"I shoot the escape pod!!!"

[Great Beyond]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

NSo some zombies got through and somehow evaded the characters' immediate attention. They spread their plague throughout the homeless and severely drug-addicted members of society' date=' where it wasn't immediately apparent what was going on, especially with the incubation phase. Now a real plague is set up to go off in the game world, and super-gadgeteer is now going to have to trace the source world, open a portal, and follow your original adventure to put a stop to it.[/quote']

 

Actually they were really super careful to quarntine the area (force wall and everything), so someone slipping past while infected - the zombification takes place considerably faster than the traditional Romero zombie. Anywhere from seconds to hours, like like the Rage Virus in 28 Days Later.

 

However, I think I might go the Typhoid Mary route, and have an outbreak that way - somone who was immune but still carrying the plauge. I'm also thinking about another group of survivors from the other side - but this time make them a group of bad guys who come through a portalof their own making and swinging for the benches.

 

But yeah, I might steal some of what you suggest and put them all together in one big wibbly wobbly ball. I'm down, but I'm not out yet.

[Kevin Schultz]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

I've done the following once or twice with Kathi, one of the GM's in my monthly gaming group:

 

GM: "The enigmatic old man stands up, and mutters 'before you cross this threshold, you must answer me..."

 

Kevin, interrupting: "Oi! Is the answer "Death"? It usually is, in these sorts of things..."

 

GM, blinking for a moment. "Right, off y'go."

[input.jack]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

I derailed a couple things. One was with a critical hit in the beginning of combat killing the mage that was going to be the big bad for us in a fantasy hero game. The GM killed my character off hand for revenge.

 

That was incredibly childish of that GM. Thats a "table-flipping offense" in my book.

 

The other was a champions game' date=' we all wrote up characters for a dark future game and for our first assignment, my character got the instructions and I mixed up target with who we were supposed to protect...[/quote']

 

Oops.....(did you still get paid?)

[jtelson]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

In a D&D game I was in recently, something similar occurred.

 

I was playing a Cleric. For those who don't know, Clerics, being holy men, have certain power against the undead. I had boosted this by taking the Domain of Sun - which meant that if the undead creature wasn't too powerful, I could call on the power of the Sun once per day to destroy the undead I faced rather than merely forcing them to flee.

 

Our GM was using a premade adventure, where our job was to retrieve a nasty evil sword that a Vampire had stolen from the Royal Armoury. Because we were a little underpowered for the adventure as written, the GM decided he'd ALSO stolen a holy weapon - the idea being we could grab this away from him and use it against him in the climactic battle.

 

The problem was, until that happened this Holy weapon was a drain on the Vampire's abilities.

 

Our group caught up with the Vampire's carriagejust before nightfall. There was a running battle, which we were barely winning, and the Vampire chose to make his getaway - he summoned up a swarm of thousands of bats, assumed Bat form himself, and flew away - one of thousands, and we didn't have any area affect spells.

 

So, annoyed, I summon up the powers of the Sovereign Host (my character's gods), draw upon the power of the Sun, and max my turning roll.

 

If it wasn't for the Holy item, I couldn't have affected him, he was too powerful. But with it -

 

POOF. A moment later the Evil Sword is falling to the earth yelling "BASTARDS!" in a cloud of Vamp dust.

 

Our GM played it straight. End of adventure, in chapter two of a seven chapter module.

 

 

That's "Whispers of the Vampire's Blade" isn't it? We ended up derailing the plot on that one by literally derailing the plot. 3 or 4 encounters down the line we end up on the same train as the Vamp. Tired of the cat and mouse game we force the train off the rails and searched for the Vamp in the confusion.

 

As a GM I've had it happen to me, I was running Justice inc (Guess how long ago that was.) and had our Heroes interacting with various sides of a Union vs. Company conflict. The Players knew that the factory's boilers needed to be regularly 'bled off' or they were likey to blow (Like the Hotel in The Shining), and that Strikers were going to be keeping people out of the plant. They also had discovered that smugglers were using disused sections of the factory as a base and had captured this weeks damsel in distress.

