Player Character Consequences... Would This Be Unfair As a GM?

[AntiAuthority]

Sorry if this is the wrong Prefix, it seemed the most appropriate.

On the off chance my party sees this post... If you're in a two player campaign featuring god-like powers, insects, man-eating foxes and such... Don't read, this is a spoiler for the next session.

So, I'm GMing a high-powered game where the PCs have much more combat power than the average person in their world. It's a sandbox type of campaign, so they aren't necessarily railroaded into doing things but I make it clear time is passing (and things are happening offscreen) when they decide to do things.

A large part of the game has been me telling the players that their actions have consequences. I was HOPING they'd be good consequences, but the party seems to not think too far ahead... Or choose the easier route/shortcuts, ignoring the long-term ramifications. So far, the party has... Ignored several disturbing hints until they've become too large to ignore and are pretty amoral/immoral. People are dying because of their actions but they seem to be fine with it as long as, "It's not directly affecting us."

Now for the bit that makes me question if I'm being unfair... They did something where their actions essentially potentially unleashed a great evil into the world AND said evil now has every reason to be gunning for them personally.

There are two armies... Each fighting each other because they've been tricked into it and honestly don't even want to fight each other but believe the other is screwing them over. They express several times they'd rather just stop fighting but are essentially locked in with each other and believe the other side is responsible for the spell keeping them locked into their current area... Which is a lie as the party quickly figures out. Note, the armies were sealed up somewhere and the party didn't even need to break the seal in the first place... Doing so now means the armies can escape, they just haven't realized it yet.

To make things short... The party essentially played the two obviously evil armies composed of monsters to fight by pretending to be allies to both... And one player slipped up by mentioning info they got from the opposing army's leader, which put one leader on high alert... And the excuse they used wasn't convincing for several reasons ("random civilians overheard you talking about it...") The party could tell the leader was suspicious, then the leader started randomly talking about food (which was actually a code phrase for his minions), the leader then gave them an undead "guide" around the area... Who was actually a spy that the party has known for all of about a collective 2 hours.

One party member then tells this spy vital information that they hid from their boss (such as entering from outside the prison)... And then more vital information they hid from the spy's boss... Like the fact that the two armies don't even need to fight each other to begin with to escape their current prison. All of this within moments of getting back to their base. I kept thinking they wouldn't feel the need to reveal unnecessary information... And then I was thinking, "There's no way they're letting this stranger wander around after being told all of that" but nope... They also give this spy the freedom to go outside and leave... And go right to their boss (the person the spy's actually loyal to.)

Now the boss has information to end the war, and (thanks to the information the party gave him both intentionally and accidentally through slips of the tongue/the spy) knows who to speak to on the opposing side... And goes to have a peace talk with the opposing side's leader, using the information the party gave to pique his interest on how he even found any of that out. The two then realize, "They were playing both of us."

The one who sent the spy became enraged because he was willing to actually work with the party, would have given them rewards, ended up bargaining away important information (like how he's unkillable...), tried to frame him for actions done against the opposing side and his pride was thoroughly hurt by the knowledge that they tried to make a fool out of him.

The other side realized the party was the one that turned one of their members into a human bomb, blew up their main base, was willing to reward the party and was willing to share the details of where their side's children were to the enemy... And is angry that he actually considered working with such people who betrayed their cause and made them look like clowns.

Both realize they don't need to fight each other, but are incredibly angry at being played (as well as knowing they could have both left their prison prior to this if the party had only been honest with them) and decided to unite against the party... So now the party has two massive armies of various monsters gunning for them. Both armies also know where the PCs are resting and the PCs are far away from their own allies. Next session, the two armies will unite and surround the PCs and approach them en masse.

All of this because they trusted a random NPC they barely knew while being secretive with the same NPC's boss. I was willing to let them figure out it was a spy but... Then that happened immediately after.

They were struggling with one side but realized they had some advantages... But both sides uniting is very likely to end with the PCs being murdered through the sheer numbers and the fact that (by avoiding combat at all costs) them not having a full grasp on what some monsters are capable of

Anyway, the party has limited ways of escape... They could hypothetically use fire to teleport to another nearby flame but the current setting makes that very unlikely to work. It was a plot point because one used a power that was within a certain distance and I had to come up with an answer earlier.

It's also worth noting if they'd just gone crazy on everything and started slaughtering enemies left and right, they'd probably have a better chance at survival. Or just sided with one side and help win... Then turn on their own side when it's weakened and kill them. I didn't imagine it was possible to unite both against them, yet those series of poorly chosen words (and trying to make the sides angry at each other) had a butterfly effect.

Also the PCs taking shortcuts, making deals with the devil and such led to them having NPC party members that only work for them because it's more convenient... And said NPC party members will bail on the party as soon as it becomes clear their lives are in genuine danger. One player outright said they don't trust some of them in life or death situations. For example, "You were valuable to me, but not THAT valuable."

I've stressed the importance of their actions having consequences and how they need to think ahead before they act but... In this case they kept talking and talking until it basically ended up with saying too much to the wrong person and then not thinking it was a big deal.

I don't want to kill the party, and even considered just having the leaders quietly exit the barrier... But I feel like that would be letting the consequences of their actions get away from them and they'll keep doing stuff like this until they realize it won't always end well for them.

Would this be unfair/forced as a GM or simply allowing their actions to catch up to them?

[MoiMagnus]

Something I think is important is to differentiate the "consequences for bad actions from the characters" and "consequences for lack of skill from the players".

Consequences for lack of skill from the players

The usual example is in combat, if the players don't have a good tactical mind, an intelligent enemy can create a battle literally unwinnable by outsmarting the players, and that's not really interesting to have an ambush with a "well, you're dead".

But here, you're in intrigue/scheming, and your players definitely seems pretty bad at it (in particular, pretty bad at handling information wars). As such, intelligent enemies (like the ones you have) can outsmart the players (like they did) without too much difficulty.

Outside of hardcore campaign (where you expect PCs to die and die again up until the players learn and improve), I'd say the GM should adapt to the player's skill level. And in particular, whenever the enemies would outsmart the PCs, then the PCs lose access to the "total victory" but they should still be able to fight for a "partial victory" (which can be "surviving"), even if that means dumbing down the enemies a little.

Consequences for bad actions from the characters

But not every bad consequence stem from the players having low skills. It's expected in sandbox game that the players will be punished for thinking "seem to be fine as long as it's not directly affecting us" and accumulating enemies by behaving in amoral/immoral ways.

From a purely "fun" point of view, it's more important for the consequences to be visible than to be effective. Meaning that it's more important that the players end up thinking "crap, it's the consequences of my actions coming back..." than to actually perfectly simulate those consequences. But if your table value the "simulationist" mindset, then that's the place to have faithful consequences to actions.

And in your case "trying to play both sides" is definitely an action that can legitimately yield bad consequences.

[Quertus]

I mean, I think I’d… hmmm… explain the situation to the players, almost like you did in this thread, and ask them why / how they thought this could possibly have any consequences other than “both armies attack you”.

If they have no good answer, and are genuinely just clueless, then ask them if they’d like to pick up with the (possibly unwinnable) battle, or start a new campaign (one that doesn’t give them quite so much opportunity for this obvious weakness to cause them to fail, and with the admonition to attempt more honest tactics / not engage in information wars).

OTOH, maybe they actually did all this on purpose, and had an actual reason for their actions. Here’s some of the possibilities I can imagine, and what I might do in each case:

Maybe they misunderstood something. In 3e D&D parlance, maybe they had just taken Leadership, and thought that the Undead was their cohort. Or maybe they had a power (like Rebuke Undead) that they thought just automatically made all Undead their allies. In this kind of scenario, if you think that the character could have misunderstood this, then oops, mistakes (even fatal ones) happen; if not, then it’s time for a retcon.

Or maybe you misunderstood something. Maybe one of the players said he took command of the undead or something, and the players understood that to mean something different than you did. Definitely time for a retcon in this case.

Maybe they had a good plan, but failed to explain it. Like, they told the undead all this stuff on purpose because they suspected it of treachery (which could even explain the “roam free” instruction to enable its treachery). Maybe they just assumed you’d tell them if the Undead attempted to leave camp. Or maybe they intended to start next session with, “so, we secretly watch the Undead - does it attempt to leave?”. In this scenario, just run with their ideas (and explain about timely delivery of information for the future).

Or maybe they had an idea, but it was a terrible one, with no understanding of human psychology (from your PoV, at least). Maybe they thought that their actions masterfully set up a completely different chain of events than what you envisioned. And, I suppose I should start with, maybe after they explain it, you can see their PoV, in which case, go with it. However, assuming you can’t, then we’re back to “would you like to play out this fight?” and learning at least for the next campaign to not rely on your players having a reasonable (to you, at least) grasp of human psychology.

In short, when your players choose such a “???”-rated series of actions, I don’t know what’s going through their heads any more than you do. But they should. So ask them. And, based on their response, determine how to move forward with the game, and how to optimize future games.

[MoiMagnus]

I agree with Quertus on the fact that you need to understand what your players are currently thinking and how they see the situation.

If you're not sure how to present this question to them, start by asking them to sum up the last session and the current situation.

[MonochromeTiger]

Whether it's fair or not depends heavily on both the full context and what perspective it's being looked at from.

First, have there ever actually been consequences for their actions? You can say there will be all day long but if they've been committing atrocities or angering everyone they meet for ages with nothing to show for it then it's highly unlikely that they'll believe it. Taken further if nothing they've done up to now has ever come back to bite them then there's going to be some potential for "the DM/GM is just being cheap and trying to kill us" when the first thing to ever blow up in their faces is literally two entire armies when they've apparently struggled to fight a few members from just one of them; if the understanding that there are consequences and potential danger hasn't been reinforced on any of the smaller opportunities to do so then it may look a bit problematic when the thing that sets it off is also the thing they've just shown you they have a hard time with. However if you have shown it to be true throughout your campaign then it's much easier to justify a big and potentially final reminder after all the smaller reminders they've ignored or failed to learn from.

Second, what are the expectations both you and your players have for the campaign? Have you both communicated that and made sure you're on the same page? You've used the terms sandbox and high powered when explaining your game, those have different connotations for different players and that ranges from "you can do whatever you want and you're strong enough to handle it so just have fun doing whatever" to "every direction you pick has the potential to be lethal and you're stronger than most people in the setting so you're going to conveniently run into the most dangerous threats to compensate." If there was a tone and expectations mismatch that's on both sides of the situation and should be cleared up before deciding either way to avoid hurt feelings and confusion. If there's no miscommunication and they're bought into the game as you intent to DM it then they should already understand how you run the game well enough that this turn of events wouldn't shock them.

Third, as others have pointed out, are they even used to thinking of any of this kind of stuff enough to notice the big glaring warning signs? Even in experienced groups that are actively looking to engage with it intrigue can be hard on both DMs and players, simple plots like a doublecross or a spy can somehow have insufficient thought put into how they're treated and be doomed by overthinking at the same time without even getting into issues of just not thinking of something at the time. There's usually a fairly limited range of "right moves" in intrigue situations because the players have to compete with both the obvious capabilities of the characters they're trying to trick or work around and also the DM's/GM's willingness to think "yeah I could see that working" while looking at a much more complete view of the situation and the characters involved (not to mention their own ideas and biases on what would be likely to happen) than the players have access to.

In a way intrigue plots in RPGs are like a riddle. The person asking isn't looking for every answer that fits the criteria of the riddle, they're looking for the answer they expect. The people answering run the risk of being wrong because they just don't understand the riddle (not grasping the situation or all the moving parts or failing to notice what's going on is even that important), being wrong because they lack the knowledge needed to answer (understanding it's a plot point and engaging but not seeing a real way to make it work for what they want), or being right in the wrong way and failing because of it (going in with a goal in mind but not lining up with the DM/GM on what that goal is until it's already decided that they failed something completely different).

All of that being said, from an outside perspective with just what you've given in your opening post I think they likely ran into a mix of the first and third.

They've apparently been just jumping between disasters they've caused without any reason to look back or have a moment of introspection that maybe the chaos they've caused isn't making them the best of friends with the people they leave behind; if nothing has caused them to look back it's likely that nothing has caused them to consider those consequences are capable of following them beyond the bounds of whatever area the actions causing them happened in. They then run into the situation you described, tried to mess around with it as normal, engaged the intrigue situation you described and apparently stuck around long enough to realize "oh wait these guys hurt and we're not into this whole dangerous combat thing" and with risk starting to look much more proportional with reward than they care for and their deception not yielding benefits they consider worth it they leave expecting another situation safely forgotten behind them.

Or, less politely, they've gotten used to switching locations whenever they exhaust the benefits or get bored and having fights that hurt them set off the kill switch for their attention spans and failed to also hit the warning light for "maybe clear this up before you go" since it hasn't actually been needed before.

[icefractal]

This is a tricky one - on the one hand, it seems likely that this is primarily an OOC blunder that the players (rather than characters) will be unhappy with the outcome of. On the other hand, since it occurred by accumulation there's not really a clean way to retcon.

One option is those "semi-loyal followers" you mentioned. If any of them were around for this conversation, and/or might have followed the undead, then they can bring the problem to the attention of the PCs in the form of GTFOing themselves.

"Hey, you know that scam we've got going? Yeah, I think they know - the undead went off looking purposeful after that conversation. So ... I'm not sticking around to find out how bad trouble we're in. Good luck, bye."

Since that would be happening simultaneous to the opposing generals arranging a meeting, it should give the PCs a decent head start if they flee ASAP.

[AntiAuthority]

ON ASKING THE PCs...

I decided to ask what was the thought processes behind their actions... I didn't spoil what happens next though.

The party was trying to get the two armies to fight BUT had slightly different means of going about it. One player wanted the armies to be united against each other so both sides were at full power... The other player wanted to break up the two armies and cause in-fighting. Telling the spy (talking floating skull) all that information was a deliberate attempt to weaken its trust in its master's (Lich) intelligence... But the telling the Lich was a genuine accident on my player's part.

ON CONSENQUENCES....

Now for the consequences part... I have put consequences in place for their actions and the party is well aware of it... They clearly remember it but it might not have worked out too well. I have two examples that become one.

First example is the characters' kind are being collected for being "evil spirits" that are threats to the kingdom... But nobody knows the main characters are in this group. Some stuff happens, they go to a city to give a lost child with powers like their own to her next of kin, her next of kin is revealed to have bought into that evil spirit propaganda and one character reveals themselves (and the kid) in a dramatic moment... Which sets off the entire town. Then to add fuel to the fire, they make a mirage of a dragon appear over the city, making things more tense. They manage to escape out into the wilderness.

Second part, one player was introduced to the campaign by fighting a sickly-looking troll in their tutorial fight... The player chose to run away instead of even rolling to attack. The monster followed and the player defeated it, but didn't kill it. They then feed it kidnappers they encountered, and I realized the troll was becoming a recurring character. The troll even mentioned/implied it didn't get to eat much/travel far because of its physical state but was doing better now. Throughout this, the troll was spouting strange nonsense about fire hurting it not being normal for it. As they feed the troll and visit it, I go out of my way to mention it's looking healthier, putting on muscle, etc. One player was getting weirded out by this but the one that spared it kept excusing these things. They feed it and I mentioned time and again that it was putting on weight... Eventually they pass by it while in a carriage and mention they're going to a nearby city (same one as above paragraph) with tasty humans and the troll seems interested in it... The party heads off to the city but notice the troll is stalking them from a distance. The player that was creeped out earlier REALLY wants to kill this thing while the one that spared it instead wants to avoid killing it for some reason and they run off... They think they lose it and go to the city. They return to the area and a local mentions the troll isn't at its usual haunt, and displayed unusual characteristics involving shooting lights out of its fingers (or something to that effect)... When the party goes to investigate they find the troll isn't there and the player that kept sparing it is weirded out because, "This is the first time I've come here and not seen that thing." They retrace their footsteps and end up near the city and find the bodies of several dead ogres and the troll comes out of the ground as if the soil were water... The troll has put on several hundred pounds of muscle, is taller and has stone-spikes covering its body now. So, turns out that the troll has the same type of powers as the PCs, them feeding it helped it return back to a more powerful state and it can now travel underground and cause earthquakes that topple buildings and uproot trees within a fairly large area. The troll points to the city and states, "This will be my greatest feast yet." The players freak out and try to warn the city after the troll sinks into the earth...

Now how they connect. The PCs teleport into the city (any lit flame within a certain distance is enough for them to do this) and the carnage begins shortly after an earthquake causes several tall buildings to crash into each other. The party enters the area (along with various adventurers and guards to help being in the surrounding area) and find the troll eating the bodies of people. It ignores them up until the party attacks and the troll roars in pain before counterattacking. The fighting draws the attention of the adventurers and guards who recognize the (now wanted) party and are confused as to why they're back with a strange monster.

Adventurers: The evil spirits are back! They brought a monster with them this time!

Party: The troll is the real threat here!

Troll:... Masters, why are you hurting me?!

Party:... What?

Troll: You told me to do this!

Party: This thing is a liar!

The party tries to argue that the troll is lying but the people there remember the ruckus they caused only a short time prior. To them, it looks an AWFUL lot like the PCs are connected to the weird monster that suddenly appeared near them shortly after their last visit. The party even admits they fed people to the troll which didn't exactly help their case that, "We're not with this thing!"

The party escapes using their powers while the troll escapes as well via going underground. The party is now associated with the massacre and stays away from that area. They also get a bit of a lead on the troll's backstory and... Choose not to follow up on it.

They then retreat to a forest full of giant insects because they've agreed to work with an obviously evil insect goddess (who herself is a giant red flag) in exchange for protection. They can now never enter the major cities of the kingdom they're still near without being hunted so choose to stay in the wilderness. The troll's still at large, they just... Do everything they can to avoid it.

I thought they learned from this except...

Anyway, later on, they meet some Kumiho (man-eating foxes in OP) that eat people and explicitly gain power from devouring more powerful beings. They're introduced having killed a village's worth of people and tried to eat the PCs... They take some damage and see a bus-sized nine tailed fox emerge from a building. Instead of fighting, they take two hostage while threatening the rest of the Kumiho away unless they want the captives to die (the giant one agrees as those are her daughters and she actually likes her kids.) They then offer to feed these two man-eating monsters some of their godly blood in exchange for being party members and I drop hints that it's doing something strange to their bodies, supercharging their spells, accelerating their natural growth many times over... One PC even followed and overheard them saying, "I think we can reach a higher form of existence than is naturally possible for our race" while talking to each other. The player believes they can't be trusted... But still feeds them anyway. The two still kill people out in the wilderness, but the PC who knows does nothing since, "It's not my problem." They also tried bullying another party member and... Got humbled by being beaten, but that resentment did not do them any favors with having loyalty towards the party. Note these two are probably going to bail if things get particularly dire.

So essentially, they fed a man-eating super troll that is now killing people in the "name of my masters"(PCs), is leaving up statues in their likeness as "tributes" and the party is essentially doing the same thing with TWO man-eating monsters this time around that are explicitly getting unnaturally strong because of what they're doing. Also, unlike the super troll, these two explicitly know where the party lives and who they care about...

I told them they had freedom but if they went around being menaces to society, they probably won't be getting any fans that way. Or they DO get fans, but doubt they'd want to be around the types of people that would be cool with that.

I was honestly expecting them to just fight their way through or talk... But not try playing both sides in such detail. I did my best to roll with it, and they got pretty far up until the Lich part and slipping up on information and then, in their bid to cause in-fighting, told the spy (who had no indication of being disloyal to its creator) vital information of that nature.

I think the troll thing was enough of a wake up call that their actions have consequences that are affecting them but then they started doing it again. Side note, if they hadn't chosen to go into the sealed off area, they were actually going to meet people looking for the "masters" of said troll who "just wanted to talk to them" about their "servant" killing the people they loved.

Yeah, I think they're just used to running away... They can't really go into any cities in that kingdom now except for the parts the insect cult takes over (which isn't that much as far as they're aware.) In this case, they can't exactly do that since there's no convenient flames nearby to jump out of (the monsters in the the place they're in have Darkvision and any normal survivors down there aren't starting fires because they don't want to attract the bands of monsters that are looking out for them.)

