rmnimoc
2019-03-19, 09:04 PM
About a year and a half ago I posted a thread on here about a campaign that went sour towards the end after our DM made some questionable decisions. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?542483-I-m-still-a-little-upset-but-is-it-really-as-bad-as-it-seems-to-me-(Forcecage)). Afterwards he asked about another game, and ultimately everyone in the part (including me eventually) agreed to it. That's the story as the last thread left it.
A little over a month later he got in touch and mentioned that he was running a pair of new campaigns in a shared world and asked if it was okay if we joined in the campaign latter in their story, after they were a bit higher level and had some more experience under their belts. So I heard from him a few more times over the months about the progress of the players and how the campaign was going in general, though he was pretty cagey with any details about the setting. Come October, 11 months after the last game our old campaign, he mentions that the campaign and the players have finally reached a good point for us to jump in, but then he asks if it would be okay if we took a few plot critical NPCs as new characters instead of making new ones. We agree, and a date for our introduction to the campaign is finally set, the one year anniversary of the last game of our last campaign with him.
We all show up for the game to discover he's already part way through running the game and so he has us all in a second chat until it's our time to hop in, though he do get to see what the other players are up to. We ask for the character sheets of the new characters and he says he already gave them to us, but since we've played a campaign with him before he's pretty confident we'll pick up the characters easily enough even if we don't have them until we actually enter the game.
That was red flag number 1 in my mind. While he made pretty big mistake before, he was otherwise a fairly good DM and this seems totally out of left field and rather weird. Red flag number 2 was raised when the big bads from the previous game showed up as these quasi-invincible super-badasses that the party didn't stand a chance against thanks to both being way higher level than the parties and also all kinds of absurd magical items that they apparently got from a bunch of evil gods. They'd also apparently taken over the world. Whatever, the DM obviously liked those characters so it made sense he'd use them again, even if it was a bit odd. Red flag number 3 was that he had two games running simultaneously (the two campaigns merged back together and the characters had shared goals that they both had to succeed for things to go well).
Despite all the red flags though, the game seemed to be going well. The players were all happy and the game really had a "Lord of the Rings"-esque vibe to it, where the goals of the parties were never to beat the bad guys and it was pretty clear they weren't anywhere on the level to stand a chance (it was clearly close to the end of the campaign but the party was only level 7). Instead each party had a MacGuffin they had to deliver to some location to do some nebulous thing that would allow the good gods to "set right what went wrong" and give them the edge against evil. Meanwhile each party had their own sort of rival group running around and trying to stop them. Anyway, the parties managed to get the MacGuffins to do their thing. Now we're given the stuff to enter Fantasy Grounds and what should await us but our old characters on the old map, exactly as it was when the TPK finally happened. Then the DM seemed to reset everything to how it was just before the fight began and two parties of level 7s showed up just as the bad guys sprung their trap.
Apparently the DM felt bad enough about the whole thing to make the main goal of that entire campaign to fix that mistake, with the party being trapped in some weird thing where we kept having to relive that fight for eternity. Anyway, a cleric from party A tossed me some swanky teleportation boots and all of a sudden the fight was afoot. With a small army of ten level 7s and me not stuck on the sidelines unable to fight, the TPK became a stomp in the other direction. Our original party split up between parties A and B and the real endgame started. Over the next few months we pushed back, shattered the hold the bad guys had on the world, beat the rival groups, and even took down the new and improved big bads. Ultimately everyone in the original party died over the course of the next few games, but since this time our characters went out like heroes making things that were otherwise impossible for the others possible in straight up cinema-worthy fashion (my character died from wounds caused by a souped-up Sword of Wounding after saving the party from a TPK and single-handed killing the big bads (who weren't actually the finally enemies of the campaign, though it was still the second to last game)) instead of a bunch of chumps who just got screwed by "Surprise Forcecage", no one had any real issue with it.
In the end, we all died to the same enemies, but it was still enough to turn the campaign I had the worst memories of into the one I have the best memories of.
