Achievement unlocked!

[RabidEel]

In the words of our DM:
https://i.ibb.co/k944Kkv/achievment-unlocked.png (https://ibb.co/k944Kkv)

I'm... kinda proud of us, in a terrified, we-still-have-no-idea-what-happened sort of way.

[Forevaxp]

Please, I need more details. What exactly happened?
I’ve personally helped with an event that was probably a 0.5 Henderson, but I haven’t ever experienced a full Henderson yet.

[sithlordnergal]

I've gotten so dang close to a full on Henderson scale of derailing. Hell, my current game has not one, but two items that I could use to cause a Henderson event...but the party won't let me have them. >_> One is a Helmet that basically boosts your persuasion, and magically charms all creatures within range of your voice that fail an insight check, and causes those Charmed creatures to do as you command...even if it means putting themselves in danger by entering combat! I want, nay NEED, that for my Warlock/Bard with a +12 persuasion. Once I get that I can get a rod that controls dragons, also with a Persuasion check, and I will RULE ALL!!!

[Zhorn]

This is why I like to seed in other stories into the background, be it from other modules or built off the players' prior actions. Derailing the plot just sets a course for a new plot to take priority.

It does mean even I as a DM don't know where the plot is ultimately headed, but that is part of the fun.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKQv4GC0N9Q

[Keravath]

This is why I like to seed in other stories into the background, be it from other modules or built off the players' prior actions. Derailing the plot just sets a course for a new plot to take priority.

It does mean even I as a DM don't know where the plot is ultimately headed, but that is part of the fun.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKQv4GC0N9Q

Absolutely agree. I've always run my games this way whether it was Traveller, D&D or something else. I like open worlds where there are lots of things going on and the players only see what they experience. Any decision they make can have an impact but there is nothing they can do that would destroy the plot line since there are multiple plot lines and they are always flexible. Even if they somehow accidentally destroyed the plane of existence where the adventure was based, as long as the characters survive, the adventure continues.

[Chronos]

Henderson was... Wait, was he the guy who managed to win Call of Cthulhu?

And yeah, you can't just leave us hanging, here. If you or your party managed to pull something off of that magnitude, there's got to be some great story there.

[Lupine]

Honestly, my party has tried numerous times to de-rail my plots, and it ends up spinning into a new plot. That said, I run a “living world” style campaign, so doing something I don’t expect leads them towards something they don’t expect (ie, if they kill the king, and evil noble might take the crown, and becomes a tyrant that the player have to deal with)

[MaxWilson]

Henderson was... Wait, was he the guy who managed to win Call of Cthulhu?

Supposedly, yes, that was the PC's name. The Old Man Henderson story smells like a fabrication to me though.

[RabidEel]

Please, I need more details. What exactly happened?
I’ve personally helped with an event that was probably a 0.5 Henderson, but I haven’t ever experienced a full Henderson yet.

Sorry for the wait, I posted the OP just before Shabbos.

In short: we don't know. We're still at the stage of the game where we have mostly questions and not answers. In the very immediate direct sense, what happened was that one of the PC's dropped his weird homebrew magic scythe into the gears of a the city-sized (?) weird computer that that we've been ending up in when we get transported to the weird homebrew astral plane at night. Something reacted by eating most of the computer (and at least one nigh-invulnerable being of destruction which was trapped inside).

The DM has been talking to my brother (not in the campaign), who's been talking to me, albiet avoid specifics. We apparently unbalanced some cosmic force and now it's going to devour the world. Or something. And there's no way to stop it. And the DM is going to deploy some high-level NPC's to give us time to think, but even he has no idea how we'd possibly manage to get out of this.

So yeah. Fun times. (And my brother is mad at us, because he was in the first campaign in this world and he has NPC's and former PC's he's emotionally invested in, thank you very much. Though we already killed one by accident even before unleashing an eldritch horror, so he was upset at us already).

[Chronos]

That's the Henderson-level derailing? You put a bunch of PCs in a realm of gears, you should assume that they're going to try to throw a spanner into them. That should be Plan A. The derailment would be if, somehow, they don't mess up the gears.

[Keravath]

Sorry for the wait, I posted the OP just before Shabbos.

In short: we don't know. We're still at the stage of the game where we have mostly questions and not answers. In the very immediate direct sense, what happened was that one of the PC's dropped his weird homebrew magic scythe into the gears of a the city-sized (?) weird computer that that we've been ending up in when we get transported to the weird homebrew astral plane at night. Something reacted by eating most of the computer (and at least one nigh-invulnerable being of destruction which was trapped inside).