I actually talked to them about it before (both IC and OOC) and pointed out, "You NEED to push your limits to gain the XP needed to level up. If you guys don't want to fight so much, we can focus on a politics heavy one instead that's focused on roleplaying and combat is scarce," but they turned that down in favor of the current style of the campaign.

ON NPC PARTY MEMBER HINTS...

As for the semi-loyal NPC party members... Yeah, they might pick up on that and give the party a hint. That said, the PCs have actually browbeaten them into submission with threats before when they get uppity with them so... That might agitate the situation though I'll likely still up putting it in so the PCs can potentially run away.

[Quertus]

Telling the spy (talking floating skull) all that information was a deliberate attempt to weaken its trust in its master's (Lich) intelligence...

Um... OK, pointing out that their boss is bone-headed (hah!) could work, but "look how we're playing your boss"? That isn't paired with some "we obviously did this for your benefit (to rescue your hostage children / soul / whatever)"? In what universe does that do anything positive? Your players have failed, badly. Is it reasonable for the characters to have failed that badly?


I actually talked to them about it before (both IC and OOC) and pointed out, "You NEED to push your limits to gain the XP needed to level up. If you guys don't want to fight so much, we can focus on a politics heavy one instead that's focused on roleplaying and combat is scarce," but they turned that down in favor of the current style of the campaign.

In all fairness, I'd say you owe them several to a dozen levels, as they obviously are "pushing their limits" (and pushing way past them), just in terms of "doing intelligent things" (fail, fail, fail!) rather than, you know, the way you meant that. Your players obviously aren't skilled enough to handle "making plans" or "succeeding", and clearly need to hire the services of a 5-year-old advisor before returning to "Being an Evil Overlord 101", or perhaps "Remedial Evil Overlord Studies".

Your players clearly cannot handle the game that they are in. I recommend giving them a game that they can handle, one suited to their skill level. Which may well be approximately zero, or even a negative number, as it sounds like, if you gave them a game where all they had to do was do nothing and they'd win, they would still manage to cause themselves problems, and possibly lose. :smalleek:

So, what can you do to make the game easier for them? Well...



I mentioned time and again that it was putting on weight

Compare that to



The troll has put on several hundred pounds of muscle

let alone



The troll has put on several hundred pounds of muscle, is taller and has stone-spikes covering its body now

Once it was too late, you got more descriptive. Even your comment of



I go out of my way to mention it's looking healthier, putting on muscle, etc.

isn't clear, because



sickly-looking troll

The troll even mentioned/implied it didn't get to eat much/travel far because of its physical state but was doing better now

mean that "putting on weight" and "putting on muscle" might just mean "looking less sickly" rather than "looking buffed".

So, always assume the "final state", and describe events as "heading towards this final state" (ie, "the once-sickly Troll is looking much buffer and much more muscular than a regular Troll; at this rate, it will be the Bodybuilder of Trolls within a week, and there's no sign of its growth stopping there."). Treat your descriptive text like every time the party does something dumb, someone is going to come in and steal 5 years from your lifespan or something - be that serious about making sure your descriptions allow the players (even your players) to act intelligently the very first time you mention anything. Prompt them with as much additional information as they need: "There is no reason for a normal troll to grow like this from normal food", "Clearly, something unusual is going on", etc.

That's the best advice I can give for how to deal with utterly clueless players.

Also... as your players seem Resistant to Learning, I recommend going over the "Cause and Effect" list for this campaign, and explicitly ask them, "if they could go back in time and do 1 thing differently, what would it be, and why?'. Or, on different days, for each complete blunder, explain the blunder, and ask them what a better answer would have been.Do what you can to encourage that learning they seem to fail to do on their own.

I also recommend, the moment anyone does anything strange, you stop, and ask them why they are doing that. Immediately clear up any misunderstandings - and give them bonus XP (or bonus Fate Points, or an extra cookie or something) any time they give an good answer that is just something you'd never considered.

[AntiAuthority]

Um... OK, pointing out that their boss is bone-headed (hah!) could work, but "look how we're playing your boss"? That isn't paired with some "we obviously did this for your benefit (to rescue your hostage children / soul / whatever)"? In what universe does that do anything positive? Your players have failed, badly. Is it reasonable for the characters to have failed that badly?



In all fairness, I'd say you owe them several to a dozen levels, as they obviously are "pushing their limits" (and pushing way past them), just in terms of "doing intelligent things" (fail, fail, fail!) rather than, you know, the way you meant that. Your players obviously aren't skilled enough to handle "making plans" or "succeeding", and clearly need to hire the services of a 5-year-old advisor before returning to "Being an Evil Overlord 101", or perhaps "Remedial Evil Overlord Studies".

Your players clearly cannot handle the game that they are in. I recommend giving them a game that they can handle, one suited to their skill level. Which may well be approximately zero, or even a negative number, as it sounds like, if you gave them a game where all they had to do was do nothing and they'd win, they would still manage to cause themselves problems, and possibly lose. :smalleek:

So, what can you do to make the game easier for them? Well...




Compare that to




let alone




Once it was too late, you got more descriptive. Even your comment of




isn't clear, because





mean that "putting on weight" and "putting on muscle" might just mean "looking less sickly" rather than "looking buffed".

So, always assume the "final state", and describe events as "heading towards this final state" (ie, "the once-sickly Troll is looking much buffer and much more muscular than a regular Troll; at this rate, it will be the Bodybuilder of Trolls within a week, and there's no sign of its growth stopping there."). Treat your descriptive text like every time the party does something dumb, someone is going to come in and steal 5 years from your lifespan or something - be that serious about making sure your descriptions allow the players (even your players) to act intelligently the very first time you mention anything. Prompt them with as much additional information as they need: "There is no reason for a normal troll to grow like this from normal food", "Clearly, something unusual is going on", etc.

That's the best advice I can give for how to deal with utterly clueless players.

Also... as your players seem Resistant to Learning, I recommend going over the "Cause and Effect" list for this campaign, and explicitly ask them, "if they could go back in time and do 1 thing differently, what would it be, and why?'. Or, on different days, for each complete blunder, explain the blunder, and ask them what a better answer would have been.Do what you can to encourage that learning they seem to fail to do on their own.

I also recommend, the moment anyone does anything strange, you stop, and ask them why they are doing that. Immediately clear up any misunderstandings - and give them bonus XP (or bonus Fate Points, or an extra cookie or something) any time they give an good answer that is just something you'd never considered.

Thanks, I didn't know I needed that laugh lol.

But with the current shapeshifting man-eaters they're feeding, I've been trying to be more blatant with what's happening... Including them growing extra tails (and commenting on it), getting taller and having random sparks of energy appear over their bodies in front of the characters and confirming that NOT normal for their race. They're still part of the party. I also forgot to mention that the Kumiho essentially have dibs on whatever the party kills... Including powerful boss monsters/minions the party kills... The party fully understands they're getting stronger by doing this but still are going through with it.

The person who is supplying the blood also told them, "Sure... Hey, your scary mother and little sister from earlier are probably following us ever since we abducted you... They can join us too and take my blood as well! Just as long as she's not our enemy, it's all good. Just tell her our precious blood is a peace offering. I'll give her as much as she wants."

Meaning in addition to the two younger members of their species going through these changes, they're fully willing to give this to a third member... Which isn't as bad. But giving it to the fourth member, their much more powerful mother who is already at the apex of their species' natural power might... Not be the best idea for a variety of reasons (the daughters more or less spelled out, while one PC was eavesdropping, what they believed would happen if they got to their mother's level and kept taking it ("ascending to a higher form of existence")), but I feel I gave them them enough obvious hints that, "If you don't trust the two weaker ones getting it, why are you giving the stronger, smarter, tougher, arguably crueler and definitely more magically potent one your god blood as well?"

You bring up a good point... I think I should ask them about the Cause And Effect aspect and what they'd do differently if they had the chance. For the last session, I know my player regrets slipping up with the Lich on that oddly specific information that he shouldn't have if he were truly on the Lich's side and that he should have phrased it differently.

Same with asking, "Why?" more often when they're doing things... And reward it somehow if it's clever.

Speaking of Evil Overlord 101, I'm going to link the Evil Overlord List in the hopes that can help them be more focused with what they're trying.

[MonochromeTiger]

Thanks, I didn't know I needed that laugh lol.

But with the current shapeshifting man-eaters they're feeding, I've been trying to be more blatant with what's happening... Including them growing extra tails (and commenting on it), getting taller and having random sparks of energy appear over their bodies in front of the characters and confirming that NOT normal for their race. They're still part of the party. I also forgot to mention that the Kumiho essentially have dibs on whatever the party kills... Including powerful boss monsters/minions the party kills... The party fully understands they're getting stronger by doing this but still are going through with it.

The person who is supplying the blood also told them, "Sure... Hey, your scary mother and little sister from earlier are probably following us ever since we abducted you... They can join us too and take my blood as well! Just as long as she's not our enemy, it's all good. Just tell her our precious blood is a peace offering. I'll give her as much as she wants."

Meaning in addition to the two younger members of their species going through these changes, they're fully willing to give this to a third member... Which isn't as bad. But giving it to the fourth member, their much more powerful mother who is already at the apex of their species' natural power might... Not be the best idea for a variety of reasons (the daughters more or less spelled out, while one PC was eavesdropping, what they believed would happen if they got to their mother's level and kept taking it ("ascending to a higher form of existence")), but I feel I gave them them enough obvious hints that, "If you don't trust the two weaker ones getting it, why are you giving the stronger, smarter, tougher, arguably crueler and definitely more magically potent one your god blood as well?"

You bring up a good point... I think I should ask them about the Cause And Effect aspect and what they'd do differently if they had the chance. For the last session, I know my player regrets slipping up with the Lich on that oddly specific information that he shouldn't have if he were truly on the Lich's side and that he should have phrased it differently.

Same with asking, "Why?" more often when they're doing things... And reward it somehow if it's clever.

Speaking of Evil Overlord 101, I'm going to link the Evil Overlord List in the hopes that can help them be more focused with what they're trying.

Fully agreeing with everything from Quertus, no offense to your group but from the sounds of it they're completely lacking any sense of self preservation failing to learn the very simple lesson of "keep making things you know are dangerous more powerful and eventually they realize they can stop asking and start taking by force."

Three things I took away from your story.

First, your players' threat recognition is possibly even worse than their sense of self preservation. It's sounding like they continuously avoid fighting the things you say they can handle and then immediately believe the conflict is resolved for good until it affects them personally. With the Kumihos it sounds like they're convinced as long as they can still fend off the two daughters they have control of the situation and even have the potential to win over the entire family by feeding them divine blood; anyone with basic sense will instead realize they're not winning anyone over while holding hostages and the fact those same hostages tried to throw their weight around proves the attempted bribery isn't working it's just moving them from "kill at earliest convenience" to "keep alive and drain slowly for free power."

Second, while you may have established there are consequences I'm not certain they understand those consequences are for them. The Troll situation blew up, but it blew up in a way where a city that already hated them was the main victim and all it really did to them was make it even more set in stone that they aren't welcome there. The Kumihos haven't blown up yet but the big red flag they got was apparently taken as "eh we can handle them and we've got time to win them over." Guessing the Insect Goddess deal hasn't blown up on them yet but as far as that goes they've basically just got someone they were already making deals with who then proved willing to take them in when they got barred for life from the cities that, again, apparently already hated them.

Third, they seem really overconfident in their ability to influence people and win them over. They overshot on bluffing the superstitious people and made themselves even bigger public enemies instead of cowing them and getting to act freely. They screwed up by not actually engaging with the Troll enough to set clear limits and establish "no, you don't go out and just kill people" and by the sounds of it the one that was behind all that decision making may still think they did alright because the Troll is pretty much going around worshiping them instead of actively seeking retribution for their "betrayal." They're treating the Kumihos like people they can just reason with and bribe into genuine loyalty by being their tickets to power, and completely failing to notice "ticket to power" and "ally" aren't actually the same thing. Then with the two armies they apparently bumbled their way through social intrigue with conflicting goals without actually bothering to communicate with each other with one just digging them deeper into trouble when either side learns they're from outside the "prison" and the other thinking getting someone whose fought for years to forsake any and all loyalty to their side is as simple as going "hey, your boss is kind of dumb, here's the exit you've failed to notice this whole time and by the way we intentionally never told you this detail that could end the conflict bloodlessly until we were ready to leave, bye."

There's not grasping the material then there's not grasping cause and effect. This doesn't even go as far as "is it unfair if I act on this", it's so far below that it falls squarely in the range of "should I require a skill check for them to tie their shoes to keep the challenge more in their range."

You make it sound like the way you expected them to run things is see a monster, fight the monster, kill the monster, move on. They however seem to be risk averse when they need to be aggressive and trusting when they should be risk averse and it's leading to an endless string of "how did you not see this coming" moments that each make it increasingly clear they really don't get that the rest of the setting isn't as quick to forget about past grievances and ambitions as they are.

To be fair to them in some campaigns there's room for people to befriend all the "bad guys" of the setting. Evil isn't incapable of making allies or feeling positive emotions like friendship or love as the fact the Kumiho mother cares about her kits shows is the case for your campaign. That takes actual effort, diplomatic skill, and caution however which they seem to lack all of. If anything it sounds like you have one player who's as trusting and willing to forgive as they assume everyone else is and another who's heard of this cool thing called subterfuge once or twice but can't quite pin down how it works; with their powers combined you have a small team that thinks they're way more persuasive than they are and lack any voice of cynicism needed to point out the mistake or explain that "it's not our problem" can also mean "but it will be very soon if we don't stomp it out now before it gets bigger."

[King of Nowhere]

As for their current predicament, it doesn't seem nowhere near as bad as you make it.

I mean, the party can escape. they have teleportation. you say that's unlikely to work in this case, but i'm not exactly clear why. seems to me allowing some excuse for the teleportation to work would be trivial for a dm wanting to give the party a way out.

the other things you mentioned are more worrying. granted, it's only part of the picture. maybe the campaign is very long and there were only those couple accidents. but it seems your players are bumbling morons who insist on making the worst possible decisions every time. and if that's the case, you should talk to them (with a bit more diplomacy than calling them bumbling morons) and possibly lower the difficulty level of the intrigue

[noob]

Is it a really bad decision to feed a troll and get a strong ally?
I mean this troll is not helpful for integrating the regular society but it probably could be an helpful bruiser.
I do think that your tendency to make monsters grow in power easily risks turning the game into murderhobo pokemon if the players figure out how your world works, you should not make monsters get strong for cheap, it is a gm mistake not a player one and eventually it will bite you specifically while players will benefit from it should they ever understand that mechanic that you seemingly applied to a troll and 2 other creatures. It is a recurrent mechanic only in your world for a specific reason: it is easily exploitable so gms avoids shoving in stuff using that kind of mechanic in their worlds.
There is a significant risk that later on one of your players will write a "GM world consequences, Would this be unfair as a player" thread.

[Spo]

Your game has a lot of nuance that if the characters (said character not players) are paying attention they would realize these things you mentioned. In your mind, it is clear as day, but some of the subtleties of the situation are are lost on the players because they are detached to some degree from the world their characters live in. You see this a lot when trying to run murder mystery/puzzle sessions.

One remedy is to strive to make things crystal clear and maybe not shoot for Game of Thrones intrigue but more The Witcher types of stories. Your players have real lives (school/work/family) that takes up a lot of their mental/emotion energies. Let your game be a relaxing escape for them that may include spoon feedng and the occasional railroading.

[icefractal]

Part of this is bad decisions on the players' part, but part of it is also the information gap.

You mentioned that they're too cautious when they need to just go for it - but you're running a sandbox, so they can't just assume that a given fight is winnable. How much information are you giving them?
A) Description - unless your setting is way more consistent than most D&D settings, this tells one very little about the threat a creature poses. If you didn't already know it, would you seriously guess that a squid-headed dude (Mind Flayer) is a much scarier threat than an elephant-sized, five-headed dragon thing (Hydra, Five-Headed)?
B) IC Lore - more helpful, but often it's from the perspective of an average person, which means nearly everything is described as "very dangerous". It can be hard to "compensate" for the different viewpoint.
C) Selected Stat Bits - like how Knowledge checks are often run. Can be very informative, or not, it depends on what they happened to ask.
D) Direct Assessment - as in, "this would be an easy/tough/nigh-impossible fight for you". Pretty rare, IME. If you are telling them this and they're still making nonsensical choices, then IDK ... check if they're actually listening?


Also, it strikes me that a lot of their behavior follows the pattern of "trying to split the difference", mostly to their own detriment. Which makes me wonder if they've seriously misunderstood your advice:
I told them they had freedom but if they went around being menaces to society, they probably won't be getting any fans that way.

In a way, they're trying to follow that. They oppose the town (reasonable, sounds like the people there hate them for basically existing?), but they aren't willing to commit to being enemies of it either. They went diplomacy rather than fight the troll. But then they still wanted to potentially ally with the town, so they stop the troll from destroying it ... in a way that didn't work well at all. Then they do the same thing with the foxes - neither fully opposing them or fully allying with them. I wouldn't say this is the case for the armies exactly - playing both sides could have worked if they didn't make the mistakes they did - but there did seems to be some "let's keep every possible option open" behavior there as well.

Related to that, you seem to be running on the basis of "monsters aren't misunderstood, they are legitimately monstrous, and the fact that they can talk doesn't mean it's a good idea to ally with them" - but do the players know that? Because sure, the human populace might consider the troll or the foxes to be obviously bad news ... but that populace also considers the PCs to be obviously bad news, so can we really trust their opinions?


That said, there's also a lot of questionable logic on the players' part going on. Don't mistake this to say their actions all make sense. But I think that the information gap is a contributing factor.

[AntiAuthority]

Fully agreeing with everything from Quertus, no offense to your group but from the sounds of it they're completely lacking any sense of self preservation failing to learn the very simple lesson of "keep making things you know are dangerous more powerful and eventually they realize they can stop asking and start taking by force."

Three things I took away from your story.

First, your players' threat recognition is possibly even worse than their sense of self preservation. It's sounding like they continuously avoid fighting the things you say they can handle and then immediately believe the conflict is resolved for good until it affects them personally. With the Kumihos it sounds like they're convinced as long as they can still fend off the two daughters they have control of the situation and even have the potential to win over the entire family by feeding them divine blood; anyone with basic sense will instead realize they're not winning anyone over while holding hostages and the fact those same hostages tried to throw their weight around proves the attempted bribery isn't working it's just moving them from "kill at earliest convenience" to "keep alive and drain slowly for free power."

Second, while you may have established there are consequences I'm not certain they understand those consequences are for them. The Troll situation blew up, but it blew up in a way where a city that already hated them was the main victim and all it really did to them was make it even more set in stone that they aren't welcome there. The Kumihos haven't blown up yet but the big red flag they got was apparently taken as "eh we can handle them and we've got time to win them over." Guessing the Insect Goddess deal hasn't blown up on them yet but as far as that goes they've basically just got someone they were already making deals with who then proved willing to take them in when they got barred for life from the cities that, again, apparently already hated them.

Third, they seem really overconfident in their ability to influence people and win them over. They overshot on bluffing the superstitious people and made themselves even bigger public enemies instead of cowing them and getting to act freely. They screwed up by not actually engaging with the Troll enough to set clear limits and establish "no, you don't go out and just kill people" and by the sounds of it the one that was behind all that decision making may still think they did alright because the Troll is pretty much going around worshiping them instead of actively seeking retribution for their "betrayal." They're treating the Kumihos like people they can just reason with and bribe into genuine loyalty by being their tickets to power, and completely failing to notice "ticket to power" and "ally" aren't actually the same thing. Then with the two armies they apparently bumbled their way through social intrigue with conflicting goals without actually bothering to communicate with each other with one just digging them deeper into trouble when either side learns they're from outside the "prison" and the other thinking getting someone whose fought for years to forsake any and all loyalty to their side is as simple as going "hey, your boss is kind of dumb, here's the exit you've failed to notice this whole time and by the way we intentionally never told you this detail that could end the conflict bloodlessly until we were ready to leave, bye."

