"It was all for nothing"

[Jon_Dahl]

I've noticed that at least one of my players, a recent recruit, has a minor issue that sometimes comes up in my games. If there is more than one way that a mission can fail and one of these possibilities is realized, then he feels that they have done all for nothing. I will give you an example.

The PCs went to rescue NPC adventurers from an edge zone of the Positive Energy Plane, which is a gigantic air bubble and has the minor positive trait. The PCs fought the lumi warriors guarding the prisoners and then the PCs and the NPCs escaped to the astral plane.

In the astral plane, I gave the players a non-combat challenge: The leader of the NPC group felt that his ego had been hurt by getting caught, put into chains and then being rescued by a bunch of "amateurs". He couldn't stand the thought of having everyone at home to hear what had happened to him. He started to blame the PCs for "walking too slowly". It was true that according to the movement rules pertaining to astral plane, the PCs were very slow compared to the NPCs. What happened was that one of PCs started to wind up the NPC and rub his nose in it. This infuriated the NPC and made diplomacy with the rest of the group very difficult. The NPCs left the PCs, but they left without any gear and the NPC cleric didn't have her holy symbol. They were ridiculously vulnerable, but the NPCs felt secure, because nothing had ever happened in the astral plane. However, this time was different, since they encountered an astral stalker, which easily killed the NPCs and left their bodies to float around in front of the portal to the material plane, which was the PCs' destination.

When the player whose character had offended and successfully irritated the leader of the NPC group saw the dead bodies, he felt disappointed and said that all their efforts had been in vain. I stopped to think about his reaction, but I don't what to think about it. My plan was to have the adventure in two parts: First, saving the NPCs (success) and second, not having them to split the group in a hostile environment (failure). This twofold nature of the mission would have offered the PCs some extra XP. All comments are welcome.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Sounds perfectly realistic to me *shrug*. Stupid, to be sure, but a lot of what realistically happens is stupid random **** for stupid random reasons. If that's the kind of world you're shooting for, you hit the mark. The player will learn that being an ass to NPCs has consequences, and that's that.

[False God]

So the player/PC made what was an annoying, but otherwise resolved situation worse, which ultimately lead to the undoing of their efforts, and then complains that their efforts were pointless?

I mean, yeah I like to stick my hand in the blender from time to time, but I've got noone to blame but myself when I lose a finger.

Depending on who's complaining (the player or the PC, or both) their counterparts (the other players or the other PC's) really need to tell him to settle down. If he's gonna make situations worse, he's really got no room to complain when they go sideways.

[Vizzerdrix]

Seems fair to me. They could still salvage the mission by getting the npc party ressed, THEN rubbing that in on top of the rescue.

[Bronk]

Yeah, that guy really screwed up the mission.

You don't seem to think so though! If I were in that party, I'd assume that it was a total failure too, since the mission was to save the NPCs and clearly they're all dead before the final escape. However, since you've designated the initial rescue as the one that really counts rather than the overall rescue (perhaps since the NPCs made their own decision to leave?), letting him know would probably cheer him up.

I like the idea of rezzing the NPCs too... that could make it clear that doing that kind of thing can be an expensive mistake.

Plus, they could try tracking down this Astral Stalker and take it out for more experience, depending on their level.

The NPCs are partly to blame here too... if they were faster, they were either smarter than the others or were more familiar with the area, and they should have known better than to take off alone and weaponless like that.

[Blackhawk748]

Uh...how is this a failure? If they;re running around the planes that means they have access to Raise dead at least, so grab the bodies and rez them. If they still feel bad, waize the costs. its not hard.

But ya, they screwed that up themselves

[Rynjin]

I'm...not entirely seeing how this is the PCs fault.

The NPCs were clearly morons, and it's the DM who made them that way. What kind of idiot goes wandering around in ANOTHER PLANE without any gear. Particularly if they're supposed to be "experienced" compared to the "amateur" PCs?

I don't think anyone would logically expect a little needling of these supposedly expert NPC adventurers to result in their deaths.

Even if nothing killed them, what was their actual game plan? The Cleric didn't have their holy symbol, and presumably didn't have a component pouch either in that case, so couldn't Plane Shift them out (or they would have done so from the start), so their plan was to wander an infinite plane for all eternity on the off chance they find a naturally made portal out because somebody hurt their leader's fee-fees?

I'd be kind of peeved too if I was a player in this game, and retroactively vindicated that such a group of giant idiots who were talking such gooood **** a minute ago about how "expert" they are did such a thorough job of proving themselves wrong.

The only thing I think your players did wrong is calling this mission failure. They did their part; rescued the NPCs. If they decide to commit suicide afterward that's not the party's problem.

[Psyren]

I'm...not entirely seeing how this is the PCs fault.

The NPCs were clearly morons, and it's the DM who made them that way. What kind of idiot goes wandering around in ANOTHER PLANE without any gear. Particularly if they're supposed to be "experienced" compared to the "amateur" PCs?

I don't think anyone would logically expect a little needling of these supposedly expert NPC adventurers to result in their deaths.

Even if nothing killed them, what was their actual game plan? The Cleric didn't have their holy symbol, and presumably didn't have a component pouch either in that case, so couldn't Plane Shift them out (or they would have done so from the start), so their plan was to wander an infinite plane for all eternity on the off chance they find a naturally made portal out because somebody hurt their leader's fee-fees?

I'd be kind of peeved too if I was a player in this game, and retroactively vindicated that such a group of giant idiots who were talking such gooood **** a minute ago about how "expert" they are did such a thorough job of proving themselves wrong.

The only thing I think your players did wrong is calling this mission failure. They did their part; rescued the NPCs. If they decide to commit suicide afterward that's not the party's problem.

^ I'm on Rynjin's side here; The abject stupidity of the NPCs and the random encounter that killed them were entirely in your control as the DM. Trying to blame both of those on the PCs would annoy me too.

[Kesnit]

Yeah, that guy really screwed up the mission.

I disagree. The NPCs got their feelings hurt and sulked off. As I understand it, the NPCs were upset that they had to be rescued; the PC added to the frustration, but he didn't start it.


I'm...not entirely seeing how this is the PCs fault.

The NPCs were clearly morons, and it's the DM who made them that way. What kind of idiot goes wandering around in ANOTHER PLANE without any gear. Particularly if they're supposed to be "experienced" compared to the "amateur" PCs?

I don't think anyone would logically expect a little needling of these supposedly expert NPC adventurers to result in their deaths.

Even if nothing killed them, what was their actual game plan? The Cleric didn't have their holy symbol, and presumably didn't have a component pouch either in that case, so couldn't Plane Shift them out (or they would have done so from the start), so their plan was to wander an infinite plane for all eternity on the off chance they find a naturally made portal out because somebody hurt their leader's fee-fees?

I'd be kind of peeved too if I was a player in this game, and retroactively vindicated that such a group of giant idiots who were talking such gooood **** a minute ago about how "expert" they are did such a thorough job of proving themselves wrong.

The only thing I think your players did wrong is calling this mission failure. They did their part; rescued the NPCs. If they decide to commit suicide afterward that's not the party's problem.


^ I'm on Rynjin's side here; The abject stupidity of the NPCs and the random encounter that killed them were entirely in your control as the DM. Trying to blame both of those on the PCs would annoy me too.

I agree with Rynijn and Psyren. The NPCs were completely in your control, and were upset about their rescue before the PC did or said anything. Then you had them stalk off (without gear???) and die off-screen. To someone who cannot read your mind, it probably did look like you had the planned from the start and set the PCs up to fail.

Perhaps a better way to handle their deaths was to have the PCs come upon the combat with a chance to defeat the stalker and save the NPCs (again).

[ExLibrisMortis]

The DM planned for the NPCs' frustration to be an encounter. It was an easy encounter: stay near them, don't piss them off. One PC failed and that means the party didn't beat the encounter. There's no "oh but the DM could've prevented the NPCs from leaving". That's called an ad-hoc difficulty adjustment, or fudging, and it isn't called for when the players' own ill-considered choices cause the party to fail. It is entirely reasonable to blame the PCs, noting that cruel chance has played its part, too (which the DM has to simulate, at times, else the game'll get awfully boring).

[Psyren]

The DM planned for the NPCs' frustration to be an encounter. It was an easy encounter: stay near them, don't piss them off. One PC failed and that means the party didn't beat the encounter. There's no "oh but the DM could've prevented the NPCs from leaving". That's called an ad-hoc difficulty adjustment, or fudging, and it isn't called for when the players' own ill-considered choices cause the party to fail. It is entirely reasonable to blame the PCs, noting that cruel chance has played its part, too (which the DM has to simulate, at times, else the game'll get awfully boring).

Neither "we're so mad we're ragequitting the group naked" and "this random encounter table generated something that would slaughter us" are within the PCs' control. If you believe that, I can only be happy we'll never be at the same table.

[False God]

Neither "we're so mad we're ragequitting the group naked" and "this random encounter table generated something that would slaughter us" are within the PCs' control. If you believe that, I can only be happy we'll never be at the same table.

To be fair to the NPCs, we don't know exactly how badly the player in question rubbed their noses in it. Some mild jesting and these guys get so butthurt they wander off naked? Yeah ok the DM took that a little far a little fast. The PC really rubbing their noses in it, actively insulting their skills, their honor, their traditions? Yeah, I can't blame the NPCs for bailing, death might be preferable to dealing with a massive jerkwad of a PC.

[MisterKaws]

I disagree. The NPCs got their feelings hurt and sulked off. As I understand it, the NPCs were upset that they had to be rescued; the PC added to the frustration, but he didn't start it.





I agree with Rynijn and Psyren. The NPCs were completely in your control, and were upset about their rescue before the PC did or said anything. Then you had them stalk off (without gear???) and die off-screen. To someone who cannot read your mind, it probably did look like you had the planned from the start and set the PCs up to fail.

Perhaps a better way to handle their deaths was to have the PCs come upon the combat with a chance to defeat the stalker and save the NPCs (again).

Kind of this. Especially the part about the cleric being obviously dumb with the whole "I'm gonna walk through a foreign plane while as weak as a commoner" shtick. They could easily have made an improvised wooden holy symbol using untrained Craft checks for two days before leaving(choose 10xDC5x2=1gp). And don't tell me "well but the cleric didn't have the one-third material cost". It's a piece of wood.

Also, about half of the spells that require cheap material components only require it for arcane spells.

[Rynjin]

To be fair to the NPCs, we don't know exactly how badly the player in question rubbed their noses in it. Some mild jesting and these guys get so butthurt they wander off naked? Yeah ok the DM took that a little far a little fast. The PC really rubbing their noses in it, actively insulting their skills, their honor, their traditions? Yeah, I can't blame the NPCs for bailing, death might be preferable to dealing with a massive jerkwad of a PC.

To be less fair, almost every response to that kind of abuse, including socking said PC in his fat mouthy gob is more sensible and sensical than "let's wander an extradimensional desert naked lmao".

[Quarian Rex]

The DM planned for the NPCs' frustration to be an encounter. It was an easy encounter: stay near them, don't piss them off.


And this is the actual problem. The DM turned a minor RP element (the misplaced pride of the rescued adventurers) into an illogical auto-fail if the PCs didn't go out of their way to massage the bruised egos of the people who should be grateful for being saved. People tend not to coddle ingrates at the best of times and are even less likely to do so in a game that they are supposed to be playing for fun.

