How much of this was my fault?

[Catullus64]

Ran a one-off game recently with two people I don't get to see very often in-person. I don't think it went terribly well, and the players seemed kinda lukewarm about it in the end.

I don't think I did anything wrong. But people in the wrong seldom do. I figured it'd be good to describe what happened in the game, as neutrally as I can, and get some outside perspective, just to see what lessons I need to learn from this fairly mediocre game.

Spoiler: Premise

Show

My idea was to run an homage (or, less diplomatically, a rip-off) of the short story by Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant, because it's just about one of the most classic D&D things in existence that isn't actually D&D-branded. So I designed an evil sorcerer's tower and the walled garden surrounding it, and filled it with riddles, traps, monsters. I plotted out the rotation of the human guards, and had a rough idea of where in the tower the evil sorcerer is at any given time of day. I rolled up a treasure hoard. I came up with a weird and unique monster imprisoned within the tower, which would help the players if they found it and communicated with it. I came up with a few flavorful details about the city in which the tower is located, and decided I was good to go.

Spoiler: Players

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Was playing with my older brother and little sister, both of whom are adults. Both have played a little D&D before, enough to know the basics of the rules, but they don't play much or at all when I'm not in town.

My brother made a single-classed Diviner Wizard 4. Nothing fancy build-wise, just a solid subclass, solid spells, and maxxed-out INT. I let him take a magic item, and he takes a simple Cloak of Protection.

My sister was too busy to make a character on short notice, so I make her a DEX-centric Rogue 2/Fighter 2 with Dueling Fighting Style and the Alert feat, a fairly decent sword-and-board setup. I give her an Immoveable Rod as her magic item because hey, it's a fun item. I let each of them start with two Potions of Healing since it's only two characters and neither has any innate healing spells.

Spoiler: How it Went

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I start the session by describing their approach to the city, and the looming presence of the tower on a clifftop. I tell them about the tower, about the infamous but reclusive sorcerer who dwells there, and say that their goal in traveling to this city was to steal the sorcerer's treasure. Simple stuff.

They start doing some digging around the city, and discover that every couple days, a local merchant makes a delivery of food and sundries to the tower. They decide this means that they should pose as merchants themselves. They agree that they need goods to sell, and need to obtain them by stealing; I improvise a suitably unsympathetic cloth factor for them to rob. They do a pretty good job roleplaying the burglarizing of this guy's warehouse, with some fun use of illusions and the Immoveable Rod, and the dice favor them, so now they have a few dozen bolts of cloth and a cart.

They wheel their cart full of stolen silks up the winding road to the tower. The guards challenge them: 'I didn't think we were scheduled for any deliveries today.' They (mainly my sister, with her high Deception) admit they don't have a delivery scheduled, but say that their wares are so good that the sorcerer will really want to see them. I consider that a pretty difficult sell, and the dice fall low. The guard tells them to be off. When they press the matter, the guard looks them over, lowers his voice so the other guard doesn't hear, and warns them that the sorcerer does really messed up stuff to people who intrude or annoy him, and that they should just forget whatever they're planning.

When it becomes quite clear they're not getting in that way, my sister's character decides it's time for violence. She draws on the guard, and a fight breaks out. The fight with the two guards lasts three rounds due to poor rolls and lack of any real tactics on my players' part. I decide at this point that more guards appear on top of the walls, javelins at the ready. Finishing off the two guards, the PCs shelter from the javelins under the gatehouse, and begin engaging in an inconclusive poking match through the murder-holes in the gate. After several rounds of this, I tell the players that they hear a door open somewhere to their left, and that they hear footsteps; guards are coming out the sally port to flank them.

I straight-up tell my players at this point that they might consider fleeing. My sister says, (I'm really not sure whether in or out of character), that they've already been playing for an hour and she doesn't want to go back to square one. My brother reluctantly agrees, and they both surrender.

The guards capture and bind them, take their stuff, and put them in a holding cell in one of the gatehouses. I tell the players that a few minutes pass, and they are unattended, hoping they will take this as a cue to escape. They both say that they simply wait.

The guards say that the sorcerer wants to see them; I play the guards as nervous, perhaps a little sorry for the players, trying to broadcast as loudly as I can that this is bad news. The players go with the guards, who lead them through the hedge maze, into the tower, and up the stairs to the sorcerer's study. The sorcerer, whom I try to make look and seem as creepy as possible, asks why they tried to break into his tower, and who sent them. They try to play it off like they were just interested in meeting him, and wanted to partake of the wealth of his knowledge. They claim that it was the guard who escalated things to violence; since both the guards who were actually there to say otherwise are dead, I let her make a Deception roll, and she rolls very high.

The sorcerer is now convinced that these two are not working for any of his rivals, that they're just some blundering hucksters. But he's still evil, so even though they're not a threat to him, he still plans to kill them horribly for kicks.

My brother's character starts talking about his own aspirations as a scholar of the arcane, and tries to flatter the sorcerer about his reputation and wisdom. Here's where I absolutely did make a mistake: I let him roll Persuasion, even though the sorcerer has basically made up his mind at this point. He rolls very high.

I immediately think "crap, I shouldn't have let him do that. There really is no sensible way to deter the sorcerer at this point." I decide that instead of glassing them on the spot, this amuses the sorcerer enough that he'll use a more sporting method of killing them, by sending them to the basilisk he keep upstairs. (Although frankly, I was planning on doing this anyway, so that there could still be a game.)