There's not grasping the material then there's not grasping cause and effect. This doesn't even go as far as "is it unfair if I act on this", it's so far below that it falls squarely in the range of "should I require a skill check for them to tie their shoes to keep the challenge more in their range."

You make it sound like the way you expected them to run things is see a monster, fight the monster, kill the monster, move on. They however seem to be risk averse when they need to be aggressive and trusting when they should be risk averse and it's leading to an endless string of "how did you not see this coming" moments that each make it increasingly clear they really don't get that the rest of the setting isn't as quick to forget about past grievances and ambitions as they are.

To be fair to them in some campaigns there's room for people to befriend all the "bad guys" of the setting. Evil isn't incapable of making allies or feeling positive emotions like friendship or love as the fact the Kumiho mother cares about her kits shows is the case for your campaign. That takes actual effort, diplomatic skill, and caution however which they seem to lack all of. If anything it sounds like you have one player who's as trusting and willing to forgive as they assume everyone else is and another who's heard of this cool thing called subterfuge once or twice but can't quite pin down how it works; with their powers combined you have a small team that thinks they're way more persuasive than they are and lack any voice of cynicism needed to point out the mistake or explain that "it's not our problem" can also mean "but it will be very soon if we don't stomp it out now before it gets bigger."

Yeah... The more I write this out, the more I'm starting to feel like I'm not being unfair an GM to them so much as they're continually making very bad decisions based on short-term rewards.

Initially the player that kept sparing the troll tried to argue with me that the troll thing was unfair since the adventurers instantly believed the man-eating monster's words about it being their servant... After they scared the place earlier by conjuring an illusion of a dragon literally days before and then went on to confirm, "Yeah, we fed it people, but you should trust us when we say we're not associated with this thing!"

Afterwards they said, "Yeah, ok, we really messed that up... In hindsight, it shouldn't have gotten that far. It was cool though." and understand the Troll is basically trying to get the party killed by adventurers by making it seem like they're the masterminds for all the carnage it's causing. The party is now its scapegoat and they fully understand why that's probably not a good thing... Or so I thought but then they started doing the stuff with the kumiho so... Yeah.

I'm not sure what else to do about the Kumiho situation other than just let what I've been hinting at will happen. The player outright admitted, "I don't trust these two to be willing to die for me... Especially with the sinister way they speak to each other when they think nobody's around," but keeps supplying them.

The one that wanted the two to fight just went along with them, "Let's splinter up the armies into smaller factions!" idea since it was going to have the same "end result." But then the one decided to over talk and... That happened with the Lich picking up on something not adding up.

I've been trying to get them to do things about the various evils they encounter but... They instead end up cutting deals with these beings and these shortcuts aren't really in their best interest. At one point I even told them, "I'm TRYING to give you guys powerful magic items but you keep avoiding conflicts with the people that can give them to you (fighting the insect goddess, defeating the kumiho matriarch, etc.) and... The things you're partnering up with have no reason to part with them willingly." The current situation was an attempt I had at, if they chose the peaceful route (which they keep trying to do) they could get these items without having to fight, so that they could get goodies... Both sides were pretty forthcoming about, "If you help me either win this war OR help me escape, I'll give you these (powerful) magic things that I can't really use at the moment..." I was trying to accommodate for another, "Let's cut a deal" situation and left the door wide open for them if they wanted to go that route (since they keep making deals)... Or instead resort to violence and just taking both (my preferred option but they don't seem to be into that style)... Instead of cutting deals with these particular two that don't even want to fight, they resort to amplifying tensions and this is how they're in their current situation. They keep doing the opposite of what I expect them to.

... I just realized how weird it is they're willing to partner up with man-eating monsters that constantly push their boundaries and evil cults that tried to kill them but try to kill the beings that are trying to be civil towards them.

I actually realize this "playing both sides" thing has happened earlier in the campaign and it... Backfired too, just not to the same extent as the current situation as it was much smaller in scale.

There was one example of their actions basically barring them from a place they actually liked being... A small ranch that was on the border of the insect goddess' territory and the kingdom's (the insect goddess' domain is at the very edge of the kingdom's and this ranch is in between both.) The rancher there tells the PCs about the insect goddess, her weird cult and the giant insects that have been appearing in the area since. The PCs offer to take care of them...

The PCs then find a nigh infinitely regenerating kid (the same one that was being transported to the city for her next of kin) that was essentially being kidnapped to be taken to the king for being an "evil spirit" and the kidnappers admit they'd be paid handsomely for finding one such being... And argued, "Ok, I KNOW this looks bad but she keeps regenerating any damage we do to her AND she's not really a person like us, so it's fine." The party then feeds these same kidnappers to the above super troll.

The kid was even in that situation to begin with since she grew up in one of the areas occupied by the insect goddess and her parents went missing after arguing with the cult members... Her grandparents then tried to sneak her out of the area and got killed by said kidnappers who discovered she was regenerating damage and wouldn't die.

They eventually end up sending this kid back to the ranch since it was a safe haven... The kid obviously hates the insect goddess and her cult and believes the PCs will kill her, free her hometown from their control and find out what happened to her parents.

The party meets one of the insect goddess' envoys (an adult black dragon who is actually controlled by a parasitic insect... The party was relatively equal to it in terms of power at this point, even if weaker individually, together they would have been able to bring it down) who offered them a deal of, "Leave my area and we won't have a problem." The player that would later go on to spare the troll asked, "How about we team up instead? You help us, we help you?" and the deal is taken. The party hides this from the family that runs the ranch and the kid though...

Through this deal, they discover the regenerating kid's parents were still alive... And take her to go meet them but they're acting... Off. Strangely calm and it took the kid commenting they were acting funny before the party caught on. One player gets the bright idea to try something and the insect goddess (who realized the ruse was up) and two parasitic insects (the same type as the ones in the dragon) emerge from their bodies. The two parents immediately begin having a mental breakdown and reveal they were tortured before being implanted with the parasites.

Party:... Cool, we got your parents back. You guys are living on this ranch now.

Now the traumatized parents and the kid are on the ranch as well... Fine.

Anyway, the stuff with the troll then happens and the party encounters some of the insect goddess' cultists in the city trying to spread her religion... They end up taking them outside of the city with them after sneaking out. They then have the idea of sending them back to the ranch (since it's a safe haven and closer than the rest of the insect goddess' territory) while they go ahead and try to warn the rest of the city about the approaching super troll.

One returns to the ranch to get pelted at with rocks by the kid who is furious that they essentially joined forces with the cult that kidnapped, tortured and traumatized her parents, indirectly got her grandparents killed and then lied to her about their partnership of "taking care of it."

The ranch owner in particular was also annoyed since, "You brought these lunatics to my HOUSE! Is this what you call "taking care of the problem?!""

Players: Ok, we didn't think this through too well.

PC: It's not all black and white, we needed to make deals.

The party can physically go to the rancher, but it's fairly clear they're not welcome there anymore as the people only tolerate them since... The PCs could easily kill everyone there (except for the kid they're protecting) and the "deal" they made with the goddess is the only thing keeping a horse-sized spider (which there are now a LOT more of thanks to the party) from wandering onto the property and eating everyone. The party seems aware that the ranch owner WOULD kill them if he had enough strength to (or at least has a lot of anger towards them), but has to go along with it for now. Unlike the rancher, the two armies in this case actually can follow up on their hatred.

They kind of stopped going to that ranch after that.


As for their current predicament, it doesn't seem nowhere near as bad as you make it.

I mean, the party can escape. they have teleportation. you say that's unlikely to work in this case, but i'm not exactly clear why. seems to me allowing some excuse for the teleportation to work would be trivial for a dm wanting to give the party a way out.

the other things you mentioned are more worrying. granted, it's only part of the picture. maybe the campaign is very long and there were only those couple accidents. but it seems your players are bumbling morons who insist on making the worst possible decisions every time. and if that's the case, you should talk to them (with a bit more diplomacy than calling them bumbling morons) and possibly lower the difficulty level of the intrigue

This is all within a couple sessions of each other. I want to say the Kumiho were introduced like... 2-3 sessions after the troll thing happened. It might have even been the very next session, I remember it was VERY soon after.

Well, I want them to but it's mostly the environment and them specifying where they were going.

Basically, the system is Godbound and one of them has access to the Firewalker ability... It lets them sense fire within a mile and teleport to said fire (along with any willing companions), though they can't go farther than 1MPH in a single hour using this method. This by itself is fine, but...

The place they're in now is an underground city + surrounding forest that was cut off from the rest of the world. There's glowing moss overhead giving access to light... But yes, the inside buildings might have had lanterns and such to see indoors, which was fine. Because of the monsters roaming around now, most people that are survivors (the players actually encountered some out in the surrounding forest) aren't trying to broadcast their presence to the monsters roaming around. Also understandable as...

Both sides have dark vision, so don't really need lanterns to see indoors. However, they have encountered two buildings that has actually had lights on in them are 1) the building where the Lich meets them in and 2) the base of the opposing enemy's side... Which they blew up earlier by turning one of their members into a human bomb. I heavily implied most of the buildings were dark since the characters could see "glowing eyes watching them from the darkness of the surrounding buildings" but they might not have caught onto the fact that it's rare for there to be actual lights/lanterns down there besides the two leaders having access to it. They also specify, "Yeah, we're going more than a mile away from where we last saw them." This by itself is worrying but also fine... Except...

They went out of their way to specify that they'd set up camp right in the middle of both armies' territories. Their reasoning was, "We'll just say we're on their side since we're clearly not setting up base in the other side's territory." While I suppose this makes sense, it also means that if both sides ended up going into an all out combat (like the party was trying to incite), the party would be smack dab in the middle of it of giant monster armies trying to murder each other... But in this case, it also means both sides have a much easier time surrounding their base since they've already effectively surrounded themselves thinking it would give them a tactical advantage of some kind.


Is it a really bad decision to feed a troll and get a strong ally?
I mean this troll is not helpful for integrating the regular society but it probably could be an helpful bruiser.
I do think that your tendency to make monsters grow in power easily risks turning the game into murderhobo pokemon if the players figure out how your world works, you should not make monsters get strong for cheap, it is a gm mistake not a player one and eventually it will bite you specifically while players will benefit from it should they ever understand that mechanic that you seemingly applied to a troll and 2 other creatures. It is a recurrent mechanic only in your world for a specific reason: it is easily exploitable so gms avoids shoving in stuff using that kind of mechanic in their worlds.
There is a significant risk that later on one of your players will write a "GM world consequences, Would this be unfair as a player" thread.

I feel like you may have a skewed sense of how I GM in that I'm actively trying to screw them over at every turn when I'm more just trying to get them to think ahead more about their actions and why letting obviously malevolent creatures (that have tried to murder them) wander around, possibly while accumulating strength, probably isn't the best idea for a variety of reasons. Like how the kingdom isn't too keen on people like the PCs doing the same thing.

I would like to point out the troll was ignoring them when it was attacking the city... Up until the party started attacking it. Even before then, the party understood, "This thing is not our friend" yet kept protecting it for some reason. Prior to that, various characters commented on how it just "showed up" one day and already seemed to be injured from something, with its regeneration acting wonky like it was hurt from some previous battle. It was also hinting that it was related to a powerful troll figure in the past when the party spoke to it. But at no point did the troll refer to them as anything other than people that bring it food.

As for the kumiho, I was pulling from various Asian myths about demon foxes growing in power as they acquired more tails and the kumiho themselves stated to the party they get stronger from feeding on the life force of their victims. Gods have a lot more life force than normal humans, so it seemed logical that being fed such things would result in an upgrade for them.

As for the monsters evolving... It's not a super common thing, just these three that have done it out of the dozens/hundreds of enemies they've faced so far. Even then the kumiho confirm they can't get stronger unless the party chooses to keep engaging with them by feeding them this way. There's also the plot point there's enough of them for them to be hunted down, so the PCs aren't the only people with this power...

I've also used this in their favor several times. When one player realized their (actually loyal) human NPC followers were falling behind, I worked in explanations for those characters to become supernatural entities themselves to keep up with the party in terms of damage and durability. One became a sentient golem-type creature (same dude that was getting bullied by the kumiho over being turned into a "freak") while another is a spirit inhabiting a suit of armor and can phase through walls. However, they're currently outnumbered by the shady NPC party members traveling as well.


Your game has a lot of nuance that if the characters (said character not players) are paying attention they would realize these things you mentioned. In your mind, it is clear as day, but some of the subtleties of the situation are are lost on the players because they are detached to some degree from the world their characters live in. You see this a lot when trying to run murder mystery/puzzle sessions.

One remedy is to strive to make things crystal clear and maybe not shoot for Game of Thrones intrigue but more The Witcher types of stories. Your players have real lives (school/work/family) that takes up a lot of their mental/emotion energies. Let your game be a relaxing escape for them that may include spoon feedng and the occasional railroading.

I've asked about this... But they keep saying the current thing is fine and they're fine. I even offered to accommodate the style for them but they seem to be enjoying the current way things are going.


Part of this is bad decisions on the players' part, but part of it is also the information gap.

You mentioned that they're too cautious when they need to just go for it - but you're running a sandbox, so they can't just assume that a given fight is winnable. How much information are you giving them?
A) Description - unless your setting is way more consistent than most D&D settings, this tells one very little about the threat a creature poses. If you didn't already know it, would you seriously guess that a squid-headed dude (Mind Flayer) is a much scarier threat than an elephant-sized, five-headed dragon thing (Hydra, Five-Headed)?
B) IC Lore - more helpful, but often it's from the perspective of an average person, which means nearly everything is described as "very dangerous". It can be hard to "compensate" for the different viewpoint.
C) Selected Stat Bits - like how Knowledge checks are often run. Can be very informative, or not, it depends on what they happened to ask.
D) Direct Assessment - as in, "this would be an easy/tough/nigh-impossible fight for you". Pretty rare, IME. If you are telling them this and they're still making nonsensical choices, then IDK ... check if they're actually listening?


Also, it strikes me that a lot of their behavior follows the pattern of "trying to split the difference", mostly to their own detriment. Which makes me wonder if they've seriously misunderstood your advice:

In a way, they're trying to follow that. They oppose the town (reasonable, sounds like the people there hate them for basically existing?), but they aren't willing to commit to being enemies of it either. They went diplomacy rather than fight the troll. But then they still wanted to potentially ally with the town, so they stop the troll from destroying it ... in a way that didn't work well at all. Then they do the same thing with the foxes - neither fully opposing them or fully allying with them. I wouldn't say this is the case for the armies exactly - playing both sides could have worked if they didn't make the mistakes they did - but there did seems to be some "let's keep every possible option open" behavior there as well.

Related to that, you seem to be running on the basis of "monsters aren't misunderstood, they are legitimately monstrous, and the fact that they can talk doesn't mean it's a good idea to ally with them" - but do the players know that? Because sure, the human populace might consider the troll or the foxes to be obviously bad news ... but that populace also considers the PCs to be obviously bad news, so can we really trust their opinions?


That said, there's also a lot of questionable logic on the players' part going on. Don't mistake this to say their actions all make sense. But I think that the information gap is a contributing factor.

I've actually explained to them multiple times, "Unless you guys do something completely insane, you can probably beat whatever's attacking you in a straight up fight. I'm not trying to throw more at you than you can handle, but if you guys do something crazy like purposefully piss off people stronger than you, THAT might get you killed if you do something stupid, but the random encounters you guys will face should be fine."

Also I told them before we began, "Things may be dark or your actions may have unintentional consequences... Are you ok with that?"

As for monsters being misunderstood... Yes actually they have met some monsters that aren't overly malicious.

They met a hobgoblin and bugbear that were in charge of a group of smaller goblins. They took the hobgoblin and smaller goblins hostage and got to the bugbear that was essentially abusing the smaller goblins and even the hobgoblin seemed nervous around him. The bugbear was also heavily implying it just wanted to kill humans and would, "Give you exactly what you deserve." They eventually decide to kill the bugbear while leaving the hobgoblin in charge of the goblins while they're away... So far the hobgoblin hasn't done anything particularly bad to the party and seems more interested in running a tight ship now that the bugbear is gone. But at the same time, the hobgoblin wasn't going around beating the weaker goblins/captives for the fun of it (like the bugbear), luring men into dark rooms via seduction to munch on their tasty organs (kumiho... actually the one PC that took damage during their introduction fell for this honey trap and got bitten in the neck despite knowing something weird was going on with the strange women) or attacking random travelers with glee and implying it believed the world owed it a great feast for existing (troll.)

They've also began teaching the slower goblins how to speak and... So far they haven't done anything particularly bad to the party either, only following orders to the best of their abilities.

They have a dragon (disguised as a human) traveling with them... While the dragon IS controlled by the insect goddess, it is mentioned various times that her aloof personality is how she normally acts when not getting direct orders. She is violent, yes, but not to the point of barely containing her bloodlust at the thought of killing people every second of the day.

It's mostly the "om nom nom, give me your organs you lowly humans" type of monsters they should worry about... Which is also apparently the type they keep trying to give chances to while the civil ones inside the barrier haven't really acted like that (towards the party... the humans, orcs and whoever else caught in the middle of their war is fair game though.)

[noob]

I feel like you may have a skewed sense of how I GM in that I'm actively trying to screw them over at every turn when I'm more just trying to get them to think ahead more about their actions and why letting obviously malevolent things wander around near them probably isn't the best idea.


I was saying that the only guy you were screwing over with those rules for monster power growth was yourself.

The players playing both sides of a war and therefore getting attacked by both however is normal, it is however an opportunity for them to be truly challenged and you said that you would make them get stronger only in those cases. Therefore it was the right decision because it was the one the most likely to enable them to get stronger.
You made an incentive that encourages players to get as many foes allied against them as possible to get stronger, they might be playing the long game based on that mechanic you defined, it is a bit like how in Terraria, you kill the guide (which is your friend) to face stronger monsters to then become stronger.
Basically that rule for progression means that the most terrible decisions are the right ones, it also means that magical items are not as much a benefit for them because they make challenges easier therefore reducing their power growth, this might be why they were not very proactive in getting them: it is a short term boost but a long term weakening.
This might also be why they empower monsters, they do know the rule that their own power growth is based on pushing themselves to their limits and facing overwhelming challenges, therefore it is logical to help monsters to grow stronger so that eventually they turn against them and thus pose them a great threat further amplified by the fact that they would know them and would be in the perfect position to betray thus causing maximal challenge (and thus maximal power growth).

Basically convoluted rules encourages convoluted behaviors, they might very well be playing optimally while confusing you in believing they are playing subopitmally in order to then have their characters grow to be the strongest ever, it might be terribly complicated psychological warfare against you for making you put enough strong foes for them to be challenged while having you feel merciful toward them due to being convinced they are completely unaware of what they are doing therefore auto-balancing the encounter difficulty to always be high enough.

[Sapphire Guard]

Wow, that there is quite the situation.

You could just have the enemy armies send a message explaining all this and saying 'give us a reason not to kill you all.' and see what they come up with.

[MonochromeTiger]

... I just realized how weird it is they're willing to partner up with man-eating monsters that constantly push their boundaries and evil cults that tried to kill them but try to kill the beings that are trying to be civil towards them.


They may have a "type" for which NPCs they consider allying with. Might be just that they think these are strong so they want to be on the same side but then it makes no sense to try getting two armies to kill each other when there's a clear way of winning both sides' approval.

Consider doing a test, present them with a piece of toast but say it has committed multiple genocides. If they just have a thing for unambiguously monstrous creatures it will be their best friend forever and since it's a piece of toast for once it won't be an invitation for a powerful creature to kill them later.


I was saying that the only guy you were screwing over with those rules for monster power growth was yourself.