 

So despite knowing the Girl was likely in the factory and the factory was likely to blow, they went back to their hotel to get some sleep and try to sort things out in the morning. I was dumbfounded, and also younger and less experienced, so at about 4 in the morning theywere woken up by the sound of a very large explosion that killed the smugglers, most of the strike busters and strikers, and of course the DID. I'd like to think I could come up with a better solution now, but for our group 'Going back to the Hotel' has become a running joke.

[ScrewySquirrel]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

MY FH players did the same thing to me during a big city court intrigue masked mystery man assassin game I was running. First encounter with the masked assassin, noble in disguise, who was the big bad for the story arc, a meeting encounter in the street intended as a brief exchange of blows and insults followed by a hasty retreat. Good thing too because this guy should'a been able to abso-fricken-luetly SLAUGHTER the party in stand up fight, something this encounter was intended to hint at.

First exchange of blows the swashbuckling duelist type manages, by the skin of his teeth, to block the assassin's shot. His riposte is a 3. To the head. Using max damage critical rules. With an Offensive Strike.

 

So I, rather stunned, call for a smoke break.

Now, how to rewrite the plot with kebob boy no longer in charge?

 

 

 

Thinking on ones feet is always the best bet, but it still doesn't prevent the occasional "may we have a moment of silence for this poor stillborn plot" moment

 

 

My moment of plot derailing glory to a GM came in the middle of a Total Party Kill in the ORIGINAL Ravenloft (teh 1e adventure where it was a gothic-themed single adventure).

 

Out party consisted of Psionic Twins (A Ranger and a Cleric of Ehlonna, both Half Elves), a Paladin of st. Cuthbert, an elf Mage, a halfling ftr/rogue, and my Gnome ftr/ill.

 

On watch one night, Strahd managed to suprise and kill the Ranger (snapped neck, said the GM ), this awakens the sister, with a scream. Strahd dominates her! A new Bride! the rest of us awaken at the scream and take off in pursuit, stopped by some spectres, who kill the rogue before the paladin defeats them. We arrive in at the top of the stairs, where Strahd grabs the Paladin (Level Drain! ) and hurls him down the stairs. He is dead from the fall + drain. Just the Mage and myself left. Mage launches a lightning bolt, only to have it reflected back at him, 9d6 vs 9d4... his HP loses and he's gone.

 

I'm all alone, facing a powerful vampire who seems unhurt after wiping out 5 members of a 6 person party, with no hope of survival

 

Until I pull out my scroll of 'Shades' My illusion: Sunrise! "even if disbelieved, its still does 60% damage." 60% of infinite is still infinite. Strahd evaporates and I live!

[lemming]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

That was incredibly childish of that GM. Thats a "table-flipping offense" in my book.

 

Well, it was my last session of FH with the GM. His games were of the sort that were fun to recollect, but not so much during. They were bearable just because of the other players were fun.

 

Oops.....(did you still get paid?)

 

Hmm, Not sure if pay was ever mentioned, though the campaign degenerated quickly from there. Most of the team got killed in death traps a few weeks later. Mine in a giant wine press, IIRC. All in all, a wonderfully goofy game.

[SCUBA Hero]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Great Beyond,

 

If you do cobble something together, I second Captain Obvious' suggestion that something obvious should go right or easier for the players due to their earlier good idea. Players should be rewarded for clever thinking.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Two incidents come to mind. The first was simply incredible luck on player's part, the second, well, it was probably my fault honestly.

 

A friend had bought a D&D solo module and really wanted to play in it, so he asked me to DM for him. Bear in mind that he hadn't actually read it. So I familiarized myself with it pretty quickly, which means, in hindsight, too quickly. So, long story short, he hunts down the wizard he's supposed to confront and heads to his tower. Now, he's a lowly enchanter about to take on a higher level necromancer. He didn't stand much of a chance. He's stealthily ascending the tower, his nemesis on the top floor. The penultimate floor has a table with a skeleton sitting at it. It's not moving; it lifelessly sits there as if it died eating. Not undead. It seems. In a fit of frustration our hero smashes the skeleton's skull…which kills the wizard's stationary familiar. In the old days, when a familiar died it had a small chance of causing massive feedback and killing the wizard. Guess what happened? When the hero reached the top floor he found the lifeless wizard lying prone before him. I thought about negating it and keeping the wizard alive, but it was such an incredible stroke of luck that I kept it in. Besides, if I didn't he would have been creamed.