He orders the guards to unbind them, and tells them that up the stairs on the next floor, they will see the fruit of his researches. They go up the stairs, and once they're up there, the stairway rotates behind them, sealing them in. They begin exploring this floor of the tower, which is dark and seemingly empty. The wizard casts light, and they can see the statue of the basilisk's most recent victim. They guess what's going on, and clamp their eyes shut just as the basilisk attacks.

They're damaged from the previous fight, low on abilities & spells, unarmed, essentially blinded, and facing a creature meant to be a significant challenge. The basilisk kills them, and the adventure ends.

After it was over, even though they didn't say quite as much, I got a real sense that they felt like there was nothing they could have done; I think they felt railroaded. I feel like I gave them plenty of off-ramps and signposting about where things were headed, and that what happened was fairly logical from the choices they made and the situation they were in.

It was clear to me that at some point, probably about when their attempt to fight their way past the guards stalled, they felt like it wasn't worth trying to make plans or try things anymore, and they pretty much just passively went along to their deaths, with their only real plan from that point being "try to smooth-talk the guy we've been told is a sadistic murderer." I absolutely goofed by allowing a Persuasion roll where no significant persuasion was possible, but at that point things were already pretty effed, and they already seemed disengaged.

Did I do something to engender that passivity in them? They were fairly engaged in the first part of the session when robbing the cloth merchant. Often, when players check out and are just along for the ride like that, it can be a sign that they feel their choices have been unfairly invalidated by the DM; in other words, railroading. Is that what happened here?

Regardless of whether I am guilty of some sin or not, I consider this session mostly a failure because they weren't having much fun by the end, and didn't actually get to see the majority of the puzzles and encounters I planned for them. What should I have done differently? Could I have done very much differently?

[Dienekes]

Eh. Looks like you wanted a complex puzzle filled adventure with difficult stakes and dangerous characters, while your players wanted an escapist romp. They were excited when they were doing weird nonsense that had next to no chance of succeeding because it was weird and fun and their own off the wall idea. And you set the hammer that certain number of their plans were realistically quite stupid and punished them for it.

Sounds like misaligned expectations to me. Some people want beer pretzels and to think themselves a hero.

And one player not caring enough to come up with their own character is rarely a good sign.

[Damon_Tor]

They went through all that trouble to sneak in as merchants to have it fail. That was a time for a "yes, but" not a "no".

[Catullus64]

They went through all that trouble to sneak in as merchants to have it fail. That was a time for a "yes, but" not a "no".

What sort of "yes, but" might you have come up with in that situation? It's always good to have ideas.

[lall]

Big-picture, they weren’t super-invested, so maybe should have gone easier on them. As a player, I don’t like being penalized for an unconvincing persuasion check (based on what I say as a player), as my character is the charismatic one. But I know many DM’s expect/hope the players themselves to be convincing, puzzle-solving, etc.

[questionmark693]

What sort of "yes, but" might you have come up with in that situation? It's always good to have ideas.

The guard lets you in to see the sorcerer (no check), and gives you that warning. Now they get to feel good about having a plan, and it seems like everything you had with the sorcerer was meant to be pretty tough anyways.

This is armchair nitpicking, so take it with some salt. In your description of events, you gave hints that I would typically say were pretty good, and with most players would've been helpful. But for players that don't play almost ever - it might've been good to consider being a bit more explicit about what's going on and what they're headed into. It's different when you're teaching new players, vs dealing with semi experienced but inconsistent players. Just my two copper.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

It occurs to me that the characters should have hit the 'win' button (Portent) in the encounter with the guards... or some sort of Charm spell or whatever. This is one of those adventures where the most important thing is to get into the place without incident, and more experienced players (or perhaps experienced at playing the characters in front of them: Diviner) would realize. Once inside the likelihood is that most others working inside would assume the characters have a reason to be there and I'd assume things would have gone more smoothly.

In terms of 6-8 encounters per day, social encounters count and players should be willing to use resources where appropriate. This was one of those times. Did you do anything wrong? I don't think so; sometimes the players don't 'win', and if there was never a way of 'losing' in DnD I wouldn't want to play. Maybe the players learned something from the session and will make better choices next time.

[KorvinStarmast]

"I don't want to go back to square one" after an hour of play, followed by "I attack."
(This sometimes indicates a player who is getting bored with the scenario, or with the game - I've got a monk player who is a lot like this).

This "I attack" response probably needed "are you sure" as a DM response, I think.

Unwilling to come up with an alternate plan - this is the point where you and your brother needed to engage with your sister to point out that just because one approach didn't work doesn't mean that another approach - like go away, wait for dark, and try to sneak in another way ... won't work. The point to emphasize is that isn't going back to square one, it's moving in a different direction.

[Dr.Samurai]

If they don't play that often, it could be they weren't expecting "you might die" as a realistic consequence from surrendering/not retreating. They may have expected that there would be other opportunities and didn't realize they were marching to their deaths, despite it being very clear to you as the DM what was occurring.

It's hard to say as you know them better than we do, but I think they expected the merchant charade to get them in and they were planning to go from there. Going by your sister's comment, it sounds like they didn't have an inkling of a plan B and felt that surrendering would provide another avenue to complete the mission.

I feel just by your OP that perhaps at some point you should have provided an out between the gatehouse and the sorcerer, so they could still explore the tower and do stuff. If it were more seasoned players that might expect a gruesome death at the top of the stairs, then you handled it just fine. But if they're not so familiar with the game, I think expectations were misaligned.

[Nidgit]

It seems you set up meeting the sorcerer as an automatic lose condition, considering that even a very high Persuasion roll just got them into a "creative" kill. Once it became clear the party was voluntarily heading in that direction, you needed to come up with some other course of action for the sorcerer that didn't inevitably end up in their deaths. Offering them a short rest while waiting in the holding cell could have helped things too.

