Plot Derailment and YOU!

[Ninjadeadbeard]

What was the worst part about it? Knowing that you spent 6 months of your life planning out an epic adventure that would take the heroes from the depths of the sea to the thrones of the Gods, only to see it all come crashing down in fire and pain? Or is it that you wasted something like a dozen sheets of paper on a BBEG who just got curbstomped and sent hurtling into a star?

Regardless of how it happened, every GM knows the feeling of a good recurring villain/plot wasted due to those meddling kids (and their Kender too!) we call our players.

What was your worst Villain/Plot cut short?

For my part, I just ran a game of Mutants and Masterminds. The players rolled up telekinetic ninja characters (of course) and had a grand old time wiping out a Ninja-Robot Army who spoke Japanese in a Christopher Walken voice. At the end of a brutual fight with a villain named Chromedome, they walked out of the torched warehouse to find Dr Dinosaur (yeah, THAT Dr Dinosaur) roaring past them on a stolen motorcycle, giving them the velociraptor-equivalent to "Kiss My Ass" as he went by.

And then one player decided to telekinetically lift his back tire up. Dr D falls off the bike at 100+ MPH, fails every. Single. Save. And Crit-Fails his Toughness check. So the guy who was going to be the bane of the heroes' existence, the guy who drove zepplins through their base and dual-wielded ice-cannons and thermonuclear homing missiles, the guy who was going to be the source of every woe the characters faced, turns into a grease stain on the freeway before the end of the first encounter. And then he exploded. Cuz his grenade belt.

[Surfnerd]

In a shadowrun campaign I spent a great deal of time building up a gang to antagonize the players. I made my main man just the best grimey dirtbag streetscum ever. The kinda guy not even loved by his own mum. First encounter one of the players shoots him in the chest while hiding under a car on cinderblocks. I was just getting ready for my parting monologue when the dice betrayed me and the players got initiative.

Games with guns definitely level the playing field no matter what your stats are. And wife beaters provide zero ballistic protection. Damn Ares Predators.

To be fair during that time I spent way too much time creating backgrounds and characters compared to the amount of time actually spent playing.

[ArcturusV]

I suppose one of the worst was that I built an Artifact related plot for DnD. The player characters would get the artifact at the end of their first adventure, and it would guide them through the world and lead them into a conflict between pretty much every faction on the world or off the world, where it would eventually end in Epic Tier throwing down in a 4 way war that could shatter the world.

... They got the item. I started giving them clues. One of them wanted to "Commune" with it, and it gave them part of it's backstory in the way the Artifact was supposed to communicate at the time, telepathic visions and sensations. It was dropping hints about the BBEG and what might happen, etc.

Before it could even finish up casting Summon: Plot Exposition, the PCs decide "Rock Jesus" is evil. Put it in a bag, lock it away, and try to ignore it. Told me there was no way in hell they were getting involved with something like that, they were going to pretend it didn't happen and avoid anyone who mentioned it.

[Reltzik]

This would have to be the evil character which the DM allowed me to play.

Evil spy, actually, for the... Dreaming Dark? I think they're called? The Sarlonan spy agency in Eberron. Face rogue. LE. Bought into the total-obedience to the Inspired and their plan to enslave the world in their utopian little dictatorship, and also purge all magic-users, and made herself a willing tool to this end. She was On A Evil Mission.

Her cover (which she spent years establishing) was a Tyre expat TN journalist for the Koranberg Chronicle, who wasn't above a bit of B&E to get material for stories. She landed in the party as an investigative reporter who didn't care that much about the distinction between breaking and making the news. In addition to handling the party's PR, she was constantly prying into EVERYONE'S backgrounds, asking everyone questions, interviewing the defeated villains (So, how did you feel when you realized you'd been pwned?) and generally being so irritating that no one questioned her being a reporter for a moment. She also liked to go scouting whenever it seemed like anyone was going to break out the detect-allignment mojo, though no one ever noticed that.

In actuality, she was occasionally receiving psionic instructions to steal this or that from villains the party defeated. The first one was to empty a treasure chest before the party got it. The description of the chest she was given was of a fancy, fancy box. She realized in advance that if it was empty, the party would suspect the rogue.