This could have been handled in multiple ways, from the rescued party becoming an ongoing rival due to the further bruising of their pride, to them being complete d!cks and trying to spin the story to place some of the blame for their predicament on the PCs when they returned to home base. There are any number of ways that this could have played out in a way that would stress the importance of diplomacy if that was your goal.

Having the NPCs stalk off, against all sense of self-preservation, naked into a hostile plane (not one of them had Knowledge Planes to be aware of possible dangers even if they hadn't encountered some yet?) only to have their remains conveniently deposited in the PCs path (of all the infinite expanse of the Astral Plane) smacks of DM railroad and the players are right to call you out on it. The DM had them achieve an objective and then blew it up and tried to make them feel responsible for the deaths because they chose not to flatter characters that he chose to play as jerks.

I would say that they have a right to be pissed.

[False God]

To be less fair, almost every response to that kind of abuse, including socking said PC in his fat mouthy gob is more sensible and sensical than "let's wander an extradimensional desert naked lmao".

I would generally agree. Though I'm going to go out on a limb here and suspect that the party may be the type to "start something" with the expectation that the NPCs will engage, only to kill them and take their stuff. Without additional commentary from the DM I'm left to wonder.

But my past experience with other DMs leads me to believe that players/PCs tend to be jerks in two situations:
1: When they have no idea what they're dealing with.
2: When they're grossly more powerful.

Given the NPCs were unarmed, it's possible that the PCs were holding their gear. Thus, putting the players/PCs in a position where they can do as they please, and if the NPCs tried anything the party would handily whoop 'em.

[Psyren]

I would generally agree. Though I'm going to go out on a limb here and suspect that the party may be the type to "start something" with the expectation that the NPCs will engage, only to kill them and take their stuff. Without additional commentary from the DM I'm left to wonder.

Commentary from the party might be nice too. I tend to automatically distrust these kind of one-sided recountings, especially when even the side that has more justification to be biased towards their NPCs is unable to make their actions seem remotely rational.

[Saintheart]

I've noticed that at least one of my players, a recent recruit, has a minor issue that sometimes comes up in my games. If there is more than one way that a mission can fail and one of this possibilities is realized, then he feels that they have done all for nothing. I will give you an example.

The PCs went to rescue NPC adventurers from an edge zone of the Positive Energy Plane, which is a gigantic air bubble and has the minor positive trait. The PCs fought the lumi warriors guarding the prisoners and then the PCs and the NPCs escaped to the astral plane.

In the astral plane, I gave the players a non-combat challenge: The leader of the NPC group felt that his ego had been hurt by getting caught, put into chains and then being rescued by a bunch of "amateurs". He couldn't stand the thought of having everyone at home to hear what had happened to him. He started to blame the PCs for "walking too slowly". It was true that according to the movement rules pertaining to astral plane, the PCs were very slow compared to the NPCs. What happened was that one of PCs started to wind up the NPC and rub his nose in it. This infuriated the NPC and made diplomacy with the rest of the group very difficult. The NPCs left the PCs, but they left without any gear and the NPC cleric didn't have her holy symbol. They were ridiculously vulnerable, but the NPCs felt secure, because nothing had ever happened in the astral plane. However, this time was different, since they encountered an astral stalker, which easily killed the NPCs and left their bodies to float around in front of the portal to the material plane, which was the PCs' destination.

When the player whose character had offended and successfully irritated the leader of the NPC group saw the dead bodies, he felt disappointed and said that all their efforts had been in vain. I stopped to think about his reaction, but I don't what to think about it. My plan was to have the adventure in two parts: First, saving the NPCs (success) and second, not having them to split the group in a hostile environment (failure). This twofold nature of the mission would have offered the PCs some extra XP. All comments are welcome.

If you're saying your new recruit went out of his way to irritate the NPC, and you gave them multiple hints/warnings that irritating him would cause the NPCs to leave, and particularly if the recruit did this with the rest of the PCs desperately trying to keep the NPCs with them - then if your guy wails that "We did it all for nothing", the most logical if not polite response to him is "Yeah, so maybe next time you might consider not annoying the plot-critical NPCs? Where did I give you the impression that once you had this group in the party you were home and hosed?"

However:

As a suggestion, the Angry GM has an article (https://theangrygm.com/coping-with-loss/) on why DMs need to be a bit more thoughtful about loss than they traditionally are.

Quoting the relevant section, bearing in mind it's said in Angry's usual high-handed style:


The basic D&D adventure is structured like an obstacle course. The players overcome one challenge after another. If they overcome all the challenges in their way, they win. Otherwise, they lose. And the only way to lose most challenges is to die. And even if there is a challenge that won’t kill a party of losers, one that merely sends them along a different path, most adventures allow the players to just keep trying different ways until they succeed. Didn’t talk your way past the guard? Try sneaking past him. Oops, he noticed you. Guess you have to kill him. He’s dead now. You get to continue on your way.

That’s a really, really terrible structure when you get down to it. It means that the only way to actually lose at an adventure is to die along the way. 99% of the time, winning the adventure is inevitable. It’s a matter of mere persistence. Just keep throwing yourself at the challenges until you succeed. 1% of the time, someone – or everyone – dies. And no matter how unlikely the possibility of death is, if you spin that Russian Roulette wheel enough times, eventually death is going to happen. So the whole campaign – if you’re playing one – becomes a matter of surviving and winning every adventure and getting to the end before the odds catch up to you and someone – or everyone – dies.

D&D doesn’t handle loss well. It never has. It doesn’t know what to do if the players retreat. It doesn’t know what to do if the players have to drop back ten yards and punt. It doesn’t know what to do if the players lose encounter after encounter. The only thing it knows how to do is high five the victors with XP or kill the losers. And killing the losers feels so bad and the game designers are such utter ****ies that they’ve made death more and more unlikely. Which means most adventures are just inevitable victories until someone gets hit with enough critical hits to die.

...

Let’s consider that example though. Because it’s actually highly instructive about loss. And good losses. So, imagine this adventure: the heroes have to retrieve the Orb of MacGuffin from the Dungeon of Plot Contrivance. The Orb is locked in a vault in the middle of the dungeon. There’s a complex puzzle lock on the door. The party overcomes a bunch of challenges along the way. They kill all sorts of Guardian Monsters™ and overcome Terrible Traps™ and solve Complex Puzzles™. All the crap adventurers are always doing. And then they get to the vault in the middle.

First, they try to solve the puzzle lock. But they can’t do it. It just doesn’t make sense to them. So, the rogue tries to sabotage the puzzle lock and open the door. He flubs the roll and can’t circumvent the mechanism. Finally, the barbarian flies into a rage, batters at the door, and fails to knock it down. And… that’s it. There’s no other way in. The party can’t break down the door, they can’t pick the lock, and they can’t solve the puzzle. Game over. Party loses.

And that loss DOES suck. Even the screaming Internet morons get it right once in a while. But the reasons why it sucks are important.

The first reason why it sucks is that the loss is completely unearned. Apart from not being smart enough to solve the puzzle, the party didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, once they realized they couldn’t solve the puzzle lock, they were smart enough to try some alternatives. Like picking the lock or breaking down the door. And those came down to die rolls. Nothing about the loss had anything to do with the choices the players made. And when they walk away from that loss, they won’t be looking at all of the things they could have done differently because there’s not much they could have done differently. Maybe they could have used more Aid actions or some additional buff spells to pump their die rolls. But those are small things. Nudges. They aren’t choices. Mostly, the party just feels stupid and cheated.

The second reason why it sucks is related to the first. Notice how that defeat doesn’t build on anything else that happened in the adventure. That challenge was completely isolated. It doesn’t matter how many Guardian Monsters™ the party defeated or how many Terrible Traps™ they evaded or failed to evade. The entire adventure hinged on getting through that one door. They could have skipped every encounter in the dungeon and still had the same result.

Honestly, that second reason is why boss fights and epic combats are actually GOOD final challenges. Because D&D is a game of resource attrition. Which means that every fight – to some extent – builds on the ones before it. If you overspend your resources in the first encounter of the day, all of the other encounters become more challenging. And if you lose a late day encounter, you can look back and say “man, if I hadn’t used up all my spell slots in the first fight against those goblins, I’d have had the resources to win.” It’s just a shame that D&D has moved away from persistent negative effects living on after the fight and has made it so easy to recover from just about anything except death. Resource attrition is really the ONLY thing that persists from encounter to encounter.

The third reason is a little more subtle and it leads to a problem I like to call “the adventure that just won’t freaking end.” Imagine you’re running the adventure I just described. Imagine the players have totally blown it in every way and can’t get through the door at all. They’ve failed. They need to call this adventure a loss, go home, and find a new quest to redeem themselves. Is that the way the players do?

No. Of course not. The players will keep banging their heads against that door. They will keep trying more and more outlandish solutions to get through that door. They will search the entire dungeon for clues to the puzzle. Or secret doors. Or some other way into the vault. They won’t admit defeat and go home as long as they can imagine any possibility of success. Which means that it falls to you as the GM to say “try as you might, you can’t get into the vault. It’s over. You lost. Go home.” And if you’re not willing to say that – and most GMs aren’t – you’re going to have to accept that this adventure is your life now. The players are never going to let it go.

The truth is, loss SHOULD be a part of the game. It adds to the tension. It adds to the joy of winning. And it adds weight to the choices the players make. If their characters are never really risking their lives, for example, then it doesn’t matter whether they choose to fight or sneak or negotiate or run away. And if they can’t lose, no matter what they do, it doesn’t matter what they actually do. They just have to try every solution they can imagine. Eventually, one will work. That’s not role-playing.

But loss has to be carefully designed. More carefully designed than victory. Because the wrong types of losses just suck. And if you don’t consider losing at all when you’re writing an adventure, then you’re just left with “keep trying until you die and hope you win before the odds catch up to you.”

So with that in mind, what your recent recruit might be pointing to is that the party's failure in this case seems to have been "unearned". I'm not sure how many social encounters there were before the NPCs decided to ragequit on the PCs, but if it was the one encounter and there wasn't some sort of "tracking mechanism" - e.g. "3 more attitude failures and these guys are leaving, and that'll be a mission failure" - then what you have at least on my perception from this short and doubtless incomplete summary of the game was a single roleplaying encounter in which a PC annoyed the NPCs, they left, and the NPCs died, mission failed. You may have had a similar scenario to the locked door where the rogue flubs his roll and that's it, the adventure's over. Maybe one more combat encounter with the PCs trying to rescue the under-attack NPCs would have fixed that perception. Then at least you could say you had given them a sort of "catch up" mechanic, i.e. given them a chance to snatch victory from the jaws of failure.

[DeadMech]

In my experience some players will go out of their way to embarrass or injure npc's who treat them disrespectfully. And frankly I get it. I play DnD to get away from the real world. I've worked retail. I have no shortage of encounters with rude people who thought it was perfectly acceptable to disrespect me or my coworkers simply because we were "below" them. Many of them do it simply because they think they can use it as a chance to bully people who either can't or won't defend themselves. I was lucky to work at a place where the boss had previously been in the same position. So understood that the customer was not in fact always right.

As far as I can tell you introduced a rude NPC and deliberately antagonized the party and then when one of the players took the bait and said something rude back you pulled the rug out from under them. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm kind of lacking on details. It would explain why the NPC's ran off to get killed when they should have known better.