[Unoriginal]

Ran a one-off game recently with two people I don't get to see very often in-person. I don't think it went terribly well, and the players seemed kinda lukewarm about it in the end.

I don't think I did anything wrong. But people in the wrong seldom do. I figured it'd be good to describe what happened in the game, as neutrally as I can, and get some outside perspective, just to see what lessons I need to learn from this fairly mediocre game.

Spoiler: Premise

Show

My idea was to run an homage (or, less diplomatically, a rip-off) of the short story by Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant, because it's just about one of the most classic D&D things in existence that isn't actually D&D-branded. So I designed an evil sorcerer's tower and the walled garden surrounding it, and filled it with riddles, traps, monsters. I plotted out the rotation of the human guards, and had a rough idea of where in the tower the evil sorcerer is at any given time of day. I rolled up a treasure hoard. I came up with a weird and unique monster imprisoned within the tower, which would help the players if they found it and communicated with it. I came up with a few flavorful details about the city in which the tower is located, and decided I was good to go.

Spoiler: Players

Show

Was playing with my older brother and little sister, both of whom are adults. Both have played a little D&D before, enough to know the basics of the rules, but they don't play much or at all when I'm not in town.

My brother made a single-classed Diviner Wizard 4. Nothing fancy build-wise, just a solid subclass, solid spells, and maxxed-out INT. I let him take a magic item, and he takes a simple Cloak of Protection.

My sister was too busy to make a character on short notice, so I make her a DEX-centric Rogue 2/Fighter 2 with Dueling Fighting Style and the Alert feat, a fairly decent sword-and-board setup. I give her an Immoveable Rod as her magic item because hey, it's a fun item. I let each of them start with two Potions of Healing since it's only two characters and neither has any innate healing spells.

Spoiler: How it Went

Show

I start the session by describing their approach to the city, and the looming presence of the tower on a clifftop. I tell them about the tower, about the infamous but reclusive sorcerer who dwells there, and say that their goal in traveling to this city was to steal the sorcerer's treasure. Simple stuff.

They start doing some digging around the city, and discover that every couple days, a local merchant makes a delivery of food and sundries to the tower. They decide this means that they should pose as merchants themselves. They agree that they need goods to sell, and need to obtain them by stealing; I improvise a suitably unsympathetic cloth factor for them to rob. They do a pretty good job roleplaying the burglarizing of this guy's warehouse, with some fun use of illusions and the Immoveable Rod, and the dice favor them, so now they have a few dozen bolts of cloth and a cart.

They wheel their cart full of stolen silks up the winding road to the tower. The guards challenge them: 'I didn't think we were scheduled for any deliveries today.' They (mainly my sister, with her high Deception) admit they don't have a delivery scheduled, but say that their wares are so good that the sorcerer will really want to see them. I consider that a pretty difficult sell, and the dice fall low. The guard tells them to be off. When they press the matter, the guard looks them over, lowers his voice so the other guard doesn't hear, and warns them that the sorcerer does really messed up stuff to people who intrude or annoy him, and that they should just forget whatever they're planning.

When it becomes quite clear they're not getting in that way, my sister's character decides it's time for violence. She draws on the guard, and a fight breaks out. The fight with the two guards lasts three rounds due to poor rolls and lack of any real tactics on my players' part. I decide at this point that more guards appear on top of the walls, javelins at the ready. Finishing off the two guards, the PCs shelter from the javelins under the gatehouse, and begin engaging in an inconclusive poking match through the murder-holes in the gate. After several rounds of this, I tell the players that they hear a door open somewhere to their left, and that they hear footsteps; guards are coming out the sally port to flank them.

I straight-up tell my players at this point that they might consider fleeing. My sister says, (I'm really not sure whether in or out of character), that they've already been playing for an hour and she doesn't want to go back to square one. My brother reluctantly agrees, and they both surrender.

The guards capture and bind them, take their stuff, and put them in a holding cell in one of the gatehouses. I tell the players that a few minutes pass, and they are unattended, hoping they will take this as a cue to escape. They both say that they simply wait.

The guards say that the sorcerer wants to see them; I play the guards as nervous, perhaps a little sorry for the players, trying to broadcast as loudly as I can that this is bad news. The players go with the guards, who lead them through the hedge maze, into the tower, and up the stairs to the sorcerer's study. The sorcerer, whom I try to make look and seem as creepy as possible, asks why they tried to break into his tower, and who sent them. They try to play it off like they were just interested in meeting him, and wanted to partake of the wealth of his knowledge. They claim that it was the guard who escalated things to violence; since both the guards who were actually there to say otherwise are dead, I let her make a Deception roll, and she rolls very high.

The sorcerer is now convinced that these two are not working for any of his rivals, that they're just some blundering hucksters. But he's still evil, so even though they're not a threat to him, he still plans to kill them horribly for kicks.

My brother's character starts talking about his own aspirations as a scholar of the arcane, and tries to flatter the sorcerer about his reputation and wisdom. Here's where I absolutely did make a mistake: I let him roll Persuasion, even though the sorcerer has basically made up his mind at this point. He rolls very high.

I immediately think "crap, I shouldn't have let him do that. There really is no sensible way to deter the sorcerer at this point." I decide that instead of glassing them on the spot, this amuses the sorcerer enough that he'll use a more sporting method of killing them, by sending them to the basilisk he keep upstairs. (Although frankly, I was planning on doing this anyway, so that there could still be a game.)

