Following the Plot... or not

[teh bunneh]

Inspired by Courtfool's post regarding players never doing what the GM wants/expects, I thought I'd start a thread to tell stories about when the players did exactly what the GM wanted!

(Therefore, I expect this to be a short thread). ;)

In my own case, the PCs were delivering a McGuffin from Point A to Point B, and had to cross some very hostile territory. They managed to make it all the way through, and found a friendly village of Hobbits on the other side. The local folk were delighted to have visitors (they were pretty cut off, so they never got news of the outside world), and the PCs made a few friends -- including a little boy who was thrilled and awe-struck at the amazing stories of adventure and excitement the heroes spun.

The next morning, the heroes jumped on their horses and set off. While crossing a mountain pass, they were ambushed by a Giant, who demanded tribute. The heroes had no intention of paying, but they didn't want to fight either, so they used spells and trickery to distract the Giant and fled down the mountain -- slapping themselves on the back for making it past the beast without having to engage him.

That night, they set up camp and (wouldn't you know it) up pops the little Hobbit boy, who had been hiding in the wagon. He wanted to go on an adventure just like the big folk! The PCs freaked. The players freaked. "Oh my god, we have to bring the kid back to his village, and to do so we have to get past that Giant again!"

It was brilliant -- they did exactly what I wanted them to do (and what I truly didn't expect them to do). They didn't check the wagon or look for the boy before they left. They avoided conflict with the Giant, meaning that they had no choice but to deal with him a second time. And they didn't just decide to drop the child off on the side of the road with a water bottle and a hearty "Good luck, kiddo!" :lol:

To wrap-up the tale, the heroes went back up the mountain pass, fought the Giant (he wasn't so easily fooled a second time), brought the kid back to his village, and convinced the villagers that they weren't kidnappers. A happy ending all around, though they did have it tough making up all the time they lost dealing with the child. :D

What are your stories?

[Supreme Serpent]

I got nuthin'.



;)


Hmm...well this one time, at Band Camp...no...


Ah. OK. Setup for new game, heroes haven't met yet, all pretty new on the scene. They respond to a bank alarm going off. Each of them finds a money bag on their way in. They pick it up to return it and head into the darkened bank. Once there, they see these other superpowered yahoos with bags of money, some of whom are near the open vault door. Mayhem ensues, with small "teams" soon being formed ("Hmm..he shot the guy who shot me, he must be a good guy!"). Eventually of course, they actually start talking and figure out they've been set up.

Players picked up the shiny on the way in, successfully misinterpreted things enough to get a Mighty Marvel Misunderstanding going, and successfully figured out everyone was a good guy before permanent damage done/bank destroyed/etc. So they band together and start tracking down the villain who HAD robbed the bank and set them up to (hopefully) destroy each other...

[OddHat]

Hmmm. Quite a few. My games never go as planned. :)

The Dragon King (an absurdly powerful Super) and his lesser minions were meeting in Campaign City. The plan was for the PCs to find the lesser minions, take them out one or two at a time, meet the Dragon King, fight him to a stand still, and end up negotiating with him to get a piece of meta-plot forwarding information. He was also set to find one female PC, Dragon Jane, sexually attractive, which sets up a future series of plots.

The PCs waited to ambush the lesser minions until all of them, including the Dragon King, were together. This lead to the PCs defeat and capture.

OK, not a problem. The PCs would be whisked away to Greenland, where a stunning revelation about the past of one PC, Mister Morph, and its ties to the game world's future would be made. On the way, there'd be plenty of chances for role-playing with their captors, and the Dragon King could make disturbing advances on Dragon Jane.

The PCs (and I should have expected this) broke free, ripped open the plane in flight, and got away. Meanwhile, Dragon Jane turned out to kind of like being hit on by another Dragon type.

Argh.

[teh bunneh]

Argh.

Typical, just typical. :lol:

Any good examples of a time when it did go right? :ugly:

[Manic Typist]

I don't know if this counts...

In my Semona campaign, the PCs are hosting a meeting between the various Houses of the city to try and foster a lessening of tensions, etc. The city is quickly moving towards war, and the PCs are trying to avoid that (for actually selfish reasons, mostly).

However, House Ivory is the House responsible for the recent troubles (they have a nefarious plan, etc), despite its appearance to be the weakest House in all of the city.