The players playing both sides of a war and therefore getting attacked by both however is normal, it is however an opportunity for them to be truly challenged and you said that you would make them get stronger only in those cases. Therefore it was the right decision because it was the one the most likely to enable them to get stronger.
You made an incentive that encourages players to get as many foes allied against them as possible to get stronger, they might be playing the long game based on that mechanic you defined, it is a bit like how in Terraria, you kill the guide (which is your friend) to face stronger monsters to then become stronger.
Basically that rule for progression means that the most terrible decisions are the right ones, it also means that magical items are not as much a benefit for them because they make challenges easier therefore reducing their power growth, this might be why they were not very proactive in getting them: it is a short term boost but a long term weakening.
This might also be why they empower monsters, they do know the rule that their own power growth is based on pushing themselves to their limits and facing overwhelming challenges, therefore it is logical to help monsters to grow stronger so that eventually they turn against them and thus pose them a great threat further amplified by the fact that they would know them and would be in the perfect position to betray thus causing maximal challenge (and thus maximal power growth).

Basically convoluted rules encourages convoluted behaviors, they might very well be playing optimally while confusing you in believing they are playing subopitmally in order to then have their characters grow to be the strongest ever, it might be terribly complicated psychological warfare against you for making you put enough strong foes for them to be challenged while having you feel merciful toward them due to being convinced they are completely unaware of what they are doing therefore auto-balancing the encounter difficulty to always be high enough.

Which would make sense... If it was a players vs DM situation. Or if the game wasn't being run in a way that already caters to their power fantasy. Or if they weren't already apparently asked if they wanted easier or harder content and said things were fine. Or if they had some strange sociopathic need to engage in psychological warfare against someone who is nominally their friend for the sake of getting stronger at an RPG which, again, they've already been asked if they had objections to the difficulty of.

Or it doesn't make sense and Occam's Razor says they're just really not that good at navigating social situations and very flighty about working with whoever looks strongest without an exit plan.

[MoiMagnus]

Yeah... The more I write this out, the more I'm starting to feel like I'm not being unfair an GM to them so much as they're continually making very bad decisions based on short-term rewards.


I have the feeling it's not even in-character short term rewards that they're seeking, but out-of-character ones.

They seem to enjoy the endless stream of chaos that you provide to them, as it give them plenty of opportunity to have unexpected ideas (often bad ones) with controlled consequences (they can always get away with it). They enjoy the situation as players even if their characters are probably miserable.

As for the combat avoidance, I'm not sure if they don't like combat at a mechanics (some players find combat boring), if they fear combat (they feel combat situations are the only situation where they might not get away with bad choice and actually die), or if they are deeply contrarian (and everytime they feel you want something to happen they instinctively do the opposite).

But I would guess that as long as you continue to provide to them this endless stream of chaos for their PCs to live through, they'll be happy with your campaign.

And they'll probably be fine with whatever consequences of their action you punish their PCs with as long as they can still get away with it and continue to enjoy this chaos.

[Quertus]

They may have a "type" for which NPCs they consider allying with. Might be just that they think these are strong so they want to be on the same side but then it makes no sense to try getting two armies to kill each other when there's a clear way of winning both sides' approval.

Consider doing a test, present them with a piece of toast but say it has committed multiple genocides. If they just have a thing for unambiguously monstrous creatures it will be their best friend forever and since it's a piece of toast for once it won't be an invitation for a powerful creature to kill them later.

Or their type could be “anything seemingly powerful enough to deliver those ‘consequences’ the GM warned about”. Which would make “combat avoidance” and “be nice to them” and “turn the ‘nice’ powerful evil creatures against one another (rather than risk the consequences of angering them)” make sense.

EDIT: to test that theory, you could try introducing powerful, benevolent beings who want to hand them magic items, and see how they respond.

[AntiAuthority]

I talked to the players again... They understand something big is going to happen when I told them they should fill out more character sheets if things go south. They also said they'd be ready to face whatever happened... Well, we'll see.

They apparently thought, "Well if the person who sealed them in here could trick them into fighting each other, we can do it too" but... That person wasn't being as extra as the party was.

That said... I've been thinking about it. I don't enjoy "Rock Falls, Everyone Dies" but I also don't think it'd be cool for them to just waltz out of there after this coupled with everything else they've been doing beforehand with a slap on the wrist being their only issue. That last part is how they got into this situation in the first place.

So after reading through and getting advice on how to avoid a "small party against an army of full on monsters" issue... As a middle ground, the party will receive hints they need to get out of dodge before everything goes down. This is the first time I've ever had to make something resembling a flowchart for a campaign... And I don't think this is unfair to the players since they're kind of doing everything in their power to make it happen... That said, still giving them chances to get away.


This is a tricky one - on the one hand, it seems likely that this is primarily an OOC blunder that the players (rather than characters) will be unhappy with the outcome of. On the other hand, since it occurred by accumulation there's not really a clean way to retcon.

One option is those "semi-loyal followers" you mentioned. If any of them were around for this conversation, and/or might have followed the undead, then they can bring the problem to the attention of the PCs in the form of GTFOing themselves.

"Hey, you know that scam we've got going? Yeah, I think they know - the undead went off looking purposeful after that conversation. So ... I'm not sticking around to find out how bad trouble we're in. Good luck, bye."

Since that would be happening simultaneous to the opposing generals arranging a meeting, it should give the PCs a decent head start if they flee ASAP.

This one will be the first hint, along with characters mentioning they can sense "something" is coming in the horizon.

Now, the PCs may follow the advice and leave... Or they choose to stick around.

If they choose to stay...

To avoid the characters essentially holing up in their camp (they built a castle and a bunker in a short period of time using their powers but... Locking themselves inside of it is essentially a horrible idea as I'll touch on later...), the floating skull will return and ask the party to come meet him because his boss has something super mega important (in his words) to tell them about the upcoming attack on the opposing army and that they're needed to prepare for a plan of attack.

The party may follow the skull... Or take this as a sign to leave... Or choose to remain in their base... (once again, a bad idea...)

If they follow the skull, they will be led out to a clearing full of undead (along with a really foul smell that is explained away as being from the undead gathering in such dense numbers) before the floating skull flies away to "do some recon." A skeleton that the lich is speaking through (the magical equivalent of a radio)... And the lich explains that the party has really changed everything before explaining how the floating skull told him some things... And that he had a peace talk with the opposing side's leader and ended up having an interesting conversation with the opposing side's leader and... This happens:

Lich: So, we realized we don't have to fight. Quite the opposite. We realize that we have a lot in common. So much in common that we decided to unite in our shared hatred of the idiots who thought they could make a fool out of one of us and burn the other one alive! You want to see us fight so much, now we're going to fight you. So this is what's going to happen, I'm going to walk out of here in about 2 minutes. He's going to walk out of here in about two minutes. This spot, this place right here is going to be your tomb. A lot of our forces are coming with us into the outside world but everything in there with you is focused on murdering you. I WAS going to reward you properly but you decided to try to be smart... You're not even close to smart, while I didn't get to be a lich by being a dummy... I don't know what you thought was going to happen, I don't even know if you were thinking at all... I'm assuming you thought you come just come in here, mess around and just run away as soon as things got hard, yeah... No no no, that's not the case here. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes... Oh, did you have any other words?

Before passing it over to the other leader, who speaks through the skeleton...

Enemy Leader: As it stands... You burned me alive, healed me then tried to turn me against my own troops... I was going to help you out but you instead decided to act like violent idiots for no reason, so... I don't have as much to say as the others except that you're going to be turned into seedbeds if the undead don't eat you. Keep in mind, the only reason why our forces were so lax on you before is because they were searching for an exit but now... Well, I left the more bloodthirsty ones to handle you.

Then the undead army is joined by various factions from the other side... Who were hiding within the trees themselves while the foul odor was actually the scent of several other invisible members of their ranks just lying in wait. The party is essentially surrounded by multiple tough monsters and AoE effects are their friends (and one PC is actually rather good at AoE.)

IF they choose to fight... Good luck, as new ones will be coming onto the field over the battle. The sheer volume is essentially a game ender unless they get really lucky with their rolls and the numerous enemies get incredibly unlucky with their rolls.


As for their current predicament, it doesn't seem nowhere near as bad as you make it.

I mean, the party can escape. they have teleportation. you say that's unlikely to work in this case, but i'm not exactly clear why. seems to me allowing some excuse for the teleportation to work would be trivial for a dm wanting to give the party a way out.

the other things you mentioned are more worrying. granted, it's only part of the picture. maybe the campaign is very long and there were only those couple accidents. but it seems your players are bumbling morons who insist on making the worst possible decisions every time. and if that's the case, you should talk to them (with a bit more diplomacy than calling them bumbling morons) and possibly lower the difficulty level of the intrigue

If they try to teleport... I might (still debating on it) allow it for one use since say... One member of the faction left a candle burning in excitement before leaving to the outside world. But that doesn't really help too much as they're now in an unfamiliar area and the various monsters are still on high alert. Tough enemies are everywhere and more will come in after the others notice the commotion of the party trying to fight their way through. It's essentially a marathon to survive as they attempt to make their way to the exit at this point... And they don't really know where they are, so that may actually be a huge detriment to them.

These series of fights will be difficult... I won't be pulling punches with the rolls, the enemies have a ton of hax or brute force, numbers and several tough enemies that would have been fought individually are instead backed up by their counterparts from the rival faction... And the party is going to have to earn their lives if they want to survive. This is doing one of those "insane situations can end in death" things I was talking about.

Now as to why staying in their camp/bunker/castle is a bad idea... A lot of the undead are capable of just walking through walls and attacking them... And them trapping themselves inside of a small space while that happens is going to turn the bunker into a tomb really fast after the onslaught of enemies keep coming in... Not to mention the more physical enemies are going to be trying to break open the exterior the entire time and may or may not end up throwing the entire bunker around (disorienting the party in the process.)

I have no idea what's going to happen to the NPCs, still working on that... It honestly depends on who they take with them or if they take anyone at all.

Now for the other consequences thing that actually affects the party besides everything in sight attempting to kill them...

If the party makes it back to the exit (while being hounded by the horde) well... They earned it. IF they just go back by skipping all of the above by simply by... Leaving when the floating skull is gone, pretty much the same thing as the following happens. The insect goddess isn't exactly going to be too happy about these people basically releasing these beings into her territory.

The original deal was...

PCs: Help us and we help you.
Insect Goddess: Cool, a bunch of other beings like us have been giving me a headache and pushing into my territory... In exchange, my guys won't attack you.
PCs: We can help you with that!
Insect Goddess: Ok, now I can focus on other things to grow my cult...

Now... The party has killed/defeated exactly 0 of these beings that were giving her a headache, not upholding their end of the deal. The one time they actually encountered one that was attacking from an distance they... Ran away back to her territory instead.

She's allowed them to start a miniature cult under her territory as well... Which was a concession she was willing to make to get the other enemy gods off her back.

They've even argued, "If we find any powerful magical items (like the ones the Lich and other enemy leader TRIED to give them for basically free), we'll split them up evenly..." Despite them not pulling as much weight, they feel entitled enough to make that demand of her.

Her enemies are still the same number as when she teamed up with the party, she's losing potential worshippers to them wanting to start a cult in her territory and they feel entitled to things when SHE is providing them with shelter and aid for basically free. Only this time, they unleashed what can best be described as an army of undead and weird Lovecraftian monsters into her area, so she's effectively worse off than when she met the party now as these things are attacking the people she needs to worship her.

... She decides the freeloading stops there. If they're going to mess up her home and stay under her roof, they're going to start pulling their weight.

First order of business, no more starting cults for the PCs... All of their current worshippers are now her worshippers. The party is to promote her religion, any accomplishments they do are to be attributed to her (killing monsters, removing bandits, fixing local problems, etc.)

Second order of business, any powerful magical items they gain are to be brought to her for distribution as she sees fit. If they try to sneak something off, she will consider it an act of treason worthy of death. They're not splitting things "evenly" if she's putting in several times the work that they are... She's taking most, if not all, of the powerful stuff since she has the "wisdom" to use it. This also applies to other resources... No feeling "entitled" to anything, they're not partners, they're not her friends, they're her subordinates.

Third order of business, they're going to do missions for her (killing bandits or even the monsters that escaped from the sealed off area earlier that are currently attacking her followers.) If they try to "run away" from these the second it gets "too hard", she's going to kill them because, "None of that, you ended up in this mess because of that attitude."

Fourth order of business, no more "cutting deals" with powerful beings without consulting her first. It's expressed, "Everyone has to stay in their wheelhouse. Mine is thinking, yours is following. When you don't follow, it causes problems for me."

She points out if they dislike any of those conditions, they're free to leave and go out into the world that's full of enemy gods, powerful beings, a kingdom that wants to capture them for being "evil spirits", other kingdoms that may or may not be better or worse for them and the various people that are looking for revenge on the owners of the "pet troll" that's still causing mayhem in their name. Though "leave" may also be synonym for "die"... Maybe, still unsure on this one. Anyway, it's her way or the highway...

I have no idea if this will make them start working with her, leave outright or try to somehow outsmart her... I don't know what to expect at this point. At that point, they're essentially minions but I genuinely don't know how they'll take any of that.

Second part of their actions catching up to them... Well, now there's bounty hunters, undead and twisted abominations that keep appearing on their path. These are because of the super troll they "own" angering a ton of people (I mentioned this above) and people on the lookout for "evil spirits" while the undead and abominations are sent by the members from the two armies who still very much want the party dead. If they anger the insect goddess, giant bugs and bug fanatics can get added to this list.

Still working on the other details...

I feel these are appropriate reactions for the NPCs who have to deal with them... And if they go through with the fighting their away through an entire army part, I can only imagine it'll be the tensest part of the campaign that's worthy of being cinematic in nature... But there is still a real threat of dying as I won't be pulling punches. This is assuming they don't do something completely out of left field again. If it seems to be having a negative impact on their fun, I'll have to talk to them again... Though they seem curious about what could possibly go down from what little I told them.


They may have a "type" for which NPCs they consider allying with. Might be just that they think these are strong so they want to be on the same side but then it makes no sense to try getting two armies to kill each other when there's a clear way of winning both sides' approval.

Consider doing a test, present them with a piece of toast but say it has committed multiple genocides. If they just have a thing for unambiguously monstrous creatures it will be their best friend forever and since it's a piece of toast for once it won't be an invitation for a powerful creature to kill them later.



Or their type could be “anything seemingly powerful enough to deliver those ‘consequences’ the GM warned about”. Which would make “combat avoidance” and “be nice to them” and “turn the ‘nice’ powerful evil creatures against one another (rather than risk the consequences of angering them)” make sense.

EDIT: to test that theory, you could try introducing powerful, benevolent beings who want to hand them magic items, and see how they respond.

Both great ideas... I'm genuinely curious as to what their responses will be. The closest they got to a "benevolent powerful figure offering free goodies" was their current situation and they turned it into... All of this.

Also I suspected it was because both armies could gain incredible numbers if given enough time and they were nipping a problem in the bud before it grew too big... But they don't seem to care about the insect goddess essentially doing the same thing so I have no idea why they decided these two had to go but not the other ones that were much more bloodthirsty.


I have the feeling it's not even in-character short term rewards that they're seeking, but out-of-character ones.

They seem to enjoy the endless stream of chaos that you provide to them, as it give them plenty of opportunity to have unexpected ideas (often bad ones) with controlled consequences (they can always get away with it). They enjoy the situation as players even if their characters are probably miserable.

As for the combat avoidance, I'm not sure if they don't like combat at a mechanics (some players find combat boring), if they fear combat (they feel combat situations are the only situation where they might not get away with bad choice and actually die), or if they are deeply contrarian (and everytime they feel you want something to happen they instinctively do the opposite).

But I would guess that as long as you continue to provide to them this endless stream of chaos for their PCs to live through, they'll be happy with your campaign.

And they'll probably be fine with whatever consequences of their action you punish their PCs with as long as they can still get away with it and continue to enjoy this chaos.

I can't say for sure, but it's definitely possible. Their chaos is having ripple effects it's just... Not immediately obvious to them. If they're fine with the chaos, they might be ok with the further chaos (via ripple effect) that springs from their actions. Though it may genuinely place their characters' lives in danger...

As for why certain enemies get fought while others don't... I have no idea.

[Morgaln]

What you have here is not necessarily a problem but could be an opportunity.

You don't have to kill the characters right away. Just because they're going to face a battle they have no hope of winning doesn't mean they need to be killed in that battle. The leaders might want to capture them so they can perform a public execution in front of both armies (making a point about traitors and such).That gives the players some time to come up with an escape plan.
If the two leaders have disagreements (I don't know how uneasy their alliance against the characters is) it might even give the players the chance to sow some more discord and maybe delay the two armies. Then the subsequent story could be about staying ahead of the army while trying to find allies powerful enough to defeat them.

[Quertus]

What you have here is not necessarily a problem but could be an opportunity.

You don't have to kill the characters right away. Just because they're going to face a battle they have no hope of winning doesn't mean they need to be killed in that battle. The leaders might want to capture them so they can perform a public execution in front of both armies (making a point about traitors and such).That gives the players some time to come up with an escape plan.
If the two leaders have disagreements (I don't know how uneasy their alliance against the characters is) it might even give the players the chance to sow some more discord and maybe delay the two armies. Then the subsequent story could be about staying ahead of the army while trying to find allies powerful enough to defeat them.

Following up on that (and assuming the PCs / players will retain their described level of incompetence, and be unable to come up with a working escape plan), perhaps things could be scripted to work out on their own after the PCs' capture. For example, the bulk of the army that was sent outside could have been wiped out by the combined forces of the insect goddess and the 9-tails, trying to deal with the incursion into her land, and seeking to protect her kits (perhaps some divinations involved?), respectively. Then they get to berate the PCs, hear the full story, berate the PCs some more, drive home how the only useful thing the PCs have done is to empower the 9-tails' kits, and work out an arrangement that is actually to everyone's benefit. Everyone's. The insect goddess, the 9-tails, maybe the Troll, the 2 generals, and the PCs.

So, perhaps, the 9-tails and the 2 kits get to feed on the PCs' blood, the remaining armies of the 2 generals are tasked to do the PCs' job of dealing with problems for the insect goddess (give or take those few who get fed to the Troll, if he's part of these "negotiations"), the PCs get the loot that the generals were willing to give them, and... get tasked with something their negative intellect and negative social skills and negative intrigue skills can handle. Which, other than being walking snacks for the foxes is... causing problems in the human lands alongside the Troll, to keep the humans busy and out of the insect goddess's hair mandibles, maybe? "Causing Trouble" is about the only thing I can think of to assign to people like the PCs, to make them feel "useful" instead of just keeping them as snacks (their only real value thus far).

Of course, this is made under the assumption that the combined forces of the insect goddess, the 9-tails, and the troll are sufficiently overwhelming as to demolish the armies sent forth, and to give the 2 generals sufficient pause to encourage them to enter negotiations rather than just execute the PCs and attack. And that their personalities even make such thoughts possible. You could even throw in a "BBEG"-style evil god-wizard orchestrating the thing if the insect goddess or troll need some incintivizing, or if the 9-tails needed outside divinations to know her kits were in danger, or if that coalition needed more "oomph" to give the generals pause - a god-wizard whose only goal is just to get the forces of evil to be stronger and work together, and really gets nothing else out of the deal. But there's my suggestion, knowingly made in near-complete ignorance, of how one might drive home the PCs failures, and continue the campaign without going a deserved TPK route, while hopefully teaching the players a thing or two, and giving the PCs a carrot of "here's the items you could have just had if you hadn't been such complete duncewaffles", rather than making this a sour deal.

Bonus points if the "evil god-wizard" takes the PCs under their wing, and shows them how they could have done the exact same thing they just did, only easier, if they had behaved differently when interacting with these forces. Teach the players, not just what they did wrong, but what "doing things right" looks like.


I talked to the players again... They understand something big is going to happen when I told them they should fill out more character sheets if things go south. They also said they'd be ready to face whatever happened... Well, we'll see.