So she quietly bought a book of goblin jokes from the bargain bin of a bookstore we passed. And then she made an 10x10 grid inside the front cover, filled it with letters from the alphabet, and added a cryptic, meaningless note signed by someone named "Captain Zanzibar". Then she went through the book of jokes, underlying random words on various pages.

We found the chest. Other party members find it first. So she tricks the party into thinking its trapped, and has them go behind a wall while she unlocks it in case of a fireball. She makes the switch. Then she opens it where they can see it, and pulls out the book.

The wizard grabs it. Oooh, spellbook! ... no, wait, these aren't spells... wtf?

Eventually, they decide it's some sort of codebook or cypher. They decide that it's either a code known as "Captain Zanzibar", or that Zanzibar is some sort of BBEG behind this most recent villain.

To maintain this cover, my character grabs and doctors a goblin cookbook and plants it on the next villain, who frankly had nothing whatsoever to do with the first.

Gather information checks, quests, wild goose chases, and hilarity all ensue.

[Kol Korran]

D&D 3.5, around 5th level? the party was in a complex siege from forces of Yuan Ti, INtelligent skeletons and more... they were all led by a bone knight who exceeded the party's level by about 6 levels or so.

My idea was the PCs fight a losing battle, tricked near the end and the bone knight getting what he wanted from the siege and teleporting away- onwards to the chase and the next stage of the campaign!

But... before that they were in a fight that contained the bone knight as well, and as party's oft do, they decided to go for it! (I was a new DM at the time, I thought they will run? ) on went the longest battle I ever ran in D&D (25+ rounds) with retreats, reacharging, support troops and more. the party depleted nearly ALL of their resources (the arcane caster was down to acid spalshes), but the bone knight started to buff himself up again (after a succesful dispel magic), when the party decided to lower all the remaining defenses of the city, and charge after him!

it was then that the half giant psiwarrior with extension power remembered he could grapple. (haven't done that before!) so he grasped this second- most- important- recurring- villain- of- the- entire- campaign, while the others just bashed him while he tried to escape.

finally he had escaped! I understood he must run away, and fast! but the half giant ask- hey, don't I get an AoO as he flies off? and true to dramatic rules, he double crits the bone knight, killing him utterly in his flight.

but also . this has forced me to rewrie about half of my plans for the campaign, but made them so much better, and it's still remembered as one of the best moments our group had for a looooooong time!

[Felandria]

Once, our DM sent a Hydra after us.

She made the mistake of, instead of raising all it's stats to be a big enough challenge for us, at 12th level, simply raising its hit points by a lot.

I, the cleric, killed it with two spells.

Blade Barrier, in a ring around it.

Then Greater Command.

I told it to come closer.

Then back up.

And repeat.

It failed every will save to end the command and hokey pokeyed itself to death.

Thus a battle that was supposed to take up a lot of the session ended in 20 minutes.

[supermonkeyjoe]

Not exactly plot derailment but our group tends to have a recurring theme of first "bosses" being utterly destroyed,

First boss was a bandit chief, paladin charged, smote and critted, dropping him on the first round.

Giant wolf in the next campaign, managed to wedge its head in a doorway, everyone wailed on it, dead next round.

Then there was a Sith, got to let off one force lightning before the mandalorian shot, critted and killed him in one hit.

So the standard rule for our group is never NEVER introduce the BBEG as the first boss or in the first encounter, he will die.

[mjlush]

I was playing 'Goldon Child' character in the original Deadlands

I took the 'Born on Christmas' advantage but never had a chance to use it until the very last session.

We were facing a the end of campaign Boss Madtech robot armed with Madtech Gatling gun and flamethrower... It was chasing after two of the other characters, so I ran up to it, shot it twice with my peacemaker (to absolutely no effect ... I did it mostly because I liked the image of a skinny 10 year old trying to use one:-) and stood there out of actions shouting to leave my friends alone.

The GM was a bit bemused but did the only thing he could do and opened up with the Gatling gun. I then held up a blue chip and said "Its a little know fact but actually I was Born on Christmas'. The GM said What??? and went to his books to find that using a blue chip on born on Christmas "forces a backfire of some sort. Hucksters roll on the Backlash Table, mad scientists suffer a malfunction, and cultists get spanked by their dark masters for their incompetence".