One PC plays perfectly into House Ivory's plan- he suggests that Ivory be made the coordinator for combined patrols between the Houses (the Ivory representative was about to do JUST that).

*Sigh* That was pretty nice. I like it when the PCs advance the plot FOR me.

[AliceTheOwl]

Well, that frustrated bit that Josh was posting about a couple of weeks ago? The PCs had to play JUST the right way for it to work. So they were wandering the wilderness, as I needed them to, bumped into some Order of the Wish scouts, and were rightfully suspicious. And instead of overwhelming them with force (and endangering the "hostage"), the party infiltrated them, found out about the hostage, and freed him. They also freed the men they captured without harming a single hair on their heads, just some distance from their destination.

Then, while they WERE suspicious about who the guy was and why the Order would capture him, their cursory examinations were enough to satisfy them. And they didn't bring it up again until they'd nearly reached their destination, at which point the villain (who was the hostage they'd freed, all along) got to speechify and vanish, taking their foundling with him and thereby shaking up their resolve tremendously.

It does help that, by that time, I'd realized that PCs don't pay much attention to NPCs beyond "threat or no?", but the players DID play along beautifully. That's what frustrates Josh so much about it. ;)

[OddHat]

Typical, just typical. :lol:

Any good examples of a time when it did go right? :ugly:

Those are less common. :)

Playtest of the New Circle 2005 Convention Game. The players pretty much stick to the plot, step by step through the five basic scenes in the story, skipping three optional scenes. They escape from a giant undead turtle floating in Kirby Space, witness the death of the Supervillain Bloodbath at the hands of four fighting Monkey Spirit Warriors while a giant Monkey Spirit Warrior battles the turtle, realize the involvement of the Sinister Doctor Chang (brother to one of the PCs) and figure out his plot to steal magical artifacts needed to forge a new Jade Crown (the mystical power object used by a PC that Chang believes was rightfully his), track him to his lair in a hidden temple on Mount Fuji and defeat the terrible Black Alice, and finally get to the climactic battle.

As part of Doctor Chang's power set, he has a few dozen spirit jars around the place, containing the Evil Spirits the Chang family has been capturing and imprisoning for centuries.

The battle commences, with Chang and his sister, the Light (played by SatinKitty) bickering wonderfully.

One of the PCs is a Flash tribute, under the name Always. The player decides that he has the perfect way to cut the fight short. He starts smashing the spirit jars with multiple move bys, freeing hundreds of years worth of captured Evil spirits all at once.

It works. Chang breaks off the fight to try to recapture spirits before they can escape to ravage Japan, China, and all of Asia. The Light and the other PCs eventually help.

Many spirits, the smarter and more dangerous ones, escape.

As a post script, the hero receives DEMON's Man of the Year Award, and invitations to join the Devil's Advocates and the Circle of the Scarlet Moon.

Unplanned, but incredibly fun, and would have made the start of a great campaign. :)

[BlackSword]

If there is one nice thing about running a pulp game, its when you lay out the obvious cockney plot the players stare at you for 10 seconds thinking to themselves, "This is an obvious cockney plot, its like something you would read in a bad story from the 20's." Then they get a big smile, grab onto it with both hands and enjoy the ride. :) Admittedly we are playing the pulp genre as a bit tongue in cheek and light hearted feel. Kind of a comedic break from our more serious games.

[sinanju]

I've mentioned this one before, but what the heck....

I decided to run The Expendables (2.0). The PCs would be exploring alternate dimensions via a stargate-like device using GURPS rules. This was before the movie, much less the tv show, mind you. But it was a very large circular object through which one passed by walking up a metal ramp. It was in a secured facility with heavy weapons covering the portal.

It was impossible to see through the interface (just like in Stargate). The main difference was that it took three days to charge the capacitors to activate the portal and it could remain open for no more than thirty seconds (it required obscene amounts of energy to open these portals). Once the PCs stepped through the gateway, they were committed to the adventure for at least three days.

I told the players that I would not dump their characters into vacuum, poisonous atmospheres, or anywhere else that would instantly kill them--but that otherwise, they could wind up in any environment. I also told that they could not use pack animals or vehicles. They could take "only what they can carry" were my exact words. They would be traveling in teams of 12, about six PCs and six NPCs (i.e., to serve as redshirts and as backups in case their PCs got killed). We generated characters and agreed to start the first adventure at the next game session.