Especially after this, I probably wouldn't push the "capture" route, just time the entrance of the coalition's arrival to be (hopefully) before the last PC dies. I don't know how fatal combat is in that system; perhaps 1 PC left standing is enough to guarantee most if not all the PCs live, or perhaps only 1 or 2 PCs will survive if the coalition shows up at the last minute, or perhaps no PCs would survive if no PCs were left standing. Shrug. Still, I think it would benefit the players for (at least some of) the PCs to survive, so that the coalition - especially the insect goddess and the god-wizard - can point out how useless the PCs have been, and to show them a better way, respectively.

[AntiAuthority]

What you have here is not necessarily a problem but could be an opportunity.

You don't have to kill the characters right away. Just because they're going to face a battle they have no hope of winning doesn't mean they need to be killed in that battle. The leaders might want to capture them so they can perform a public execution in front of both armies (making a point about traitors and such).That gives the players some time to come up with an escape plan.
If the two leaders have disagreements (I don't know how uneasy their alliance against the characters is) it might even give the players the chance to sow some more discord and maybe delay the two armies. Then the subsequent story could be about staying ahead of the army while trying to find allies powerful enough to defeat them.


Following up on that (and assuming the PCs / players will retain their described level of incompetence, and be unable to come up with a working escape plan), perhaps things could be scripted to work out on their own after the PCs' capture. For example, the bulk of the army that was sent outside could have been wiped out by the combined forces of the insect goddess and the 9-tails, trying to deal with the incursion into her land, and seeking to protect her kits (perhaps some divinations involved?), respectively. Then they get to berate the PCs, hear the full story, berate the PCs some more, drive home how the only useful thing the PCs have done is to empower the 9-tails' kits, and work out an arrangement that is actually to everyone's benefit. Everyone's. The insect goddess, the 9-tails, maybe the Troll, the 2 generals, and the PCs.

So, perhaps, the 9-tails and the 2 kits get to feed on the PCs' blood, the remaining armies of the 2 generals are tasked to do the PCs' job of dealing with problems for the insect goddess (give or take those few who get fed to the Troll, if he's part of these "negotiations"), the PCs get the loot that the generals were willing to give them, and... get tasked with something their negative intellect and negative social skills and negative intrigue skills can handle. Which, other than being walking snacks for the foxes is... causing problems in the human lands alongside the Troll, to keep the humans busy and out of the insect goddess's hair mandibles, maybe? "Causing Trouble" is about the only thing I can think of to assign to people like the PCs, to make them feel "useful" instead of just keeping them as snacks (their only real value thus far).

Of course, this is made under the assumption that the combined forces of the insect goddess, the 9-tails, and the troll are sufficiently overwhelming as to demolish the armies sent forth, and to give the 2 generals sufficient pause to encourage them to enter negotiations rather than just execute the PCs and attack. And that their personalities even make such thoughts possible. You could even throw in a "BBEG"-style evil god-wizard orchestrating the thing if the insect goddess or troll need some incintivizing, or if the 9-tails needed outside divinations to know her kits were in danger, or if that coalition needed more "oomph" to give the generals pause - a god-wizard whose only goal is just to get the forces of evil to be stronger and work together, and really gets nothing else out of the deal. But there's my suggestion, knowingly made in near-complete ignorance, of how one might drive home the PCs failures, and continue the campaign without going a deserved TPK route, while hopefully teaching the players a thing or two, and giving the PCs a carrot of "here's the items you could have just had if you hadn't been such complete duncewaffles", rather than making this a sour deal.

Bonus points if the "evil god-wizard" takes the PCs under their wing, and shows them how they could have done the exact same thing they just did, only easier, if they had behaved differently when interacting with these forces. Teach the players, not just what they did wrong, but what "doing things right" looks like.



Especially after this, I probably wouldn't push the "capture" route, just time the entrance of the coalition's arrival to be (hopefully) before the last PC dies. I don't know how fatal combat is in that system; perhaps 1 PC left standing is enough to guarantee most if not all the PCs live, or perhaps only 1 or 2 PCs will survive if the coalition shows up at the last minute, or perhaps no PCs would survive if no PCs were left standing. Shrug. Still, I think it would benefit the players for (at least some of) the PCs to survive, so that the coalition - especially the insect goddess and the god-wizard - can point out how useless the PCs have been, and to show them a better way, respectively.

I've been thinking about it... Even though I'll probably end up with the "armies try to murder you both" near the beginning of next session (hopefully they take the hints to get out of there when they notice the floating skull is missing), I like these ideas, I just think they need to be implemented at a later date since... Well, the PCs kind of did something that makes peaceful relations with both armies nigh impossible. If they survive this. Anyway, the next batch of villains might be... More incompetent to compensate.

The reason being is that neither side has a reason to keep the PCs alive... Quite the opposite.

For the non-Lich leader... Peaceful conclusions go out the window when it comes to light that people turned one of your soldiers into a human bomb, blew up your home base, you got caught in the explosion (getting severely burned in the process), put you under magical compulsion to reveal the information of where your kids were and then tried to give that information away so that your more blatant enemy then goes and slaughter your young... At that point, I think most everyone would agree, "These people have to go."

The Lich... While the party hasn't done anything as bad to him, he is prideful and can realize, "If they would do that to him... Why would I think I'm safe from it? And why should I trust these people if they were willing to effectively do their best to plot my murder?"

To further make it obvious they were playing both sides... The first person ended up drawing a map of where their children were... And the party gave this same map (not a copy, the original one) to the Lich... The leader of the opposing army can blatantly recognize his own handiwork and handwriting since he literally drew that exact same map like a few hours before. The party kept a copy of it for some reason, but the Lich has the original one and... Yeah, the Lich has a literal receipt.

At this point, it's fairly obvious that both sides can't trust the PCs and, if they give them the chance, they will do something to make them regret it since... They welcomed the PCs with open arms earlier (mostly after recognizing their combat strength...) and got met with violence and treachery instead.

As for the insect goddess' army coming in... Actually that was a major plot point. Basically, they requested backup but it would take some time to get there... Which is fine, it would just take a few days (the insect army was actually in the middle of something.) But to help bolster their side, a rather powerful insect warrior (humanoid bug person) was sent to aid them until then. They just had to wait a few days before backup arrives, hope nobody found out the barrier was down but then they decided to do all of that and... Well, the single lone soldier of incredible power showed up to help them, but the main force of individual, weaker insects are going to take a while to get there.

As for the troll... The party has expressed that if they even hear rumors of that thing being in the same area, they're going to immediately leave until they hear it's somewhere else. And if the troll knew the party was in the middle of dying, it would honestly laugh for "betraying" it after the party "dared" try to stop its feasting on lowly humans. That thing's far off at the moment, may come back later.

The kumiho matriarch and the lone sister outside... Yeah, if they find out their relatives are in there, they'd 100% be ready to fight, but they're more into laying low in the shadows and waiting... They'd probably try picking off the army in guerilla tactics rather than an all-out fight, but the reproduction rate would be an issue for them to handle.

They definitely need a mentor-type character to help guide them on the way of how to actually manipulate people. So I'm going to find a way to work one of those in. Might be the BBEG-style Wizard you mentioned or some other scheming type, just someone to help them think before they do things without considering the long-term consequences (like setting up base in the middle of two armies they're actively trying to get to kick up their aggression towards each other... In a world where the PCs' plan to make the two become more angry at each other worked, they'd still most likely caught in the crossfires... This was a bad idea all around, even if they succeeded in their short-term goal.)

Future villains after this... Probably won't be as competent, I may dumb them down significantly. I picked a Lich because it was intelligent and figured the party may want to partner up with it because it was a powerful magical ally. The opposing side's leader is rather weak... But he's not the leader because he's the strongest, rather he's the leader because he's the smartest and the actual heavy hitter for his side IS physically dominating and offered (through its fairly unique abilities of essentially being the RPG equivalent of a Xenomorph queen) the PCs an army of monsters that they could lead if the PCs helped their side. Either side would be a massive boon to the PCs, and ideally they could find a way to work with both for some kind of deal... Up until the above happened. I might make weaker villains as a result after.

After that... If they die, I'm going to talk to them about picking characters with abilities that explicitly can pull off complex social interactions as features (such as being able to instantly spot lies, being able to trick people into believing virtually anything, etc.) rather than their own IRL skill level. Or ask if they want to pick up in a new campaign or their new characters show up some time after their previous ones died.

The main thing as to why I'm likely going through with the "the armies are coming for you both, you need to get out" route is, I'm getting the impression if they just walk out of here after all this without any consequences (along with everything else they've been doing and effectively being able to run away)... They're not going to learn from the experience, if anything, it may teach them, "We can do whatever we want and survive!" Leading to something insane like (as an example that I hope never comes true) randomly (from my perspective, I don't know if it'll be random from theirs) picking a fight with the insect goddess in her territory, surrounded by her followers (including the NPC party members that are explicitly only traveling with the PCs because she ordered to them) and then expecting to win despite being at a massive numerical disadvantage, lacking the homefield advantage, etc... And being confused as to why her own minions (two of the NPC party members that explicitly ONLY work with the PCs because she told them to) didn't side with them instead for some reason. Or set her home on fire, kill her followers en masse and then be confused as to why she's now trying to kill them. I genuinely expect them to try that at this point and I think having to fight their way out/have to deal with the consequences firsthand (instead of running back to the safety of the insect goddess' territory... Instead the consequences are explicitly IN her territory because of them) will help hammer it in. Otherwise I expect things to get worse.

That said, they're definitely getting an evil mentor like a BBEG or something to help steer them away from borderline suicidal actions. I have no idea if the evil mentor type will even be listened to or if the PCs decide to kill him/her for... Some reason that won't make sense to me. Or the villains become INCREDIBLY forgiving, if not incompetent at actually being villains, to the point of being borderline cartoons in terms of how foolish they are. Maybe both, I'm still debating on this.

[Quertus]

The point of the BBEG-class "mentor" wasn't to continually monitor them, it was to give them a singular view of "doing it right" vs "doing it wrong", to show the players the difference.

The best way to do something similar later would be... to show the PCs an alternate reality / alternate timeline, where the PCs weren't such duncewaffles, where they had made intelligent choices at all these intersections. Perhaps encountering a history book (or historian?) from that alternate timeline could be used to show them what good looks like. Alternately, have them be Isekai'd by someone expecting the them from that alternate timeline, who knows that version of them's history, and is baffled by the weakness and poor decisions of the copy of the party they accidentally summoned instead.

And that's the point - to show them an example of what good looks like, not to make it feel like you're forcing them down a railroad path, the way an ongoing mentor character likely would.

EDIT: and definitely agree on the "take skills to do social things, because y'all just can't handle it on your player skills" bit, except that I would word it more as, "take skills to do social / subterfuge things, if you want to continue attempting such, and want them to actually succeed, as y'all's player skills are clearly not up to the challenge". Because just taking a more straight-forward approach, where they don't need such social skills, is also a valid option, and you should make it explicitly clear that that is the case. (IRL, I guess I'd word it more like, "look, the way I see it, you have 2 choices: ... be more straightforward ... drop the subterfuge ... OR ... take character skills to enable such actions" or something).

[icefractal]

The best way to do something similar later would be... to show the PCs an alternate reality / alternate timeline, where the PCs weren't such duncewaffles, where they had made intelligent choices at all these intersections.
...
and is baffled by the weakness and poor decisions of the copy of the party they accidentally summoned instead.
...
"take skills to do social / subterfuge things, if you want to continue attempting such, and want them to actually succeed, as y'all's player skills are clearly not up to the challenge"
IIRC you've said your group is comfortable with extremely frank criticism, but IME that's not always the case. I think a lot of groups would be pissed off and/or dispirited with the level of IC and OOC "scolding" / mockery that this and some of the proposed outcomes in the thread contain.

I mean, not likely "the players riot and flip over the gaming table" kind of upset, more like "the players mentally tune out and stop showing any initiative, because nobody wants to put their ideas up to be told how **** they are"

[AntiAuthority]

The point of the BBEG-class "mentor" wasn't to continually monitor them, it was to give them a singular view of "doing it right" vs "doing it wrong", to show the players the difference.

The best way to do something similar later would be... to show the PCs an alternate reality / alternate timeline, where the PCs weren't such duncewaffles, where they had made intelligent choices at all these intersections. Perhaps encountering a history book (or historian?) from that alternate timeline could be used to show them what good looks like. Alternately, have them be Isekai'd by someone expecting the them from that alternate timeline, who knows that version of them's history, and is baffled by the weakness and poor decisions of the copy of the party they accidentally summoned instead.

And that's the point - to show them an example of what good looks like, not to make it feel like you're forcing them down a railroad path, the way an ongoing mentor character likely would.

EDIT: and definitely agree on the "take skills to do social things, because y'all just can't handle it on your player skills" bit, except that I would word it more as, "take skills to do social / subterfuge things, if you want to continue attempting such, and want them to actually succeed, as y'all's player skills are clearly not up to the challenge". Because just taking a more straight-forward approach, where they don't need such social skills, is also a valid option, and you should make it explicitly clear that that is the case. (IRL, I guess I'd word it more like, "look, the way I see it, you have 2 choices: ... be more straightforward ... drop the subterfuge ... OR ... take character skills to enable such actions" or something).

Oh yeah, that's a much better idea than what I was imagining. I'll find a way to integrate it.

Probably a book written by a devout believer in how their gods came to free the world from the insect goddess when her cult was still small, saved people from the grip of a paranoid king that kidnapped people for fear of their power threatening him before he got his hands on some REALLY dangerous magic, spread technology across the world for people to have easier lives, destroyed the violent monsters infesting the wilderness so that their followers could settle the area peacefully, how they protected their followers from thirst in the dry seasons and cold in the warm seasons, how they slayed mighty monsters and evil gods to keep their people safe... All because their gods love them and see them as their children. And the reveal that the religion is at least 700 years old and still going strong to this day.

... But I am partial to the isekai bit too lol.

NPC: Ok, I summoned you guys to stop a powerful god that's going to burn my country to the ground... And you're the guys, right? You killed that insect goddess and her army of flesh eating monsters? What do you mean you're partnered up with her?! Ok... You... You DID stop the "Evil Spirit" hunt, right? Like you blended in with normal people and went around, righting the injustices you saw in front of you since nobody was aware of what you were? What do you mean you're staying away from that whole place?! Alright, at least tell me you took care of the powerful monsters that were plaguing your area so that people could live there peaceful-... You teamed up with and protected them from... Why are you letting all this happen when you have the power to stop it? Wait you did WHAT?! Wait, I think I messed up the spell somewhere... Oh no... I mispronounced this part of the incantation... I'm a failure. I messed it up. I didn't get the right gods, my country's gonna be burned to the ground and we got the wrong people... I'm a failure! I got the worst possible version of these people! We're gonna die!

Interestingly I did something similar, but not quite the same. Basically one of my players was commenting on how their PC felt weak in combat (to be fair, a large part of it was poor rolls so... Yeah) and I asked, "Hey, do you want to see what your character looks like at peak efficiency? I think the main thing is you're not using your abilities to their full potential with your creativity" The player agreed... And the NPC version they met could best be described as a god that was immune to mundane attacks (on account of being made out of sand), could see through non-magical structures (and attack people inside because a lot of their abilities work on "line of light"), could sneak virtually into any building that wasn't completely airtight by simply flying through a crack, could rain lightning down on people that auto-hit all enemies in sight up to 100ft, convert the surrounding land into deserts (to expand his reach), could sense everything WITHIN those deserts (as long as he was paying attention to certain areas, he wasn't automatically aware of every single thing going on in the desert), open random holes in the sand to trap people like a pit spell and was doing all this while in an underground section of the desert from miles away. My player seemed kind of annoyed this character was basically death incarnate (my player essentially picked the same general concepts but missed some specific abilities that had good synergy), and I assured him if he kept going, he'd be able to reach that level. He ended up changing characters because his rolls were still poor but it was to show his character had the potential to become essentially a one-man army with some creativity.

I was in the process of doing the same with the other player, not as much synergy as the above, but there's potential there. But the current situation takes precedent...

Interestingly, I took a look at one player and... They DO have the power to incite passion/rage into people (which might have been useful for inciting tensions into the two opposing armies), I just don't think they realize it yet despite it being listed as one of their abilities. I keep mentioning they need to look over what their characters can do, but it seems that didn't stick...

... One player says they're not sure if they're up for a social character that can manipulate that easily since they're pretty sure they messed up last session, but I'll dig deeper later to see if they change their mind.

EDIT: I decided I'll probably have the Lich (before sending the various monsters to hunt the PCs to the death) would have a similar role to the BBEG mentor type (temporarily anyway)... He's still going to try to kill them shortly after, but he's curious about something before he ends the conversation.

Lich: For the life of me, I cannot understand why you thought setting your camp up in the middle of what you wanted to become an intense warzone was a good idea. Even in a perfect world where you got us to fight with a hundred times our normal aggression... That would have put you both right in the perfect spot to get caught in the crossfire between two hostile forces, likely getting you both injured or killed in the process when about 500 wraiths, specters and whatever else pass through your camp on their way to get to the area that you wanted them to go to. That was what you wanted to happen... I genuinely want to know what part of any of that seemed like a good idea. And this isn't even the only question I have about any of what you did...

[MetroAlien]

running a sandbox campaign is harder work than most people expect!
I applaud you for coming this far in your DM-ing efforts.

However, from your players' perspective, they may not be the only ones who missed critical oversights.

I'm just going to mention some general DM-ing things that stood out.
In all likelihood, the written summary makes it sound more messy than it was in-person, but that's the limited information I'm gong off of, so please don't think this is targeted at you personally.

---
Firstly,
a foreword about sandbox RPGs:
your group correctly identified that the biggest, most fun difference to conventional "campaign" RPGs, is the "freedom" of consequence and grittiness!
However, the increased realism doesn't give the DM a "carte blanche" to do whatever they like!
A sudden global pandemic that forces everyone indoors may be realistic, but not necessarily fun to play!
The DM should never forget that this is a game world and despite the exponentially increased realism, the players are still central to the game, and by extension the world.
What does this mean?
It means, your players need agency over their fate that isn't realistically available, well, in reality.
Otherwise, it's not a game, but a simulation. Simulations don't have players, they have witting volunteers, and your players are neither.
Agency implies informed choice and if the choice is un-informed, the game starts to turn into a simulation.

Practically, this means that you must bend the rules of in-game realism to let the players know in advance when something is about to happen that gravely impacts their fate.
Skirting realism doesn't have to mean skirting verisimilitude!
(who was that forum member with a relevant signature??)

I don't mean a God-fiat OOC warning. It's more fun when it's in-game.


the henchman is about to tell on the players to his boss?
There are several options:
A. Have one of the players randomly overhear the conversation.
B. an ally tips the players off.
C. the boss is actually busy and thinks the henchman isn't important enough.
etc...
in any case, the players have time to catch up with the situation!


does it seem like coddling players too much?
maybe. But that's what it means to have agency in a game: the players get to actively do things, not passively sit still while a simulation happens to them.

---
Secondly:
you know more about the world and the characters than the players themselves do!
Tell them even the most obvious things!
This isn't from your campaign, but it's a good example nonetheless:



Are they players about to inadvertently insult a powerful NPC by skirting etiquette?
This feels unfair, in the same way as a 'haha, gotcha' bottomless pit where the rogue didn't get to roll to detect nor save.
The bard/wizard/any character with high INT/WIS/CHA, all of them should know, or at least have some intuition about, etiquette in the game world.
explicitly tell them in these words:
"your character knows this is a bad idea that will lead to X"


The players may not catch on. But the DM knows that the characters do.
Heck, maybe the players will persist after knowing!
But knowing is the key!

There's a fine line between challenges for the players and challenges for the characters.
Character challenges should be resolved by a dice roll or ability/skill point threshold.
Player challenges should never rely on asking the right questions at the right time. That's not a challenge. That's a guessing game you don't know you were "volunteered" for.
If you ever feel like "hm... why don't/when will the players ask me about XYZ"
.... that means now is time to tell them about XYZ!
Find a way to do so in-game, but do tell them!