If I can spend several hours being screamed at and insulted without walking out of a shift of work then I don't see why someone would walk out into an alien plane of existence without so much as a bagged lunch.

[Psyren]

As a suggestion, the Angry GM has an article (https://theangrygm.com/coping-with-loss/) on why DMs need to be a bit more thoughtful about loss than they traditionally are.


My major problem with Angry's position (and yes, I read the whole thing) is that pretty much no other games are designed this way. Certainly no RPGs are, or at the very least, the ones that are take a hell of a lot less time to restart or replay than your average D&D campaign. You can close off a sidequest with this kind of perma-loss, but I have a hard time seeing the benefit in throwing out your main plot this way, unless you didn't care that much about it to begin with. (His gendered insult of game designers who want there to be a way to ultimately win isn't doing him any favors either.)

[Saintheart]

My major problem with Angry's position (and yes, I read the whole thing) is that pretty much no other games are designed this way. Certainly no RPGs are, or at the very least, the ones that are take a hell of a lot less time to restart or replay than your average D&D campaign.

I think your qualifier at the end there - paraphrasing, that the RPGs which are simpler to restart or replay are also the ones less vulnerable to catastrophic loss - is very much germane. If you can restart your average game easily - as easily, say, as a save and reload in a video game - then common sense seems to me to say you don't have to think about the consequences of loss at any given point in the game quite as much, you can just hit Quick Load and away you go again.

However, I'd suggest even railroad-plotted video games (whether in the style of Divinity, Baldur's Gate, or Witcher 3) do still have to think about what in tabletop RPGs can be classed as "unearned" losses - i.e. where the failure is the result of something arbitrary and unaffectable by the players, or worse still, due to players' ignorance. Mainly because, due to their design and limited interface with the player, they have to be prepared for situations where the loss is imposed by something other than the monsters' teeth.

Say the party unknowingly sells a component of the Macguffin which is needed to open a plot-central lock, and thereby can't get to stage 3 or whatever. If we were playing this videogame and ran into that metaphorical wall we'd likely say that the game is 'bugged', even if it continues to operate just fine on our barely-adequate processor and shonky video card, and we can run around pointlessly in the plot-central lock's area killing random monsters until the end of time. I wouldn't so characterise that as a bug: that's a game that hasn't fully thought through what happens if the players have failed a challenge or have done something off the wall. It's a game that hasn't fully thought through the consequences of loss, or the consequences of being unable to complete a challenge. The ways of dealing with that loss are myriad - either make the plot-central item unsellable, or keep it entirely out of the players' inventory via cutscene, or whatever - but the issue has been thought through, part of the design process in some way has asked "What do we do if these numbskulls try and sell the Deathly Hallows for a +1 falchion?"

(This is also where I get into a digression about how videogames seem to me to attempt to replicate the conditions normally required for a human being to enter the Flow state, i.e. that condition of effort where temporal experience is slowed or stopped: we have the ingredients of a challenge that the player believes they can meet, we have constant feedback via steadily-increasing XP and better weaponry, etc., etc ... I'm not saying designers go out looking consciously to replicate a Flow experience, but the result is interesting, to say the least.)


You can close off a sidequest with this kind of perma-loss, but I have a hard time seeing the benefit in throwing out your main plot this way, unless you didn't care that much about it to begin with. (His gendered insult of game designers who want there to be a way to ultimately win isn't doing him any favors either.)

Part of that might come out of a difference in idea about RPGs: Angry is very solidly in the camp that they're games, not cooperative storytelling (I only observe that because you used the word 'plot' in there - if I'm off base I apologise). Games require game design, not story design.

Me, I didn't understand Angry's point as being that every campaign must be subject to a "sorry, you lose" situation; what I took away from it was that DMs do need to think about what happens if the party doesn't, in fact, make the crucial roll needed to open the plot-central lock. Not many do, and the easiest solution to a "sorry, you fail the crucial roll" situation is to just let the party try again X number of times until number of attempts = number of failed rolls +1. I take from it that if you can make the party's by-design inevitable win at least look a bit less inevitable, the game works better, you preserve a little more suspension of disbelief, which is the heart of all roleplaying or indeed most fiction-based entertainment when you get right down to it.

One mechanic I particularly like -- that Angry refers people to in another article - is from the Mark Rosewater article (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/ten-things-every-game-needs-part-1-part-2-2011-12-19) on 10 things every game needs, and in particular, the Catch-Up feature:


#4) A Catch-Up Feature
There needs to be a way for players that have fallen behind to catch up. A game becomes frustrating if a player feels like he or she has no chance to win.

Another way to think of this requirement is the idea of investment. In order for a game to function at its best, all its players have to care. If they don't then the core of the play group's attention will shift from the game. How do you keep focus on the game? By keeping all the players invested in it.

The biggest reason players disconnect from a game is because they no longer have any investment. The number-one cause of this is a belief that you can't win. The point of the game is to complete the goal from #1. Once you are no longer able to do that (or, more importantly, once you no longer believe you can do that) the game stops having any pull over the player.

The classic way to do this is to build something into the game that allows players that are behind to catch up. There might be some random event with a huge swing. Players in the lead might pick up handicaps. The game might be built such that the gains made in the game get larger as the game progresses. No matter how you do it, it's important to make sure that players always have something to hope for even if that hope is a small one.

I don't pretend to have played every module out there, but in my biased opinion there is certainly one 3.5 module that did include such a feature - Red Hand of Doom. In short, it was a combination of the Victory Points system which told you whether you were on track to win and the fact that the game allowed enough fat in the points such that if you did fail one major encounter area, you could make up those points again elsewhere ... most significantly, in the fact that any Red Hand leaders you'd missed while out doing all the things the module required would show up again by the final, epic climax of the campaign, thus giving you one final shot at catching up if you'd fallen short. Red Hand of Doom is fairly well-regarded as a module and I would suggest it's partially because that game does hit these marks that's one large reason for its success narratively.

You could certainly say I'm just arguing semantics: that a Catch-Up feature isn't qualitatively any different to letting the players try different ways of cracking the plot-central lock until it succumbs. But I'd say they are somewhat different: the Catch-Up feature is primarily there to convince players who are some distance behind that they might still triumph. Thinking about loss, or at least setting some hard "lasting losses" or accounting for them, is in the other direction: it's to keep the players in suspense about whether they're going to win or not, and not just achieving that suspense by throwing overlevelled monsters at them. I think a game where you're certain of victory due to DM fiat or obvious nudging can be just as boring as playing a game where defeat is inevitable and apparent right from the start of the game.

[Jon_Dahl]

Thank you for the comments so far. At this point, I will only comment on one thing. Some posters have a problem with the fact that the NPCs wandered off naked, but these NPCs had been to the astral plane several times before and had encountered nothing that would have given them any reason to be concerned. In my game, the githyanki have kept peace in the Astral Plane for a while, since Mercanes have been visiting Tu'narath and other major sites. Trading has been beneficial to all parties, since, over the centuries, the githyanki have accumulated loot that they don't need.

The NPCs had grown complacent. Astral Stalkers are intelligent creatures, and they had been waiting things to be too peaceful for too long before starting an unexpected hunting season. This has scared the living crap out of everyone in the astral plane. Not everyone knows what has unfolded, included the deceased NPC party.

The Astral Hunter Hunting Season is a minor planar event in my campaign.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Neither "we're so mad we're ragequitting the group naked" and "this random encounter table generated something that would slaughter us" are within the PCs' control.
So? The world is not under the PCs' control, and they've got to learn to live with that.

[Bronk]

I disagree. The NPCs got their feelings hurt and sulked off. As I understand it, the NPCs were upset that they had to be rescued; the PC added to the frustration, but he didn't start it.

It sounds like one of the NPCs was rude and having a bad day, but then:


What happened was that one of PCs started to wind up the NPC and rub his nose in it. This infuriated the NPC and made diplomacy with the rest of the group very difficult.

I've played with more than one person who decided that they had to 'play their character', and that since they decided their character was a jerk, they always had to play as a jerk, even when it didn't make any sense. This could be a learning experience for both the PC and the player. I was just trying to be nice about it, since I presume these guys are all friends of some sort.


The Astral Hunter Hunting Season is a minor planar event in my campaign.

I guess this mission was more of an introduction for his new event then? Presenting it like that - as a shocking cut scene - could help smooth out some feathers.

[Psyren]

So? The world is not under the PCs' control, and they've got to learn to live with that.

It's not, but failing due to circumstances you couldn't have possibly foreseen makes for piss-poor game design. That might not matter to you, but the OP asked for opinions and I'm giving mine.


I wouldn't so characterise that as a bug: that's a game that hasn't fully thought through what happens if the players have failed a challenge or have done something off the wall. It's a game that hasn't fully thought through the consequences of loss, or the consequences of being unable to complete a challenge. The ways of dealing with that loss are myriad - either make the plot-central item unsellable, or keep it entirely out of the players' inventory via cutscene, or whatever - but the issue has been thought through, part of the design process in some way has asked "What do we do if these numbskulls try and sell the Deathly Hallows for a +1 falchion?"

But that's exactly my point. TTRPGs don't have hard barriers like that (unless you make the plot item cease to exist from the moment the PCs obtain it until it's needed or something), so you have to prevent such an ignominious failstate in other ways - such as the very ways he derides, i.e. having more than one route to continue the story. A DM who plans for that is not being a ------, to use Angry's elegant phrasing.



Part of that might come out of a difference in idea about RPGs: Angry is very solidly in the camp that they're games, not cooperative storytelling (I only observe that because you used the word 'plot' in there - if I'm off base I apologise). Games require game design, not story design.

I find it interesting that you consider the two to be different. I'm of the opinion that many games - and especially RPGs - need both game and story design to function.

[Segev]

From the perspective of the players and their PCs, the purpose of the mission was to get these NPCs home alive. They failed at that. Succeeding in getting them out of prison isn't "success" by itself. It isn't a "partial success." The NPCs still are dead, and won't be around for whatever purpose the PCs wanted to free them.

If you spent hours on preparing a meal, and it was a gorgeous meal, and you were very happy with how lovely it was, and your first guest was about to arrive, and then a horrible and mean person who hates you sneaked in behind you while you were answering the door and ripped the tablecloth out from under it to dump everything on the floor, then unleashed her dogs on it in the 3 minutes you were making small talk outside, and you came back in to see nothing but a ruin made of your dining room as you show it to your first guest...would you consider that you'd had a successful meal preparation? Or would you feel that all your efforts at preparing that meal were for nothing?

[tiercel]

So? The world is not under the PCs' control, and they've got to learn to live with that.

From a gaming perspective, there is a question of managing player expectations; what I mean by that is just how much players expect their PCs to be central to the world.

In one case, the world (backstory, NPCs, etc.) is sufficiently populated with importance that many important things happen without the PCs; the PCs are, or can become, important in their own right but, well, not everything crucial in the world is up to the PCs — and not everything is their fault.

In another case, the world, while having its own character, is primarily a dramatic backdrop for the PCs’ actions and choices. (The United Federation of Planets exists, but on matters of importance, the USS Enterprise somehow winds up being “the only ship in the sector” on far more occasions than mere chance might warrant.) It really is pretty much up to the PCs to save the world, and Bad Things Happening in the world usually have something to do with the PCs (as a plot hook for what they will be thwarting next and/or as a “this is all your fault” Bad End).

