Це відео не доступне.
Перепрошуємо.
I DESTROYED my D&D game. It was a mistake.
Вставка
- Опубліковано 2 лют 2023
- PATREON: / discourseminiatures
TWITCH: / discoursegames
WARGAMING: / @discourseminis
DISCORD: / discord
UK AFFILIATE: affiliates.way...
TIPS: ko-fi.com/disc...
MERCH: discourse-mini...
Affiliate links that I have put in the description of this video link to those companies that I myself have purchased from and had good dealings with as a consumer. I would recommend these companies! These help support the channel, and don't cost you anything to use, so if you're going to feed your plastic addiction, this is a great way to do so!
All images belong to their respective owners.
Music: Kevin MacLeod ✘ License: CC BY 3.0 (goo.gl/BlcHZR) ✘ Download: incompetech.com....
The DM wanted to play D&D. The party wanted Blades in the Dark.
Nah. It’s easy to play D&D the way the players wanted to play. That DM was too new to know how to make it happen, which isn’t their fault, just unfortunate how it turned out.
Another lesson to be learned: be gracious to the new GM. They are new. Some of us have been gaming for decades. Go along with their, pick up their bread crumbs. Follow their narrative. Let them learn.
Is this really something that needs to be so obviously stated?
@@Chardansearavitriol Apparently. 🙂
@@ChardansearavitriolBased on my first time DMing, yes, yes it is.
@@Chardansearavitriol have you read the comments? Holy shit some of these folks shouldn’t be allowed near people…
@@Chardansearavitriol did you watch this abomination of a video?
So it sounds like the DM thought D&D, the players thought Blades in the Dark.
lol i thought the same thing. Just tell them to shred there sheets we are playing this instead.
Sounds like the DM thought “I’ll have a go at DMing”, and the players thought “New Fish”, like they were prisoners in maximum security, “let’s fuck him up the arse”.
dnd community: "Man i wanna play dnd but theres just not enough DMs out there!"
New dm: "I can try DMing so you guys can play!"
dnd community: "Thanks, i will reward you by not cooperating and making you hate you ever tried!"
Yeah, I have my crew I love running 5e for, but frankly I could never run a game with randos anymore like back in my FLGS days.
I absolutely would charge to DM nowadays
Cooperation first requires prompt guidance on what the goal is about. Don’t make assumptions.
In a homebrew adventure, while the DM can have an overall idea on what is happening in the world, once the players become involved, it doesn't mean they will follow that particular story line. It CAN still be happening, and the DM should drop hints and story bits that it is happening, but the players can decide to go be pirates, guards, or whatever.
Yeah, expecting "cooperation" as a DM is a frustrating and unrealistic expectation. It's supposed to be a group storytelling game, and railroading players into doing things that they want to do just isn't... fun.
@@littlelostphoenix No they can't. Because when they suddenly decide to go from town guard to high seas pirates the DM has to throw away dozens of hours worth of prep and start from scratch. This directly leads to DM burn out.
It looks like the *NEW* DM probably built a general path for the players along with taking time to build the backstory.
Right off the bat, it seems like you and others took over the story completely and made your own backstory and narrative with the NEW DM's scenery.
This would be fine for an experienced DM's and they tend to make the background and quest lines very broad and with multiple paths.
Just as an Experienced Player and DM, you seemed to have railroaded the DM and forced the DM off the bat to do big changes on the fly ( I literally forgot the word for it. ).
You should have known ( And I think you did ) that it would put you at odds for the DM. The game should be as fun for you as it is for a DM. And I'm sure you made the DM nervous to ever run another with the group.
this is why my prep work isn't about adventures anymore its about setting up cities, regional issues, NPC relationships, sprinkling in hooks and seeing where they go. the current homebrew i'm running, when i initially thought of writing it, was suppose to be about the players becoming the heros who would rise up and defeat the looming vampire threat. however they got so pre occupied in the capital with local gang related stuff, that the vampire army rose and is now in control of the city they were waging a gang war in. they are now leading a guerilla style resistance to free the city using the very connections they made in their gang wars. i never imagined this is where the campaign would go, but man is it fun adapting my players curve balls
Exactly. Learned that lesson a long time ago running a mechwarrior game. Starting tonight a game set in Ivan the terrible Russia. So will let the players have fun. One is a complete newb. We are learning pathfinder together as well.