---
Once again, to reiterate
I only said "you" because I found it easier to write that way, not because I'm addressing your personal way of running the game.

I hope you're inspired to find creative ways to let your players engage with in-game consequences and it's fun for everyone involved!

[AntiAuthority]

running a sandbox campaign is harder work than most people expect!
I applaud you for coming this far in your DM-ing efforts.

However, from your players' perspective, they may not be the only ones who missed critical oversights.

I'm just going to mention some general DM-ing things that stood out.
In all likelihood, the written summary makes it sound more messy than it was in-person, but that's the limited information I'm gong off of, so please don't think this is targeted at you personally.

---
Firstly,
a foreword about sandbox RPGs:
your group correctly identified that the biggest, most fun difference to conventional "campaign" RPGs, is the "freedom" of consequence and grittiness!
However, the increased realism doesn't give the DM a "carte blanche" to do whatever they like!
A sudden global pandemic that forces everyone indoors may be realistic, but not necessarily fun to play!
The DM should never forget that this is a game world and despite the exponentially increased realism, the players are still central to the game, and by extension the world.
What does this mean?
It means, your players need agency over their fate that isn't realistically available, well, in reality.
Otherwise, it's not a game, but a simulation. Simulations don't have players, they have witting volunteers, and your players are neither.
Agency implies informed choice and if the choice is un-informed, the game starts to turn into a simulation.

Practically, this means that you must bend the rules of in-game realism to let the players know in advance when something is about to happen that gravely impacts their fate.
Skirting realism doesn't have to mean skirting verisimilitude!
(who was that forum member with a relevant signature??)

I don't mean a God-fiat OOC warning. It's more fun when it's in-game.



does it seem like coddling players too much?
maybe. But that's what it means to have agency in a game: the players get to actively do things, not passively sit still while a simulation happens to them.

---
Secondly:
you know more about the world and the characters than the players themselves do!
Tell them even the most obvious things!
This isn't from your campaign, but it's a good example nonetheless:



The players may not catch on. But the DM knows that the characters do.
Heck, maybe the players will persist after knowing!
But knowing is the key!

There's a fine line between challenges for the players and challenges for the characters.
Character challenges should be resolved by a dice roll or ability/skill point threshold.
Player challenges should never rely on asking the right questions at the right time. That's not a challenge. That's a guessing game you don't know you were "volunteered" for.
If you ever feel like "hm... why don't/when will the players ask me about XYZ"
.... that means now is time to tell them about XYZ!
Find a way to do so in-game, but do tell them!

---
Once again, to reiterate
I only said "you" because I found it easier to write that way, not because I'm addressing your personal way of running the game.

I hope you're inspired to find creative ways to let your players engage with in-game consequences and it's fun for everyone involved!

Yeah, the sandbox thing can be... Tricky. I actually hate railroading players, but love the freedom TRPGs bring... It's why I actually prefer them over scripted video games too when it comes to my actions having consequences.

I am going to give them chances to avoid the tough fighting altogether by having one NPC party member outright say, "That undead fellow left and... I feel weirded out by it, my instincts are telling me there's a bad omen in the air, I'm just gonna go. If you want to stay down here, fine, I'm leaving before whatever is about to go down happens."

However considering the PCs, there's a higher than 0% chance they may force the NPC to stay through threats/violence. Last session, one amputated a (non-threatening, non-party member) NPC for not doing what he wanted, threatening to torture the NPC for the next few days until the NPC gave into his demands (which didn't earn him any fans, it just made the PC look like a nutcase.) This non-party member NPC is definitely not going to risk dying for the people that did that sort of thing. With this in mind, I genuinely have no idea if they'd even listen to the NPC party member or not who will practically beg them to leave.

I'm definitely trying to be more obvious... I just don't know if they'll figure it out or choose to ignore it because it's not their problem.

I'll try to keep all of this in mind.

[MetroAlien]

another way is to drip-feed consequences

to take the two armies example:
the army leaders are understandably ticked off, but they are also professional soldiers.
No doubt they had their fair share of personal/political drama in their own ranks and on their way up the career ladder!
They stood the test of time by being more resilient, more resourceful and more underhanded than their rivals.

They put their responsibility as generals first and foremost guided by their experience of operating as just one lever in a machine with thousands of cogwheels.

It's very plausible they may not want to send the full force of the army against the players.

First order of affairs would be to reconcile the exact conditions for an armistice with the opposing force.
That's no easy task. Both sides may have stopped fighting, but they'll still try to one-up each other politically.
Besides, the other army is still the larger threat than the players.
Heck, it could all be an elaborate ruse!
Better make sure first...

Second, is maintaining morale and order in their ranks.
One day they are fighting their (alleged) sworn enemies, the next day they watch these same (perceived) scumbags pack up and leave unpunished??
They killed Mike, god-damn-it!
Few soldiers and even officers will take these new orders without batting an eye.
There may not be a full-on mutiny, but there will be disorder and widespread confusion.
Have you ever seen a ship turn? Now imagine turning around an entire fleet!

Third, is getting the soldiers home.
An army camping out is one not protecting the kingdom.
The soldiers' homes could be on fire this very moment!
Maybe they players were simply distracting them from exactly that!

Dealing with the players is also important,
but no one task should compromise the army's ability to carry out its other duties.
An appropriately sized task force, possibly with its own head of operations, should be designated to dealing with this particular threat.

Furthermore, professional armies are patient.
It may take months, years, or even decades for a full-scale war to finally conclude!
The goal isn't to kill the players right now, but eventually... If they escape today, they will be court-martialled at a later date.
For now it's enough if they are prevented from messing with the army's current operations.


PS:
---
others already mentioned how this is a great opportunity to tie in the party's previous failures.
I think that by itself could be consequence enough even without direct violence.
I'm sure that after this incident, the insect queen will not want to associate with a party that makes enemies of entire armies willy-nilly.

Suppose that one of the "ally" NPCs tipped her off about the party's incompetence.
She could officially end their "alliance" the very next time they meet. To really drive the point home, she could attack the ranch where the party once stayed. And if the players become any more of a nuisance, they are next on the list.
This isn't dealing damage to the player characters directly, but it does set a very strong precedent that things are now getting "personal" (in-game, of course)

The fox-beasts could very likely decide that it's much too dangerous to hang out with the players.
They will exhaust all their efforts to escape, putting their lives on the line.
(from the fox's view, they're in danger either way, escape or not)
And if the players try to stop them violently, their mother will obviously jump in to defend her cubs!

If the foxes DO escape, the whole family could come back full force.
The mother simply can't pass up the chance to feast on these wondrous flesh-meats!
It would be ironic if she somehow roped the troll into following through with this... both the troll and fox thinking they will be the one to eat the players.
While they didn't stand a chance separately, surely together it will work?

---
you already mentioned how this episode could be campaign-ending
But TBH I'm afraid this will a sour taste in the players' mouths OOC.

If you feel up to the task, you could try packaging in some goodies for the players into this whole fiasco... a kind of silver lining?
As it stands, the whole world is turning against the players, and they don't see any explicit path towards changing that.

Assuming the players end up getting their just deserts from the insects/troll/fox/armies,
regardless if they win or lose, an NPC could witness the fight
It could be a
A: a scout from a wealthy patron, in need of disposable assets
B: professional monster hunter looking for helping hands
C: a wizard/sorcerer collecting rare magical ingredients
D: Good-aligned deity and/or their priest/cleric
etc...

basically, the idea is to offer the players rewards if they finish something they started.
Ideally, this reward should be directly connected to the goal.
E.g. a weapon/ability conspicuously named "troll/fox killer", that they get to keep only if they go through with it

This will serve as an example that following up on previous plot points gives the players tangible rewards, on top of preventing things from coming back to bite them later.

[AntiAuthority]

another way is to drip-feed consequences

to take the two armies example:
the army leaders are understandably ticked off, but they are also professional soldiers.
No doubt they had their fair share of personal/political drama in their own ranks and on their way up the career ladder!
They stood the test of time by being more resilient, more resourceful and more underhanded than their rivals.

They put their responsibility as generals first and foremost guided by their experience of operating as just one lever in a machine with thousands of cogwheels.

It's very plausible they may not want to send the full force of the army against the players.

First order of affairs would be to reconcile the exact conditions for an armistice with the opposing force.
That's no easy task. Both sides may have stopped fighting, but they'll still try to one-up each other politically.
Besides, the other army is still the larger threat than the players.
Heck, it could all be an elaborate ruse!
Better make sure first...

Second, is maintaining morale and order in their ranks.
One day they are fighting their (alleged) sworn enemies, the next day they watch these same (perceived) scumbags pack up and leave unpunished??
They killed Mike, god-damn-it!
Few soldiers and even officers will take these new orders without batting an eye.
There may not be a full-on mutiny, but there will be disorder and widespread confusion.
Have you ever seen a ship turn? Now imagine turning around an entire fleet!

Third, is getting the soldiers home.
An army camping out is one not protecting the kingdom.
The soldiers' homes could be on fire this very moment!
Maybe they players were simply distracting them from exactly that!

Dealing with the players is also important,
but no one task should compromise the army's ability to carry out its other duties.
An appropriately sized task force, possibly with its own head of operations, should be designated to dealing with this particular threat.

Furthermore, professional armies are patient.
It may take months, years, or even decades for a full-scale war to finally conclude!
The goal isn't to kill the players right now, but eventually... If they escape today, they will be court-martialled at a later date.
For now it's enough if they are prevented from messing with the army's current operations.


PS:
---
others already mentioned how this is a great opportunity to tie in the party's previous failures.
I think that by itself could be consequence enough even without direct violence.
I'm sure that after this incident, the insect queen will not want to associate with a party that makes enemies of entire armies willy-nilly.

Suppose that one of the "ally" NPCs tipped her off about the party's incompetence.
She could officially end their "alliance" the very next time they meet. To really drive the point home, she could attack the ranch where the party once stayed. And if the players become any more of a nuisance, they are next on the list.
This isn't dealing damage to the player characters directly, but it does set a very strong precedent that things are now getting "personal" (in-game, of course)

The fox-beasts could very likely decide that it's much too dangerous to hang out with the players.
They will exhaust all their efforts to escape, putting their lives on the line.
(from the fox's view, they're in danger either way, escape or not)
And if the players try to stop them violently, their mother will obviously jump in to defend her cubs!

If the foxes DO escape, the whole family could come back full force.
The mother simply can't pass up the chance to feast on these wondrous flesh-meats!
It would be ironic if she somehow roped the troll into following through with this... both the troll and fox thinking they will be the one to eat the players.
While they didn't stand a chance separately, surely together it will work?

---
you already mentioned how this episode could be campaign-ending
But TBH I'm afraid this will a sour taste in the players' mouths OOC.

If you feel up to the task, you could try packaging in some goodies for the players into this whole fiasco... a kind of silver lining?
As it stands, the whole world is turning against the players, and they don't see any explicit path towards changing that.

Assuming the players end up getting their just deserts from the insects/troll/fox/armies,
regardless if they win or lose, an NPC could witness the fight
It could be a
A: a scout from a wealthy patron, in need of disposable assets
B: professional monster hunter looking for helping hands
C: a wizard/sorcerer collecting rare magical ingredients
D: Good-aligned deity and/or their priest/cleric
etc...

basically, the idea is to offer the players rewards if they finish something they started.
Ideally, this reward should be directly connected to the goal.
E.g. a weapon/ability conspicuously named "troll/fox killer", that they get to keep only if they go through with it

This will serve as an example that following up on previous plot points gives the players tangible rewards, on top of preventing things from coming back to bite them later.

I like the consequences... That said, I don't think I'll have a Deus Ex Machina roll in and save them. I strongly suspect things have gotten this bad (and will keep getting worse) because I kept coddling them and they got used to having NPCs (insect goddess) protect them from the consequences of their actions... While giving absolutely nothing back in return to make sure the NPCs want to keep interacting with them (acting like entitled guests in the process.) If they survive, they survive, if they die, they die. That being said, I am going to give them options to escape before and during the chaos... Preferably before, as that way nobody has to die.

Also more obvious rewards for actually completing quests... I tried to give them that in the form of "you can potentially gain powerful allies"/"gain an underground city full of frightened people that would view you as their saviors"/"powerful magic items that will let you warp reality on a minor level (with permission to do it near the insect goddess anyway)" It turned into... The current thing. One of the NPCs they could have won over from doing this... They instead amputated him, regrew the limb and threatened to make him eat nothing but his own flesh... And the guy would have probably would have done it if they'd given the NPC a reason to, but managed to make him (and his friends) hate the PCs. I don't know if the rewards thing will work with this in mind.

The insect goddess is almost certainly done with the party after this. Mainly because they didn't do the things she teamed up with them to do in the first place and the party made her problems 10x worse than when she first met them.

I was already thinking about the ranch being attacked... And several candidates in mind that have a variety of reasons to.

That said, I suspect they'll be angry even if they live as... Outside of what the insect goddess handed them, they don't have anything to their own name. Even two heavy hitters of the party are only traveling with them because the insect goddess told them to, and (after reading everything I typed out, along with feedback from others I realized they don't seem to understand basic cause and effect) I'm concerned the players genuinely believe the two NPC party members have loyalty to them instead.

Also, if the characters die... That's not necessarily the end of the campaign, just the end of those characters. New characters will arrive in the setting some time after the last ones perished. In this case, the things the PC did will have been setup for what the next batch of PCs will encounter (whether for good or bad.) They'll be able to pick up the same plot points (that may have developed in the time the previous PCs died), just with different characters.

What confuses me is that they're both experienced with TRPGs, yet I can't understand what's going on here. I could understand these actions if they were total newbies to a TRPG, but that's not the case. I've played with both in other games and they're not acting like how they are here.

[Quertus]

The point of the BBEG-class "mentor" wasn't to continually monitor them, it was to give them a singular view of "doing it right" vs "doing it wrong", to show the players the difference.

The best way to do something similar later would be... to show the PCs an alternate reality / alternate timeline, where the PCs weren't such duncewaffles, where they had made intelligent choices at all these intersections. Perhaps encountering a history book (or historian?) from that alternate timeline could be used to show them what good looks like. Alternately, have them be Isekai'd by someone expecting the them from that alternate timeline, who knows that version of them's history, and is baffled by the weakness and poor decisions of the copy of the party they accidentally summoned instead.

And that's the point - to show them an example of what good looks like, not to make it feel like you're forcing them down a railroad path, the way an ongoing mentor character likely would.

EDIT: and definitely agree on the "take skills to do social things, because y'all just can't handle it on your player skills" bit, except that I would word it more as, "take skills to do social / subterfuge things, if you want to continue attempting such, and want them to actually succeed, as y'all's player skills are clearly not up to the challenge". Because just taking a more straight-forward approach, where they don't need such social skills, is also a valid option, and you should make it explicitly clear that that is the case. (IRL, I guess I'd word it more like, "look, the way I see it, you have 2 choices: ... be more straightforward ... drop the subterfuge ... OR ... take character skills to enable such actions" or something).


... But I am partial to the isekai bit too lol.

NPC: Ok, I summoned you guys to stop a powerful god that's going to burn my country to the ground... And you're the guys, right? You killed that insect goddess and her army of flesh eating monsters? What do you mean you're partnered up with her?! Ok... You... You DID stop the "Evil Spirit" hunt, right? Like you blended in with normal people and went around, righting the injustices you saw in front of you since nobody was aware of what you were? What do you mean you're staying away from that whole place?! Alright, at least tell me you took care of the powerful monsters that were plaguing your area so that people could live there peaceful-... You teamed up with and protected them from... Why are you letting all this happen when you have the power to stop it? Wait you did WHAT?! Wait, I think I messed up the spell somewhere... Oh no... I mispronounced this part of the incantation... I'm a failure. I messed it up. I didn't get the right gods, my country's gonna be burned to the ground and we got the wrong people... I'm a failure! I got the worst possible version of these people! We're gonna die!

Interestingly I did something similar, but not quite the same. Basically one of my players was commenting on how their PC felt weak in combat (to be fair, a large part of it was poor rolls so... Yeah) and I asked, "Hey, do you want to see what your character looks like at peak efficiency? I think the main thing is you're not using your abilities to their full potential with your creativity" The player agreed... And the NPC version they met could best be described as a god that was immune to mundane attacks (on account of being made out of sand), could see through non-magical structures (and attack people inside because a lot of their abilities work on "line of light"), could sneak virtually into any building that wasn't completely airtight by simply flying through a crack, could rain lightning down on people that auto-hit all enemies in sight up to 100ft, convert the surrounding land into deserts (to expand his reach), could sense everything WITHIN those deserts (as long as he was paying attention to certain areas, he wasn't automatically aware of every single thing going on in the desert), open random holes in the sand to trap people like a pit spell and was doing all this while in an underground section of the desert from miles away. My player seemed kind of annoyed this character was basically death incarnate (my player essentially picked the same general concepts but missed some specific abilities that had good synergy), and I assured him if he kept going, he'd be able to reach that level. He ended up changing characters because his rolls were still poor but it was to show his character had the potential to become essentially a one-man army with some creativity.

EDIT: I decided I'll probably have the Lich (before sending the various monsters to hunt the PCs to the death) would have a similar role to the BBEG mentor type (temporarily anyway)... He's still going to try to kill them shortly after, but he's curious about something before he ends the conversation.

Lich: For the life of me, I cannot understand why you thought setting your camp up in the middle of what you wanted to become an intense warzone was a good idea. Even in a perfect world where you got us to fight with a hundred times our normal aggression... That would have put you both right in the perfect spot to get caught in the crossfire between two hostile forces, likely getting you both injured or killed in the process when about 500 wraiths, specters and whatever else pass through your camp on their way to get to the area that you wanted them to go to. That was what you wanted to happen... I genuinely want to know what part of any of that seemed like a good idea. And this isn't even the only question I have about any of what you did...

The Lich bit is good, but it's only half of the point of the BBEG.

With the proposed Lich bit, you're getting your players to evaluate why they did what they did, and explaining why that was a terrible implementation. Which your players seemingly need. However, the other half of the point of the BBEG was to show them what a good implementation of that objective looked like. So (for example), if their goal was to be far away from either camp, then "off to the side" would be the correct implementation; if the goal was to be able to quickly crush the near-defeated forces, the patient construction of buried lanterns for teleportation, or just hitting them back at their own camps would have been smarter. Show them how an intelligent person would have gone about the achieving the same goals. Teach your players what it feels like to think, to actually implement their objectives intelligently.

Your Isekai example, OTOH, fails to hit either part of the purpose of the BBEG, because you have created an alternate them with completely different objectives. Your proposed Isekai is tantamount to saying, "yeah, I know I told you this was a sandbox, but I don't actually like letting you guys make choices about how the campaign progresses". Don't get me wrong, your players seem to need help in choosing objectives, too, but your proposed Isekai is more the "horror story" implementation of that than the "actually helping your players get better" version.

Whenever your players bungle something, imagine your incredulous Lich staring at you, and asking you, "why did you think that your players could handle that scenario? How could you have implemented or explained this scenario differently in order to make it more appropriate for their skills?" And, ideally, add a player to the group who can actually think, and/or at some point swap with one of the players, let them GM and be a player yourself, in order to help your players see what "having a good plan" and "not being a duncewaffle" look like.

Also, given the tenor of your proposed Isekai, it might be valuable to do some soul-searching, and consider whether you actually want to give your players the freedom of a sandbox or not.

[AntiAuthority]

The Lich bit is good, but it's only half of the point of the BBEG.

With the proposed Lich bit, you're getting your players to evaluate why they did what they did, and explaining why that was a terrible implementation. Which your players seemingly need. However, the other half of the point of the BBEG was to show them what a good implementation of that objective looked like. So (for example), if their goal was to be far away from either camp, then "off to the side" would be the correct implementation; if the goal was to be able to quickly crush the near-defeated forces, the patient construction of buried lanterns for teleportation, or just hitting them back at their own camps would have been smarter. Show them how an intelligent person would have gone about the achieving the same goals. Teach your players what it feels like to think, to actually implement their objectives intelligently.