He rolled the gun fell off ... Do you have another one? he asked... I did the flamethrower exploded and the mech spent the rest of the session armless and chasing me. The GM was a little nonplussed he was expecting multiple fatality's :-)

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I did it to myself once, when I transplanted the Lord of the Rings plot into Star Wars (with many adaptation, of course). I spent a long time inventing Star Wars styled dwarf-substitute civilisations, shoe-horning the Ring backstory into the Sith backstory, and all that stuff.

Then I killed Frodo with a stray blaster shot.

[geeky_monkey]

A few years back I was DMing a 3/3.5 (I forget which) campaign.

The party had been tasked by a high level NPC wizard to recover a macguffin amulet before the BBEG got it and used it in a ritual to gain great power. They’d been told it was imperative they got it back to the wizard ASAP as he was one of the few people in the kingdom powerful enough to hide or protect it.

Unfortunately the BBEG had been scrying the location of the amulet and sent wave after wave of goons to recover it on their return journey.

After the second or third attack the party decided the amulet was too dangerous to transport. Their amazing idea to stop it falling into the hands of the BBEG was to sell it at the first village shop they came across! This was despite the fact I’d made it abundantly clear he knew where it was at any time and would not stop until he recovered it and the wizard was less than half a day’s travel away.

They then looked around for a new quest as they’d ‘completed’ that story line. I quickly made up a simple sidequest where they had to wipe out a band of bandits who’d been harassing the innkeeper’s beer deliveries.

Unfortunately they never got to collect the reward from that quest as by the time they got back to the village it was on fire, all the villagers had been crucified, and the BBEG had a shiny new amulet to play with…

[DigoDragon]

I suppose the hardest part of a plot derailment is trying to figure out how to get that train back on the tracks.

In a long-running D&D campaign, I decided to have a nation of elves hit an industrial revolution, building all sorts of war machines using magic and then conquoring their neighbors with it. One construct was based on the "Magitek Armor" from Final Fantasy 6. Big tough riding machine with lots of deadly ranged attacks.
The adventure was supposed to lead the PCs over to one of their "factories" where they could break in and ride some of those toys for a short while, allowing them to unleash complete indiscriminate destruction upon the area for their own pure enjoyment. However, the party always kept passing it up for side quests like locating lost village girls and fighting off tribes of cannibal kobolds.

Ah well, it could have been fun.

[oxybe]

years and years ago i ran a campaign that we simply still refer to as "the monster campaign".

ogres, medusae, pixies, you name it and the players were it.

players came up to a rather "end game" area: they had a simple quest to do in a major town the BBEG ran by a high ranking NPC in the organization.

the party, after finishing their quest, go adventuring in the countryside and wind up stumbling into one of the emergency exits. they follow it and get quickly outnumbered. they let themselves get caught and told they will meet with the NPC.

my expectations was to do a villainous monologue and have an escape sequence.

oh no. not this party.

the pixie was invisible but they knew he was there, they generally ignored him, letting him think they didn't see him. they expected him though.

the medusa is the group's face, so she goes to meet with the NPC. Pixie follows.

guards escort her to boss who, almost immediately as he beings to talk, the pixie's player sees an artifact in his possession i mentioned in passing: a circlet containing the essence of a demon prince (they didn't know this latter bit).

pixie rolls surprise initiative and goes first. he quickly grabs the circlet and shoves it in his bag of holding. NPC boss who could see the invisible pixie yells the guards to grab the medusa and kill her.

first round of initiative, the pixie uses his pixie arrow to memory wipe the boss. this is something that never came up until now as he never used that arrow so, of course i forgot it existed and the NPC boss fails the save.

so the boss blanks out and the guards currently have the medusa grabbed, getting ready to stab her. medusa fast talks the npc boss to help her basically going "help me old friend, these bad men have me captured".

they proceed to roflstomp and destroy the enemy base since it's most powerful member is now addled in the mind and helping the already strong PCs (note that they were only captured because of the superior numbers and did not want to go through attrition of fighting the superior number of mooks THEN a strong leader).

needless to say the NPC boss was a temporary member of the party until he was sent on a wild goose chase (his presence alongside the party was going to raise questions) and the PCs returned to their patron with a rather surprising gift.