We got together a week later and the players handed me a seven-page, single-spaced, typed list of the equipment they were taking with them.

It started with a calculation (using the GURPS rules for strength) of the maximum load 12 healthy humans could JUST BARELY lift and shuffle though the gate with before they had to drop it. They began with a fully inflated survival raft. Each character (wearing a harness clipped himself tothe raft with a D-ring. The raft was piled high with clothing appropriate to everything from arctic to tropical environments, weapons both sophisticated and simple, ammo, reloading equipment, tool kits, several broken-down mountain bikes, survival gear, foodstuffs, medicines, surgical tools, surveillance equipment, communications gear, plenty of water, and basically anything and everything they could think of that they MIGHT ever need in any environment to survive, travel and flee or fight. All of it neatly arranged by category with weights assigned to each item.

The raft would be bouyant enough to float even with everything (and everyone) on it or in it, at least briefly. There was even a cargo parachute attached with a number of release cords...just in case, hence the D-ring attachments for the PCs (though mid-air arrivals, in my mind, counted as instantly lethal so i never intended that).

Their standard procedure: stand in front of the gate. The moment the portal opened, the 12 explorers pick up their load and shuffle through the gate. Once they're on the other side, they drop the raft. They immediately assess the area for threats and climate; then they extract from the raft the appropriate gear/clothing for the environment and start looking for a site for their initial camp.

It was an air-tight response to my original instructions. No vehicles, no pack animals, only what they--all 12 of them--could carry (albeit only briefly). I had no choice but to admit that I'd had my ass handed to me again.

[Blue Jogger]

Sounds like the same group that I ran for a Fantasy-based version of Stargate.

Although I wasn't smart enough to say no vehicles... And I gave them about three months of prep time (the magic worked best on the day of the solstice or equinox). The also figured that because there was no portal on the other side, they could adjust the equations slightly to put them into the ocean instead on land, and since they explored the area first, I agreed.

So they built three ships and built this artifical narrow waterway up to the portal. There calculations left barely any room for error, transporting as much mass as was allowable based on well-defined Fifth Edition (revised) rules of how much mass could be transported given the portal was opened for 30 seconds (a surprisingly long 60 phases at Speed 2)...

And I allowed it, however, because the NPCs smuggled more mass than they were allowed, the third ship did not make it all the way through before the portal collapse. ***CRUNCH*** Spilling most of the contents of the third ship (which made it roughly 80% through the portal) to the ocean floor. :jawdrop:

And they still blame the GM on this one. :angel:

But I was impressed, they managed to get two ships through a tiny portal

[Lucius]

We got together a week later and the players handed me a seven-page, single-spaced, typed list of the equipment they were taking with them.

It started with a calculation (using the GURPS rules for strength) of the maximum load 12 healthy humans could JUST BARELY lift and shuffle though the gate with before they had to drop it. They began with a fully inflated survival raft. Each character (wearing a harness clipped himself tothe raft with a D-ring. The raft was piled high with clothing appropriate to everything from arctic to tropical environments, weapons both sophisticated and simple, ammo, reloading equipment, tool kits, several broken-down mountain bikes, survival gear, foodstuffs, medicines, surgical tools, surveillance equipment, communications gear, plenty of water, and basically anything and everything they could think of that they MIGHT ever need in any environment to survive, travel and flee or fight. All of it neatly arranged by category with weights assigned to each item.

The raft would be bouyant enough to float even with everything (and everyone) on it or in it, at least briefly. There was even a cargo parachute attached with a number of release cords...just in case, hence the D-ring attachments for the PCs (though mid-air arrivals, in my mind, counted as instantly lethal so i never intended that).

Their standard procedure: stand in front of the gate. The moment the portal opened, the 12 explorers pick up their load and shuffle through the gate. Once they're on the other side, they drop the raft. They immediately assess the area for threats and climate; then they extract from the raft the appropriate gear/clothing for the environment and start looking for a site for their initial camp.
.


In other words: They did exactly what a group of reasonably intelligent people of the sort likely to be recruited for such an expedition (i.e. experienced) would do, and what they would in fact probably be REQUIRED to do if, as in the series, this is a military operation.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary defines Logistics: "That branch of military science devoted to the acquisition, maintenance, and movement of men and material."