Your Isekai example, OTOH, fails to hit either part of the purpose of the BBEG, because you have created an alternate them with completely different objectives. Your proposed Isekai is tantamount to saying, "yeah, I know I told you this was a sandbox, but I don't actually like letting you guys make choices about how the campaign progresses". Don't get me wrong, your players seem to need help in choosing objectives, too, but your proposed Isekai is more the "horror story" implementation of that than the "actually helping your players get better" version.

Whenever your players bungle something, imagine your incredulous Lich staring at you, and asking you, "why did you think that your players could handle that scenario? How could you have implemented or explained this scenario differently in order to make it more appropriate for their skills?" And, ideally, add a player to the group who can actually think, and/or at some point swap with one of the players, let them GM and be a player yourself, in order to help your players see what "having a good plan" and "not being a duncewaffle" look like.

Also, given the tenor of your proposed Isekai, it might be valuable to do some soul-searching, and consider whether you actually want to give your players the freedom of a sandbox or not.

I like the sandbox approach (I think? It's not so much the sandbox thing bothers me, as their goals... I'll get to that in a bit.) I understand why it might look like that, but for context, I mentioned I played games with these two before... When I'm not one of them is my GM and the other is my fellow player. My PC roasts his PC by bringing up an incident where his hairbrained schemes almost led to one NPC party member almost being killed (and we're too poor and low level to get a resurrection at the moment.) While his character roasts mine over being triggered by a certain character's name and generally being mentally weak. Anyway, in that campaign, the other player (OOC) seems to love having NPCs roast him, so that he can roast the NPC back in even harsher ways (often involving his character cussing them out in languages his character has only a basic grasp of.) But I understand why it might look like I'm not for the sandbag design. But I'll think on it some more just in case some part of me isn't.

Now, about the goals thing and the isekai... I think I understand what (part of) the issue is. With the isekai example above, one player did admit they did want to do those things (while I asked in a stealthy manner to avoid any spoilers), but when the other player wanted to abandon those things... The one that did want to accomplish those goals did as well, mostly to see where it led... But my player noted his character wasn't exactly happy about how things turned out (he noted his character really hated the insect goddess and troll (even prior to the revelation it wasn't a normal troll) for... Well, obvious reasons that amount to, "They tried to kill us.") In the isekai example, it could be seen as an example of what the PCs could have gotten if one PC had kept going with their original goals and gotten what they wanted, with an explanation of how they achieved them.

Now part of the problem that I mentioned above... One player seems unsure on if their ideas are good or not, so they defer to the other player's actions. The player strongly suspects they messed up last section (which they did, yes) and believes the other player's choices are better (which probably isn't the case as, if they succeeded, their party probably would have been killed in the crossfire.) I'm going to try to encourage both to try talking to each other more rather than one saying, "We should do this!" and the other player just going along because they're unsure of their ideas. Last session, the roles were reversed and... Well, one player saw the obvious red flags but chose to go along with it, leading to this current situation. They might need balance, but I'm not sure how to address the situation beyond saying, "If one of you does something in-game that the other finds suspect/is at odds with your character's goal, you should probably talk about it and make sure you're both on the same page." I may even resort to pausing the game temporarily to ask, "Are you BOTH ok with this course of action?"

We were supposed to have more players but... They got busy so it's just for now. I believe another player's presence MAY have changed the way they handle things, but I can't be certain as it depends on the player in question. I'm trying my best to get into their mindset but... It's kind of difficult, so I'm still figuring that out.

For the other part of the issue... I'm probably going to put a "rival" character in that has the same goals (immediate or long-term, still figuring that out) as the party. Or ally... Or something to help them see what they could be doing better. I'm still figuring out the best way to approach this angle. For all I know, they might be several different characters that are currently working on things the PCs want to do and being efficient about it.

[Cactus]

It's probably true that neither player's initial plan is very good. This is nothing to be ashamed of and is usually true of most plans. What appears to be missing is the step where the players discuss a proposal, spot the obvious flaws, and craft it into a decent plan. This conversation can be in or out of character but if your players default to "we do the first thing that somebody says" disaster will continue to follow them.

[AntiAuthority]

I played the session... Gave them plenty of chances to leave... They locked up the one NPC who was basically freaking out since they could "sense" something was going on, refusing to let her go. They eventually let her leave, along with her elder sister and another shady NPC party member.

Two more NPC party members expressed concerns that they had bad gut feelings about the situation... They realized, "Ok, maybe we should leave..." and then chose to stay several more hours to see what this "great danger" would do instead of leaving ASAP.

I got a migraine halfway through. By itself, I could probably work through it for a bit (happens a lot), but it was everything that came after that kind of killed my fun. In hindsight, I doubt the migraine changed much for everything else.

Anyway, another floating skull (being communicated through by the Lich) appears to off the party a chance to "end the fighting" by killing the others ide and the party follows... Despite another NPC repeatedly asking if it was really a good idea.

The Lich revealed they caught onto their deception, and began to break down where they went wrong up, like why putting themselves in the middle of a warzone was a bad idea until-

PC: Yeah, let's skip that, I wanna try something.

And kept interrupting when I was trying to explain how their tactics could have been better (like not being in the path of two opposing forces). So I suppose tactics are out, brute force is in.

Then the player used a power that... Has somewhat vague implications (especially when converting stuff from other games) with the rest of the parts of the game, so I paused the game and spent some time looking up information on if it worked. Basically the last PC this player used retired like 1-3 sessions ago (got replaced near the beginning of one session actually) and the player seemed eager to try all the abilities at once in a hard combat encounter.

Then it happened again with a slightly different thing that this new PC can do, which caused me to pause the game for another few minutes to look up information online.

Most of the combat part of the session was me reading the rules and trying to figure out how to convert it to the game, rather than actually fighting...

Then the same one was essentially fighting me on the rulings, "This thing that you converted from another game SHOULD work this way, right?" and being annoyed when I took time to think about it/began leaning towards no because it was consistent with other things that happened prior instead of giving a yes.

Not helping my migraine was the constant asking from this player of, "If we win this, we level up right?" and "Did the win the encounter yet?" and "So we got that level up, right?" during the battle.

So I ended the session mid-combat to think on things and research the character's abilities more for more consistent rulings... And was asked, "We won the fight, right?" immediately after, despite there being multiple enemies left on the map.

Because of the constant interruptions (especially in regards to helping them with their tactics), needing to think on various rulings (and when I do make a ruling, being met with annoyance if they disagreed with it), being asked variations of the same question several times in succession and the migraine were draining at my energy and motivation to keep going, I decided to stop there for the night. I forgot to have an after-session discussion on cause-and-effect as a result of not being able to compose my thoughts, I'll try to keep it in mind next time.

I'm going to need some time to think on this whole situation. One player noticed how frustrated/tired I was getting and thankfully said he would understand if we stopped for the session, but the other that was doing all of the above... I'm thinking on how to talk to him about it, as this is possibly the first time I've seen him act like that OOC in regards to a TRPG to the point where it was almost putting me off of GMing.


It's probably true that neither player's initial plan is very good. This is nothing to be ashamed of and is usually true of most plans. What appears to be missing is the step where the players discuss a proposal, spot the obvious flaws, and craft it into a decent plan. This conversation can be in or out of character but if your players default to "we do the first thing that somebody says" disaster will continue to follow them.

Yeah... I think the impatience is the main issue here, instead of thinking things through carefully. I told them to think ahead more carefully, but... Well, I don't know if that took too well.

[MonochromeTiger]

I played the session... Gave them plenty of chances to leave... They locked up the one NPC who was basically freaking out since they could "sense" something was going on, refusing to let her go. They eventually let her leave, along with her elder sister and another shady NPC party member.

Two more NPC party members expressed concerns that they had bad gut feelings about the situation... They realized, "Ok, maybe we should leave..." and then chose to stay several more hours to see what this "great danger" would do instead of leaving ASAP.

I got a migraine halfway through. By itself, I could probably work through it for a bit (happens a lot), but it was everything that came after that kind of killed my fun. In hindsight, I doubt the migraine changed much for everything else.

Anyway, another floating skull (being communicated through by the Lich) appears to off the party a chance to "end the fighting" by killing the others ide and the party follows... Despite another NPC repeatedly asking if it was really a good idea.

The Lich revealed they caught onto their deception, and began to break down where they went wrong up, like why putting themselves in the middle of a warzone was a bad idea until-

PC: Yeah, let's skip that, I wanna try something.

And kept interrupting when I was trying to explain how their tactics could have been better (like not being in the path of two opposing forces). So I suppose tactics are out, brute force is in.

Sounds an awful lot like they either have the mentality of "I won't be lectured on my choices by walking bags of experience points" or already decided this would come to a fight and want to skip all the exposition regardless of what it's for to get to the part where they see how overpowered their character idea was.


Then the player used a power that... Has somewhat vague implications (especially when converting stuff from other games) with the rest of the parts of the game, so I paused the game and spent some time looking up information on if it worked. Basically the last PC this player used retired like 1-3 sessions ago (got replaced near the beginning of one session actually) and the player seemed eager to try all the abilities at once in a hard combat encounter.

Then it happened again with a slightly different thing that this new PC can do, which caused me to pause the game for another few minutes to look up information online.

Most of the combat part of the session was me reading the rules and trying to figure out how to convert it to the game, rather than actually fighting...

You mention they switched characters recently, did they say something along the lines of "this one's going to be really cool in a fight" or "this one should handle combat easy" to indicate the fact they're trying to build around combat? For that matter is this the same person who pulled the human bomb trick you've mentioned a few times and, I'm guessing, also wanted to go all in on kicking the war into high gear?

You may be dealing with someone who just found out they want to focus on fighting and doesn't really grasp matters of scale, or thinks they've found some special trick to negate odds that are highly against them. In which case all the reminders of "there are consequences and things could get bad" or the forewarnings of "what were you guys thinking exactly" and NPCs wanting out may have backfired and been taken as a challenge to show off how overpowered they think their character is.


Then the same one was essentially fighting me on the rulings, "This thing that you converted from another game SHOULD work this way, right?" and being annoyed when I took time to think about it/began leaning towards no because it was consistent with other things that happened prior instead of giving a yes.

Not helping my migraine was the constant asking from this player of, "If we win this, we level up right?" and "Did the win the encounter yet?" and "So we got that level up, right?" during the battle.

So I ended the session mid-combat to think on things and research the character's abilities more for more consistent rulings... And was asked, "We won the fight, right?" immediately after, despite there being multiple enemies left on the map.

Yeah this is sounding more and more like someone who hasn't really grasped how combat in an RPG works before but found something they think is really strong and just want to be rewarded for it without really knowing how it works or why it's supposed to be good. I can sympathize a tiny bit with them expecting a power to work a certain way because I've known plenty of people who play things like Illusionists and think of some trick to get more use out of a simple spell only for the DM to go "no it doesn't work, no I'm not going to warn you it didn't work before now." That tiny bit is negated however by the fact every single one of those situations would've been resolved by considering ahead of time and asking if the vague wording meant what they thought or if the use not covered by the spell description could work or if it was strictly limited to what the spell says.

The jumping to "I won right? We're being rewarded for me being awesome right?" is just another point in my mind of someone who really hasn't paid much attention to how combat works in a game and expects the situation to be completely resolved (in their favor) by just pulling out the big flashy moves they heard were strong on some forum (like this one) or that looked cool. Problem being, as you've noticed, overconfidence and failing to realize a situation isn't as simple as slapping down you turn and steamrolling the entire encounter can be just as annoying as a complete lack of confidence and a refusal to engage for fear of losing.


Because of the constant interruptions (especially in regards to helping them with their tactics), needing to think on various rulings (and when I do make a ruling, being met with annoyance if they disagreed with it), being asked variations of the same question several times in succession and the migraine were draining at my energy and motivation to keep going, I decided to stop there for the night. I forgot to have an after-session discussion on cause-and-effect as a result of not being able to compose my thoughts, I'll try to keep it in mind next time.

I'm going to need some time to think on this whole situation. One player noticed how frustrated/tired I was getting and thankfully said he would understand if we stopped for the session, but the other that was doing all of the above... I'm thinking on how to talk to him about it, as this is possibly the first time I've seen him act like that OOC in regards to a TRPG to the point where it was almost putting me off of GMing.

Well "it's frustrating having constant interruptions to ask 'did we win yet' instead of actually paying attention to how the fight wasn't done and having every rules decision that doesn't give you an advantage questioned" would probably be a place to start.

You're the DM/GM/whatever the game rules and table etiquette dictate the person running the game is called, you have to craft the encounters for them, settle rule disputes, and provide the world for them to engage with. Part of the expectation is that they engage with it and respect your time and effort or at the very least are willing to discuss what they take issue with and work it out in a civil manner. Instead it sounds like they flip flopped on decision making for multiple sessions in a row and despite multiple reminders that the game world would react negatively to them just poking hornets nests and laughing merrily away or questions of if things were too tough to engage with being met with "it's fine as is" this player still expects that everything will crumble with the slightest effort and their character is somehow immune to all notions of difficulty or risk.

Now, obviously phrasing it how I just did makes it all very confrontational and is likely to just make them take offense and dig their heels in, or worse feel like they're the victim in the entire situation and the conversation is just bullying them for "finally getting into combat." Absolutely phrase it nicer than I did. That said you're still part of the group and participating in the game as much as they are, there needs to be respect for that. If they wouldn't talk over another player and interrupt them for no reason they shouldn't do that to you either, and if they would talk over and interrupt another player just to rush what they want to do that's kind of a big table etiquette and manners issue that sets a big red flag for that player. I don't know how the behavior of your group is or what does and doesn't get accepted and done at your table, I'm making some assumptions based purely off what you've been telling us and how I interpret it, but saying "it kind of hurts to just get talked over or brushed off when I don't do exactly what you want" is the bare minimum of conversation I'd be having at that point.

That said the description you've given makes me really wonder if the lack of situational awareness and social understanding is purely an in game thing. No offense to them but the way you've described the session sounds an awful lot like a kid excited to be winning a game and upset when people point out that's not how a piece moves or that they're actually behind on points; even more so it sounds like that same kid already brushed off any attempt at advice because "they know what they're doing" and has mentally shifted the goalposts multiple times from the actual win condition of the game to meeting a much smaller easier target and getting called the winner.

It's the kind of behavior I'd expect from someone new to RPGs or who has only really played with some aid from the DM to soften situations so they don't feel discouraged by the challenge; and if they've really undergone some big shift in how they act in the game it is genuinely worth asking what happened to cause it. Sudden changes in behavior are worth asking about, in my experience plenty of potential problems are cut short just by noticing someone is acting off and asking out of game if they're okay or if something gave them false expectations for how something works.


Yeah... I think the impatience is the main issue here, instead of thinking things through carefully. I told them to think ahead more carefully, but... Well, I don't know if that took too well.

As I said, sounding an awful lot like the impulsiveness and lack of social understanding in game may have some out of game roots. With these two players were the previous games you played with them in larger groups? Were those games also sandbox games or were they prebuilt adventures or games with preplanned events and goals and the standard "plot hooks going this way" prepped ahead of time by you or other DMs/GMS?

Sometimes players will act completely different in a large group or while doing something with a set goal and clear routes to get there than they will in a small or solo game or a sandbox game. Larger groups provide both more voices to and decision makers to balance out rash choices and point out when something is out of line as well as the expectation that the numbers are there for a reason and you aren't going to be the single unbeatable hero who resolves everything and dictates the encounter (with some obvious exceptions that the optimizers of the forum are happy to point out). Games with set objectives also give some direction and focus as well as usually giving clear stakes and making it known that "this is important and you should care about it, not just say it doesn't affect you and move on." Some players react to a smaller group by equating that with more personal power offered in compensation and, with the wrong mentality, more spotlight on them with the game being less about challenge and danger to overcome and more about how their character can be shown off. Some people also react to sandbox games by assuming since they can just go anywhere they can shrug off any situation and escape any consequences by just moving on, after all there's still more world and the people after them aren't everywhere and if it works in story it should work in fights. Those might not be why your players are having these issues but from what you've described across the thread they sound like they could be part of it.

I do wonder if they might be contributing and if you've really worked out with them what you expect from them in the game and what they expect the game to be instead of just getting brief conversations where they say "yeah sure" and don't really get what you're saying or that they should explain their opinions. A real session zero is standard advice for DMs/GMs, everyone on the forum has probably seen a dozen posts expecting it as default even if they only casually read through things on occasion like I do, what's not stated as much is that there can still be miscommunication or lack of understanding if one side isn't willing to really engage in that discussion and take in what's being said. If that happens at the start it's easy for the disconnect to just keep growing with both sides thinking they understand each other while still lacking any real context; warnings about potential danger from errors catching up to them can become challenges and hints of big rewards for resolving a situation, a lack of realization that things aren't always working out in their favor can turn reminders of past mistakes into reminders that they got away successfully and that the people they betrayed or ignored are weirdly permissive.

Whatever you decide to do while talking to them be clear with your meaning and make sure they actually listened and understand it. Be willing to hear them out if they say they thought something was different or claim you implied something other than what you actually said, but make your own stance and meaning as clear as you can. For the sake of future communication ask them what they believe you mean so that you can hear in their words what they think you're getting at to make sure it's what you actually intended and clear up misunderstandings. And if it turns out this is all down to problem player behavior or something that just flat out can't be fixed by continuing on with the game as is be willing to act on that whether it means discussing with them that they're being disrespectful to you and the other player's time and effort or acknowledging if the group and the game you wanted to run aren't suited for each other and moving to something you can all mutually enjoy.

[Quertus]

Wow.

Two of my sayings that might apply:

1) When you find yourself playing with adults who lack the emotional maturity of a 7-year-old, you’re generally better off playing with actual 7-year-olds, as they are more likely to improve with time.

2) Build the game for the players you have.

For example,



Then the player used a power that... Has somewhat vague implications (especially when converting stuff from other games) with the rest of the parts of the game, so I paused the game and spent some time looking up information on if it worked. Basically the last PC this player used retired like 1-3 sessions ago (got replaced near the beginning of one session actually) and the player seemed eager to try all the abilities at once in a hard combat encounter.

Then it happened again with a slightly different thing that this new PC can do, which caused me to pause the game for another few minutes to look up information online.

Most of the combat part of the session was me reading the rules and trying to figure out how to convert it to the game, rather than actually fighting...

Then the same one was essentially fighting me on the rulings, "This thing that you converted from another game SHOULD work this way, right?" and being annoyed when I took time to think about it/began leaning towards no because it was consistent with other things that happened prior instead of giving a yes.

I’m curious what rulings you made on what powers converted from what system, and just what the player expected those abilities to do. However, given how the session went, I’m concerned that a more boarding board game level of rules simplicity may be better suited for your players and your sanity - something with rules rather than vague implications and rulings seems preferable in this scenario.

[MetroAlien]

I'll second MonchromeTiger's "session zero advice"

I'm sorry to hear you had a migraine. I hope you got better in the meantime.
Taking care of yourself comes before social commitments, so ending early was the correct thing to do in any case.

That said, breaking off the session early could've been a blessing in disguise, in a twisted way, both for you and the players.

You can start the next session with a "mini-session-zero".
Something like:


Hey, guys. I was out of it last time. I hope you understand.
Just so we're on the same page, let's remember the general order of things.
I'll tell you what's in my notes, and after I'm done you can remind me if I forgot anything.
*you tell them your interpretation of events, without spoilers, but heavily implying they dun' goof'd*
(here is the point where you emphasise that their "allied" NPC left them high and dry)
That's what I remember. Do you guys still know what your characters were up to?


This should bring everyone's in-game perception on the same page.
If there was any major misunderstanding on either side, it'll hopefully get cleared up right there.
The disruptive player will hopefully explain their intention behind rushing to combat.
Even if they don't, you might get a clearer idea of their attitude if you insist on them recounting their view of the in-game situation, e.g. if their recollection focuses on their character's badassery, etc...

[AntiAuthority]

So, wanted to give everyone an update. I wasn't sure how the forum felt about double posting, and I don't feel this is worth another thread entirely, so removing my last comment to put this instead.