One of my players is my husband. I know him. Have options, because he will take a turn when you would want him to go straight.
So mostly developing the locations. Having NPC, including my old pc from his campaign, and another to be their guide to the world. Loved the flexibility.
They may get tonight a kobold wizard. Of course, session zero is going to be different. We have an absolute nube, who is taking a mod one, version two fighter. Nope, not a dwarf, a halfling.
But then again you are probably a experienced GM. New GMs will not be ready for this and I think it really is on experienced players to let new GMs learn these lessons in a more... gentle way than in this example.
Absolutely! I have no idea where this idea of GM's becoming budget George Lucas has sprung up from. Back when I learned to DM in the 90's it was made very clear to me not to do the "adventure path" thing. Maybe the fact that I'm running my games in this sandbox style dates me, but I wouldn't even know where to beging with it to be honest. Worry about the world and making it believable, the story will emerge from your players interacting with it! The players are in charge of their characters, their choices and actions. Manipulating them to go down the path you've designed for them doesn't sound like a game to me. Sounds a bit creepy, doesn't it?
@@patrickmulder2450 yet there are people who run pre packaged adventures all the time. We have yet to get the books from Paizo, though did the humble bundle. So session zero was run with the…wait for it, SRD
@@Arrow333 you are correct. I was nervous cause new game, new party, have not GMed in a decade…and we are doing this over zoom…time zones. But the other critical element is…players should have fun. It was my third session running when hubby broke me out of spend more time developing a path on tracks. However, my maps are better than they used to be. I use Inkarnate. And we bought some books of maps. We have plenty of models since we wargame.
I guess my chaos khorne Marines can be…drum roll, constructs. At least the ones without nasty machine guns. Swords are perfect.
TL;DR: Forever GM was finally going to be a player when new GM stepped in with an adventurer, only for forever GM turned group to accidentally go against the new GM's adventure plans. Moral of the story: Be nice to your new GMs, they don't have the tools, experience or know how that more experienced GMs had.
If a player truely wants to play a murder-hobo, no GM has a chance. Any attempt to play a longterm-campaign is cursed when there is not character-motivation besides "I will do whatever I want".
@@Casey093 Sure. But often players don't necessarily want to play a murderhobo - that's just kind of what the game comes by default if there isn't a clear vision that the game is to be about something else. Like she said in the video: They would've made different characters if they'd known in advance the GM was wanting the campaign to be heroic.
This actually sounds amazing, but i agree - its a nightmare for a newbie DM. Sadly from what i see, starting your DM ing adventure with experienced players doesnt make it easier - more times than not it makes it harder
The fourth edition Hero System has a campaign outline that allows a GM to clearly state what the goals are of the game, power level etc , I used something similar since the dark ages of 1st ed
I think the hardest thing about being a DM for experienced players is they forget or ignore the need for them as players to leave their DM knowledge behind. So many games are destroyed by the DM being undermined by "Dmplayers".
I think that the biggest point was that the DM was new. If players aren't willing to treat a new DM like they would want to be treated as a new Player... then they cannot expect the DM to be able to run the game for very long. If a new player enters the game and the DM is hard on them, and doesn't seem to care if they are having fun or not...then it's pretty common for the [player to quit... sometimes permanently. ("D&D sucks!") Why then. would not the group expect a new DM to have the same reaction?
Also... sometimes a DM expects a more generic D&D game. They don't know or have any way to know that once the game starts up, that the party will come up with an idea, like becoming Evil villainous thugs. The fact is that you cannot address something that you never conceive of. I once started a 'regular' D&D game. People made their characters. One of them was apparently into some anime I had never seen. Another was into Steampunk. In the end both of them got mad. One that I not only didn't know the anime but was NOT going to buy and watch it just so I could run enough of what they wanted, and the other because my world was firmly fantasy medieval and again, I knew jack all about steam punk. Again, I expected D&D but they did not, and somehow expected me to cater to their interests when I knew nothing about them.
I agree, however... there needs to be some help on the player's part. If the players just rip apart everything the DM comes up with and leaves the DM with nowhere to go... then they have to be ready for the DM to give up BECAUSE the players have left them with nowhere to go.