If the DM is trying to run a campaign of the first kind but player expectations are of the second kind, then that disconnect could lead to bruised feelings. Discovering the bodies of the people you’ve been sent to save — conveniently floating around in the one place you’re definitely passing through in the Astral — can feel like a big “you screwed u-up, you screwed u-up nyah nyah nyah, nyah nyah nyah!!!” raised middle finger from the campaign universe if you as a player do believe that game universe, well, is basically about you and that the NPC deaths really are All Your Fault.

That is to say, the PCs may have been expecting result of “major success” (rescue of the NPCs) and “minor failure” (NPCs alienated, less likely to be allies in the future), especially if they shared NPC expectations that the Astral is basically safe, but instead perceived that they got a result of “total failure” (rescue of NPCs obviated by their deaths, which appear to be the direct fault of the PCs), especially if the PCs perceive the deaths of the NPCs to be their moral responsibility despite having incomplete knowledge for such culpability. It’s one thing to let the folks you rescued storm off naked in a huff across featureless Safeland, and quite another to let them storm off into “you have an 8% chance of being utterly gibbed without your gear” because of adventurer-grade ego razzing.

That’s not to say that this couldn’t become an important moment in the campaign: from a game perspective, pushing home the idea that the campaign is more of the first kind than the second kind, and/or from a character perspective, a character development (“What Have I Done?”) moment — never mind the possibility of (as other posters here have pointed out) getting the NPCs rezzed and/or future plot hooks arising from this incident (“let’s go help clean up the Astral!”). If any of these conditions or similar obtain, then it really wasn’t​ all for nothing.

[Remuko]

I dont have much to add but I don't see why the other PCs didnt stop the jerk PC or why not one tried to stop/follow the NPCs when they left. There were definitely (as far as I can tell) other options that could have prevented this and they were just all not taken.

[MisterKaws]

Thank you for the comments so far. At this point, I will only comment on one thing. Some posters have a problem with the fact that the NPCs wandered off naked, but these NPCs had been to the astral plane several times before and had encountered nothing that would have given them any reason to be concerned. In my game, the githyanki have kept peace in the Astral Plane for a while, since Mercanes have been visiting Tu'narath and other major sites. Trading has been beneficial to all parties, since, over the centuries, the githyanki have accumulated loot that they don't need.

The NPCs had grown complacent. Astral Stalkers are intelligent creatures, and they had been waiting things to be too peaceful for too long before starting an unexpected hunting season. This has scared the living crap out of everyone in the astral plane. Not everyone knows what has unfolded, included the deceased NPC party.

The Astral Hunter Hunting Season is a minor planar event in my campaign.

How does it matter that it's kinda peaceful? Why would they go out on an endless desert plane with no directions or ways to go back?

[Rynjin]

Thank you for the comments so far. At this point, I will only comment on one thing. Some posters have a problem with the fact that the NPCs wandered off naked, but these NPCs had been to the astral plane several times before and had encountered nothing that would have given them any reason to be concerned. In my game, the githyanki have kept peace in the Astral Plane for a while, since Mercanes have been visiting Tu'narath and other major sites. Trading has been beneficial to all parties, since, over the centuries, the githyanki have accumulated loot that they don't need.

The NPCs had grown complacent. Astral Stalkers are intelligent creatures, and they had been waiting things to be too peaceful for too long before starting an unexpected hunting season. This has scared the living crap out of everyone in the astral plane. Not everyone knows what has unfolded, included the deceased NPC party.

The Astral Hunter Hunting Season is a minor planar event in my campaign.

Seemingly peaceful or not, it doesn't make sense. Let's remove the Astral Plane from the equation for a second.

You're in a kingdom with regular guard patrols. There are no bandits or anything like that. It's peaceful.

You, an adventurer, who kills things for a living, are going to walk down the road with no weapons? Because everything else aside; random wyvern attacks, a new group of bandits that haven't been cleared out yet, all that other adventurer stuff aside...there's still a chance you could get waylaid by a bear or some ****.

Which is exactly what happened to your NPCs. Except it was an intelligent, malevolent bear.

Part of being an adventurer, especially one that survives to the point they're doing extraplanar stuff, is a bit of justified paranoia. NOWHERE is completely safe. How did a group of people this naive survive that long in the first place?

[Saintheart]

But that's exactly my point. TTRPGs don't have hard barriers like that (unless you make the plot item cease to exist from the moment the PCs obtain it until it's needed or something), so you have to prevent such an ignominious failstate in other ways - such as the very ways he derides, i.e. having more than one route to continue the story. A DM who plans for that is not being a ------, to use Angry's elegant phrasing.

I agree, but my view is that something a bit more subtle than "Just try the lock again and again until you get the right roll" is required. This is the same sort of DMing mistake as a plot railroad, it's just in the opposite direction.


I find it interesting that you consider the two to be different. I'm of the opinion that many games - and especially RPGs - need both game and story design to function.

I think the difference can be illustrated by one question: have you ever heard of someone reading a novel complain about being railroaded by the author?

There are elements of a story present in a RPG which assist principally with suspension of disbelief for the participants, but I don't see a story and a RPG as identical. Stories are passive, games are interactive; what keeps someone reading a book is not the same thing that keeps a person playing a RPG, or playing a video game for that matter. Games have goals; stories have endings. There's plenty of D&D games out there that are nothing but good old hack and slash continual encounters, with no overarching story.

A story doesn't depend on a reader for its plot to advance other than in the conceptual argument that without someone to turn the pages a book doesn't get read; RPGs depend on players, and more orthodox tabletop board or card games are entirely dependent on an actual participant. Even Solitaire needs one person to choose which pile to send a card to, although I'd regard Solitaire as more a puzzle in the order of Sudoku than an actual game. RPGs frequently rely on a general story framework because (a) the worlds they're trying to ape are usually story-based and (b) escapism more or less demands that we get events with a narrative, because life doesn't have a narrative - but let's not mistake the paint job for the engine. (And no, gamebooks like CYOA don't change this either. They're simple RPGs, with possible choices ranging from ignominious, plot-contradictory, and sudden defeat through to outright victory if the player selects the right options. Not to mention that CYOA had a few books where you couldn't actually "win" the story in a plot-centric manner by the 'rules' of the book as such.)

[Psyren]

I agree, but my view is that something a bit more subtle than "Just try the lock again and again until you get the right roll" is required. This is the same sort of DMing mistake as a plot railroad, it's just in the opposite direction.

Where did I ever say "try the lock again and again until you get the right roll?" That's a pretty clear strawman :smallconfused:

What I actually said was "the DM should have other ways to continue the plot if the players get stuck on the first one." For example, maybe the party can't get the lock open, but the BBEG's minion does - and now the challenge becomes to pickpocket the macguffin or ambush the minion before he can get back home with it. And if those fail, now the BBEG has the thing, and you're forced to storm the base and stop the ritual, with the difficulty of the encounters ramped up as a consequence.



I think the difference can be illustrated by one question: have you ever heard of someone reading a novel complain about being railroaded by the author?

There are elements of a story present in a RPG which assist principally with suspension of disbelief for the participants, but I don't see a story and a RPG as identical. Stories are passive, games are interactive; what keeps someone reading a book is not the same thing that keeps a person playing a RPG, or playing a video game for that matter. Games have goals; stories have endings. There's plenty of D&D games out there that are nothing but good old hack and slash continual encounters, with no overarching story.

This is another strawman, I never said they're "identical." I said both kinds of design are needed to create a compelling experience.

Yes, you can have a D&D campaign that is nothing but a string of combats with little or no overarching plot. Looking at the vast majority of D&D and PF modules that actually sell however, you can easily see that those are the vanishing minority. People crave something a little more substantial with their RPGs, for all that you might dismiss such elements as the "paint job." The paint is what we're paying for, any hack DM can just throw a bunch of fights together if all the players want is to roll dice.

[Saintheart]

Where did I ever say "try the lock again and again until you get the right roll?" That's a pretty clear strawman :smallconfused:

What I actually said was "the DM should have other ways to continue the plot if the players get stuck on the first one." For example, maybe the party can't get the lock open, but the BBEG's minion does - and now the challenge becomes to pickpocket the macguffin or ambush the minion before he can get back home with it. And if those fail, now the BBEG has the thing, and you're forced to storm the base and stop the ritual, with the difficulty of the encounters ramped up as a consequence.

I don't disagree, as I pointed out one sentence prior to that sentence. I'm just saying that if the DM's effort at providing an alternative to an insurmountable problem is "Just roll the dice again until you succeed", it's not going to fly -- in summary because it's a positive sort of railroading. I am not suggesting you took that argument.


This is another strawman, I never said they're "identical." I said both kinds of design are needed to create a compelling experience.

You said you found it "interesting" that I discern a difference between a story and a game. I'm not sure what inherent interest there is in that remark, but I'm fairly sure you weren't being passive-aggressive by saying so; I took from that phrase that you had the opposite view, i.e. that there's no difference. If I'm off base because of your phraseology, again, I apologise. As I already said, I don't disagree that story elements and game design are both needed for a RPG -- but it's the game design elements that matter a hell of a lot more than the story ones.


Yes, you can have a D&D campaign that is nothing but a string of combats with little or no overarching plot. Looking at the vast majority of D&D and PF modules that actually sell however, you can easily see that those are the vanishing minority. People crave something a little more substantial with their RPGs, for all that you might dismiss such elements as the "paint job." The paint is what we're paying for, any hack DM can just throw a bunch of fights together if all the players want is to roll dice.

True; but a well-painted car is still a lemon if the engine within it is not working. My point is that story elements are secondary in a RPG. They are needed for suspension of disbelief certainly, but it is still a vastly different creature to a story.

[Psyren]

I don't disagree, as I pointed out one sentence prior to that sentence. I'm just saying that if the DM's effort at providing an alternative to an insurmountable problem is "Just roll the dice again until you succeed", it's not going to fly -- in summary because it's a positive sort of railroading. I am not suggesting you took that argument.

Okay.


You said you found it interesting that I discern a difference between a story and a game. I'm not sure what inherent interest there is in that remark, but I'm fairly sure you weren't being passive-aggressive by saying so; I took from that phrase that you had the opposite view, i.e. that there's no difference. If I'm off base because of your phraseology, again, I apologise. As I already said, I don't disagree that story elements and game design are both needed for a RPG -- but it's the game design elements that matter a hell of a lot more than the story ones.
...
True; but a well-painted car is still a lemon if the engine within it is not working. My point is that story elements are secondary in a RPG. They are needed for suspension of disbelief certainly, but it is still a vastly different creature to a story.

I think the gap, if it exists at all, is far smaller than you seem to ("hell of a lot more.") These games are ultimately commercial endeavors, and almost universally, the crunch and the fluff are packaged together when new material needs to be sold. Having one without the other is a hollow experience in either direction.

Put another way - yes, a car with metal seats and no shocks/paint/radio etc. will function, in the most rudimentary sense of the word. What it won't do is what it's designed to do, i.e. be engaging. Ergo, good luck selling it.

[rel]

I for one would have seen that result as an absolute win.

A band of arrogant, terminally stupid NPC's managing to off themselves is an event that never happens often enough.
Usually they triumph despite their incompetence and then become ten times more insufferable.