He orders the guards to unbind them, and tells them that up the stairs on the next floor, they will see the fruit of his researches. They go up the stairs, and once they're up there, the stairway rotates behind them, sealing them in. They begin exploring this floor of the tower, which is dark and seemingly empty. The wizard casts light, and they can see the statue of the basilisk's most recent victim. They guess what's going on, and clamp their eyes shut just as the basilisk attacks.

They're damaged from the previous fight, low on abilities & spells, unarmed, essentially blinded, and facing a creature meant to be a significant challenge. The basilisk kills them, and the adventure ends.

After it was over, even though they didn't say quite as much, I got a real sense that they felt like there was nothing they could have done; I think they felt railroaded. I feel like I gave them plenty of off-ramps and signposting about where things were headed, and that what happened was fairly logical from the choices they made and the situation they were in.

It was clear to me that at some point, probably about when their attempt to fight their way past the guards stalled, they felt like it wasn't worth trying to make plans or try things anymore, and they pretty much just passively went along to their deaths, with their only real plan from that point being "try to smooth-talk the guy we've been told is a sadistic murderer." I absolutely goofed by allowing a Persuasion roll where no significant persuasion was possible, but at that point things were already pretty effed, and they already seemed disengaged.

Did I do something to engender that passivity in them? They were fairly engaged in the first part of the session when robbing the cloth merchant. Often, when players check out and are just along for the ride like that, it can be a sign that they feel their choices have been unfairly invalidated by the DM; in other words, railroading. Is that what happened here?

Regardless of whether I am guilty of some sin or not, I consider this session mostly a failure because they weren't having much fun by the end, and didn't actually get to see the majority of the puzzles and encounters I planned for them. What should I have done differently? Could I have done very much differently?

I mean, not blaming you or anything, but since the Wizard had convinced the BBEG they were just here to meet him and maybe learn more about magic from him... I would have had the sorcerer grant them their wish.

By putting them in the room where he keeps the tortured being he stole magical secrets from, and telling them either they kill the being, or the being will kill them.

That way the sorcerer gets to show off his magical might, teach the intruders a lesson about what it takes to be a mage in his opinion, inflict an ironic death on the intruders as they are killed by the secret behind the sorcerer's power, and torment the being in a new way by forcing them to kill to survive (assuming you kept the part from the story wherethe creature is actually benevolent).

Of course, being a self-serving jerk, the sorcerer doesn't realise the entity would be willing to sacrifice their own life to give the PCs the means to destroy the sorcerer and end his reign of terror.

[Sorinth]

Given the amount of work put into building their disguises/plan it seems kind of crappy to have everything come down to 1 deception check with the guards, especially a check with a high DC just because the player wasn't a smooth talker. So as other's said that's a fail-forward situation. Just having the guard say they'll put them on the schedule for tomorrow would probably work, or say they can't let them in but they can fetch so-and-so to come down and look at the silks to see if it's worth their time. The players might still choose violence but it's not a hard no.

Regardless a bunch of guards showing up after 3 rounds (18 seconds) seems like a very fast response time. So that was probably the bigger mistake, you should have given the PCs a chance to actually sneak into the greater complex with an alarm being raised fairly quickly. But that gives them a chance to find a hiding spot, the place might still be on high alert but it can't remain that way forever so perhaps by nightfall things will have died down enough for the players to continue to enter the main tower.

And for the persuasion check, you turned a success into a failure which is obviously bad. One option would've been to let the sorcerer play along, so he'll let them stay for dinner where they can discuss the whatever arcane matters try to get a bit more info and then plan on feeding them to the basilisk after dinner. They would be given rooms to freshen up in which would obviously be guarded but they would have opportunities to slip the guard or wait for dinner.


Finally if your Fighter/Rogue wasn't getting SA regularly which seems kind of likely given the only other player was a wizard then that wasn't a very strong build for them. Battlemaster 3/Rogue 1 would've likely been a better fit.

[Spo]

When they agreed to play this game, I think they probably imagined their characters doing movie-worthy escapades (sneaking in, swinging from chandeliers, beating up nameless guards). Instead they felt like bumbling mooks that the heroes of stories would talk about as a lesson to others the leave adventuring to the professionals.

I also think you forgot this is not a DM versus player game. I get the sense you didn’t want to be flexible enough to let your players make mistakes yet still succeed in some way.

Lastly, don’t be so dependent on the dice rolls. This is a role playing game not Yahtzee. They spent time stealing fabric and coming up with a merchant scheme only to have all their work go down the toilet with a bad roll? If they fail the roll let the consequence be that the guard is suspicious and will escort them to the sorcerer himself. That will give them opportunities to overcome only one guard by deception or force instead of turning the encounter into a siege of the castle.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I'd like to push back on those saying to fudge the dice rolls on the Deception check. Yes, perhaps the OP set the target too high, but social encounters are encounters. And this was a critical one, which likely would have gotten the players in and helped them avoid/ trivialize other encounters once inside. Players should be willing to spend resources on social and exploration encounters. If the initial discussion wasn't going well the players had resources (Spells and Portent) to get them in. If we're all just going to fudge rolls that don't work out what's the point? Might as well take a drama class and put down the DnD books.

[Dr.Samurai]

I'd like to push back on those saying to fudge the dice rolls on the Deception check. Yes, perhaps the OP set the target too high, but social encounters are encounters. And this was a critical one, which likely would have gotten the players in and helped them avoid/ trivialize other encounters once inside. Players should be willing to spend resources on social and exploration encounters. If the initial discussion wasn't going well the players had resources (Spells and Portent) to get them in. If we're all just going to fudge rolls that don't work out what's the point? Might as well take a drama class and put down the DnD books.