Anyway, first off, thank you to everyone who gave me suggestions on how to handle things. It helped me get some new perspective on how to approach scenarios.

To preface this, the campaign is done. Mostly because I get the impression my GMing style doesn't match with their own play style. By the end, I was strongly starting to suspect I was being trolled because of their reasonings.

To help differentiate PCs... I'll refer to them by their roles. One is a GM that I play with in another game, who I will call Other GM/OGM, while another is a player I player in that same game and I'll refer to him as Sparing PC/SPC since he was the one that kept trying to make friends with the antagonist.

It's a bit of a long story, but suffice to say... The one PC that was trying to team up with monsters ended up coming back to their base (which was, once again, in the smack dab of the middle of two opposing armies) getting overrun. While they left initially, the PC that was sparing everyone ended up returning to go down in a blaze of glory.

A bit before this, the OGM's new PC decided to try making a super disease that causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, inability to drink water, blindness, fever, weakness and dementia... And it kills you in 4 days... And it's also super infectious... And is airborne... And the creature they wanted to use it on would then spread it to other beings in the sealed off area they were currently in.

Me: ... Why are you doing this?

I could understand the idea, but it was just so poorly thought out because it was established that the barrier keeping the monsters inside was down and they were very much going to leave first chance they got.

Sparing PC: (Sarcastically) Yeah, I can't help but feel this is SOMEHOW going to go horribly wrong for us like everything else.

I had another NPC explain to them that the things could very easily leave (and, IIRC, the Lich either did mention they figured out the barrier was down BUT I can't recall if he even got that far before OGM's character cut him off mid-speech out of frustration at "nothing happening"...) and OGM had to be reasoned out of it. This whole exchange bothered me (mostly because, the implication seemed to be creating what amounts to the T-Virus on steroids and having it go horribly wrong would be me being unfair to them), but I decided to let it go for the time being.

SPC then creates a new character (he had been working on new PC in the chance his current PC died) who is an apathetic God of Death with a child-like innocence, speaks with a lisp and cares absolutely nothing for anyone to the point where the player said his PC might "destroy the world to start anew." This was also bothering me, but I decided to stay quiet until the game was done.

So, the end of the game comes and I realized I forgot to have a Session Zero at the start, and now seems like a good time for discussing cause-and-effect, so try to speak to both these things before everyone left.

What followed more or less killed my interest in the game and made me have a realization about us having different interpretations of cause-and-effect.

They explained their characters (OGM's mad scientist, SPC's apathetic god of death) were that way because my world was so bleak that nothing they did mattered. I responded by pointing out that while the world was darker than your average fantasy setting (beings like themselves were being hunted down, certain monsters aren't all misunderstood creatures and genuinely enjoy hurting people and the common mortals are are the mercy of more powerful beings like the PCs) they could have changed things by cleaning up the more undesirable elements. These may not be in the exact order that things were discussed, as they're fairly interchangeable.

EXAMPLE 1: IMMEDIATELY GIVING UP

Since the two PCs that had made the deal with the insect goddess were dead, she effectively kicked OGM's PC out (especially since she was made aware of one of them not thinking releasing a super virus in her territory wasn't a big deal and wanted no part of any of that)... I pointed out they could have gained the favor of the towns she was subjugating in the beginning of the campaign by defeating her and build off the momentum of that to create a good reputation.

SPC: We weren't beating her pet dragon.

... I was really confused as this was literally their first encounter with a dragon in this system. They had no frame of reference as to why they should lose, but SPC kept insisting statistically speaking... It was more of a 50/50 type of deal as they both had around the same amount of health her dragon did (combined, they had about double the dragon's hit points). But the dragon also had the option to attack twice (and similar damage die) at the cost of using up one of its movement actions (so if they could force it to move enough, it only had one attack action per round). It should have been fairly even at worst, and at BEST the PCs would have had an advantage if they kept forcing the dragon to move by depriving it of its full-attack action, and if the fight was too hard but they managed to do significant damage to the dragon (say at around half of its health), the thing probably would have retreated rather than risk its life.

I was really confused as to how he came to the conclusion that they "couldn't" win against an enemy that they had never encountered before in this system. To SPC, it seemed to make total sense. I thought maybe I wasn't looking at it from their perspective enough, so tried another example.

EXAMPLE 2: EXPOSING THEMSELVES

I pointed out that the kingdom being made aware of their identities could have been avoided. For example, even if one of them was identified, the other could still potentially enter cities in the area to gather intel or what have you.

SPC: Yeah, but we're a party, we shouldn't split up like that.

I was still confused, but was getting the impression they were going to defend their choices regardless of whatever I said. I tried to give another example.

EXAMPLE 3: THE TROLL THING MADE NO SENSE

For this example, they argued that the townspeople (who they frightened last time) not prioritizing the man-eating troll over them didn't make sense... Even though the Troll brought up, "You fed me!" and insisted the PCs were its masters, and the PCs did admit to it (both during the fight and after), they still insisted it didn't make sense for the townspeople to not side with them over the monster.

Me: You scared them and the next time you show up, you're with a giant monster that claims to know you and you apparent fed corpses to it... Why would they believe you had nothing to do with this? Do you realize how bad this looks from their perspective?

OGM: It would be like Superman saving people and getting hated for it. Why would he want to keep doing it?

SPC: Yeah, it didn't make any sense they'd do that. Nothing we could have done would have changed their minds.

I was also confused as they agreed they screwed up with the troll situation a few sessions ago, but now they changed their minds? So I decided to try yet another example...

EXAMPLE 4: THE KUMIHO SITUATION WAS RIGGED?

Their new PCs finally decided to handle the Kumiho... After they transformed and were going to go after the undying child I mentioned above. Since the Kumiho were now marked for death, but the PCs kept insisting the whole thing was "meaningless," I pointed out that they man-eating foxes could have been handled better.

SPC: Look, what was I supposed to do? I was barely alive by the time their mom showed up!

Me: Why did you follow two beings you (both IC and OOC) heavily suspected were man-eaters to a secluded location, where they had the homefield advantage and let them lock you inside of a dark room?

SPC: My PC thought they had a crush on him at best. At worst, I was gathering information and would signal for help.

Me: Then they bit you and started doing damage.

SPC: Yeah, but it wasn't fair as I couldn't stand up to their mother by that point.

Me: You put yourself in that situation?

SPC: How was I supposed to know the boss would show up when I was near death?

Me: You knew they were probably man-eaters but still chose to follow them and put yourself in that vulnerable position? You could have just politely refused to go with them and not taken any damage. And why keep them around and feed them your god blood after you recovered your HP back to full?

SCP then tried explaining how it was rigged against him or something/it wasn't fair/his actions made perfect sense with the context or something to that effect... My memory was getting hazy by this point as I was finding it harder to understand his reasoning.

EXAMPLE 5: THE IMMORTAL KID WAS DOOMED


I tried pointing out that the unkillable kid was doomed because even if the Kumiho hadn't found out about her existence (via brainwashing an NPC since the original PC was now dead and couldn't order her around), the insect goddess probably would have killed her since... Well, she can't exactly have that kid roaming around, eventually growing up and coming for payback. The kid is currently living in the spider goddess' territory (which, because the PCs refused to take care of in the earlier stages, is now teeming with giant carnivorous insects and cultists that will tear her to shreds/kidnap her at a simple command.)

SPC: She's just a kid, why would she care about her? Why would the kid go after her when she's older?

OGM: Well, the spider goddess DID torture her parents (and indirectly got her grandparents killed)... That might be why she'd go after the spider goddess... And the spider goddess is fully aware of her existence, and hatred for her, because of us taking her cult there...

I'm glad at least one of them understood the concept of revenge, but not understanding the rest was confusing me.

EXAMPLE 6: THE NPCS REACT IN THE WORST WAYS POSSIBLE?


So, the immortal kid from earlier... She snuck out to try to rescue one of the PCs. SPC apparently had an issue with that.

SPC: You're telling me her parents wouldn't have caught on immediately and stopped her?

Me: I think they were distracted by the revelation that you 1) teamed up with their abusers and 2) sent them to their doorstep.

SPC: But I cured them of all their mental illnesses, so it shouldn't bother them.

Me: You cured them of the brainwashing, yes, they're not going to be, "Alright, cool, come on in, I don't care" towards the people that tortured them and might still present a threat. They were more focused on the cultists at that point and angry at you guys for agreeing to work with them, since that happened like only a few hours beforehand. They weren't on their A-game at that particular moment.

SPC: See, you're refusing to take any accountability for this. She shouldn't have been able to leave undetected.

I wasn't sure if I was just explaining it poorly or not.

CONCLUSION


I kept trying to explain that the reason things were as bad as they were is because they kept letting obviously malevolent beings wander around unopposed.

They both stated that nothing they did mattered, regardless of what their characters did, it would always end up being some bleak, grimdark situation, it was my fault for making the plot that way (when I was mostly just letting the characters' personalities fuel their actions) and... Apparently if I had let the super virus they were planning to make escape into the outside world (which diseases often do), that would have been yet another example of me doing everything in my power to screw them over. Also, apparently I was refusing to admit any shortcomings on my side... Which is likely, I admit, but I still couldn't wrap my head around their rationalizations for what they were doing.

That was when I realized that what are cause and effect to me means something else entirely different to them. To me, it appeared they were just doing whatever they could to justify their actions after the fact, but to them, it appears I was just looking for the worst possible ways to make them fail.

And since I'm hypervigilant about being a GM that makes the players' actions meaningless (the whole reason I made this thread was to to try to be fair to the players rather than screw them over at every opportunity), that whole exchange ("Whatever you do, your campaign is going to end up this needlessly bleak because you want it to end up this way. Even if we made a new campaign, you'd find a way for it to turn out like this.") took the fun out of it for me, so I eventually sent a message in the Discord server that my GM style doesn't match with their player styles, so I'd be stopping/taking a break for a while. I can't understand their thought processes, and I gave up on trying to at that point.

To be honest, when SPC started implying that any of those actions (such as creating a super virus/following two heavily suspected man-eaters to a secluded area) ending poorly for them was me finding ways to make all their actions end in the worst way possible, I was starting to strongly suspect they were trolling me towards the end. If I have to wonder, "Is my party trolling me right now?", as the most logical answer, that's probably when it's time to stop the game.

Anyway, thanks for the help everyone. The ideas were good and I implemented them to the best of my abilities, but I think the main issue is that they have very different interpretations of what cause-and-effect/consequences mean in comparison to what I was trying to get across.

[MonochromeTiger]

Wow, that last session sounds like a bit of a rough experience. Sorry it ended that way but from what you're saying unless something got really misrepresented here it doesn't sound like it was on you necessarily. More like either everybody went in with different expectations and the clash just made the divide wider or the players really didn't understand that in a campaign where things react to their actions constantly avoiding risk and letting dangers grow is going to end in things going badly.

Expectations mismatch is a genuine concern and it's the reason a session zero is so important, not only do the rules used (including house rules) need to be established and understanding of them confirmed but also a shared understanding and agreement on the tone of the campaign should be present. On an obvious level there's making sure to exclude content and topics the players are uncomfortable with and shooting down things that you as a DM are uncomfortable with like certain kinds of violence, personal phobias and dislikes, social or cultural taboos and bigotry, or adult content. Beyond that though there's also the simple fact that agreeing on a "mood" for the content and establishing that both players and DM can bring up if they feel something is departing from that mood can do a lot to prevent the kind of growing mutual dissatisfaction you experienced.

That said, it does seem like your players really did land squarely in the assumption a few of us had that they just didn't get how consequences work and when to engage or not engage, even just sticking to the examples you list.

They didn't want to fight the Spider Goddess because of her Dragon but instead of simply going to gather support to handle the Dragon from the many enemies a big obviously evil Spider Goddess would certainly have they just left letting it grow worse. They're apparently not afraid to just make new characters but they're still so risk averse that they shy away from a fight that by their own statements is "even" and take that further by their choices to side with the obviously evil Spider Goddess and do things that empower her or let her grow her own power then get confused about why something they did led to a "needlessly bleak" setting. All based off minimal to nonexistant knowledge to back up their assumption.

They chose to do things that would make their nature obvious while knowing people had a fear of them and then doubled down to "not split the party" when all "splitting the party" was in those circumstances is making sure someone can still go into town for supplies and leads on a way to fix that fear. I've seen plenty of attempts to solve a "we're banished from this town but still need stuff" situation, I've seen disguises, I've seen sneaking in to steal what's needed, I've seen winning the town over, and I've seen the players just interact through a proxy who isn't banished like they are. This is honestly the first I've seen of only one player being banished then the other player doubling down to "keep the party together" when they're clearly perfectly willing to work on mutually conflicting plans elsewhere.

They actively kept a Troll alive and empowered it repeatedly, ignored the many warning signs that it wasn't discerning in who it chose to eat, and actually admitted their personal involvement with it to the people who were already afraid of them at best thus confirming every bit of fear and blame laid at their feet. This one should really go on the list of self made problems twice because they somehow expected people to take their side when they admit they're responsible for the problem that is now killing people and could've cut it short at any time. They even could've mitigated it by actually tracking down the troll and trying to deal with it after to show they weren't intentionally bringing disaster to the town but they chose to cut and run leaving behind the town that's now fully justified in blaming them for their worst problems and the Troll who now has reason to despise the people who "turned on him" after enabling his recovery and rampage.

The Kumihos are just as headscratching as the Troll because the way you're making it sound the "SPC" was either wounded before deciding to follow two enemies he already suspected were dangerous into an isolated location or did so unhurt but gave them ample opportunity to injure him despite knowing they might be dangerous. First off where was the "don't split the party" mentality here that the SPC was alone and exposed enough to be such an easy target, how is going off with two potential enemies who know you're there and you believe will try to hurt you "gathering information" instead of just walking into a clearly labeled trap? And how exactly were they planning to signal for help without just getting jumped the same way before that help arrived? But then they just kept both of the Foxes who made it clear they're willing to hurt or kill the SPC and intentionally made them stronger not noticing that maybe giving more power to the things that want to hurt you is a bad thing.

The immortal kid was basically them doing one small good deed then five evil deeds that directly counter it and pretending it's fine. Even at the most charitable interpretation it's hard to see how leaving someone that vulnerable with that many grudges exposed after helping all the people they knew would oppose the kid was ever supposed to work out as anything but the "needlessly bleak" results they expected.

Then the entire incident that spawned the thread. That's been gone over extensively for how many obvious gaping holes there were in their plan and the fact that they didn't even have a consistent plan and just flip flopped between how to handle things until they finally decided to win over the undead minion of a Lich who probably has easy ways of ensuring control and loyalty from their followers. You can't really achieve a goal if you don't even have a set goal to begin with, all it accomplishes is causing chaos and wondering why there wasn't a victory behind it.

The virus though, that's new and given the new characters I'm guessing that was just them hitting the point where they already assumed nothing would go their way so they might as well kill off the setting entirely. But then they apparently act as though if the virus does the exact thing they want it to do on the enemies who they've already established have a way out of the confined environment they're in it's somehow being twisted to punish them?

Reading that all, I still think it's a case of expectations mismatch but it feels more like an internal expectations mismatch than one between you and them. They shied away from danger constantly as though they were expecting you to go out of your way to be a "killer DM" and run their characters through a meat grinder but at the same time they said the difficulty was fine. They kept aiding their biggest threats while at best making and breaking promises to potential allies which I'd expect from a group of amateurs who are trying to play Evil characters without understanding that "Evil" doesn't mean "lacks self preservation." Despite that they also expected good things to come from it which makes it sound like they were still expecting it to be a bright and happy campaign where all it takes to be the loved and respected hero is hitting the bad things a couple times before running off. All in all they were their own worst enemies every step of the way, still expecting that no matter what they did it would somehow end up nice and happy in the end even when they knowingly aid creatures with a stated goal of killing and eating people, and instead of acknowledging "well we messed up" chose to see that as the setting being forced to be bleak and hostile.

In other words I'm sorry you had the experience but going strictly by what you've said throughout the thread realizing that their playstyle and your DMing style don't match was probably the best result with the least likelihood of hurt feelings. The alternative would've probably been increasingly passive aggressive "just end it already" characters like their last two while still not understanding why just releasing superweapons and not caring about problems at all is making them such big targets and the setting such a bad place to be in.

[Vahnavoi]

@AntiAuthority:

I've written about similar things before. If you want to understand what is happening, that's relatively simple to explain in terms of certain cognitive biases. It's not very helpful, because simply being aware of said biases does not make humans much better at avoiding them.

The first is negativity bias, the tendency of humans to weigh bad events over good ones, especially in social situations. Do keep in mind that as a game master, you are responsible for actions of all characters you control. Regardless of how justified those actions are, the social reality of a game table is that every bad thing happening in retaliation to the player characters is by your decision. This means that if you want your players' to even maintain a neutral image of you, positive events have to be more common than negative ones, by ratio of 9 to 1.

You might think "wait, that doesn't sound fair". You'd be right, it isn't. A fair split would be 50/50. That's the only well-defined meaning of "fairness" in a game that involves chance. But humans aren't all that good at estimating fairness. If you ask a human to produce a 50/50 distribution, the result tends to be closer to 60/40. Combine this with negativity bias, and you ought to realize that if a human loses a few rounds in a series, they'll very likely consider the distribution rigged against them, even if its, mathematically, absolutely fair.

Now consider hindsight bias. Hindsight bias is a result of people updating their evaluation when they come across new information. Sounds good, right? But in the process, they tend to forget what information they had when doing their original evaluation. In plain terms, this is when people start going "I should have seen that coming" even when they could not have seen it coming; what is obvious in hindsight is suddenly treated like it was always obvious, outcomes that were uncertain going in are suddenly treated like they were always certain, people are lauded or blamed for their decisions based on information they did not have making those decisions, so on and so forth. This is the major reason why your reality seems so divergent from your players': not only did they have different information than you did in the past, all of you have since then updated your ideas of what that information even was. The seemingly incongruent ideas of causality happen because you and your players have different ideas of how the inciting events lead to how things are now.

The case with the dragon is the clearest example of all of the above. Going in, your players might've had no idea of their chances against it. Going out, they know they lost, so now they consider it a given they were going to lose. And, since humans use the past to predict the future, they are now convinced they'd lose against any other dragon. The idea that the same situation could've yielded a different outcome is horribly counter-intuitive and people willing to believe that tend to swing to some other form of erroneous thinking (such as gambler's fallacy). I'm bringing this up also to highlight how much random chance will screw with people in situations such as this. If your dragon fight was boiled down to a single hidden 50/50 die roll, majority of the people failing their first attempt would conclude that the dragon is unbeatable. Only a minority would try again, and of those repeaters 50% would get confirmation that the dragon is unbeatable.

This leads us to: how do people ascribe causality to functionally random events? There's actually a fairly simple way to describe this: "If I win, it's because I'm a good or skilled person. If I lose, it was outside action, not in my control. If others win, it was a fluke, just a result of circumstance. If others lose, it's because they're bad or unskilled people." This afflicts even people who know they are playing a game of random chance where personal qualities have no impact on the outcome. It's why we have concepts such as "luck" or "fortune" (in their original meaning of divine favor) that we ascribe to people.

All put together, your players' attitudes are shockingly normal. They stem fron common cognitive errors almost all of us make from time to time.

So what you can do about, for future reference if not this particular group?

The most important thing is that when describing what players could've done differently, do not focus on what players did or didn't know when they made their original decision; both you and them will have an incorrect idea of that in retrospect. Instead, give them a spread of alternative actions they could've taken. These alternatives should always include both better and worse options. Focusing just on what could've made the situation better is what triggers the hedgehog defense you experienced. When the question, "so how should've we known to act differently?", is asked, reply in future-facing rather than past-facing manner. Get them to think how they will act based on what they know, rather than how they did act based on what they did know.

The above only has effect as long as players are willing to entertain alternate perspectives and actions in good faith. The moment a game master loses that good faith, it becomes an impossible battle.