My only questions would be:

a) why do you see it as a failure?

and b) since you do see it as a failure, why didn't you do something to prevent it / why aren't you doing something to remedy it?


I mean if nothing else a band of helpless NPC's are only leaving the party because the party are letting them leave.
You can bet my response to the people I'm rescuing saying they are leaving will be:

'Ha ha, no. I was hired to bring you back alive which means you either walk back by my side or I put the shackles back on and carry you back.'

[Waazraath]

Neither "we're so mad we're ragequitting the group naked" and "this random encounter table generated something that would slaughter us" are within the PCs' control.

I tend to this position as well. Of course, none of us was at the table, but the OP makes some alarms go off. The NPC's begin hurt and annoyed because of being rescued, and start the bickering. If 1 character responds to that (and yes, this really can be just playing someones character/background - sometime this is an excuse for a player to be disruptive, but not per se), and that has then such dramatic consequences, even while the rest of the party tries to use diplomacy... really doesn't feel good.

[upho]

I've noticed that at least one of my players, a recent recruit, has a minor issue that sometimes comes up in my games. If there is more than one way that a mission can fail and one of this possibilities is realized, then he feels that they have done all for nothing.

....

When the player whose character had offended and successfully irritated the leader of the NPC group saw the dead bodies, he felt disappointed and said that all their efforts had been in vain.First off, disregarding the specific details of the example you provided, are you certain this is the player speaking OoC and not IC?

I mean, these comments certainly make perfect sense if they're expressing the views of the PC rather than those of the player.


I stopped to think about his reaction, but I don't what to think about it. My plan was to have the adventure in two parts: First, saving the NPCs (success) and second, not having them to split the group in a hostile environment (failure). This twofold nature of the mission would have offered the PCs some extra XP.Even if assuming this comment was made by the player OoC, I don't find it strange at all.

Far from all players find mechanical rewards (XP, treasure etc) to be the most satisfactory, valid or important measures of (or rewards for) success, instead believing that the most important such measure is whether the party is actually being successful in-game in their mission/quest/adventure. IOW, the greatest reward for these players isn't finding thousands of gold pieces or new mechanically powerful magic items, nor getting enough XP to gain a level, but their PC and party accomplishing what they set out to do and having as much intended impact on the setting and story as possible.

If this is true for the player in question, I have no problems seeing why he'd regard this mission as if it was "all for nothing". He simply doesn't care very much about the mostly mechanical rewards you give for successfully accomplishing a part of the quest, but about the quest being successful as a whole in-game. This of course becomes more noticeable the less the parts or objectives of a mission you have decided on are defined also in-game, and the less successfully accomplishing one of those parts also represents an actual success in-game. In this case, AFAICT it didn't really matter in-game whether the party were successful in the first part, but only whether they were successful in both parts, actually returning with the rescued NPCs safe and sound as they had set out to do.

Two suggestions which might help you mitigate or avoid this problem in the future:

Make sure your "parts" are clear and well-defined also in-game. Succeeding at any one part should be an actual tangible success also in-game, achieving an independent in-game goal of the quest or campaign.
Try ditching XP altogether along with much treasure which simply increases wealth and have no specific relevance to the story or the PCs. Replace XP with "milestones" awarded for achievements well defined also in-game, and decide on a suitable number of milestones required for a level up. Or simply decide together with the players when to level up, maybe mostly according to when doing so would be most practical. Replace much of the generic treasure with more items of importance to one or more of the PCs (not necessarily just from a mechanical perspective, but have the players make "wish-lists" of a few magic items their PCs would find especially interesting/useful). A good way to replace much generic treasure is to give one or two more unique and highly personal "signature items" to each PC which increases in power as their owners do.

In short, make sure your rewards really matter in-game and try minimize the amount of anonymous mechanical rewards.

[Efrate]

I read this as nearly entirely as the players fault. I have had this player, and I have had this character. Someone upset about being helped because they are proud is no big deal. It can be refreshing as opposed to constant accolades about how great the pcs are.

But a player (or character) who constantly "pokes the bear" for any reason should expect a similar reaction. NPCs can be vibrant and emotional and react accordingly. It is very realistic to get so frustrated you just leave, and this drives home the fact that player (or character) actions have consequences. I like them seeing the corpses because in a way they did fail, and they need to know. This is a great opportunity for a redemption are or character growth.

Also what did the rest of the party do when one pc was belittling the rescued prisoners? If nothing, then their complacency is also something that needs to addressed, it's partially their fault. You are a party, you need to work together to achieve stuff. If no one made an effort then that's problematic.

More importantly, was it the player or the character who did this? That matters a lot.

If its the player you need to talk to them out of game about it because it is likely going to be happening again, and if that player is a pain to all npcs regardless of circumstance he is going to render any fleshed out lifelike npcs worthless and hurt every one else's enjoyment.

If it's the character, then its a great opportunity for growth and change. That can be an entire plotline in and of itself.

[icefractal]

This is a great opportunity for a redemption are or character growth. Redemption for not prioritizing the bruised ego of someone who's being a jerk? How about the NPC needing redemption for getting their entire team killed for the sake of said ego? Unless the PC in question was being vicious AF in their needling, this is all on the NPC.

See, this might be a "social challenge", but it isn't a good one, IMO:
1) Can be failed by one person with no warning.
2) Not remotely the 'cool' type of challenge; it sounds like the social equivalent of "RP mucking out these stables".
3) Negates the success of another challenge which probably took more RL time.

I'm not really surprised the player would be disgruntled.

[Quertus]

Social challenges are cool, IMO.

All the NPCs being smarter than all the PCs, and thus being able to outpace them on the Astral is… odd.

"Smart" NPCs - especially one with a Wisdom-based class - being this dumb? That's weapon's grade stupidity right there. Good riddance.

Let's call this Cleric NPC "Tom"

Had I been in this party, I would have hired a Bard to spread the tale of the idiocy of Tom. For centuries later, whenever anyone did anything boneheaded, that they clearly should have known better, people would refer to it as "pulling a Tom". Only once that took hold would I consider resurrecting him. Until then, I would keep his corpse, as a target for Speak with Dead, so as to get maximum bonus on all social rolls against him in the future (kinda like a "Chosen Enemy" bonus, but more specialized).

Now, that's if it's an isolated event. If there was evidence of more weapon's grade stupidity in the world, well, we're already on the Astral - no better time to look for a new port of call.

I'd still send a Bard to teach "pulling a Tom", though

[Efrate]

I read the op as a deliberate provocation over an extended period of time which lead to the npc leaving. That is on the player/character. The rest of the npcs could have stayed. Could have tried to fix it.

Character redemption because treating the rest of the world like dirt on your boots is not right and will cause fallout. You do not exist in a murder hobo bubble where you can live consequence free and just move on to stab next thing in front of you. You cannot go to the king and treat him like he is worthless. Same principle.

The lead prisoner had had enough knife twisting in the wound got fed up and left. It was not merely a single comment that was an autofail AFAICT, so its not one person auto loses. It was a bad decision on the lead npcs part to leave as well, but the problematic pc caused that, and his party did not try to stop that. Nor did the pcs party try to reign it in.

Maybe it is because I run a darker setting but seeing real consequences of your mistakes and feeling despair or such and knowing that is your fault is a very powerful storytelling tool if used judiciously.

[Jon_Dahl]

On the topic of how smart it was to leave alone and naked in the astral plane: Some of you have great and really on-point comments regarding the stupidity of the NPCs and I have been reflecting on this. I would say that sometimes my NPCs are just comic book characters that do the kind of stuff I would like to happening at that moment. I had decided that this is social challenge (a good term that I picked up from this thread, thank you) and failing that resulted in the NPCs leaving and their subsequent deaths. In some cases, I want my NPCs to have realistic (we all hate that word!) attitudes and think like real people. After thinking about this, I have decided to have even less consistency in the way that my NPCs behave (Tim Burton's Batman vs. Nolan's Batman) to make my game less predictable. I have decided that I want to become less predictable and that is why in the future the NPC parties will react in several different ways in similar situations as the one described in the OP.

[False God]

On topic of how smart it was to leave alone and naked in the astral plane: Some of you have great and really on-point comments regarding the stupidity of the NPCs and I have been reflecting on this. I would say that sometimes my NPCs are just comic book characters that do the kind of stuff I would like to happening at that moment. I had decided that this is social challenge (a good term that I picked up from this thread, thank you) and failing that resulted in the NPCs leaving and their subsequent deaths. In some cases, I want my NPCs to have realistic (we all hate that word!) attitudes and think like real people. After thinking about this, I have decided to have even less consistency in the way that my NPCs behave (Tim Burton's Batman vs. Nolan's Batman) to make my game less predictable. I have decided that I want to become less predictable and that is why in the future the NPC parties will react in several different ways in similar situations as the one described in the OP.

I'm not sure if this response is sarcastic or not, but assuming it isn't, your players will get tired of irrational unpredictable NPCs who have no rhyme or reason to their actions and avoid dealing with them, or kill them on sight. Especially if "violent against the party for no reason" becomes part of your "unpredictable" NPCs.

If that's your goal...good job?

[ExLibrisMortis]

NPCs should be predictable short-term (most of the time), but vary wildly in the long term. That's really hard to manage well, but when you come back to an NPC many levels later and find that a completely logical chain of off-screen events has led to a big development in their character, well, that's when you know your DM is an obsessive genius.

[Psyren]

I'm not sure if this response is sarcastic or not, but assuming it isn't, your players will get tired of irrational unpredictable NPCs who have no rhyme or reason to their actions and avoid dealing with them, or kill them on sight. Especially if "violent against the party for no reason" becomes part of your "unpredictable" NPCs.

If that's your goal...good job?

^ Yeah, that. This feels like doubling down on illogical NPC behavior for lulz.

[Quertus]

So, if I were in this campaign, and if I understood what was going on, and *if* I were to consider resurrecting "Tom" (I'd much more likely **** on his corpse until I turned him into a Mummy), I would be prepared to perform a Pride-dectomy. Depending on the GM, that might be through magic, psychology, heckling, or just boot camp. He needs to realize that his stupid pride, plus his stupid stupidity (overconfidence) resulted in his actions, that got him and the other NPCs killed. Regardless of how bad the one PC's heckling may have been, so long as there was no Mind Control, drugs, etc involved, that NPC took actions of his own volition that had this result.

So, a lot of the initial Speak with Dead (after, you know, determining the cause of death) would be to see if he grasped that simple truth before his death. And, if not, to determine what kind of person he was, to know which path(s) to redemption would be optimal. Yes, I play the smart evil, that is willing to redeem the dumb good.

[Gallowglass]

Don't make your NPCs unlikeable, then get angry when the PCs don't like them.

This all started because you made the NPC an officious, self-involved, prideful ****. Then when the PC treated him likewise back you engineered a "you should feel bad" outcome.

*shrug* seems like the problem is with the DM, not the PC.

[ekarney]

The issue here, is you pulled a string off screen that has annoyed this player. What should have happened, is that the PCs found the NPCs still fighting the astral stalker. But they didn't, I'm assuming you handwaved the combat and decided that the NPCs died.

Players HATE it when they get screwed because of something that was largely out of their control, especially when there's been little to no foreshadowing that this thing could happen.