Sure but these aren't veteran players, so I'm not sure everyone was on the same page about "encounters" and "resources" etc.

[Frogreaver]

I'd like to push back on those saying to fudge the dice rolls on the Deception check. Yes, perhaps the OP set the target too high, but social encounters are encounters. And this was a critical one, which likely would have gotten the players in and helped them avoid/ trivialize other encounters once inside. Players should be willing to spend resources on social and exploration encounters. If the initial discussion wasn't going well the players had resources (Spells and Portent) to get them in. If we're all just going to fudge rolls that don't work out what's the point? Might as well take a drama class and put down the DnD books.

IMO. There’s a time and place for everything.

No one is saying fudge all dice roll outcomes. But occasional fudging can often keep the fun going much better than no fudging at all.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Sure but these aren't veteran players, so I'm not sure everyone was on the same page about "encounters" and "resources" etc.

Not veterans, but they'd played and the player with the Diviner was the one who actually made a character, so I'm assuming beyond the Portents had at least a couple of spells for social encounters for the one-off.
By comparison, I've got a player in a 3 person game in RotF; we had a similar scenario a while back (in early tier 2 I believe). We managed to scout the entrance and found a single guard, so I cast suggestion and had silvery barbs ready to go. With only 2 casters, committing 2 spells to a lone guard seems a lot, but that got us in the door and gave us some good intel on the rest of the place. I believe my suggestion was for him to give us a tour of the caves.
The other thing I'd say is that failure on the players' part isn't necessarily a bad thing. The fact that they didn't make it should add tension next time if they know success is at stake. Frankly, in answer to the OP's original question I'd say the one thing I'd fault is to make an adventure and one of the player's characters. It was said upthread, but if someone can't be bothered to at least co-create a character they're probably not invested enough to play. This came out during the session with the attitude of not wanting to 'start again' when Plan A didn't work out.

[Ionathus]

From your description, I can tell that you're good at reading the table and getting vibes from your players about how they're feeling. Your instincts about when the session began to take a turn match pretty well with the point where I read it and said "yeah, that would be the point where I'd expect to lose a new player."

I think your biggest mistake here was expecting new players to retreat. They are never, ever, ever in a million years going to want to retreat: even seasoned players hate retreating. For a player's first ever game, especially people who aren't terribly invested in a long-term campaign, you really gotta make it a classic funhouse dungeon romp: something where they get to kick in the door and be a hero and kill the monster and save the day, no complications.

Sure, the fights can be difficult or interesting. But you really need to take "fail forward" up to 11 when playing with newbies. Especially because they're far more likely to interpret any "failures" their PCs get due to bad rolls as actually being "failures" of them as players.

[Damon_Tor]

What sort of "yes, but" might you have come up with in that situation? It's always good to have ideas.

Off the top of my head, the guard can tell that something is off, but indicates he's amenable to a bribe.

[Alcore]

So much to unpack...

I'm going to be nice, I'm going to be mean, most importantly; I'm going to be critical. As GM it is half your fault good or bad.


let's start with "session 0"
You made a character for a player. This screams "no buy in" from the players and puts more work on you. As a cooperative game it means pulling your weight and they didn't.
You: 0, Them: 1

The game was overly complex for a one shot. They were experienced enough to know this for they seemed to lunge at the first "in" they came across. Also a lack of buy in.
You: 1, Them: 1

For sins you're running neck in neck
(The counting isn't to establish the loser to pin blame but to mark individual problems to solve)


...so in town...
Sounds like the investigation phase did not last long... sounds like they wanted to get to the good part.

Had a heist; good job. They had fun... did you?


Perhaps the key part of the issue. Did they know about how many guards the guy had?

More importantly did they know by how much they failed to bluff their way in? Some GMs are like "roll [skill] against X" and others are "roll [skill]". I usually find the later to be bad form but is vital for a one shot; keeping the DC secret allows you to fudge the degree of failure for a "yes, but".

This is a one shot so you need them to keep moving. You need to reach the end. So... the complexity worked against both groups. I don't know enough here;

You: 2, Them: 2


the jail?
All them... just waiting...


You recognize that allowing persuade was your sin... moving on.

You: 3, Them: 3


The boss fight was a forgone conclusion. Past experience with the guards suggests the players would not use the environment if you gave them a freebie so... nothing there.

Perhaps another sin for you for a sucky end...


Too much complexity, not enough buy in. All problems I see can be traced to that.

[Sparky McDibben]

But people in the wrong seldom do. I figured it'd be good to describe what happened in the game, as neutrally as I can, and get some outside perspective, just to see what lessons I need to learn from this fairly mediocre game

I feel like you've ID'ed two areas of potential improvement here. One, don't signpost new players. If there's a chance to escape, tell them they can do that. If meeting the sorcerer is bad news, come straight out and say it. If the sorcerer is toying with them, tell them that, too.

Second, fail forward. With the initial Deception check, let the guard be amenable to a bribe. "Oh, I could let you in, but it'll cost ya." After the fighting broke out, I'd have had reinforcements driving the PCs toward something they could use as an exit: sewer tunnel, loose stone in the wall, etc.

Otherwise I'd say you did well. Players don't sound very invested, and definitely don't seem to be putting a lot of thought into the problem.

[Monster Manuel]

I don't think there was much you could have done differently. Hindsight is 20/20, and all, so it's easy to look back and say "they were looking for this other style of game", but in the moment that's not as apparent.