Classic case of experienced players screwing with a New GM. Making sure the next generation of Game Masters never falls in love with running the game. Congratulations on making every effort to screw with your friend.
Also congratulations on recognizing the ownership for killing the game. You are a GM, and have lots of experience, you knew the new GM wasn't up to keeping up with your criminal creation, and that they were in over their head.
Cheers
Nah, it's a learning experience. The DM will, if they want to run games, go away and think on what went wrong. It was a classic case of railroading with players who wanted to sandbox. Nobody was in the wrong, though if we must apportion blame I'd say session zero was the moment the DM should've established tone. Guys, this is classic adventuresome D&D so keep that in mind.
I sure hope the DM licks their wounds and jumps back on the horse because we all had to start somewhere.
@@notbloodylikely4817 surely the problem was lack of communication on both sides. The Dm and the players had difference expectations. In this case the more experiences ones should had reach out and talk about it. It's sad that all end up that way where the DM probably hate every single sessions. I hope he really don't give up on DMing
@@cristianfilippone5019 which is what I said. A session zero can make a world of difference, but there's no substitute for experience. I call these sorts of situations sh*t tests and you get them in every aspect of life from work to dating to... well, everything. Like Denzel Washington said, you get knocked down seven times, you get up eight. DMing is hard, but that's good because you get the best satisfaction when it's hard, you push through and succeed despite it being hard. Just because it's meant to be fun doesn't mean it's meant to be easy. But that in itself is a hard lesson to learn.
Totally agree. I hope this person gets back up and keeps going with a new perspective. I don't believe in the notion of 'I give up because I'm a victim'. Not in any facet of life, gaming, working, culture, whatever. It's learning and growth right?
How did you - being an experienced DM and player - not expect that a first-time DM would not know to make sure that players and DM have to be on the same page about playing good or evil?
If you can't pivot you're doing it wrong, even as a new DM. If the entire party is going a direction you didn't anticipate, and it catches you off-guard, okay, sure, happens. But you make the most of it and pivot. You don't keep steamrolling the entire group and railroad them back onto your old idea.
@@remyb6854 well that's not a thing all newbie DM knows or internally understands. And even if they know they have to pivot, few newbie would know how to pivot unless they were super unreasonably prepared or someone helps them. Most cases, it should be the players who help the DM by giving easier curve balls or just talk out any problems outside the game.
Can't expect an amateur to handle the job like other professionals.
@@ruga-ventoj It's pretty basic. If you can't accomidate the obvious interest of the entire group you have no buisness DMing. Its step 1.
Putting it out there in case a new player or DM sees this and gets put off DMing (which is never good): you don't have to inherently be good at DMing, and it's okay if you mess up your first time(s) out. The best way to learn or not do that is to communicate with your players, about everything. The story you want to tell, if they enjoy the direction of the game, what they would like to get out of the game, etc.
You don't "have no business DMing" just because you plan an adventure, the players get sidetracked and you don't instinctively know when or how to pivot. Again, communicate that "you'd love to explore their idea in the future, but this is what you discussed for the game rn and it's what you prepared for the night. But maybe next week you can prepare something else!"
@@remyb6854 no, first step to being a DM is to agree to be a DM. Not a common step players make. Step 2 is scheduling the game to play. Step 3 ect, step 4 ect. My point is that while knowing to pivot a game for your players is a Required skill, it is not a skill everyone know when and how to use, there are a dozen step to learn and do before you have to learn to Improvise the game. It is like expecting a 16 year old cashier to perfectly handle a Karen on their first day at work. Some can do it, but to expect everyone to know what to do is unreasonable.
This is why when actual heroes show up to break the curse the place is in ruins with no loot in sight.
Thats why there is never any good loot in my adventures.
I ran a bunch of characters who wanted to be the evil crew. They stopped liking it when they were being hunted by all of the decent people in the city. They were always on the defensive, when they asked me why I told them "You are the monsters."
I remember the time my table said "Let's do an evil campaign." I failed to understand that what they meant was "Let's be murder hobos." So when I brought in my fascist character it caused a lot of clashing.
@@Solkpjish Honesty is always punished. All D&D PLAYERS are Chaotic Evil, regardless of what their characters say.