[SimonMoon6]

There once was a guy running a superhero campaign in his own set of rules (based heavily on V&V). Eventually, he got tired of the game, but instead of just not playing it anymore, he decided that he wanted the game to go out with a bang, so he created a group of super-tough villains who were intended to kill off our superhero group.

However, this GM had a bad tendency to want to brag about the "cool" characters he had created. So before we encountered the villains, he showed me their character sheets. Well, naturally forewarned is forearmed, so...

I had just leveled up, so I had points to spend on improving my character. I took some skill in disarming people and used gadgetry skills to build a wimpy little robot that could project various liquids (in particular, slippery liquids). Nothing too overpowered there.

So, when we fought the villain who was completely incorporeal but wielded a sword made of the only material that wouldn't pass through him, I disarmed him and smacked him around with his own sword. And then when we fought the ridiculously fast speedster guy, my robot poured slippery grease on the floor so that that fast guy tripped and fell and killed himself. And so forth. In short, what was meant to be a devastating defeat for our group became a quick and easy win.

I think the game ended later with some device that was supposed to take away everybody's powers falling into my hands, so that I was the only one on the planet with superpowers at the end of the campaign.

[EccentricCircle]

It happens certainly
The worst occurance was in my previous wednesday night game where the party were sent to stop some bandits, in the process they discovered that the bandits were camped in an old temple to the serpent god, and then as they faced the bandit chief it became aparrent that the temple wasn't as abandoned as they'd thought and the bandits were a front for the cult.
They returned to town where they were offered a job by a dubious buisnessman tracking down a stolen jewel.

They were meant to find that the person who had stolen it was a good guy (or rather girl) working against the cult who had legitimately bought the jewel (the powerful artefact they needed) from said buisnessman. This would have led to an intricate and complex plot as they raced against time to stop the cult from awakening their dark god, while the land devolved into war. they would have uncovered tendrils of the cult's influence everywhere and eventually had to follow clues leading to the lost city of gold where the serpent god is imprisoned...

Unfortunately they decided that they didn't want to take the job to get the jewel back at all, and my early attempts to get them back on track just made the cult seem incompetant. After a while I just dropped most of it and played up the b plot, where the lizardmen try to reclaim their lands from the humans culminating in a massive war. They knew that a more competant faction within the cult was directing the lizardmen by the end and probably foiled their plans but never found out most of what had been meant to be going on.

Later when I told them the original idea one of the players commented "Oh, that sounds really cool, why didn't we do that?" unfortunatly it was a case of too good roleplaying. There was no way their characters were going to work for someone who was seriously dubious even though the players knew that that was what would lead to the more interesting plot.

It was a good campaign even if it started out being quite frustrating, and I learnt a lot of lessons which have made future games for that group run a lot smoother.

plus i've got enough plot for a sequal to the original game just made of stuff they never found out about first time around...

[kyoryu]

Plot derailment = "The players didn't do what I wanted them to!"

[Scow2]

<Snip>

Heh... although this one's fictional, I can't help but think of a different case of Plot Derailment when the players not only refused to cooperate with the guy intended to be a questgiver, but ended up actually working against them: http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0206.html

Note to ALL GMs in this thread - To save yourselves heartbreak, just remember - It's not YOUR story

[ArcturusV]

Oh, I know it's not my story. It's my world though. So I usually try to create a world where several different plots, genres, types, etc, can go on and what not. And sometimes you just want to see how players would react to something you created. So it's sad when they run away from it. Particularly if they're the type of player that you know would typically enjoy it.

For example, in mine I was talking about? The players later complained that they had no "Big Bad Evil Guy" or the like hiding behind a curtain and directing the forces of evil. Then again they avoided the plot for it and I didn't want to be really heavy handed and force them into it (Though there were always signs just off to the side that the plot in question was still happening without their interference, in case they got frisky and wanted to save the day).

Then again the players decided to be less of "Heroes" and more of random leg breakers, criminals, smugglers, and tomb raiders. So there wasn't really a huge plot connecting them other than the "Totally Legitimate Shipping Guild" which would assign them occasional missions (which they never questioned).