There's a rule philosophy at play in the Dungeon World game that I fall back on a lot. The mechanics there support a success or failure, but there's a big patch in the middle that falls under "success with consequences". The best example is a lock picking roll. How does this roll impact the game? If you succeed, you get to move on to the Fun Thing on the other side of the door. If you fail? The game comes to a halt. Nothing happens. Either you try again (if your DM allows it), or you try to get around the lock somehow, or you just never get to the Fun Thing. So, if you fail, you have to choose from a list of consequences. Maybe you broke the lock, or your lockpicks, or it takes a much longer time, or you make enough noise to alert a nearby guard. If you failed badly enough, maybe you have to have several consequences, before you get to the point where you just can't succeed. But you still got through the lock, and got to the Fun Thing, and the game moves on, albeit with the players maybe in a worse place than they were.

Something similar could have happened here with that failed persuasion on the guard. It seemed like you were setting up the guards to be somewhat sympathetic; the guard could have caught on to their deception, but been into it. "I don't know what you are up to, but the sorcerer king is insane. If you're crazy enough to try something, meet me back here at dusk with some of those silks and I can get you in". Maybe the other guard overhears and sets up an ambush. Maybe the guard requires an expensive favor to help them. An auto success is no fun in the long run, but neither is a total failure when it comes down to a single roll. When they fail, make them pay for it, but keep the story moving forward.

Easier said than done, a lot of the time, but it's something I like to keep in mind.

[kazaryu]

It occurs to me that the characters should have hit the 'win' button (Portent) in the encounter with the guards... or some sort of Charm spell or whatever. This is one of those adventures where the most important thing is to get into the place without incident, and more experienced players (or perhaps experienced at playing the characters in front of them: Diviner) would realize. Once inside the likelihood is that most others working inside would assume the characters have a reason to be there and I'd assume things would have gone more smoothly.

In terms of 6-8 encounters per day, social encounters count and players should be willing to use resources where appropriate. This was one of those times. Did you do anything wrong? I don't think so; sometimes the players don't 'win', and if there was never a way of 'losing' in DnD I wouldn't want to play. Maybe the players learned something from the session and will make better choices next time.

I'd like to push back on those saying to fudge the dice rolls on the Deception check. Yes, perhaps the OP set the target too high, but social encounters are encounters. And this was a critical one, which likely would have gotten the players in and helped them avoid/ trivialize other encounters once inside. Players should be willing to spend resources on social and exploration encounters. If the initial discussion wasn't going well the players had resources (Spells and Portent) to get them in. If we're all just going to fudge rolls that don't work out what's the point? Might as well take a drama class and put down the DnD books.

did they have spells and portents? are you sure? what makes you so sure? portents are not a consistent 'i win' button. if you roll midrange (i.e.8-12) then they're likely only good to guarantee success on an attack roll. *maybe* on a low DC you can risk it on an ability check but thats just not reliable. and neither are charm spells (if they even had them...again, not clear that they do, why are we assuming they had it). there's 2 guards at the gate..charm person has verbal and somatic components. sure, *maybe* the guard rolls low enough to fail (its only dc15. even with a +0 to wisdom saves, thats still a decent chance of success)..but even if they do fail, the other guard might have seen it. Don't be so quick to assume that the players didn't use the abilities they had at their disposal.

Also keep in mind, at best the wizard has 9 prepared spells. across 2 spell levels. if we assume that its weighted toward 1st level and they prepared: shield, magic missile, detect magic, disguise self, absorb elements, mage armor, maybe burning hands/chromatic orb as an attack spell? like...they really don't have enough spots for all the spells they want to have prepared, why assume they prepared your specific pet spell?

[5eNeedsDarksun]

did they have spells and portents? are you sure? what makes you so sure? portents are not a consistent 'i win' button. if you roll midrange (i.e.8-12) then they're likely only good to guarantee success on an attack roll. *maybe* on a low DC you can risk it on an ability check but thats just not reliable. and neither are charm spells (if they even had them...again, not clear that they do, why are we assuming they had it). there's 2 guards at the gate..charm person has verbal and somatic components. sure, *maybe* the guard rolls low enough to fail (its only dc15. even with a +0 to wisdom saves, thats still a decent chance of success)..but even if they do fail, the other guard might have seen it. Don't be so quick to assume that the players didn't use the abilities they had at their disposal.

Also keep in mind, at best the wizard has 9 prepared spells. across 2 spell levels. if we assume that its weighted toward 1st level and they prepared: shield, magic missile, detect magic, disguise self, absorb elements, mage armor, maybe burning hands/chromatic orb as an attack spell? like...they really don't have enough spots for all the spells they want to have prepared, why assume they prepared your specific pet spell?

Based on your spell load out example, disguise self could have helped in this situation. Also, sounds like the DM didn't do this, but I generally roll Deception v. Insight, meaning the player could have used either a high or a low roll to make sure of success. As opposed to just fudging the roll on what the DM clearly didn't think was a good story (so no reason to fudge) these are things I might have suggested if things weren't going well. I'm certainly in favor of helping newer players, and the DM did make suggestions, though perhaps not the ones I would have made. I feel like the DM is getting a fair bit of critical feedback here with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, but the reality is at the first roadblock the players basically threw in the towel. If it wasn't this, it probably would have been the next encounter that went sideways... or the next.

[Sigreid]

Honestly, it sounds like they were only playing to make you happy and weren't really into it. But I don't know. I know none of you and wasn't there.