@@Solkpjish reminds me of the child molesting robot sketch from SNL. Lol
If your players want to run an evil campaign there's ways to do this it doesn't have to be in exactly faerun a better spot would be the Outer Planes if they're high enough level the nine Hells the abyss there are cities and towns and maps for this there's always sigil which is completely neutral where you have both Angels and Demons regularly walking the streets you can run investigation games political campaigns their alignment shouldn't matter important thing is that they have fun running the game
Give ‘em the old I Am Legend treatment.
I dunno, "you break it you bought it" sounds so transactional and mercenary. I prefer "you keep what you kill" if only for the more noble barbarian vibe...
That's very reasonable.
My orc barbarian prefers "you eat what you kill".... But we use M&Ms for monster counters of course.
She was presumably thinking of ‘if you break it, you buy it’, which is a quite different concept.
Definitely seems like a mess of miscommunication on all sides! A good lesson for everyone: be clear what you are shooting for.
Definitely, but this was a newbie DM. Generally I think experienced players should do their best to help newbie DMs along.
@@mirtos39 bravo
Yup, new DMs need some help.
@Archimedes D respectfully, a new DM is looking to please their players, when this whole group went rogue, he decided to let it play till it killed the game,
For a Good GM a NPC is a dime a dozen, a PC is Gold
This is what alignments were for, to check player directions , and hopefully get a feel for motivation s
Also, at least one player was mature enough to understand, obviously ,
It is a case of mutalism
And we all know how the experts talk about railroading,
This was simply an inexperienced DM trying to sandbox, when he should have said it was a freedom fight, hence the one smuggler may have been fine, a troupe of rampaging thieves, not so much,
It is a give and take, and now we may have lost another GM, who may feel inadequate to ever sit behind the screen again,
@@stefanjakubowski8222 ", a new DM is looking to please their players,”
From my experience new DM/GMs are looking to tell the story that is running around in their head and they want the players to play the DM/GM’s story, not co-create a story. This is especially true of new DM/GMs who have not played in a lot of other games.
“This is what alignments were for, to check player directions ,”
Yep, and a DM trying to push their idea of how an alignment should work has killed a number of games, which is why alignments were dropped from most RPGs.
“, and now we may have lost another GM, who may feel inadequate to ever sit behind the screen again,”
Maybe, but it’s obvious in this story, that this is one of those DMs that had a story and they wanted the players to just play that story, and that does not work for TTRPGs.
If the DM can grow from this, then that’s a good thing, if not, no loss, because nobody wants to just play someone else’s story at the table.
I think it's easy to forget that the DM is also a player trying to create a story and not just a person designated to play the world reacting to the actions of the party. Checking in with each other should also include checking in on the DM to make sure they don't feel like they're getting walked on, which is redonkulously easy to do to a new DM.
My first time DMing a campaign, I was 16, my brother and friends were a few years younger. Like your DM, I planned a heroic save-the-princess type campaign. My players, like you, wanted to be criminals. As a player, I had dealt with railroading DMs before, and I did not want to do that, so I scrapped or modified my heroic campaign elements and played to the criminal side that the players wanted, and we all had a good time. In the 35 years since then, I've learned to get this settled in session zero, and if the players want to play in a campaign that is simply not fun for me (rare, but it happens), then I don't run that campaign, but most of the time, we compromise, modify, and agree to something that is fun for everyone.
This whole escapade sounds like a terrible way to treat an inexperienced DM or player that doent know better. The take away here is if you want to play more and DM less don't screw the people who step into the DM roll over like that. It takes alot to step out there like that and the players actions in this story likely ruined the new DM.
The story about looting the tower is something that happened in a Knights of the Dinner Table comic. There was no loot in the tower but the rule lawyer realized that the furniture was worth more. The DM paused the campaign and had a new space campaign for the players. Turned out this new game they had to fight their characters from the last game coming out with the furniture.
Poor DM, I have had players purposely make characters to break games, this sounded like the DM couldn't adapt, experienced players need to nurse new DMs, lol
This was fun
When starting my current campaign, I gave the players three broad scenarios to pick from:
Do you want to be all living in the same village, help it grow and prosper and make the surrounding lands safe?
Do you want to be a part of a mercenary band, traveling the land and taking on contracts?
Do you want to be nomadic workers, going from place to place in search of coin?
