my dm wants to retcon the last session...

[Guizonde]

... and i don't know how i feel about that.

anyway, here's the thing, in the pathfinder campaign i play (cayden caillean's finest ...), we've gone on hiatus for about 6 months now, and at first it was because the dm moved out of town, and none of us are really happy about using discord or roll20. but he came out 2 days ago saying that basically, we broke the game. i'll spoiler the campaign recap, so you can skip it.


so we're a drunken band of cayden caillean followers who're asked to go toe-to-toe against a newly minted god of time who's eliminating other gods in an attempt to control everything and stop all the bad things. (i'll get back to that). we went to osirion to get info, then to dwarven lands to get support. then the dm changed gears and made it more character-focused:
part the first, we went to help free (our bard) save his family business in absalom. the reward for that was the mercantile powerhouse of one of the biggest distilleries in golarion, and its distribution netword.
part the second, we went to ulf-land to help eva the cleric's temple. we ended up destroying said temple while overthrowing a brainwashed cult leader. we also got like, all the dragons on our side for the battle.
part the third, we went into the wound (gaping maw? sorry, i don't really remember the official translation) to save josé's dad, who just so happens to be general of riddle-port's navy. aaaaaaand, we lost. badly. to wit, our monk spent the entire time antagonizing the army accompanying us, the dm retconned josé's sacrifice to basically him blowing up for no reason, and we don't have the army's support AND josé's dad died, so we can't even count on the navy for support.




now, here's my feelings on it. i feel cheated. the dm and i had talked about retiring josé, and we both agreed that killing him off heroic sacrifice style was what we wanted. the fact that it was in the abyssal plane made it metal as all hell. during the last session, he even introduced my reroll, which i was very excited about. he put josé against 3 building sized demons, and i thought, "here's my moment!" and josé self destructs to save everyone. except the dm was shocked i did it. he actually admitted to screwing up the death scene because he didn't expect me to do that, despite both of us having message logs explaining it. at first, he was like "well, uh, the blast rips a hole in the abyssal plane, and devastates every demon in a multiple mile radius". which is cool and makes for a great story. but now, he goes and rescinds it for this version:

josé's sacrifice was useless. sure, he took down 3 demons, and left at 1hp in the abyss thanks to his divine kamikaze attack, his dad is critically injured with none of his fleet remaining, and the army was so antagonized by the monk's antics that we're lucky that they're allowing us to walk back to golarion with them. oh, and of course, we didn't even put a dent in the demonic numbers because they spawn in limitless numbers there.

so he's saying, "look guys, you screwed up so badly that we've got to retcon the last session. as it is, you've got cash and trade routes, and even some dragons, but to take down the bad guy, you need the army and navy, and right now you've got neither. so you lost."

i've never been in this situation. sure, we've been lucking our way out of things, surviving by wit and quick-thinking (as i'm sure 75% of all campaigns go), but that last session was like a "gotcha!" that backfired. and ooc, what did he expect? i wanted to kill off my character in a heroic way, and he goes and spits in my eye. i feel hurt, but also terribly rail-roaded. yeah, we lucked out on the absalom quest and the dragon quest, but here, it was like the entire campaign's plot was hinging on this moment with no contingency on the dm's part if and when we screwed up.

i feel wrong about retconning the whole thing. i grieved josé's passing (and his lamentably poor death scene), was looking forward to playing my new character, and i'm sure we could figure out a way to go beyond this loss. in a roleplaying game, failure is always an option, and just because we lost a battle doesn't mean we lost the war.

the thing is, the dm is actually considering giving up the campaign for both scenario and logistical reasons. the wind has gone out of his sails, and he doesn't know how to figure out how to salvage his plot from this defeat. hell, he blamed us for not taking the loss seriously, until we told him that his villain is actually not that evil. i mean, having a god-killer who wants to end religious wars and ensure fate does not get tangled up or broken doesn't exactly scream "evil", controlling and egotistical and misguided yes, but not "evil". hell, we alignment-pinged him and he registered as "lawful-neutral". part of me thinks the dm bit off more than he could chew. an overarching plot that works only if he railroads parts of it thanks to cutscenes, separated on custom-tailored story arcs focusing on the individual characters, with a morally-ambiguous villain. but i think what really stung him was when we had a radically different opinion of the villain than what he tried to give off. it destabilized him, and made him second-guess himself.

i don't really know what to feel, or how to feel about it. has anything ever happened to you like that? the dm straight up retconning things? i mean, technically, i pulled a 1 on the henderson scale of plot derailment, and i'm not proud of it. but any commentary you have that i can use to motivate my dm is welcome. i don't want this campaign to end.