[sinanju]

In other words: They did exactly what a group of reasonably intelligent people of the sort likely to be recruited for such an expedition (i.e. experienced) would do, and what they would in fact probably be REQUIRED to do if, as in the series, this is a military operation.


Yes, exactly. Given the initial parameters, they used their brains to maximize their advantage. That was the reason I liked gaming with these guys so much. We were all unrepentant rules lawyers and power gamers. I was a late addition to the group, and one of the few newcomers who didn't run screaming when I discovered how ruthless they were.

At least two would-be GMs joined the group long enough to run a session or two, and then were never seen again. My first attempt at a game--Expendables 1.0--was a complete fiasco. I had no idea who and what I was dealing with. But instead of fleeing, I hung around and eventually started Expendables 2.0 and ran it for quite a while and had great fun.

[Vondy]

On a rare whimsy I decided to run of those plots where the PC needed to be captured. Normally I avoid this kind of thing because players usually loathe being captured, but with his particuliar player I thought I would give it a shot. I plan it out because this character won't go down easy, and the player is crafty to boot. I engineered plans, contingency plans, and contingency-contingency plans over steepled fingers and brooding brows. I spend a week pondering how to do this and determine my plan is foolproof.

At the beginning of the session the player concludes he has no way of penetrating the enemy organization, and that their base is too well-secured to raid it. And yet, he needs to get in there. He announces his bold and ever-so-pulpy plan: he will engineer his own capture, thus gaining entry to the enemy stronghold, escape his confinement, raid their data-core, wreak havoc, and then engineer his escape using their own resources! All that work... and he's going to just hand himself in voluntarily?

I sat there stunned for a few moments, and then spent most of the session making him work madly to set his own capture up without it looking obvious by having all of my own intricately laid (and pretty much foolproof) plans to capture him go horribly, horribly sour. It bordered on the comedic. :sneaky:

In the last few minutes of the first half of the session, when he finally got captured, he smoked what was going on. I had been holding it in with my best deadpan for three hours and just lost it. And then he started wagging his finger at me and lost it too. Then we insulted eachothers lineage for a few minutes and went for pizza. It was a fun night. The rest of it pretty much went as planned.

[zornwil]

In a game Lamrok runs, the PC whom he was counting on to trigger an event, and would have gladly done so, didn't show up. So he had to improvise and concoct a reason for the scientist (and the group with him) to go along and basically make this huge mistake, setting loose a potentially catastrophic force. We walked right into it, without any GM overt force, naively and gladly assuming the info we had must be right even though it seemed sort of, well, evil. And we ended up doing just as that PC would have done had they been there. Lamrok was tickled it actually worked so well (in many ways, better, as there probably would have been a squabble if the absent PC had been there).

[Lamrok]

In a game Lamrok runs, the PC whom he was counting on to trigger an event, and would have gladly done so, didn't show up. So he had to improvise and concoct a reason for the scientist (and the group with him) to go along and basically make this huge mistake, setting loose a potentially catastrophic force. We walked right into it, without any GM overt force, naively and gladly assuming the info we had must be right even though it seemed sort of, well, evil. And we ended up doing just as that PC would have done had they been there. Lamrok was tickled it actually worked so well (in many ways, better, as there probably would have been a squabble if the absent PC had been there).

I was reading this thread, thinking of that incident. The game is essentially Savage Worlds Deadlands, with a few tweaks, including the fact that very little of the game has taken place in America, and the year has been moved to 1870 (so the central conflict is a somewhat rearranged version of the Franco Prussian War). I needed the PCs to publicly demonstrate that souls could be pulled from people and turned into an incredibly powerful energy source to fuel battlefield weapons. I'd been setting a player in motion for this for several sessions, and was sure he would have gleefully let this genie out of the bag as soon as he got the chance. Unfortunately, he cancelled at the last minute. But, the show must go on.

