the wrong guy makes off with the entire party's share of the quest reward. (In secret of course).

RazorChain
2016-03-24, 02:21 PM
As a player.

We were playing Times of Trouble for Forgotten Realm, one of the worst adventure module ever written. We, the players, had gotten fed up playing second fiddle to EVERYONE, so we killed Midnight, Kelemvor and Cyric. This brought the GM to tears, so he sent Elminster to talk some sense into us and resurrect the others with a Wish spell (Clerical Magic had ceased to function). So then we killed Elminster. Most people would think that wasn't possible but using loophole in the system we just grabbed him and suffocated him to death. Suck on that stoneskin and Globe of Invulnerability! It also helped that every combat round in AD&D 2nd ed. was 1 minute.

Then we managed to off Khelben Blackstaff as well before being taken out by Elminster, Khelben and The Simbul who had off course Wished both Ellie and Kellie to life.

runeghost
2016-03-24, 03:25 PM
As a player:

It was an old AD&D game. We were exploring this massive multi-level dungeon outside of town, and were supposed to eventually make our way to it's bottom level and retrieve an artifact after making our way through many, many levels of monsters, traps, and puzzles.

After two sessions of trying to figure things out, with have a pretty decent map of the first level (of an estimated nine). We go to the center, a few hundred feet above where divination and engineering puts the final treasure chamber with the artifact. The party casters then use most all their high-level spell slots on Rock to Mud cutting straight down into the final vault.

We're all standing around congratulating each other and getting ready to descend and loot when the extremley angry, mud-covered Demon Lord pops out of our new pit and surprises us. A TPK rapidly ensues. We were supposed to level and gear up as we made our way through the dungeon, until we could fight the demon lord. The puzzles we hadn't figured out yet would have told us that. Oops.

sktarq
2016-03-25, 12:43 PM
As a player:

It was an old AD&D game. We were exploring this massive multi-level dungeon outside of town, and were supposed to eventually make our way to it's bottom ......... A TPK rapidly ensues. We were supposed to level and gear up as we made our way through the dungeon, until we could fight the demon lord. The puzzles we hadn't figured out yet would have told us that. Oops.
Yup-had that kind of thing happen. More than once. Rock to Mud vertically is a good one though, never used it. Good job. And congrats on your characters leaving their mark on the world by releasing the demon lord. :smallcool:

LadyFoxfire
2016-03-27, 05:20 PM
AD&D one-shot: our characters our sitting around the pub drinking, and some npc is trying to hit on the rogue by bragging that he works at the coliseum and has his own key, so they could sneak in there for a private party, if you get his drift. Ten minutes later, the npc is unconscious in the alley and the party is on their way to break into the coliseum.

Once inside, we explore for a bit and find the tiger pit. The poor tigers looked so sad locked in that tiny dark room, and we were role playing our characters as so drunk they could barely string a sentence together, so of course we decide that the only thing to do is free all the animals.

Pandemonium ensues, we end up charming the gorilla and keeping it as our party mascot, and the tigers eat several civilians before the guards can subdue them. I still have no idea what the actual plot of the game was supposed to be.

The Extinguisher
2016-03-28, 10:55 PM
We left our last adventure with one character happily married and a legitimate lead on where to go next. Still no clue what we're actually trying to do, but we're getting stuff done. By this point, each player has two character, and we've been swapping between while the other stays on boat. So we could track down this lead, look for the bad guy and continue with the plot, but our wizard has a better idea.

You see, one of the first things we tried to do was stop this vampire from taking over the human city, which we failed at. During these attempts the vampire kidnapped wizards familiar. We got him back, but the wizard now holds a grudge. The wizard also holds a book telling him about a super weapon that can destroy anything. So he's been trying to get us to go look for it. We've got an A-team and a B-team now, and they're all together, so we can split up, he says. One team can follow the lead, and the other can look for this weapon, because to be honest we're all pretty convinced that the vampire is the important thing, and not these evil cultists killing gods.

So we set off to look for this weapon. We climb a mountain, killing then impersonating and mind-controlling a giantess's family to steal her stuff. We hire a few adventurers who have already been where we're going, and were traumatized from it, and force them to lead us to where we need to go. We spend a couple months wandering a swamp and find an evil city centered around a necromancy school. The best way to get inside and look for this weapon? Enroll as students (when only one of us can cast necromancy spells) and spend six months in school. Why was this weapon at a necromancy school you may ask?

Because the school was on top of the Tomb of Horrors. The weapon was in the Tomb of Horrors. Which we've tried to do previously, twice, and failed at. And the wizard knew this, because the weapon is an amulet designed to control a sphere of annihilation. Our wizards grand revenge plan was to annihilate the vampire that stole his familiar. So we spend some time assaulting and mind controlling students looking for the way in until asking nicely and getting assigned the Tomb as an extra credit assignment.

