How much work should be being done behind by characters behind the scenes?

[heavyfuel]

Kind of in reference to this green text: http://i.imgur.com/8xXW0kl.png

If an evil NPC has some evil plan and the players never get around to stop them, should the plan succeed? I imagine the answer for a situation similar to the green text will be a resounding "yeah, duh". After all, the PCs new about the plan and deliberately chose to ignore it.

But what if the players never even learn about the plan. What if the villain's machinations lay undetected for years, for he is a master of deception?

Jokes aside, what if the villain has a Bluff bonus of +80 or so? No one will ever, EVER, beat him in a Sense Motive opposed check as long as he doesn't tell completely absurd lies.

Or maybe he's even in a whole different continent or plane of existence.

Or both.

How much of a-hole move is it to throw some unexpected apocalypse at the PCs?

[mastermisha1]

It really all depends on your group. The general rule of thumb I follow is that everything is well and good as long as everyone has fun. Some groups may be completely fine with a curve ball like that, while others may rebel at the thought.

[Geddy2112]

It is fair to have things happen behind the scenes, so long as the players have some inkling that it is happening. It is unfair to go from 0 to apocalypse without any warning. The party should have several warning signs that things are getting bad before a rocks falls, everyone dies situation.

If players ignore things happening in the world and let them happen, let the logical consequences occur. If it is something big, it should have incremental warning signs that if something is not done, bad things will continue to happen and they will get worse.

Even if a villian can't be caught lying, their actions will come to light in some way, even indirectly. They can keep their noses clean, but you can't hide an entire city being destroyed without major major magic. If they are on another plane, certainly they are doing something on this one/have agents working for them that will lead to things happening.

For the lich example-have undead starting to come to life all over the place. Start with a single city where a few undead are coming from what seems to be nowhere. Eventually the city is overtaken with undead, and it just keeps spreading from there.

[Goaty14]

Forcing the characters into a plot is called "railroading" because they have one set path that branches occasionally, and is generally looked down upon.

I would have the worst happen, but not without constantly slapping the players with a fish. If the players want to do the thing in the picture given, then let them, but constantly throw undead at them, until they get annoyed and seek out the source.

TL:DR Look at the Elder Evils signs (faint, moderate, strong, overwhelming) and make it increasingly more annoying for PCs to ignore what's coming.

[Crake]

Forcing the characters into a plot is called "railroading" because they have one set path that branches occasionally, and is generally looked down upon.

I would have the worst happen, but not without constantly slapping the players with a fish. If the players want to do the thing in the picture given, then let them, but constantly throw undead at them, until they get annoyed and seek out the source.

TL:DR Look at the Elder Evils signs (faint, moderate, strong, overwhelming) and make it increasingly more annoying for PCs to ignore what's coming.

Having an apocalyptic event isn't railroading, they have the freedom to tackle that scenario however they choose. To railroad them would be to not only have the apocalyptic event happen, but to also only have one solution available, and to force the characters to follow that route to the exclusion of all others.

The apocalyptic event itself is more of a hard hook, or a hook that can't be ignored, but usually something like that would be discussed beforehand, and if the players aren't interested in a save the world game, then just don't run that. The problem with the greentext in the OP seems to be that the players happily signed up for that game, then one of them derailed the game and expected the DM to compensate.

To answer the OP's question though: depending on what level the players are when they learn of the impending world ending event, I think it's perfectly reasonable that the players aren't the only ones who can stop the evil. Unless they literally do not tell anyone of what they learned, and there is no other way for the world to learn of this evil lich's ascension to power, someone out there will fight to maintain the status quo, even if it's a cabal of wizards who would seek to maintain their hold on power from behind the scenes. As Goaty and Geddy said, there should be signs for such events occuring in the background that the players should notice, that kind of stuff doesn't just pop up out of nowhere (and if it does, how were the players supposed to stop it anyway).