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Note to ALL GMs in this thread - To save yourselves heartbreak, just remember - It's not YOUR story

I didn't have a story at all. Hell, I sold the idea of a Superhero campaign to my players with that Dr Dinosaur thing.

Me: Wanna play M&M guys? Superheroes? Huh?
Players: Well...um...maybe. I dunno...
Me: You will fight Dr Dinosaur-
Players: WE ARE THERE!

So it's sad to see the treat I was giving them get greased five minutes in.

[Kane0]

Writing up an awesome Planescape Campaign that only 2 players out of 6 understood and actively engaged in. From using Prestidigitation in a prank war that escalated throughout Sigil to abandoning Planes to be attacked by gods-know-what they just did not want to take the bait and play along.

At least they were interested in seeing the planes, that was the one reason I didn't just delete all my notes in the one go.

I'm just thankful I could manage to work on the fly and get most of the campaign done somewhat as-planned anyway. And we all had fun too.

[valadil]

The worst derailment I've been party to was when another player and I decided to hack into the government's computer systems, launch ALL the nukes, destroying the planet except for New Zealand. We convinced them GM that obviously hacking the computers was a computer check, so we did all that with a single die roll. I think this was a case of us immature players (this was 9th grade) testing a newbie GM, and him rolling with it but still failing the test.

As a GM I've never been derailed to the detriment of the game. I don't write very far in advance. If I don't use any material, that's okay I can recycle it later. 6 months of plotting and planning sounds like a waste of time. I'll plan a session or two, then start the game and plan around what the players find interesting.

I like seeing motivated PCs. If something is important enough to them that they'll ignore their save-the-world quest, that's awesome. That's what I'm aiming for. Once the players get to that point, I don't have to think of things for them to do anymore. I just look at the direction they're pointed in and figure out what they'll do if they keep at it for a few hours.

[JoshuaZ]

My PCs very rarely derail things badly. But they do figure out very clever solutions to things that I don't anticipate. Two recent examples:

Background: campaign is Pathfinder with liberal amounts of 3.5 thrown in. The PCs are working with/allied to/serving (depending on the PC) the Anats, a noble house that has seen better times, especially since the head of the family died as did the eldest son who would have been heir, and the current heads are both untrained and have other problems.

The PCs come back from a sidequest related to one of the player's backstory and find out that the Anats merchant caravans are being attacked by mysterious bandits who are clearly too well-trained to actually be bandits but are probably from some rival house. Meanwhile, the Anats have also gotten a request for assistance from an old allied house that is having trouble with a border skirmish far to the south. The situation was set up so that the PCs wouldn't be able to handle both situations given the timing and other constraints (among other issues most of the attacks on the merchant caravans have been in the North).

The PCs managed through a combination of clever timing, multiple feints (including feigning that some of the PCs had had a fallen out with the Anats), and fast juggling of caravan guards managed to set up a situation so that it became well known that the Anats were sending a lightly guarded relief group to the south and made it extremely tempting bate based on what they knew of the "bandits" attacks. So the PCs managed to get the bandits to attack the caravan that they are all hidden on, and managed to solve both problems since they then had time to travel down to the south and solved (temporarily) the bandit problem.

I had had detailed plans for how things would go very bad for each of the two issues not being solved, which would help lead into the next plot arc. But they did such a careful job that I it work. The Anats are now in a much more secure position.

[Dr Bwaa]

Mine usually derail my plot as a result of my inability to accurately assess their stupidity. I had a player, after the party fought its way up to around level 10, disregard every hint I'd dropped (some were anvils. Others, soarwhales.) and proceed to try to teleport the whole party across a bottomless, hundred-mile-wide chasm that the Weave(-equivalent) does not cross. He had literally read books saying that magic didn't work in, on, around, or over this chasm. He had interviewed people who had seen people trying to teleport across it, but simply never appeared on the far side. So rather than the short sea adventure I had prepared, I got to quickly pretend to have lost my notes and "make up" what happens when you try to teleport through this (because my notes say "anyone trying to teleport across simply fails to reform on the other side" and I didn't want to let the wizard pull a TPK). They then spent the next six months of real time trying to escape the Elemental Plane of Fire.