Now don't worry, I did actually read your post, and that's only the example because this player complaining is your real problem, not how to deal with this particular situation.
What you need to do is, make loss meaningful, and granting pity XP doesn't help, the players were likely going to level up around the same time they previously would anyway. Using your example as a template to build off, once the NPCs are found dead, you could present your players with two options, by whoever likely commissioned the PC's to bring back the NPCs.

1. Have the questgiver demand the bodies be recovered so they can receive a proper burial/resurrection, OR have them go on a revenge mission. That's sorta basic though and doesn't lead anywhere, because that's an "undo" quest. I don't like undo quests personally, but they're a good way of making people feel that their actions have weight.

2. There's boots to fill - those NPC's likely had their own quests going on, now who's going to finish them? Have the PCs receive a summons by someone saying "We hear you're adventurers, this is good because our last group apparently died in the astral plane and our problems still need solving", what you'd be doing here would be an "expansion" quest, which is the counter to an undo quest.


Now to expand on what I meant with undo/expansion quests is this: Undo quests very much say "You screwed up, it's your fault this is wrong, so you're going to fix it" which is a punishment, doesn't really lead anywhere and is really only good for redemption stuff.
An Expansion quest on the other hand goes "Well yes,the mission flopped, but don't worry about that we have bigger fish to fry, not because you failed, but because any failure occurred." Which is sort of like a sly little reward, you're offering the PCs a chance to go an do something new and cool, that they wouldn't have done if they'd won the mission.

So I guess what I'm saying is, when you think that player is going to complain again, hit him with an expansion quest.

[icefractal]

I read the op as a deliberate provocation over an extended period of time which lead to the npc leaving. That is on the player/character. The rest of the npcs could have stayed. Could have tried to fix it.

Character redemption because treating the rest of the world like dirt on your boots is not right and will cause fallout. I don't think the OP specifies enough to be certain, but nothing in it reads that way to me. That is why I specified "unless the needling was notably vicious" though.

AFAICT, the sequence is:
1) NPC decides to be a **** for no good reason.
2) PC responds in kind.
3) NPC storms off - maybe the other PCs could have intervened, maybe not; OP has insufficient info to say.

And the PCs are the ones at fault here? I don't really see it.

[Remuko]

I don't think the OP specifies enough to be certain, but nothing in it reads that way to me. That is why I specified "unless the needling was notably vicious" though.

AFAICT, the sequence is:
1) NPC decides to be a **** for no good reason.
2) PC responds in kind.
3) NPC storms off - maybe the other PCs could have intervened, maybe not; OP has insufficient info to say.

And the PCs are the ones at fault here? I don't really see it.

people keep saying things like this but OP, the DM has replied multiple times and hasnt addressed this "unknown info" that he absolutely could have. Why he is keeping this info from us when it would clear up a lot is beyond me.

[Jon_Dahl]

people keep saying things like this but OP, the DM has replied multiple times and hasnt addressed this "unknown info" that he absolutely could have. Why he is keeping this info from us when it would clear up a lot is beyond me.

I'm not sure what info I'm withhelding, since there is a chain of references here and I don't see what is going on, but to make the unfortunate interaction a bit clearer:

The NPC leader complained and the PC ridiculed with one or two short sentences. The NPC was calmed down by one of his NPC companions, but the PC threatened to put him back into shackles. The NPC threatened to leave. The PC dared him. The end.

[Ashtagon]

Don't make your NPCs unlikeable, then get angry when the PCs don't like them.

This all started because you made the NPC an officious, self-involved, prideful ****. Then when the PC treated him likewise back you engineered a "you should feel bad" outcome.

*shrug* seems like the problem is with the DM, not the PC.

This.

The GM basically wanted the PCs to role-play retail customer service against the most obnoxious customers imaginable. This isn't something people want to do even for actual money, let alone for fun.

[Quertus]

I'm not sure what info I'm withhelding, since there is a chain of references here and I don't see what is going on, but to make the unfortunate interaction a bit clearer:

The NPC leader complained and the PC ridiculed with one or two short sentences. The NPC was calmed down by one of his NPC companions, but the PC threatened to put him back into shackles. The NPC threatened to leave. The PC dared him. The end.

Lol. Not much of an interaction. Certainly, the PC could stand to learn a thing or two, too (whether that's politeness, or to skip threats & go straight for the shackles I'm not sure), but I stand by my Pride-dectomy.

I'm just not sure whether, in this scenario, it would be cooler to try to invent a custom undead type of the Shackled, or the Unshackled. Both names sound so cool, it's hard to choose.

But, if I did resurrect "Tom" instead of turning him into an Undead, or reincarnating him as a throw rug factory (as I skin him alive repeatedly (time traveling to 3.0 reincarnation into an animal form as necessary)), it would be on him to resurrect everyone else.

[Jon_Dahl]

This.

The GM basically wanted the PCs to role-play retail customer service against the most obnoxious customers imaginable. This isn't something people want to do even for actual money, let alone for fun.

What kind of games should we have? When I design my campaigns and sessions, I usually think about movies and comic books. The protagonists have to suffer all kinds of stuff. I have learned, from the forum, that the only bad-bad is trying to make paladin fall just for the heck of it. Other than that, the PCs in my games have to encounter all kinds of stuff. I avoid all sexual stuff and that's it.

[Andreaz]

Long story short, it was indeed all for nothing, by that guy's complete fault indeed.

But hey, at least they get the xp from the first challenge, that they did beat!

[Andreaz]

Neither "we're so mad we're ragequitting the group naked" and "this random encounter table generated something that would slaughter us" are within the PCs' control. If you believe that, I can only be happy we'll never be at the same table.

Thing is, they were frustrated and complaining, and in a way that you can expect from certain personality archetypes. The PC then went out of his way to stick his finger in that wound. It wasn't a passive "they are winding themselves out of control" situation.

Unless that was the planned outcome anyway, through pc inaction or through a demanded competence beyond the party's, I can't see how that particular player wasn't the major factor in the eventual storm.

[King of Nowhere]

The NPC leader complained and the PC ridiculed with one or two short sentences. The NPC was calmed down by one of his NPC companions, but the PC threatened to put him back into shackles. The NPC threatened to leave. The PC dared him. The end.

if that's what happened, the pc is definitely at fault here.
and the npc too, mind you. when you are a small group in the middle of dangerous ground and need to pull together to make it, being anal to people is definitely not the way to go.

Now, if that player also had a repeated history of treating npcs like crap because they were npcs, or because he is powerful, then he fully deserves what comes to him. he could learn to interact with the world better. I think that's the more likely case.
if his character generally behaves like an adult, he's got a reason to be pissed.

[Ashtagon]

What kind of games should we have? When I design my campaigns and sessions, I usually think about movies and comic books. The protagonists have to suffer all kinds of stuff. I have learned, from the forum, that the only bad-bad is trying to make paladin fall just for the heck of it. Other than that, the PCs in my games have to encounter all kinds of stuff. I avoid all sexual stuff and that's it.

I think RP-ing the crappy side of customer service a bad idea because that is, for a majority of players, something they do for pay in the real world. It is not fun. RP games are about escapism. Who wants to RP their day job?

[Jon_Dahl]

I think RP-ing the crappy side of customer service a bad idea because that is, for a majority of players, something they do for pay in the real world. It is not fun. RP games are about escapism. Who wants to RP their day job?

I'm sorry, but I outright refuse to see this is a customer service situation. After all, they could've just subdued the guy and tell the semi-naked NPCs and the NPC cleric without her holy symbol to shut their pie hole until they get home. In customer service, you always have your boss and the continuity of your job looming at the background. In this case, there wasn't any of that. They were just trying to bring the NPCs home alive and I can imagine that some players would take certain, ehem, 'liberties' to do that. With all due respect, I am willing to accept everything that has been written so far, but this customer service bit is beyond me. Way beyond me.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I, for one, fully support the inclusion of stupid, irrational, and annoying NPCs :smalltongue:.

[Segev]

I think it's worth pointing out that the OP wasn't asking if he treated his players fairly, or if they screwed up and should have acted differently to keep the NPCs alive.

He was asking if the PCs feeling "it was all for nothing" when the NPCs died despite them getting XP for the rescue, even if they never got them back safely, was reasonable. As DM, he thought it a qualified success. They got their XP for the part they succeeded at! The players (and I agree with them) felt that it was an unqualified failure: no matter the XP reward, the NPCs are no more returned home than if the party had failed to get them out of the prison in which they'd been being kept.

[Quertus]

I, for one, fully support the inclusion of stupid, irrational, and annoying NPCs :smalltongue:.

Absolutely. Of course, I especially support it when said annoying NPC dies. :smallwink: And I also support the off-camera death. And I believe that the PC was not faultless by any means.

But the NPC was 100% in control of their own actions, and 100% at fault for their death. Funny thing about fault, that the NPC can be 100% at fault, and the PC can still have some fault / feel blame.

Now, an interesting thing I noticed here is one of styles. There are two opposed styles, which basically boil down to how PC-centric the campaign is.

I personally prefer a living world, where things happen regardless of the PCs' involvement, where important NPCs can die off camera, or have major successes off camera, completely independent of the PCs.

But some people prefer a more PC-centric game, where PCs are the only important things in the world, where nothing happens without the players being responsible for it. (Apologies if I'm misrepresenting it - it's not my style, and I'm trying to explain it, not call it BadWrongFun).

These two styles of play will produce very different responses to these questions. Or, at least, to discussions around these questions.

[Pex]

Thank you for the comments so far. At this point, I will only comment on one thing. Some posters have a problem with the fact that the NPCs wandered off naked, but these NPCs had been to the astral plane several times before and had encountered nothing that would have given them any reason to be concerned. In my game, the githyanki have kept peace in the Astral Plane for a while, since Mercanes have been visiting Tu'narath and other major sites. Trading has been beneficial to all parties, since, over the centuries, the githyanki have accumulated loot that they don't need.

The NPCs had grown complacent. Astral Stalkers are intelligent creatures, and they had been waiting things to be too peaceful for too long before starting an unexpected hunting season. This has scared the living crap out of everyone in the astral plane. Not everyone knows what has unfolded, included the deceased NPC party.

The Astral Hunter Hunting Season is a minor planar event in my campaign.

Yes, but how convenient the one time the Astral Plane is dangerous to travel is the moment the NPCs decided to wander off. This is like the DM equivalent of a player saying "It's what my character would do." You chose for the NPCs to wander off. You chose them to be attacked off screen. You chose them to autolose the combat to be found dead by the party. You're certainly in your rights to have that happen. That doesn't make it the players' fault.

[Jon_Dahl]

Yes, but how convenient the one time the Astral Plane is dangerous to travel is the moment the NPCs decided to wander off. This is like the DM equivalent of a player saying "It's what my character would do." You chose for the NPCs to wander off. You chose them to be attacked off screen. You chose them to autolose the combat to be found dead by the party. You're certainly in your rights to have that happen. That doesn't make it the players' fault.

Around 70% of my adventures are based on convenient coincidences. Something bad happens and the PCs are called to action.

[upho]

I think it's worth pointing out that the OP wasn't asking if he treated his players fairly, or if they screwed up and should have acted differently to keep the NPCs alive.

He was asking if the PCs feeling "it was all for nothing" when the NPCs died despite them getting XP for the rescue, even if they never got them back safely, was reasonable. As DM, he thought it a qualified success. They got their XP for the part they succeeded at! The players (and I agree with them) felt that it was an unqualified failure: no matter the XP reward, the NPCs are no more returned home than if the party had failed to get them out of the prison in which they'd been being kept.This. Hence my previous post.