[Dork_Forge]

Two things that I think are at the heart of the issue:

- The were in it for more beer and pretzels, high heroics D&D, whilst you wanted a more realistic high-lethality version

- From your description of them, they didn't really seem invested. They may have seen this as a fun thing to do with their brother they don't see that frequently, it could have been any other activity but they know you like it. The fun activity turning out to be a high difficulty one shot where they repeatedly fail and then die probably crushed what little enthusiasm they had for it.

My opinion on the game:

- Two rookie-level characters is no time for the kind of one-shot you ran. They don't know the game or tropes as well as you do, and they likely can't leverage their characters effectively enough to be a competent small team. There really should have been an NPC with them, ideally a healer, and they probably should have been slightly higher level so they had some forgiveness space.

- They spent an hour coming up with a non-violent way to get into the keep, having all of that work fall on a single check was no a good idea, especially if it was a check that had a reasonable chance of failure. The guard could have just shifted into 'this doesn't seem legit, make it worth my while' territory. They have to pay, but they efforts are still not for nothing.

- Your brother rolled high on a check you allowed him to make, and it made literally no difference to what you were going to do... which was kill them.

- A basilisk is a terrible monster for this kind of game and players. They got the gimmick, but it would have crippled their characters to overcome it. I mean, you gave your sister a Rogue MC and then put her against a monster she'd likely not be able to Sneak Attack? This should have just been a grotesque looking meat wall.

Wrong level of difficulty, mismatched expectations, too rigid in your responses, and too easy for the PCs to fail. So, yes, I do think this is your fault, but ultimately it's just a game. Just apologise if they didn't have fun and suggest a make up activity when you're next able to, offer to buy them pizza or some such.

[Jerrykhor]

Hmm jailbreak scenarios are often tricky to run. I've only ran it once and it was the opening of Out of the Abyss, which the PCs start the campaign as prisoners and had to break out. The module gave many obvious hints and cues for the players, going even as far as having an NPC help them.

But overall I think you have a wrong mindset when DMing, that is, you think you are giving them a strong enough hint, and you think they will do what you expect them to do. I can tell you from experience that both are very wrong assumptions to have, especially when running a game for newbies.

Another problem i think is running a game for 2 players. Action economy is very important, and pre-level 5 PCs just aren't good enough to handle swarms of guards, especially if they are non-optimised. I heard a wise quote from a seasoned DM: The smaller the party, the more important your CON score is. And your 2 PCs are not the most durable bunch from what you described.

I won't say its your fault, but there are actually a lot of things most DMs never think about, but should be aware. For example, the Rogue/Fighter sounds very unoptimised, and while Immovable Rod is a fun item, surely he could benefit more from a better one. I don't know your char gen rules, but you probably should have made them stronger, such as give a free feat, higher point buy stat total, special homebrew abilities etc. Weaker characters means the players are more likely to be passive.

Personally, I wouldn't run a game for less than 3 PCs. Its harder for smaller parties to make a comeback when things are going south, and it really sucks when a few bad rolls means the end of a session or campaign.

[Velaryon]

I agree with those who have said it sounds like the players (particularly your sister) weren't very invested. Also, fighter/rogue isn't a great build choice when she's got no teammate to flank with in melee.

I think you were harsher than you needed to be with the results of rolls, as well. In particular, the two break points were A) the guards at the gates, and B) the Persuasion check with the sorcerer. As others have said, "fail forward" was the right strategy at the gate. I think "it's true we don't have a delivery today, but our wares are really great and I think your boss would want to see them" is good roleplaying and it sounds like maybe you set the DC too high there. But still, a bad roll is a bad roll. There's ways that could have gone better besides just saying no - the guards could've solicited a bribe, or suggested they come back tomorrow on regular delivery day, or something else like that.

I think your real mistake though was when they encountered the sorcerer. You say you feel that you made a mistake allowing a Persuasion roll at all, and maybe that's true, but once you allowed it then you made a bigger mistake in not allowing it to succeed. There are few feelings in D&D worse than taking a desperate shot at a check, getting an amazing roll, and then having the DM tell you it fails anyway because they don't want it to succeed, and whether you meant it that way or not that's what it would have felt like to the players. Once you allowed the roll, you should have allowed him to be persuaded whether it makes sense to you or not. Let the flattery work and have him offer to teach the wizard some stuff, or something like that.

I also think you made a mistake in designing your BBEG to be the kind of character where you'd think "there's no reasonable way for this character not to decide to kill intruders right away." You basically forced the players into an unwinnable situation as soon as they were captured, and their capture basically came down to one bad Deception roll and not being able to clean up the combat fast enough... which is not at all surprising given there were only 2 players and one of them can't use their best combat ability without a flanker.

Tl;dr: I think the adventure was too hard for players who it sounds like weren't super motivated to begin with, and there are places where you could've cut them a break and instead did the opposite.

[Corran]

After it was over, even though they didn't say quite as much, I got a real sense that they felt like there was nothing they could have done; I think they felt railroaded. I feel like I gave them plenty of off-ramps and signposting about where things were headed, and that what happened was fairly logical from the choices they made and the situation they were in.

Getting inside the tower was a more substancial problem than either of them would have liked.

Sometimes I want to play an adventure where problems like the one above, and even far more complicated ones, exist and are there for me to help figure them out. Other times I dont want to be bothered and I just want to play an adventure where such obstacles are just there (if at all) to offer a bit of roleplaying but are otherwise trivial to bypass, and the main challenge is the combat, the roleplaying, or something else entirely. It depends on the mood, on the table, on the kind of character I am playing, and on other things.