[Slipperychicken]

The worst derailment I've been party to was when another player and I decided to hack into the government's computer systems, launch ALL the nukes, destroying the planet except for New Zealand. We convinced them GM that obviously hacking the computers was a computer check, so we did all that with a single die roll. I think this was a case of us immature players (this was 9th grade) testing a newbie GM, and him rolling with it but still failing the test.

Nukes are on a closed system (not on the internet). You can't hack it unless you're wired up, at the launch terminal. They also need a bunch of keys turned simultaneously, and the launch codes. Also, people there can just stop the procedure in case of false launches or alarms, as demonstrated several times during the Cold War.

[scurv]

I think the worst derail I ever had was done by me, I had a lawful good party, You know paladins, honorable dwarfs and a monk(psionisist) who followed the Bushido code and the like,
But the party was utterly sociopathic. I Had wanted to put them on the task of being the shining example of how to live an honorable life under adverse situations. Doing the right thing and all that fun stuff.

But after the first session I had to defrocked both the palidins for convently (and in a meta sort of way)ended up leaving when torture was about to be used to extract information from the starving and badly whipped orc that survived a conflict with the party.

One session later with 3 very peeved players we then used the two warriors and the merc dwarfs to run an evil assassination campaign.

[valadil]

Nukes are on a closed system (not on the internet)...

Well I know that now. And I probably knew that in high school if I bothered to think about it. But the GM didn't and that's what counts.

[TuggyNE]

Nukes are on a closed system (not on the internet). You can't hack it unless you're wired up, at the launch terminal. They also need a bunch of keys turned simultaneously, and the launch codes. Also, people there can just stop the procedure in case of false launches or alarms, as demonstrated several times during the Cold War.

What you really want to do is attack the SCADA systems controlling power, water, or other utilities. Those are very often connected to the Internet, and usually have a nasty combination of lousy security and infrequent updates/maintenance; often, they were programmed decades ago, and may contain dozens of exploit possibilities.

Not that I would know anything about that, of course.

[Slipperychicken]

What you really want to do is attack the SCADA systems controlling power, water, or other utilities. Those are very often connected to the Internet, and usually have a nasty combination of lousy security and infrequent updates/maintenance; often, they were programmed decades ago, and may contain dozens of exploit possibilities.

Not that I would know anything about that, of course.

Not sure why you'd want that, though. Just inconveniences people for a few days before power is restored and the cops start tracking you down.

[kardar233]

I've not run enough campaigns to have them seriously derailed (partially due to the fact that I was a chronic railroader early on), but I've derailed a few campaigns.

Once we were in an Evil campaign where the party had tried to pull a heist on a dragon which did not turn out well. The dragon realized that it couldn't defend its hoard if it was out extorting gold from the locals and deputized the party into being its enforcers. This went along all fine until my character decided that the dragon had pushed him around long enough and set off a makeshift thermobaric bomb in the mountain the dragon was laired in, dropping several million tons of stone on his head. The campaign ended shortly after, as I recall.

Another time, we were just some people who had gotten in a fight in a back alley and (without knowing it was him) killed the heir of a major noble house. We went to their rivals for shelter, who gave us a job to bomb the factory that the head of the first house was going to visit. I decided I'd walk in the door and distract them while my partner set the bombs, but when the head of the house got there, I held up my partner in front of the head, sold out his role in the killing of her son and asked for a job. Again, campaign didn't last too long.

The DM of our group soon figured out that he'd have to draw a framework of important events that he'd string together with improvisation, which worked quite well. However, recently we've tried scrapping the adversarial DM/Player dynamic and planned out the course of the campaign together, which actually works damn well.

[Sith_Happens]

Not sure why you'd want that, though. Just inconveniences people for a few days before power is restored and the cops start tracking you down.

Depends. Does making most of the power plants explode count as "inconveniencing people for a few days?" Because that is in fact the level of damage that could easily be inflicted by creatively screwing with the control software. See: Stuxnet, the worm that basically punched Iran's nuclear program in the face a few years ago.

[Lord Torath]

Not sure why you'd want that, though. Just inconveniences people for a few days before power is restored and the cops start tracking you down.

Ever watch Live Free or Die Hard? As Sith Happens says, there's a lot you can do if you can access the infrastructure control systems...