So we prepare to enter the Tomb once more. We do get pretty far, right near the end, but we ultimately fail.
-The rogue was annihilated on a trap, only to be brought back to life by a djinn, then left the tomb because they found more money then they could possibly spend. Which turned out to be fake.
-The barbarian was turned into slime midway through the dungeon
-The ant-man was blinded and no one bothered to heal him with the djinn
-The dragon shaman ascended to become the new Bahamut, god of Good Dragons
-And the wizard? He got an amulet of control. Not to control the Sphere of Annihilation, but to control were-koalas. Which wouldn't have been entirely useless, had the only were-koala we've ever seen not ascended to godhood mere moments later.

So we sent off our best team members on a wild goose chase, while leaving the B-team to focus on the real plot. For an entire year.

TeChameleon
2016-03-29, 03:02 AM
I managed a slightly odd one... I derailed an entire campaign setting >.>

What happened was that my group's first campaign was set in a homebrew world that the DM had been developing for years, off and on- there were details about politics and trade and history and on and on and on and on etc. Thankfully he was quite happy to have us change things up within the setting, and there wasn't a DMPC in sight, so it wasn't one of those 'DM is a frustrated writer and the PCs are bit-players and/or spectators in their epic' things that you hear horror stories about.

Anywho, the main thrust of the first campaign was that our characters were trying to rally the civilized lands and/or find artifacts to halt the rise of Orcus and his undead hordes. As we approached the end of the campaign, things were looking rather grim; the elven nations in their entirety had buggered off to another plane, multiple smaller nations had fallen, and the undead hordes, Orcus at their head, were going to be hitting the bastions of the good-aligned nations far too soon to be comfortable, despite the PCs finding and re-activating an ancient warforged army, creating a new pact of unity for the scattered dwarven holds, re-uniting the dragonborn tribes under the banner of their ancient empire, and creating a huge secret society/spy network out of the thieves' guilds, all in the name of stopping Orcus.

Thankfully, the PCs had found a rather impressive arcane artifact that I, as the player for the group's wizard, was going to be the one steering; long story short, it was basically the crystallized form of a turbocharged Wish spell. Some of the suggestions the DM offered as examples of what I could potentially do with it included creating a gigantic wall/barrier around the good lands or firing Orcus into deep space.

After pondering it for a while (between sessions), I eventually announced that I was going to use the artifact to rip the cluster of good-aligned lands out of the ground in their entirety and suspend them in the sky as a flying continent.

One series of improbably-good rolls later (I think my lowest roll on that entire skill challenge was ~14 or thereabouts), and there's a new ocean where the PCs' homelands used to be, Orcus' avatar and his hordes have been smashed to paste by kilometre-high tidal waves, and the 'main' countries of the setting are an Earthly paradise hanging in the sky.

It kinda changed the tone of the next campaign we played in that setting :smallbiggrin:

runeghost
2016-04-02, 01:11 AM
I'm not technically certain if this was a derail, but it led to the destruction of the world and end of the campaign by the end of the next session, so it probably counts.

The PCs are a fairly normal D&D-type party - cleric, fighter, monk, a couple others that I don't remember, plus a Chaotic Neutral thief with a pirate kit and my own Lawful Evil wizard. The wizard and thief weren't especially evil guys or anything (though the pirate was greedy and my wizard was ruthless), but the party didn't exactly trust them fully.

So when we all went off on a grand quest to retrieve a powerful artifact that could help the Gods of Good stop the Gods of Evil from Destroying the World, the rest of the party didn't confide all the details of what we were doing to Mr. Pirate and Mr. Wizard. So off we all go the the dungeon at the end of the world, through which we carefully make our way, taking some damage along the way, but not so much we decide to leave and recover, or even rest in the dungeon. (There is a clock ticking on doomsday, as most of the PCs know. You can probably start to see where this is going.)

We finally get to the end, a vast treasure room guarded by a death knight, with a special vault holding the artifact at the far end. A mighty battle ensues, and finally ends with the Death Knight defeated. But only the Pirate and Wizard still are standing, and both are low on hit points. Then something like this conversation ensues:

Pirate: "There's an awful lot of gold, jewels and treasure lying about here."
Wizard: "Weren't we after yon golden disk for some reason?"
Pirate: "I think so, but I can't rightly recall why. Do you?"
Wizard: "Nope. Maybe the cleric wanted it for her church or something?"
Pirate: "Well, the vault its in is trapped to hell and back."
Wizard: "It doesn't detect as magic, but there's lots of magic around it. Probably protections of some sort."
Pirate: "What say we load up on some of this loot and get back to my boat?"
Wizard: "We're both quite injured, so getting the hell out of here sounds good to me."