[Remuko]

I'm not sure what info I'm withhelding, since there is a chain of references here and I don't see what is going on, but to make the unfortunate interaction a bit clearer:

The NPC leader complained and the PC ridiculed with one or two short sentences. The NPC was calmed down by one of his NPC companions, but the PC threatened to put him back into shackles. The NPC threatened to leave. The PC dared him. The end.

I'll just assume you missed what I was talking about. Me and a few others have mentioned that (presumably) the PC here wasnt the only PC. We can't really make judgement knowing only about him. Other PCs, if they existed, could and should have done things too, or theyre complicit. Right now with no info about the situation as a whole, we are left to just assume the PC's (the one being mean to the NPCs) party just sat by and let him do whatever and then didn't care about the fallout...which is questionable at best. I believe it was my first comment in the thread which I think was back a ways now, that mentioned there should have been many ways the result could have been prevented, regardless of how the PC you were focusing on acted, but they almost all involved the rest of PCs group doing something about him/or the NPCs yet no information is given, just more details about how angry the NPCs were and how rude the PC was.

[Jon_Dahl]

I'll just assume you missed what I was talking about. Me and a few others have mentioned that (presumably) the PC here wasnt the only PC. We can't really make judgement knowing only about him. Other PCs, if they existed, could and should have done things too, or theyre complicit. Right now with no info about the situation as a whole, we are left to just assume the PC's (the one being mean to the NPCs) party just sat by and let him do whatever and then didn't care about the fallout...which is questionable at best. I believe it was my first comment in the thread which I think was back a ways now, that mentioned there should have been many ways the result could have been prevented, regardless of how the PC you were focusing on acted, but they almost all involved the rest of PCs group doing something about him/or the NPCs yet no information is given, just more details about how angry the NPCs were and how rude the PC was.

All of the PCs just stood there and listened. They did nothing.

[upho]

Now, an interesting thing I noticed here is one of styles. There are two opposed styles, which basically boil down to how PC-centric the campaign is.

I personally prefer a living world, where things happen regardless of the PCs' involvement, where important NPCs can die off camera, or have major successes off camera, completely independent of the PCs.

But some people prefer a more PC-centric game, where PCs are the only important things in the world, where nothing happens without the players being responsible for it. (Apologies if I'm misrepresenting it - it's not my style, and I'm trying to explain it, not call it BadWrongFun).

These two styles of play will produce very different responses to these questions. Or, at least, to discussions around these questions.
Around 70% of my adventures are based on convenient coincidences. Something bad happens and the PCs are called to action.I also happen to be in the "s**t happens regardless of PCs"-camp, though I'm firmly against having such off-camera s**t being the key factor deciding irrevocable success or failure for a major goal of a PC quest or adventure. Unless the off-camera fail was intended from the start as a hook leading into some greater related quest or the next adventure, of course. And I think the situation described would be a rather poor example of a "something bad happens and the PCs are called to action"-scenario, because it's arguably the opposite; "something bad happens which completely and irrevocably voids the PCs previously taken actions to succeed".

And again, I don't think there's anything strange about the player saying "It was all for nothing", cause no XP in the world will make the adventure less of a failure in-game. (Well, at least unless/until the party includes some competent high level caster deeming it worthwhile to go back in time and prevent the stupid NPCs from running off naked to play foxes in an astral stalker foxhunt.)

[Pex]

Around 70% of my adventures are based on convenient coincidences. Something bad happens and the PCs are called to action.

But in this case the PCs didn't get to do anything. You decided the NPCs left unprepared. You decided they faced a danger. You decided they died from said danger, all because you didn't care for a player not liking an NPC you decided to be unlikable.

[False God]

Around 70% of my adventures are based on convenient coincidences. Something bad happens and the PCs are called to action.

There is a fine line between "something happens, and the PCs must move to deal with it" and "something happens that is beyond the PC's ability to even react to."

You could have coincidentally simply had the NPCs get captured again. It would be demonstrative of the arrogance of the NPCs leading them to take foolish risks. Maybe one of them that the really arrogant guy cared about got killed and he blames himself, causing him to reflect on his arrogance, which may in turn cause the PC to reflect on their own arrogance and treat the NPC better.

Or perhaps the really arrogant NPC could organize a trap for his other NPCs, with them believing him to be dead, they call out to the PCs for rescue, only for the PC's to be led into a trap set by Arrogant NPC because his ideas of honor have been twisted and the only way he can see to regain his "lost" honor is to kill the PCs. Once he is defeated (assuming he is) the other NPCs are given a moment to reflect on how his arrogance led to his warped views on honor.

The problem with killing NPCs like you did off-screen, where players can't react and can only find out about it later, is that it dead-ends potential adventure. There's no growth of the NPCs, there's no lessons to be taught to the party, nothing. It's just "The NPCs are dead, the end."

IMO: Every moment in D&D should be a teachable moment to the PCs. (which is why I dislike SoD mechanics) Teaching the PC/players about the abilities of the monsters, about the cultures of the NPCs, about the lore of the world. So that at the end of the session, the PCs have gained a greater understanding of how the world functions and how to go about interacting with things. Because whether you want to teach something or not, every moment does teach something. So make it teach the thing you want people to learn, rather than something you don't.

[rel]

I'm confused by a lot of the responses here.
Were the PC's somehow unable to stop the NPC's from leaving?

The way I see it, the PC's had a really simple way to stop the NPC's getting killed of by wandering monsters; stop said NPC's from walking off into the wilds in the first place.

If an NPC says
'I'm going to go do something incredibly stupid'
and you respond with
'have fun'
You can't then complain that said NPC got themselves killed. You had a chance to intervene. You chose to stand by and let nature take its course. Nature has taken its course and the world is now a little bit smarter.

[Remuko]

All of the PCs just stood there and listened. They did nothing.

Then yeah I believe this is all on them. They had options and refused to attempt any. Idk why other posters here are blaming you for this. You could have been more lax about the consequences but I don't think you needed to. They literally did nothing, they deserved this, imo.


I'm confused by a lot of the responses here.
Were the PC's somehow unable to stop the NPC's from leaving?

The way I see it, the PC's had a really simple way to stop the NPC's getting killed of by wandering monsters; stop said NPC's from walking off into the wilds in the first place.

If an NPC says
'I'm going to go do something incredibly stupid'
and you respond with
'have fun'
You can't then complain that said NPC got themselves killed. You had a chance to intervene. You chose to stand by and let nature take its course. Nature has taken its course and the world is now a little bit smarter.


this^

[Jon_Dahl]

IMO: Every moment in D&D should be a teachable moment to the PCs. (which is why I dislike SoD mechanics) Teaching the PC/players about the abilities of the monsters, about the cultures of the NPCs, about the lore of the world. So that at the end of the session, the PCs have gained a greater understanding of how the world functions and how to go about interacting with things. Because whether you want to teach something or not, every moment does teach something. So make it teach the thing you want people to learn, rather than something you don't.

I guess you really want to make DMing very challenging for me, but I can respect that. Life is not supposed to be easy.

[Gallowglass]

Then yeah I believe this is all on them. They had options and refused to attempt any. Idk why other posters here are blaming you for this. You could have been more lax about the consequences but I don't think you needed to. They literally did nothing, they deserved this, imo.


But in this case the PCs didn't get to do anything. You decided the NPCs left unprepared. You decided they faced a danger. You decided they died from said danger, all because you didn't care for a player not liking an NPC you decided to be unlikable.

You are both saying the same thing. The PCS did nothing. But both arriving at different destinations.

The PCs did nothing, so they deserve the blame.
The PCs did nothing, so they aren't to blame.

I happen to fall on the PCs are not to blame because of how I read the scenario, and how Jon Dahl described the scenario.

1. The PCs just had a rousing adventure saving the NPCs from slavery and are now marching them through the Astral Sea toward a gate home.
2. The NPC is being an ******* to the PCs who just saved him.
3. 1 PC decides to roleplay interact with the NPC by being as big a jerk back to him as the NPC is being.
3.5 All indications are the other PCs, who have played with Jon Dahl longer, are not role-play interacting with the NPC. Perhaps because they've gone down this road before.
4. With almost NO discernable or described escalation, the NPCs decide as one to blow a big raspberry to the PCs and go off on their own.
5. The PCs shrug and let them go. Why? Because they were being *******s, Because they didn't want to stop them by force, because they don't really care?
6. Sometime later the DM tries to morality play them by having the NPCs show up all dead and **** in an improbably confluence of events ENTIRELY OUTSIDE THE PCs control.

As many, many people here have stated there are a few things the PCs could have done differently. and MANY MANY things the DM could have done differently.

1. The other Non Jerk NPCs with their higher than average intelligence could've told jerk NPC he was one his own and chosen smartly to stay with the armed and operational battlestation PC swarm.

2. He could have had the PCs show up later while the NPCs were locked in combat and given them a choice to help or not help them.

3. He could have had the NPCs captured again and given the PCs the choice to help or not help them.

4. He could have just let it go.

5. He could have waited until they got back through the gate and went to collect their reward for rescuing the NPCs only to be reminded that, no NPCS no reward.

6. He could have reminded them, AT THE MOMENT, that they had a vested interest in not letting the NPCs wander away.

7. He could have had the NPC make a mental note about the PC who was rude back to him and later on, come back to seek revenge.

He chose one of the worst possible things to do instead. He tried some roleplay interaction with the PCs. Only one PC (his newest player) played along and, by all indications, played along in character. Then he punished the PCs for not caring about that part of the adventure. Which, all that is going to do, is teach his newest player what the rest of them have already figured out. Don't bother interacting with the DMs roleplay interactions. Just let him get it out of his system and then we get on to the next part of the adventure we actually enjoy.

[HouseRules]

From a philosophical point of view Pass Time Activities is all for nothing.

So if someone says It was all for nothing, then it is good and bad.

Good in that it is obvious that it was all for nothing, but
Bad in that the world is not an escapism that the player is expecting.

Basically, the game world is too real to be an escapism for that one player;
and, it was too fake for them to care about for the players that just stood there.

[Remuko]

You are both saying the same thing. The PCS did nothing. But both arriving at different destinations.

The PCs did nothing, so they deserve the blame.
The PCs did nothing, so they aren't to blame.

I happen to fall on the PCs are not to blame because of how I read the scenario, and how Jon Dahl described the scenario.

Were not though. Pex is saying they didnt have agency. Nothing suggests that. I got Jon to confirm they didnt do anything. I'm not going to assume they didnt have the ability to. The other PCs could have talked down the badmouthing one and defended the NPCs from him. They could have chased the NPCs down or captured them before they took off so they couldnt do so. There were plenty of options and unless Jon literally refused it "No you cant do that because I say so!" then its not his fault. The PCs had options they could have used to prevent this and chose to do nothing. That's not what Pex's comment you quoted was suggesting at all.

[Quertus]

The problem with killing NPCs like you did off-screen, where players can't react and can only find out about it later, is that it dead-ends potential adventure. There's no growth of the NPCs, there's no lessons to be taught to the party, nothing. It's just "The NPCs are dead, the end."