Just thought I'd share that, both as a "this was a super cool campaign idea" story and as a "give the other people at the table the benefit of the doubt, because they just might surprise you" story.
A little over a month later he got in touch and mentioned that he was running a pair of new campaigns in a shared world and asked if it was okay if we joined in the campaign latter in their story, after they were a bit higher level and had some more experience under their belts. So I heard from him a few more times over the months about the progress of the players and how the campaign was going in general, though he was pretty cagey with any details about the setting. Come October, 11 months after the last game our old campaign, he mentions that the campaign and the players have finally reached a good point for us to jump in, but then he asks if it would be okay if we took a few plot critical NPCs as new characters instead of making new ones. We agree, and a date for our introduction to the campaign is finally set, the one year anniversary of the last game of our last campaign with him.
We all show up for the game to discover he's already part way through running the game and so he has us all in a second chat until it's our time to hop in, though he do get to see what the other players are up to. We ask for the character sheets of the new characters and he says he already gave them to us, but since we've played a campaign with him before he's pretty confident we'll pick up the characters easily enough even if we don't have them until we actually enter the game.
That was red flag number 1 in my mind. While he made pretty big mistake before, he was otherwise a fairly good DM and this seems totally out of left field and rather weird. Red flag number 2 was raised when the big bads from the previous game showed up as these quasi-invincible super-badasses that the party didn't stand a chance against thanks to both being way higher level than the parties and also all kinds of absurd magical items that they apparently got from a bunch of evil gods. They'd also apparently taken over the world. Whatever, the DM obviously liked those characters so it made sense he'd use them again, even if it was a bit odd. Red flag number 3 was that he had two games running simultaneously (the two campaigns merged back together and the characters had shared goals that they both had to succeed for things to go well).
Despite all the red flags though, the game seemed to be going well. The players were all happy and the game really had a "Lord of the Rings"-esque vibe to it, where the goals of the parties were never to beat the bad guys and it was pretty clear they weren't anywhere on the level to stand a chance (it was clearly close to the end of the campaign but the party was only level 7). Instead each party had a MacGuffin they had to deliver to some location to do some nebulous thing that would allow the good gods to "set right what went wrong" and give them the edge against evil. Meanwhile each party had their own sort of rival group running around and trying to stop them. Anyway, the parties managed to get the MacGuffins to do their thing. Now we're given the stuff to enter Fantasy Grounds and what should await us but our old characters on the old map, exactly as it was when the TPK finally happened. Then the DM seemed to reset everything to how it was just before the fight began and two parties of level 7s showed up just as the bad guys sprung their trap.
Apparently the DM felt bad enough about the whole thing to make the main goal of that entire campaign to fix that mistake, with the party being trapped in some weird thing where we kept having to relive that fight for eternity. Anyway, a cleric from party A tossed me some swanky teleportation boots and all of a sudden the fight was afoot. With a small army of ten level 7s and me not stuck on the sidelines unable to fight, the TPK became a stomp in the other direction. Our original party split up between parties A and B and the real endgame started. Over the next few months we pushed back, shattered the hold the bad guys had on the world, beat the rival groups, and even took down the new and improved big bads. Ultimately everyone in the original party died over the course of the next few games, but since this time our characters went out like heroes making things that were otherwise impossible for the others possible in straight up cinema-worthy fashion (my character died from wounds caused by a souped-up Sword of Wounding after saving the party from a TPK and single-handed killing the big bads (who weren't actually the finally enemies of the campaign, though it was still the second to last game)) instead of a bunch of chumps who just got screwed by "Surprise Forcecage", no one had any real issue with it.
In the end, we all died to the same enemies, but it was still enough to turn the campaign I had the worst memories of into the one I have the best memories of.
Just thought I'd share that, both as a "this was a super cool campaign idea" story and as a "give the other people at the table the benefit of the doubt, because they just might surprise you" story.