The first scenario was more or less on rails and supposed to get them to know the system and the world a bit. After that I mostly used a bunch of quest hooks in the form of events that happened and rumors they heard, which the players were free to engage with or not. Hilariously, they tried to get involved in as much as possible. It's been working great for us.
At work I started a campaign for what quickly grew from 3 to 6 to 8 players, the first 7 being all newbies. My 8th and best player would always go for whatever looked like a plot hook: "I talk to the shadowy figure in the corner", "I try to climb the tower", and so on. Supporting what I had prepared, and what would give the junior players a good experience, was great cooperative RPG play.
Great way to scare a new DM. Communication is key
Session 0s are great, but it should have been clear during character creation what sort of party was being formed, and even though it was a new DM, they should have said something about what sort of game is being prepared. Then, these problems could have been avoided.
No amount of session zero and planning could help when a session start in front of a cursed tower and player chose to ignore the curse. It should be pretty obvious they are pushing their DM out of his prep.
My take as a DM for years now. No planning is ever wasted on my part. If the party goes left when I planned for right, then its my job to ask questions and explain that I may need a few to set up for this unexpected change of events. From there I need to put on my big boy britches and either play with the characters or simply state that, my adventure is in this direction , with this intent and your direction doesn't mesh with my game. What do you guys and gals wanna do? Either way my planning is in the kit for a time in the future when I can parse it into an adventure, as a whole or in bits and pieces.
I have learned this lesson as a DM. I had a whole thing going and my players just sort of went along, but they would always ask each other "Wait, why are we doing this? Why are we helping these people?" and after a while the game died also. They had no investment and no incentive to participate in my elaborate plot. So I learned to create a party and build a world together, and while doing that really listen to the players and pay attention to what they have on their sheets. If they pick stealth and appraise as primary skills, that should tell me as the DM it is something this character wants to focus on. I also like them to all be part of an organization or group already, that way the initial few games can be at least sort of directed. If the players decide to betray everyone and steal everything (spoiler alert, they always will) I can roll with it because I don't have a novel planned out, I have characters I am following along with.
Just my 2cp.
I've had a similar situation before as a DM. It can get really annoying to send a chaotic neutral party through a lawful good adventure. Luckily, I had experience as a DM at that point and minimized the disruption by introducing new elements on the fly. I would never let someone roll on the chandeliers being solid gold, lol! "They're painted gold! Now go fight the boss monster you pansies!" Yeah, experience helps a lot.
On the chandelier example: it's also important to remeber that the pc succeded on apraising the chanderlier. That dosn't mean the item magically becomes whatever the pc wants it to be. It's perfectly fine to tell the player: "You know with absolut confidence that this chandelier is not worth the hassel. This wizard had diffrent priorities."
it sounds like the DM made a mistake pretty common to new DMs, having a narrative plan. it sounds like a good idea when you first start DMing, but after having run several campaigns my players always love the sessions where i had nothing planned, or rather the sessions where they made choices so bizarre i had never though to plan them. it was never something i planned to do but after seeing how much they consistently enjoyed those sessions i started focusing on making tools for myself to help run improvised sessions better.
The DM made one mistake. Running a game for uncooperative aholes.
You oober-fucked the social contract, poor DM, but it happens sometimes. Actually when the players want to be 'bad guys', it happens all the time, pretty much. We've all done it, the good ones among us try and not to do it again, or at least just dabble in it, injure it a bit but try not to kill it, it's the DM's baby after all. :]
If your party plays chaotic-evil murder-hobos, end the campaign and search for another group.
There is just no use in constantly fighting your players who are unwilling to participate in the campaign.
At what point does the. We are terrible people realisation kick in?
Been there, had similar done to me when starting out as a GM all those years ago. I learned to have fun with it. In the situation described I would have: 1) Made all the loot from chandeliers to paintings cursed in some way and 2) inserted breadcrumbs leading the group to the explore the tower with hints of really big treasure. The adventure would have probably been completed and there would be some fallout for the greed. Grist for the follow-up adventure mill.
The other take away is don't put treasure before the end. If the other stuff was not worth much, then you have to beat the end boss to get the real treasure.
The other unless you are running a criminal campaign don't ave the characters setup a criminal empire. You should have it as something they also need to handle by taking it down.