The PCs were fighting villains in two groups aboard a zeppelin. Group A was on top, feeling out a bunch of villainous American Indian Shamans (?). Group B was trying to make their way to the control center of the huge aircraft. I announce that the mad scientist in group B feels like he ought to go above - he can feel one of the Indians reaching into his mind to give him this suggestion. The group then has a bit of a confrontation with the Indians, who prove far too powerful to overcome just yet. The players eventually pull off a daring escape (aboard "Professor Carr's Fabulous Rocket Baloon") and wind up back on the ground wondering how to bring the zeppelin down. I offhandedly tell the scientist player that given what he saw on the zeppelin, he thinks a "soul cannon" might work (this idea wasn't entirely out of the blue given that the gang had been dealing heavily withy soul-science related issues for many sessions). The group seizes on the idea and quickly manages to construct the monstrosity and demonstrate it before a crowd, sucking the souls out of 50 volunteers. After the zeppelin explodes in spectacular fashion, I announce that the scientist has no memory of the time that has passed since he decided to check out what was happening on top of the zeppelin - he's been mind controlled by one of the Indians into building the soul cannon. I never told the player he was being mind controlled, I just managed to lead him along with suggestions. The player never realized that his character was being mind controlled, that the information I was feeding him was wrong - he just thought the information was the product of his science skills and acted accordingly.

So, now the group has a dandy mess to clean up, enough to power many followup sessions, as the French army prepares to use black magic to defend itself from the steam tech powered Prussian aggressors. This type of conflict could easily lead to the end of the world.

I actually felt a bit guilty about the way things worked out in retrospect. The group was so trusting, and got very burned because of it. I probably should have given out some hints to the more religiously oriented characters, but I never expected things to go so easily and so quickly. On the other hand, in real life and in genre fiction, people often make huge lapses of judgement. It is sometimes nice and refreshing to see these in a game, where they can be redeemed through effort and clever planning. It makes the genre feel a lot more "right" to me when the characters are not perfect avatars of logic. It also makes it more fun for everyone when they get a chance to deliver some payback to the source of their woes.

[zornwil]

Nah, there was no need to give the hints - granted, it was a bit of a burn when it happened (PS/EDIT - from a single player perspective when immersed in it and identifying strongly with the PC - not once stepping back and saying "wow, neat!"), but it was a great storyline and it made perfect sense given the need for urgent action. It was really well done and as you say it just worked.

Glad you showed up to comment and give more detail!

[Curufea]

On a rare whimsy I decided to run of those plots where the PC needed to be captured. Normally I avoid this kind of thing because players usually loathe being captured, but with his particuliar player I thought I would give it a shot. I plan it out because this character won't go down easy, and the player is crafty to boot. I engineered plans, contingency plans, and contingency-contingency plans over steepled fingers and brooding brows. I spend a week pondering how to do this and determine my plan is foolproof.

At the beginning of the session the player concludes he has no way of penetrating the enemy organization, and that their base is too well-secured to raid it. And yet, he needs to get in there. He announces his bold and ever-so-pulpy plan: he will engineer his own capture, thus gaining entry to the enemy stronghold, escape his confinement, raid their data-core, wreak havoc, and then engineer his escape using their own resources! All that work... and he's going to just hand himself in voluntarily?

I sat there stunned for a few moments, and then spent most of the session making him work madly to set his own capture up without it looking obvious by having all of my own intricately laid (and pretty much foolproof) plans to capture him go horribly, horribly sour. It bordered on the comedic. :sneaky:

In the last few minutes of the first half of the session, when he finally got captured, he smoked what was going on. I had been holding it in with my best deadpan for three hours and just lost it. And then he started wagging his finger at me and lost it too. Then we insulted eachothers lineage for a few minutes and went for pizza. It was a fun night. The rest of it pretty much went as planned.

That, is very cool. It is a very nice reversal there - where you get to destroy your own plans, rather than the players doing it. It sounds fun.

[Mike W]

I don't know as I really have any stories for this. My GM style is to basically come up with a lot of different stories/plot hooks, sketch out a basic thread for each and then see what the characters do. The NPCs may have a schedule(I'm going to rob the bank on Thursday, whatever) but they also react to what the PCs do, if they could know about it. So the story kind of writes itself much of the time.

[Robyn]

I don't know as I really have any stories for this. My GM style is to basically come up with a lot of different stories/plot hooks, sketch out a basic thread for each and then see what the characters do.

You may have a lot of stories for this (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51556), then ;)

[TheQuestionMan]

Nope I got nothing.

Damn Gamers ;)

QM