The DM has been talking to my brother (not in the campaign), who's been talking to me, albiet avoid specifics. We apparently unbalanced some cosmic force and now it's going to devour the world. Or something. And there's no way to stop it. And the DM is going to deploy some high-level NPC's to give us time to think, but even he has no idea how we'd possibly manage to get out of this.

So yeah. Fun times. (And my brother is mad at us, because he was in the first campaign in this world and he has NPC's and former PC's he's emotionally invested in, thank you very much. Though we already killed one by accident even before unleashing an eldritch horror, so he was upset at us already).

I'd have to second the comment that "How can the DM build a city sized computer out of gears and NOT expect someone to drop something into the works".

This raises some other questions ...

"Why would anyone design a gear operated computer as a containment device for cosmic forces that could be so easily broken?"

"Why would whatever plot element is active keep summoning the characters back to the one place where they could do the most damage? Why do the characters even have access to the gears of this device?"

"The cosmos is typically in balance with all sort of other forces, unless the DM designed this world specifically differently. Usually there are other gods and other "nigh-invulnerable" beings, how are these creatures going to react to the world being destroyed?" They probably exceed the capabilities of a few "High level NPCs" by an order of magnitude and may have a vested interest as well. (Unless the DM has designed a world balanced on a knife edge of destruction where gods and other similar beings of incredible power do not exist ... does the game have any clerics?)


Finally, although the plot could take a turn that the DM does not expect, ANYTHING that happens is by DM fiat. They decide how the elements interact and what happens.

If the DM decided in advance that putting this weapon into the gears would unleash an armagedon, why did the DM give the players this weapon in the first place? If the weapon did not have this capability then why did the DM decide it would have this ability when a character decided to drop it in the gears? The DM decides how things interact. They can plan in advance or decide on the spur of the moment in terms of what might be more fun.

In this case, the DM appears to have decided that it would be more fun to follow up on a possible end of the world story line either planned in advance (knowing what the weapon would do) or on the spur of the moment (deciding what the weapon would do when dropped). The DM could just as easily have decided that the gears spat the weapon back out, possibly damaged (which wouldn't be surprising with a city sized gear driven magical computer artifact - it SHOULD have some resilience or self-repair capability) or perhaps the weapon could be destroyed while only weakening the bonds on whatever was contained by the computer.

However, in this case the DM decided to follow up with an end of the world story line. There is nothing wrong with that and it is fun to let the players think that their actions had real consequences but since it is the DM deciding the plot line and outcomes ... the story always moves in the direction the DM decides. If the players do something unexpected there are always directions to take the plot even if the DM had not thought of those in advance.

[LordNibbler]

Sorry for the wait, I posted the OP just before Shabbos.

“I don’t roll on Shabbos!”

[Contrast]

Supposedly, yes, that was the PC's name. The Old Man Henderson story smells like a fabrication to me though.

I think the thing that always amused me about the Old Man Henderson story was that it was framed as being a story of a player setting out to wreak revenge against a petty controlling DM...yet none of the shenanigans described would be remotely possible without an incredibly permissive DM who was buying into it all and fudging things in the players favour.

[RabidEel]

That's the Henderson-level derailing? You put a bunch of PCs in a realm of gears, you should assume that they're going to try to throw a spanner into them. That should be Plan A. The derailment would be if, somehow, they don't mess up the gears.

It's not dropping just anything in the gears, it's that the scythe was made of Essence of Genus Loci or something. Again, I don't know the details.


If the DM decided in advance that putting this weapon into the gears would unleash an armagedon, why did the DM give the players this weapon in the first place? If the weapon did not have this capability then why did the DM decide it would have this ability when a character decided to drop it in the gears? The DM decides how things interact. They can plan in advance or decide on the spur of the moment in terms of what might be more fun.

He, uh... didn't.
https://i.ibb.co/pX0tHLR/excuses.png (https://imgbb.com/)


Finally, although the plot could take a turn that the DM does not expect, ANYTHING that happens is by DM fiat. They decide how the elements interact and what happens.
To be fair, he sometimes puts us in situations he has no solution for, just to see what we'll come up with. Our first campaign, for instance, he actually didn't know how we were going to defeat the bosses, and we ended up hitting one of them in the face with two entire planes of existence, which was worth EVERYTHING.

ALSO, UPDATE: I may have, MAY have, saved the world... with the power of RETCON:
https://i.ibb.co/JrCWw1g/retcon.png (https://imgbb.com/)

So far the vote's dead even. If not, well, we're used to winging crazy situations, hopefully we'll come up with something.

[RabidEel]

All right, it's been settled: This Never Happened, Continue On As You Were.

[Evoker]

Well, that means you also pulled off an OOC -1 Henderson, resulting in net zero Henderson.