My take as a GM would be to slow burn it, the evil dwarven leader realized that this up and coming gang is a threat to their leadership as they are effectively outside their control with their swiftly increasing money and therefore power. over a few sessions turn the evil leader from an ally to an enemy using the same corrupt system the players have been exploiting against them and wind up capturing them and throwing them in prison with the leader of the rebellion whom they now have common cause with, but less than zero trust
lol .. i feel bad for the DM just a little bit... First Rule of DMing: step1- Make a plan, step 2- throwaway the plan.... being the guy was new to DMing you could have helped him along with tips and semi-held his hands but these things happen... should give them support and some words of wisdom for next time around. and always remember ... if it's not going to plan.. then at least have some fun with it
First rule of playing. Make an adventurer who will go on quests open the locked door and press the shiny button. If you are given a quest go for it. Don't subvert it certainly not for a newbie DM. Just have some freaking respect for the one Whose spent time making a game for you to play.
So I've had this happen to me before as a GM, and I've learned a lot from those failures.
Communication really is the key. ...MOST of the time. Some people really do just want to be disruptive, so you need to have a plan for that.
The illusion of choice is a powerful tool. A trio of choices that all lead to the same place without the players knowing that they do is a great way to do this. And in your haunted tower scenario this would look like the big bad coming to investigate who was ransacking their tower. Well, if I were running it at least.
As for the fledgling GM, I would want to have a discussion with them and 1) apologize for the misunderstanding, and 2) offer to build a party better suited to the story they were trying to tell.
Also... come on. Come do it. You come to my house and spill my milk, I dare you.
I love your post.
I do want to add that those same characters could have found reasons to follow the narrative the DM wanted them to. As a gang they were all about violence and profit. Both are found in abundance during civil wars.
Maybe I’m a goof, but going through even a hackneyed obvious narrative with one off characters is hilarious. Creating rationalizations for the character as to why they are participating is half the fun; the flimsier and more flawed the better.
Ouch. Well it's essential that the GM and players agree ahead of time what kind of campaign and party you'll have. If the GM needs you to be the good guys, then they need to make sure you're not making a criminal gang. Also it sounds like they were trying to railroad you - an experienced GM would have thrown out their notes and flipped to a criminal gang campaign. Also: if you want to play a criminal crew play Blades in the Dark :)
We discovered Blades in the Dark later on and got to live out our criminal thug dreams in a different campaign :D
On the other hand, if the GM just needs you to fight the oppressive overlord, his policies should directly oppress the players. I'd suggest that they end up in debt after that heist and all the bribes and extortion payments.
Blades is a great system. I played in a long-term campaign using it and it was a lot of fun.
You can be a criminal gang and be the "good" guys, or at least good enough so that you would want to topple the bad guy. It wouldn't necessarily mean that you would play evil characters, and even then they could still want to topple the guy. Maybe he is hard on crime or something. Just telling your GM you're playing as a gang of criminals doesn't mean anything. You're forgetting it's about a first -time GM. The players could have been more accomodating
@@goldenalt3166 Can't really expect a first time GM to twig to that. Either needed to go that way or go along with it becoming a criminal gang heists and mob building campaign, and an experienced GM could have pulled off either.
If the DM is a newbie at game mastering and the player has decades of rpg experience, I place the onus on the failed campaign more on the player than the DM. Sounds like the party was intentionally sabotaging the campaign. "OMG! She's a newbie DM! Let's see how much shit we can get away with. Hahaha! Won't this be fun!" In a hobby chronically short of DMs your party just drove another one way. WTG. Hope you got your moment of satisfaction. It really rankles me when people comment on how they are the "Always DM" or the "More often than playing" DM, but when someone comes along and takes up that mantle, the Always/More Often DM stomps the New DM's work into the dust.
It was obvious what the DM had intended. Hard to blame the DM for 'not communicating clearly' when the quest giver says "investigate an ancient wizard the tower". He didn't say "go here and strip the tower of lighting fixtures and paintings." Your background as a human with ties to the criminal world was suppose to your hook to get your character into the dwarven kingdom, not to hijack and derail the game. It sounds like your party played the "well it's what my character would do" trope to the detriment of the game. I've seen more campaigns ruined because of the "it's what my character would do" mentality than any other reason. You even said you knew the DM's intent was to get the campaign back unto the adventure path, but instead, your party went for the killing blow. Well done.