[Waker]

Generally when I design a campaign, I have a time frame for events set up in advance. Events may or may not happen in response to whatever the party is doing, but I do not put everything on hold simply because the party decides they wanna go on vacation looking for side-quests. That being said, while I do have very large events occur at times, I never have a "Game Over" kind of plot planned.

[Gildedragon]

If the campaign went another way (as in the green text) then NPC heroes rose up to fight the threat.
One day four adventurers burst into the Palace of the People and demand resources to hunt down the lich's phylactery/warn an army of the dead is marching to the city.

[Zanos]

Yeah, "you guys didn't do X so the world ends" isn't the type of game I run. Plots do run in the background, and the PCs interference or lack thereof will change them, but the PCs are not the chosen ones. How does that even work at level 1 unless nobody ever dies in the game? Anyway, they are extraordinary, perhaps even among the best of the best at higher levels, but other people live in the campaign world. If the Evil Lich conducts a major ritual to do Bad Thing, other people might attempt to intervene with varying degrees of success. In any case I won't end the campaign, but there might be major shifts in the political landscape as Evil Lich and his Army of Bad Stuff steamroll a couple of kingdoms before the rest of the world figures out an alliance might be a good idea and they come to a stalemate with a pretty good portion of the land covered in Bad Stuff. But that's not forever either, circumstances could change such that the Lich is overpowered, although he might screw up the world pretty good.

I digress. I run games such that world responds logically to the PCs actions. It doesn't end when some level 1 PCs decide they have other priorities than whisperings of a death cult hanging out in a nearby cave plot hook I threw out. But it doesn't ignore their actions either.

[Darth Ultron]

If your of the ''all railroading is bad'' type, and your against any type of ''direction'' to the characters, then events should happen in the background.

If your all into the random chaos of the players run the game, you should be able to accept the good and the bad of that. So if your a ''do nothing'' type Dm that just sits there and ''drops hooks'', and the players just ignore them and do whatsoever random stuff they randomly want to do and as Dm you just follow allong saying ''yes players, whatever you want players'' then you do have to ''game'' with that choice.

I guess if you want to follow the wacky spirit of the ''all mighty player agency game'', then any plot the players choose not to follow and do will automatically fail. After all it would not be fair for something to happen to the characters if they players choose to ignore something. Like if the players want to spend the whole game breaking into the local bank ''forz the lootz'', and ignore all the ''silly DM hook drops'' about the evil necromancer, then it would be unfair for the zombie horde to hit. After all if the players just want to ''lootz all the bankz'' then the world must be unchanging so they can do that (and even more so, even if the village has like ten gold, the ''bank'' must have like ''tonz of lootz'', you know so the game can be ''funz''.)

If you run a more normal game, any plot ignored should have at least a 50% of happening.

[Zanos]

If your of the ''all railroading is bad'' type, and your against any type of ''direction'' to the characters, then events should happen in the background.

If your all into the random chaos of the players run the game, you should be able to accept the good and the bad of that. So if your a ''do nothing'' type Dm that just sits there and ''drops hooks'', and the players just ignore them and do whatsoever random stuff they randomly want to do and as Dm you just follow allong saying ''yes players, whatever you want players'' then you do have to ''game'' with that choice.

I guess if you want to follow the wacky spirit of the ''all mighty player agency game'', then any plot the players choose not to follow and do will automatically fail. After all it would not be fair for something to happen to the characters if they players choose to ignore something. Like if the players want to spend the whole game breaking into the local bank ''forz the lootz'', and ignore all the ''silly DM hook drops'' about the evil necromancer, then it would be unfair for the zombie horde to hit. After all if the players just want to ''lootz all the bankz'' then the world must be unchanging so they can do that (and even more so, even if the village has like ten gold, the ''bank'' must have like ''tonz of lootz'', you know so the game can be ''funz''.)

If you run a more normal game, any plot ignored should have at least a 50% of happening.
Nobody had advocated for what you're describing.

[Darth Ultron]

Nobody had advocated for what you're describing.

There are only like ten posts. I'm being proactive.....


If you post it, they will come...and post.