We escaped the dungeon with enough gold to live like kings. I can't remember if we were planning on getting the party rezzed, or if we just left them to rot so that we could carry Moar Loot. Either way, they never got rezzed. And since we weren't even sure why we were there in the first place, we didn't go tell the Good Guys about the failure to retrieve the artifact. World ends a few weeks later when Evil Chaos destroys everything. Oops.

Vwrt
2016-05-14, 12:24 PM
As a player, I had a wand that we called the pun gun, because speaking any pun was the command word. It would even go off from my belt when I made puns by accident, targeting a nearby person or object at random with a ranged touch attack. Our GM also used a deathblow rule in combat: if you rolled a natural 20, and your roll to confirm the potential critical was also a natural 20, you'd roll one more time and if that was also a natural 20 it would be a fatal deathblow. Our quest had brought us to a new city where we were looking for the high priest of a particular temple, and when we finally met him, I made an unintentional pun which killed him on the spot.

ATHATH
2016-05-14, 01:53 PM
We left our last adventure with one character happily married and a legitimate lead on where to go next. Still no clue what we're actually trying to do, but we're getting stuff done. By this point, each player has two character, and we've been swapping between while the other stays on boat. So we could track down this lead, look for the bad guy and continue with the plot, but our wizard has a better idea.

You see, one of the first things we tried to do was stop this vampire from taking over the human city, which we failed at. During these attempts the vampire kidnapped wizards familiar. We got him back, but the wizard now holds a grudge. The wizard also holds a book telling him about a super weapon that can destroy anything. So he's been trying to get us to go look for it. We've got an A-team and a B-team now, and they're all together, so we can split up, he says. One team can follow the lead, and the other can look for this weapon, because to be honest we're all pretty convinced that the vampire is the important thing, and not these evil cultists killing gods.

So we set off to look for this weapon. We climb a mountain, killing then impersonating and mind-controlling a giantess's family to steal her stuff. We hire a few adventurers who have already been where we're going, and were traumatized from it, and force them to lead us to where we need to go. We spend a couple months wandering a swamp and find an evil city centered around a necromancy school. The best way to get inside and look for this weapon? Enroll as students (when only one of us can cast necromancy spells) and spend six months in school. Why was this weapon at a necromancy school you may ask?

Because the school was on top of the Tomb of Horrors. The weapon was in the Tomb of Horrors. Which we've tried to do previously, twice, and failed at. And the wizard knew this, because the weapon is an amulet designed to control a sphere of annihilation. Our wizards grand revenge plan was to annihilate the vampire that stole his familiar. So we spend some time assaulting and mind controlling students looking for the way in until asking nicely and getting assigned the Tomb as an extra credit assignment.

So we prepare to enter the Tomb once more. We do get pretty far, right near the end, but we ultimately fail.
-The rogue was annihilated on a trap, only to be brought back to life by a djinn, then left the tomb because they found more money then they could possibly spend. Which turned out to be fake.
-The barbarian was turned into slime midway through the dungeon
-The ant-man was blinded and no one bothered to heal him with the djinn
-The dragon shaman ascended to become the new Bahamut, god of Good Dragons
-And the wizard? He got an amulet of control. Not to control the Sphere of Annihilation, but to control were-koalas. Which wouldn't have been entirely useless, had the only were-koala we've ever seen not ascended to godhood mere moments later.

So we sent off our best team members on a wild goose chase, while leaving the B-team to focus on the real plot. For an entire year.
Why didn't the Wizard use the amulet to control the god-were-koala?

captain-mills
2016-05-14, 03:17 PM
I was GMing Star Wars Saga when not a player, but my dice decided to derail a campaign.

The party was salvaging in an old seperatist droid assembly station that had never been brought fully online, (this is 16 years after the end of the clone wars) they find out that the station was within a few days of being brought online, and decided to see if they could take it for their own uses. this i had planned for, the party was supposed to encounter an AI that was supposed to organize the droids against the party and put them through some serious combat, but the party's face is also and expert hacker, and proceeded to never roll below 17, while my dice thought that it'd be funny to roll strictly 4 or less for about 20 bluff and hacking checks in a row. suffice it to say the party got everything they wanted out of the station and blew it up, and a character that was supposed to be my BBEG for a while is now the party's best friend.

This is so similar to a story a friend of mine told me a few years ago that I'm kind of wondering if I know you.