IMO: Every moment in D&D should be a teachable moment to the PCs. (which is why I dislike SoD mechanics) Teaching the PC/players about the abilities of the monsters, about the cultures of the NPCs, about the lore of the world. So that at the end of the session, the PCs have gained a greater understanding of how the world functions and how to go about interacting with things. Because whether you want to teach something or not, every moment does teach something. So make it teach the thing you want people to learn, rather than something you don't.

I'm of the opinion that there was a lesson to learn: that actions (including being a **** to a ****) have consequences, and you *don't* always get to be around to deal with those consequences. Huge lesson, that.


If an NPC says
'I'm going to go do something incredibly stupid'
and you respond with
'have fun'
You can't then complain that said NPC got themselves killed. You had a chance to intervene. You chose to stand by and let nature take its course. Nature has taken its course and the world is now a little bit smarter.

Agreed.


Then yeah I believe this is all on them. They had options and refused to attempt any. Idk why other posters here are blaming you for this. You could have been more lax about the consequences but I don't think you needed to. They literally did nothing, they deserved this, imo.

For the record, I do not put this on the OP. I put this 100% on the NPC. And somewhat on the players (one more than the others). "All that Evil needs in order to win is for Good men to do nothing". All the players should realize their culpability here. And the one PC should realize that his actions directly led to the course of events. But, ultimately, barring mind control, drugs, etc, the NPC was completely in control of his own actions, and it was his choices that for him killed.

"But he wouldn't have run off if the PC hadn't…”. Sure. But the PC did. So the PC should feel some responsibility. Even so, the NPC could have made better choices. He didn't. So it's his fault, for making those bad choices.


You are both saying the same thing. The PCS did nothing. But both arriving at different destinations.

The PCs did nothing, so they deserve the blame.
The PCs did nothing, so they aren't to blame.

I happen to fall on the PCs are not to blame because of how I read the scenario, and how Jon Dahl described the scenario.

1. The PCs just had a rousing adventure saving the NPCs from slavery and are now marching them through the Astral Sea toward a gate home.
2. The NPC is being an ******* to the PCs who just saved him.
3. 1 PC decides to roleplay interact with the NPC by being as big a jerk back to him as the NPC is being.
3.5 All indications are the other PCs, who have played with Jon Dahl longer, are not role-play interacting with the NPC. Perhaps because they've gone down this road before.
4. With almost NO discernable or described escalation, the NPCs decide as one to blow a big raspberry to the PCs and go off on their own.
5. The PCs shrug and let them go. Why? Because they were being *******s, Because they didn't want to stop them by force, because they don't really care?
6. Sometime later the DM tries to morality play them by having the NPCs show up all dead and **** in an improbably confluence of events ENTIRELY OUTSIDE THE PCs control.

As many, many people here have stated there are a few things the PCs could have done differently. and MANY MANY things the DM could have done differently.

1. The other Non Jerk NPCs with their higher than average intelligence could've told jerk NPC he was one his own and chosen smartly to stay with the armed and operational battlestation PC swarm.

2. He could have had the PCs show up later while the NPCs were locked in combat and given them a choice to help or not help them.

3. He could have had the NPCs captured again and given the PCs the choice to help or not help them.

4. He could have just let it go.

5. He could have waited until they got back through the gate and went to collect their reward for rescuing the NPCs only to be reminded that, no NPCS no reward.

6. He could have reminded them, AT THE MOMENT, that they had a vested interest in not letting the NPCs wander away.

7. He could have had the NPC make a mental note about the PC who was rude back to him and later on, come back to seek revenge.

He chose one of the worst possible things to do instead. He tried some roleplay interaction with the PCs. Only one PC (his newest player) played along and, by all indications, played along in character. Then he punished the PCs for not caring about that part of the adventure. Which, all that is going to do, is teach his newest player what the rest of them have already figured out. Don't bother interacting with the DMs roleplay interactions. Just let him get it out of his system and then we get on to the next part of the adventure we actually enjoy.

I mean, I personally love the GM's choice. It shows that actions - even social interactions - can have consequences. I would consider many of the things on your list "worse" for my enjoyment of the game. I don't blame the GM (other than, perhaps, not making a fun game for the type of players he has), but I do blame the NPC.

[Segev]

Does it actually matter if the PCs "are to blame" or not? They feel like their effort was "all for nothing" either way, don't they?

[False God]

I'm of the opinion that there was a lesson to learn: that actions (including being a **** to a ****) have consequences, and you *don't* always get to be around to deal with those consequences. Huge lesson, that.

Typically, being a jerk to someone means they won't pal around with you in the future. And in this case, both sides were jerks to each other. The NPCs were insulting the PCs for "not saving them fast enough" and "insulting their honor" for even saving them at all. And at least one PC was a jerk back.

Being a jerk to these NPCs causing the players to lose the ability to call on their people for aid or get good service in their town would have been a great way to go about it. There's no lesson to be taught by killing the NPCs. What, if you don't suck up to the NPCs the DM's gonna kill 'em? If you don't grin and bear it the NPCs are gonna wander off and do terribly stupid things?

What kind of lessons are those? Would the party going off and dying in a ditch have taught the NPC anything? No? Then why would the reverse?

[Covenant12]

Overall, I'm more supportive of the PC's than the DM here. And that's only hearing one side of the story. I've DM'ed a lot of characters who won't back down from a challenge or insult, insulting back isn't something horrible.

They fought the guards and rescued the prisoners. Exp and hopefully loot to the murderhobos. Presumably the desire for rescue came from an NPC, so not full exp or reward because they all died. But the adventure was shorter, so go on murderhobo'ing and the PC's are progressing just fine. There is no alignment risk here, even for paladins. Darwin award category, really. I don't think "all for nothing" is realistic. They got exp and loot I hope?

DM's need to really think about an NPC talking smack aggressively to the characters. Especially weak NPCs. Honestly, I'm surprised none of the PC's didn't think of physical force to haul the NPC's back, maybe the reward wasn't impressive? No hyperbole, I've seen campaigns end when an insulting ass of an NPC was required for the PC's success and they decided they didn't want him alive. Expecting players to kiss-ass jerk NPC's is getting into railroading territory. There are times when that makes sense, this doesn't look like one.

[DeadMech]

I can easily imagine the PC's who did nothing not being ABLE to do anything. The NPC's were faster than the PC's in the astral plane. If the npc's decide to just up and go, by the time the PC's can react they are out or reach. What are they going to do? Yell ineffectually after them as they disappear into the aether? Potentially turn it into a combat against a higher level party by casting some control spell? If they are even still in range. Wasting spell slots all while being on an alien plane of existence where they still may well have to defend themselves from some other waiting threat?

And why would they want to? The NPC's are just treating them like dirt anyway? Is this snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? Seems like it. Is it something that could realistically happen due to the PC's choices? Maybe. Is it fun? Doesn't sound like it to me.

People say this is a learning experience for the party but what has the DM learned? Perhaps, that the party doesn't respond well to jerkass NPC's. Maybe everyone involved would have more fun if NPC "allies" weren't needlessly antagonistic.

[Quertus]

Typically, being a jerk to someone means they won't pal around with you in the future. And in this case, both sides were jerks to each other. The NPCs were insulting the PCs for "not saving them fast enough" and "insulting their honor" for even saving them at all. And at least one PC was a jerk back.

Being a jerk to these NPCs causing the players to lose the ability to call on their people for aid or get good service in their town would have been a great way to go about it. There's no lesson to be taught by killing the NPCs. What, if you don't suck up to the NPCs the DM's gonna kill 'em? If you don't grin and bear it the NPCs are gonna wander off and do terribly stupid things?

What kind of lessons are those? Would the party going off and dying in a ditch have taught the NPC anything? No? Then why would the reverse?

My understanding of Bully psychology (correct me if I'm wrong) is that bullies are often bullied themselves, and that, say, fixing their problems will often fix their behavior.

And it's (IMO / as I understand it) like that with a lot of things. Being a **** to people, even people who deserve it, is suboptimal for the overall performance of the system compared to actually acting as a benevolent, caring individual.

Which is why I rarely play that in an RPG. OK, actually, I usually play Evil because of Animate Dead; making things "more interesting" is just an added bonus


Does it actually matter if the PCs "are to blame" or not? They feel like their effort was "all for nothing" either way, don't they?

When life servers you lemons, make zombie lemons. Animate the dead NPCs. Then it's not "all for nothing", it's undead you can enjoy watching die in horrific ways.

Point being, if you can't make something out of it (undead NPCs, opportunity for growth, hunt for the Assassin, new bardic tales, whatever), well, that seems a rather limited perspective, IMO.

EDIT:
People say this is a learning experience for the party but what has the DM learned? Perhaps, that the party doesn't respond well to jerkass NPC's. Maybe everyone involved would have more fun if NPC "allies" weren't needlessly antagonistic.

It's a potential learning experience for the NPC (if he's resurrected - or perhaps he already learned his lesson before he died), the PCs, the players, and the GM. 4 opportunities to learn; 5, if you count "mouthy PC" and "stood by silently PCs" separately. 6, if you count "idiot sheep NPCs" separate from "loudmouth idiot NPC".

And, again, it depends on the group. I'd love watching that idiot get his comeuppance, and have the opportunity to grow (if resurrected). I'd love the party having the opportunity to realize the harsh potential consequences of actions spoken in haste, or of silently watching abuse and stupidity from the sidelines.

But that's me. Different groups want different things out of games. Seems like a good opportunity for the GM to discuss this with his players.

[False God]

My understanding of Bully psychology (correct me if I'm wrong) is that bullies are often bullied themselves, and that, say, fixing their problems will often fix their behavior.

And it's (IMO / as I understand it) like that with a lot of things. Being a **** to people, even people who deserve it, is suboptimal for the overall performance of the system compared to actually acting as a benevolent, caring individual.

Ultimately, I don't disagree, but it really does go both ways. If the NPCs are poking the PCs in the eye, it's unrealistic, and unfair to the players, to not expect a response. In this context, it reads like the DM had NPCs who were poking the PCs in the eye, and one of the PCs reacted, and the other PCs were at least sympathetic enough to their friend, and probably annoyed by the attitude of the NPCs, to let it happen. The DM then "upped the ante" by going and killing the NPCs...who the players had no reason to like to begin with.

We can psych this out all we like, but we're also playing D&D. Not everyone wants to sit down and psychoanalyze the characters, who are often extensions of the person playing them, and thus by extension, psychoanalyze their friends. The results are rarely positive. It's just not the setting for that kind of activity.

As for which is the most optimal form of play, I'll point out that murderhobos (who I would generally describe as "homeless jerks") are common in a wide swath of tables, so that must be a clearly effective way to play or people wouldn't do it.

[King of Nowhere]

DM's need to really think about an NPC talking smack aggressively to the characters. Especially weak NPCs. Honestly, I'm surprised none of the PC's didn't think of physical force to haul the NPC's back, maybe the reward wasn't impressive? No hyperbole, I've seen campaigns end when an insulting ass of an NPC was required for the PC's success and they decided they didn't want him alive. Expecting players to kiss-ass jerk NPC's is getting into railroading territory. There are times when that makes sense, this doesn't look like one.

on the other hand, i've seen pcs "talking smack aggressively" to the npcs and expecting to get away with it because they are the protagonists. I don't know the players foor this specific case, but if they are the that kind of player, it does them good to have the table turned on them.
plus, killing npcs for an insult seems way of an overreaction, regardless of whether they were plot-critical or not.