 

Then there was the adventure I ran where they party came across an artifact of incalculable power, a throne buried deep inside a mountain with only one hidden passage allowing access. Well, the party didn't discover it, the thief did. He went there alone. (That was my first mistake.) Then the thief-who was of good alignment-became corrupted by the touch of the throne. (This was my biggest mistake. The character was good. The player, on the other hand…) The thief's first wish/command is to seal the passageway to the throne so there's no way in or out. (Uh oh…) He then proceeds to have the throne teleport him close to the rest of the party and he'll act like nothing happened, and only he knows about the throne now. Except, it's sealed off. Forever. And he doesn't have the power to teleport back. And he refuses to tell the rest of the party because he's evil now. I seem to remember uttering the phrase "This is a good stopping point for the night."

[Kenn]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Not the same thing, but one where a player ended his brand new PCs life part way through the session.

 

Patrick had just rolled up his new character, as his previous one had recently become an NPC. The character group rolls into town, goes to the local tavern, and quickly meet and befriend Patrick's new PC.

 

Woman comes into the bar with a problem. She's been beseiged by Wights. So the PC group and our new friend agree to help. We go. We beat on some Wights. We get the woman home. Then Patrick describes his next action. "I grab the maiden and kiss her long and lingeringly"

 

And our GM looks at him, grabs his character sheet and says "And you just tongued a succubus."

 

Thankfully, we all, including Patrick, were able to laugh at the situation.

[tancred]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Can't remember any off the top of my head where my players derailed me. Mainly because, as Dust Raven said, I think on my feet. I rarely have things figured out in enough detail that they can be derailed.

Because the players will come up with something better than I thought of anyway.

 

I do have one good story where I did it to the GM, though.

More than 20 years ago, playing The Fantasy Trip, my best friend in college had slaved all summer over a mini-campaign, where he would run for a couple of weeks using our regular game and characters.

 

Long story short, he had a beautiful, elaborate plot all figured out.

We came to a door with 7 colored buttons on it. Each button caused the door to teleport us to a different location on the island. We were supposed to do them basically in order, although the exact order wouldn't have mattered as long as we did the last one last.

The first 6 buttons are all pretty, sparkly colors; button 7 is ominously black. "Nobody would choose that first," his thinking obviously went.

 

So of course, I had to push the black button first. Took us right to the end of the storyline, and we ended up following it backwards.

The look on his face when I told him I pushed the black button was priceless.

[Great Beyond]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

See it's easy to armchair quarterback these things when you're not on the hot seat. I was pretty quick to come up with "Well, the black button is deactivated. You guys will have to try one of the others." with the black one coming on line after the other ones have been completed.

 

And youre right - if I piece together something from the old game, I'll figure out some way to throw the players a bone.

[Talon65]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

We have a long going (almost 10 years!) FH campaign. One of our newer players decided she wanted to run a session to which we all agreed and encouraged. She spent weeks preparing.

 

The plan was for us to explore a lost pyramid in the desert and fight a nasty monster to free her PCs siblings in an epic battle. The group falls into a cesspool with the big nasty (composed of a big giant eyeball and tentacles) and phase 12 begins. My warrior has a barely better dex and going first, I immediately use my phase to do a full move toward it. On it's segment the big bad goes into a tirade about it being a terrifying god, you'll be my slaves, yadda yadda, etc. and hits the entire group with an area affect mind control which generates from it's giant eyeball with the command "FLEE IN TERROR!". Everyone flees except for me 'cause I've already used my move and can't flee. At post 12 she gives everyone an EGO roll to fight the mind control and myself and our air mage succeed. In the next phase I again go first and chuck my mighty harpoon at the "God of Sewage".

 

And hit it.

 

In the head.

 

Which is a big eyeball from which it's powers originate.

 

Then one of the other players points this out and asks if it's blind, with a quavery voice, she replies "Yeees and it's stunned too...." followed by the mage lightning bolting it to death. The big epic battle she had planned for weeks lasted less then two combat phases.