Thankfully these are things you can discuss and know about before the start of a campaign. But for a one shot it's tricky. So assuming no session 0, you are left with doing things on the fly. Ideally you want to figure out what game your players want to play. Do they want to scratch their heads until they find the best way of entering the tower? Or is it something they just want to get over with quickly in order to get to the "real" action? On which of these two extremes are they closer to? How do you figure that out? Well, you can simply ask them OoC, but another way is to listen to them discuss about it in character. Have an NPC give them the task, maybe even pose to them the question of how they intend to go about it in order to proc their conversation. Then you hear them try to come up with a solution, and this conversation will tell you something about how much they care about this challenge. You'll know if they view it as a real challenge that they want to overcome, or if they view it as a trivial obstacle that they expect to bypass. This bit of knowledge combined with how well your players take defeat or mercy, can give you an idea about how difficult you'll make the challenge (assuming you want to cater to their preferences). Keep in mind, there is no wrong way for a DM to play out the situation in the gatehouse. Anything from hitting them with a zone of truth spell to having the guards be fooled by a fake mustache is perfectly ok for some table. You just have to figure out what fits yours.

Improvising. This is a one shot. Which means that even people (or at least some of them) who like earning their victories (and consequently suffering their defeats) might be ok if they knew that a DM may impovise to save their bottoms so that the one shot does not end ahead of time or tragically. Does it matter how you thought of your evil sorcerer and is it important to stay true to character even if it means the players die? Everyone will have a different opinion. Personally, I think yes, because it makes the game better in the long term (even if the short term sucks a bit). But this is a one shot, there is no long term here. So the question to ask yourself is this. Do my players enter the one shot so that they can attempt to win it? Or do they play the one shot so that they figure out how they'll win it? If it's the second, then improvise more when they fail. One of the guards is just posing as one, and is actually a thief in disguise, trying to steal some magic item, but she has a problem in doing so, and she needs the skills of one of the pc's to accomplish it (perhaps a magical trap that the wizard can dispel; yeah yeah, they are level 4, they dont have dispel, have them roll arcana checks to either disarm the trap or to identify enough about it (on a failure) so that the rogues can disarm it). Or it turns out that the evil sorcerer is out on vacations and he has instructed the guards to keep it a secret. And the guards might be convinced to let the pc's go if they can help them with something (maybe one of their colleagues accidentally sprung one of the traps and the tower is now being flooded with monsters).

Bottom line, you did nothing wrong IMO. Your players did nothing wrong either. You just wanted to play a different game (call it a more/less straighforward one, more/less challenging or punishing one, whatever). The good news is that it's in your power to change the game and have it be whatever you want it to be. Just try to get a more solid idea about what game your players want to play (ideally ahread of time), and plan (or improvise) accordingly.

[Selion]

(long answer sorry :P)
I won't say "it's your fault", i could find some minor issues which i would have managed in a different way, but it's easier knowing the outcome.

If any, i feel there is a difference between the first and the second part of the story. While in the village it seems you managed things in a permissive and smooth way (which, to be honest, is the way i'm used playing RPG). I think that with some pedantry the theft in the warehouse would have been more difficult, but players played creatively and have been rewarded with a successful outcome.
Note well! If you rolled a random encounters with guards patrolling the streets, and dice had been unfavorable to PCs, we would tell another story, in which you disrupted the players creativity. What created a collaborative narrative in this case, is that you didn't make that roll (or you indeed did it, but PCs have been lucky).
You would have said that you played correctly, running your world in a realistic way, this would have been true, but your session would have been a failure (in terms of amusement on both parts, which is IMHO the goal).

This is precisely what happened in the second part:

players follow the lead of their previous success, they find an obstacle, which they decide to overcome at first talking, then resolving to fighting when their main strategy failed.
We could say it has been a error, or a unbeautiful way of playing the game, but lets analyze how severe this error is and how harsh it has been punished.
Severity of player's error:
"They wheel their cart full of stolen silks up the winding road to the tower"
how well the context has been presented? Was them in a casual street leading to the tower or was them literally at the tower gates? Did they knew (or was it extremely plausible) that there was other guards and that a fighting would have raised the alarm in the entire tower? Following your story it appears that they forced the very main gate, with guards launching javelins from the walls.
If the context was clear this course of actions is actually extremely unwise on players' part, and rightly should have treated to preserve at least a small degree of realism
Punishment:
Was it clear/plausible/necessary that other guards would appear (on top of walls, ok) after 18 seconds of loud fighting? This is the crucial step, things have gone sour after that, because there wasn't anymore a plausible way for your players to sneak into the tower.
It sounds to me that this was your way to tell the players "this choice has been bad, try something different". A more permissive way would have them be aware that other guards was coming, maybe with loud footsteps and yelling, giving them a few rounds of time to decide if keeping fighting was the right way to face the danger, or if they could use hiding and illusions.

With this choice you stole your players from their agenda, your choice is understandable, though, but mood had changed after that on both parts. Players have began playing more passively (because they felt being railroaded) and you stone walled choices different from what you had in mind (fleeing from the guard, escaping from the prison).
When they continued following your lead passively they found their death, they felt deluded, because their point of view is that you railroaded them to death.

In short, your (minor and unconscious) fault is stone walling players choices after they attacked the guards.
There could have been ways to give them at least a chance to survive and give them back their agenda: the evil sorcerer could have been intrigued by flattery and decided for a cruel yet less efficient way to dispose of them, or basilisk could have been fed at specific hours, making them a way back to their cell, or, you could have give them a hint of where their equipment was kept, or even you could have make them find some weapons in the basilisk lair from the previous victims. I guess your mood just dropped after the answer from your player, not wishing going for a plan b.