[King of Nowhere]

your recap of the campaign was VERY confusing at best, and i didn't understood most of it.

some things stand out, though.
1) you had a big enemy and you needed to win the support of an army and a navy to fight it
2) getting the navy required rescuing this "jose dad" guy, who was their leader

So, you had two objectives: get the army, get the navy. and it looks like you failed at both. you didn't rescue the navy leader. you alienated the army (seriously, the monk spent his whole time antagonizing your allies? why would he? and why would you guys let him?).
and there's also the stuff with the temple, where you had to rescue someone and didn't.
so, you've been thorugh a series of unmitigated disasters. retconning makes sense in the face of this.

and i don't understand why this jose sacrifice was supposed to be important (i assume he was your former character and you decided to retire him), but having a character you were planning to retire sacrifice himself and save everyone and especially solve the plot would be an awfully convenient deus ex machina. i can totally understand the dm not wanting to cheapen the plot so far

[Pelle]

Just let the campaign die. Try having an epilogue if you need more closure.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

So... you lost so badly that the DM wants to retcon it so you lost even harder, removing the only thing that went well? Because they think you should feel the consequences of how bad that went?

[zinycor]

Just let the campaign die, no reason to force your GM to run a game he doesn't enjoy anymore. I say have another person run a game and enjoy.

[Leon]

Sounds like a good time to stop.

[Guizonde]

your recap of the campaign was VERY confusing at best, and i didn't understood most of it.

some things stand out, though.
1) you had a big enemy and you needed to win the support of an army and a navy to fight it
2) getting the navy required rescuing this "jose dad" guy, who was their leader

So, you had two objectives: get the army, get the navy. and it looks like you failed at both. you didn't rescue the navy leader. you alienated the army (seriously, the monk spent his whole time antagonizing your allies? why would he? and why would you guys let him?).
and there's also the stuff with the temple, where you had to rescue someone and didn't.
so, you've been thorugh a series of unmitigated disasters. retconning makes sense in the face of this.

and i don't understand why this jose sacrifice was supposed to be important (i assume he was your former character and you decided to retire him), but having a character you were planning to retire sacrifice himself and save everyone and especially solve the plot would be an awfully convenient deus ex machina. i can totally understand the dm not wanting to cheapen the plot so far

sorry about the confusion, that was very stream-of-consciousness. you're pretty much right. we failed to save the captain of the navy. the odds were insurmountable. as for the monk, our team was split in different roles, and we've got a pretty strict "if your character isn't there, you can't interact" policy. we simply weren't present when that happened, the army didn't tell us about it, so we had no idea of knowing in character what happened. as for the temple thing, it was a hard bypass, but it worked.

as for the sacrifice thing, it wasn't really important in the long run, but since the dm and i had been talking about it for at least 3 weeks preceding the session, i thought it was the right moment, plus it made for a good story. sure, he could have just gone off and taken the reins of the navy or something, but yeah, i was sick of playing that character.

pelle, zinycor, and leon: i guess it probably is, all things considered. i'll see what the rest of the team wants.

lvl 2 expert: i think he actually wants us to go back to before the session started, so that we're in the abyss, but before the monk antagonizes the army into hating us, and so we get a chance to do it right. not necessarily to the extent of retconing what went well and worsening what went wrong. i feel that with that bit of foreknowledge, we've got an edge, while simultaneously being railroaded. which, frankly, i don't like. if i wanted to be spoiled a session, i'd play a video game with the strategy guide.

sorry if it was confusing, as i said above, i needed to vent and came out full stream-of-consciousness. guess it's time to let sleeping dogs lie.

[King of Nowhere]

sorry about the confusion, that was very stream-of-consciousness. you're pretty much right. we failed to save the captain of the navy. the odds were insurmountable. as for the monk, our team was split in different roles, and we've got a pretty strict "if your character isn't there, you can't interact" policy. we simply weren't present when that happened, the army didn't tell us about it, so we had no idea of knowing in character what happened. as for the temple thing, it was a hard bypass, but it worked.


on the other hand, if someone bash the player on the head with something heavy (say, any one of the game manuals. must be why they make them so big) then the character would stop antagonizing the army, and nobody would have interacted with the character :smallbiggrin:.
more seriously, your group shows a huge commitment. i don't think i'd ever be able to sit down and be quiet while a fellow player is intentionally sabotaging the campaign.

[Guizonde]

on the other hand, if someone bash the player on the head with something heavy (say, any one of the game manuals. must be why they make them so big) then the character would stop antagonizing the army, and nobody would have interacted with the character :smallbiggrin:.
more seriously, your group shows a huge commitment. i don't think i'd ever be able to sit down and be quiet while a fellow player is intentionally sabotaging the campaign.

we would have, had we not been playing through roll20 (one of the reasons we prefer playing live is that we can't pelt each other with things, be it saucisson or rulebooks). the worst thing was he wasn't intentionnally doing it!

we talked it over, and it's decided that this campaign is done for. no more stupid quotes from the adventure, and unfortunately no proper dénouement. we had fun, no hard feelings, but that's the way the dice roll, i guess.

thanks for letting me vent, guys.