 

And for a good year, evertime some villian tried to wow us with his mighty presence, I got to reply "Pffft, and are you a god?".

 

The GM has since learned to have a back up plan and to lie like a dog when she runs now. So, lesson learned.

[Enforcer84]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Ever spawned an entire campaign arch with a stupid move?

Let me just say, never give the givernment alien technology if yer GM is a libertarian.

[hfergus]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

My players almost always throw a monkey wrench in my plans at least a little; I'm used to it and can go with the flow (mostly I allow their plan if it makes sense. Rarely I "hand wave it" away.) This tendency also goes the bad way; can we say clueless to 12 clues with no red herrings? I plan around this too. However...

 

Once long ago in a D&D campaign, I had the "Destroy it and you solve the problem macguffin" in plain sight in the beginning scene. They destroyed it right away. I was stunned. I had many possible targets, and tend to put in red herrings (and roll for no reason other than to make my players wonder) so it was not obvious. I asked why, and they said "It just seemed obvious." It was the only time something was blown that badly. However, they are good role-players who keep what they know and what their character knows separate. We agreed to do it again with a different macguffin. (I did this on the fly as is normal for me.) Still, it was a shock.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

As a GM I've had it happen to me, I was running Justice inc (Guess how long ago that was.) and had our Heroes interacting with various sides of a Union vs. Company conflict. The Players knew that the factory's boilers needed to be regularly 'bled off' or they were likey to blow (Like the Hotel in The Shining), and that Strikers were going to be keeping people out of the plant. They also had discovered that smugglers were using disused sections of the factory as a base and had captured this weeks damsel in distress.

 

So despite knowing the Girl was likely in the factory and the factory was likely to blow, they went back to their hotel to get some sleep and try to sort things out in the morning. I was dumbfounded, and also younger and less experienced, so at about 4 in the morning theywere woken up by the sound of a very large explosion that killed the smugglers, most of the strike busters and strikers, and of course the DID. I'd like to think I could come up with a better solution now, but for our group 'Going back to the Hotel' has become a running joke.

 

I'd file this under "players who don't think". Depending on tone of the game, I might give people a roll to remember the issue of the boilers, or I might just let it blow up.

 

I like the D&D players who get wounded, run low on spells and decide that they can therefore make camp where ever they happen to be, and nothing can happen, since they need to rest to get their spells back.

 

After watching the party ambushed by giants in the night, and listening to the infernal whining, one of my players (whose character was unconscious, so he would not say anything about the plan) said "If you were robbing someone's house and stubbed your toe, would you be dumb enough to take a nap on the couch while the swelling went down?"

[Sundog]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

That's "Whispers of the Vampire's Blade" isn't it? We ended up derailing the plot on that one by literally derailing the plot. 3 or 4 encounters down the line we end up on the same train as the Vamp. Tired of the cat and mouse game we force the train off the rails and searched for the Vamp in the confusion.

 

 

Cool. Yes, it was "Whispers".

[jtelson]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

I'd file this under "players who don't think". Depending on tone of the game' date=' I might give people a roll to remember the issue of the boilers, or I might just let it blow up.[/quote']

 

It was a couple of decades back, and when I think about it, it was one of those defining moment in my 'career' as a GM. It really was the session that taught me there's more to being a GM than laying out the plot to an adventure and then administrating it. Generally at this point my adventure design consists of "The Story thus far" and "Getting the players involved" sections of an adventure and I work the rest out as we go. I've run murder mysteries where I don't know who did it at the start and follow where the players lead. (Since in a mystery players will either point correctly at the villian in the first scene or doggedly pursue the wrong person anyway.)

[tancred]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

See it's easy to armchair quarterback these things when you're not on the hot seat. I was pretty quick to come up with "Well, the black button is deactivated. You guys will have to try one of the others." with the black one coming on line after the other ones have been completed.

 

And youre right - if I piece together something from the old game, I'll figure out some way to throw the players a bone.

 

Twenty years of GMing later I could think of that.

Back then, he didn't and I'm not sure I would have either.

 

But this whole thread sums up why I have that line in my .sig. I've HAD to learn to not get too attached to my plans, because the players WILL change them.

[Balabanto]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

I just let it happen. Free will is a big part of the game. But if they do something that is, in your opinion as a GM, really dumb, you have the power of GM smackdown to make them aware of their mistake.

 

The problem is when the player doesn't realize they made a mistake even after the consequences have been shown to them.

[Chromatic]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

 

Most of my problems haven't been so much with those moments, but I tend to throw red herrings out that become more important to the players than the plot.

 

Those were red herrings? I thought they were pickled herrings and delicious!

[Jaxom]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

I've been on both ends of the stick here...

 

First, running... I was running a sandbox-style campaign in Ars Magica... In other words, I had a developed world and the NPCs had plots and things would go along with or without the PCs and they were able to do whatever they wanted and my job was to figure out how the world changed as they did things.

 

One of the big plots involved a dead house of magic (Diedne) and some violation of the "known" laws of magic (time-travel of a sort, a la Brigadoon)... So the players are investigating the "ruins" of the last surviving covenant of Diedne and there is one mage present with a bunch of followers... Had all the rules of the magic I was using worked out and sure enough they do what I expect and find the dying Quesitor Hoplite sacrificed to power the ritual, hanging on an inverted cross and bleeding out and he gives them his Sigil to prove who he is and tells them to warn the Covenant.

 

All good so far... The Covenant (gathering of all the local covenants) is going to be a big political session and I spend a couple of weeks ploting who all the factions are and making sure that the players can cast deciding votes on some issues and get big portents on others and it's going to be a good session... The players have their information about the Hoplite and they're going to drop a bombshell and campign is going along swimmingly... The drawback here that I have missed entirely is that the rules for voting essentially boil down to counting *Sigils* cast into urns.

 

When introductions come around, the mage who had found the Hoplite stands up and says something along the lines of, "Greetings, Sodales, I am of and I am here voting my sigil and that of ."

 

I'm sure I looked dumbfounded for a minute... I then adopted the role of the leaders of the Covenant and we established that yes, he'd seen the Hoplite in the last year and that to all evidence, the Hoplite was alive and... Well, 300 years was unprecedented, but who could say that it was impossible, especially for someone as powerful as this guy had been... Ok, there's no legitimate reason that he *can't* vote this sigil but all of a sudden some of my key votes are going to go the wrong way... "Anyone up for some boardgames this evening, seems that my script is now toilet paper."

 

 

 

And then how to break a campaign... I was playing a mystic super in a 350 point campaign... The GMs were running a serious mentalist baddy and their first hint to us was a henchman who was easily captured but then had a cortical bomb that killed him during interrogation. The plan for the session was to find more minions and track down where he'd hidden his base... The problem... Clairsentience, to see the past, through the senses of others, extra time, gestures, incantations, OAF of opportunity (Dead Body). "Quick, grab me some candles... If this makes you ill, you can leave the room... ."

[lemming]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Those were red herrings? I thought they were pickled herrings and delicious!

 

That was Cayenne on the herrings. Sigh.

[Badger]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Well Great Beyond if it makes you feel better, I've been know to have destroyed plans with my ability to pull some zany off-the-wall strategy out of my seemingly abstract mind. I've been told my brain seems to "run on a whole other kind of fuel".

[Matt the Bruins]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

I was in a game session once where a 2-player effort derailed the big final battle in enjoyable fashion. After a convoluted evening of espionage and following clues all around Tokyo, the PC group confronted the main villain in his office and were about to get into the customary huge rumble with all the bodyguards and hired ninjas he had popping out of every entrance to the office. Rather than fighting against the goons as expected, the disgruntled Frenchman in our group gave the Big Bad's unibrow a .22 caliber grooming and killed him with one shot. Then our less combat-oriented professor bluntly informed all the lackeys that with their boss dead, no one would be paying them to fight us, and made a phenominally successful Persuasion roll. All the opposition just packed it in and left the scene.

[Brother Dom]

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!"

 

Thanks to the slow thinking of our GM, we met a superpowerd girl who had way too much energy( for some reason she had fire off energy basts every so often to lower her power build up). Then we rescued a guy with a no upper limit power absorbtion...well, to paraphrase Bill Murray " We got tose two together and walked through the rest of the game. Nothin like having a Wave motion Gun at your beck and call