Does nobody use alignments anymore? 😀 Because to me it sounds like her whole party was full of evil characters and it's not just the issue of communication and experience but the problem with the base premise: DM expected them to be heroes and they all made villains. The background is secondary, the alignment is primary.
I DMed a *_LOT_* back in AD&D 2E and my players were just like the ones described here. I learned very quickly to put my time into developing the personalities of the major NPCs, so that I knew what they would do in just about any given situation. That way, if the players decided to go in a different direction, it didn't really matter. I knew what the NPCs would do in that circumstance. I know that you said the DM was new, so I will make some concessions based on that, but this wasn't the fault of the players. The DM should have leaned into what the players were doing (and having FUN doing), and went along for the ride. If they really wanted that plucky group of rebels that are fighting the corrupt system, they should have made them up as NPCs and pit them against the players. That way, the DM gets to have the fun of playing those characters, and the players get the fun of thwarting those goody-two-shoes at every turn.
If you're the kind of person that can't stand the idea of the players playing through the campaign in a way different to what you've planned, you're not cut out to be a DM. Sorry, but I truly believe that.
Reasonable for a new DM to have trouble with this.
It’s unfortunate too bc they inadvertently set up an excellent campaign:
After the PCs return with the stolen loot, they sell it and begin to party, but they awaken in pools of blood, their fellow partygoers butchered.
Arcane script appears on their collective flesh, the loot was cursed and they will not know peace until it’s all returned.
Now they have a reason to investigate the tower, and the curse can’t be broken until they go back and get all the stuff which has been disseminated to other people. Save the chandeliers for last and find out it’s been melted down and made into counterfeit coin, and they have to decide whether to let someone good die to get to the coins before they spread, or save the person and risk the lives of the many. If they save the good person have a celestial tell them the curse on the coins is diluted, weakened by the good done and it will be a year before they kill, but then the half-life will begin again, making them ever more deadly.
Then it becomes a race against the clock bc the cursed objects kill those that carry or own them within a month, then half a month, then a week, then 3 days, then a day and half. Until by the 8th or 9th victim, the things are so cursed just picking one up brings a meteor swarm spell down on you.
Have the magic tattoos give dreams and clues to the locations they have to go to and the people that have the items.
Excellent set up for a redemption arc.
As a DM learning to play the yes and game is a skill, it takes time to learn. So many times, I spent hours and hours building a world and adventure only to have it go wildly wrong once we started playing. after years of playing and running games, I try to be very up front about the scope of the story. i hope they pick up the books again and give it another shot.
I wonder how many viewers are going to recognize the image at 0:59 as Pathfinder rather than official D&D
we shall see :D
You say this as if there's some crucial reason to distinguish Wayne Reynolds' generic fantasy art for one versus his generic fantasy art for the other.
One of the basic rules of being a good player is follow the game Masters lead. I've done silly things like this myself. This is forgivable but it's a good lesson to learn from. I'm glad you shared your story
That's a thing that I like about rpg's like "Forgotten Lands": the GM gets a world with different factions, and the players themselves decide whose side they take, with all the risks it takes to cooperate with weaker "good" people, or with mighty "evil" creatures.
Thank you for sharing this - it's such a central challenge in D&D (and TTRPGs in general) that have a GM: How much should a GM adjust to meet the players where they are? I feel really bad for the poor DM - that sort of thing contributes to a lot of DM burnout, I think. And unfortunately, there often is a big mismatch in what players want to do and what a DM/GM can offer. I think that this is something that really needs to be covered in Session Zero - what kind of game is everyone expecting? There is already a lot of expectation put on DM/GM to adapt to players, but there needs to be a stronger social norm for players to participate in good faith - i.e. not ditch the adventure or setting and run off to do something else completely, and not actively try to "break" the adventure (like video game players putting buckets on Skyrim NPCs' heads to rob them blind). Appreciate your reflections on this, and I hope future groups can avoid this grief.
It's just frustrating because you can't have solid expectations as a DM. Players will always throw you curveballs, and part of being a DM is being accommodating about those curveballs.
In my long-running game, the ranger just decided to straight up worship an eldritch being for no great reason whatsoever. It was a weird choice, especially after we had worked to destroy the cult of the creature, but I rolled with it. It was absolutely amazing because of the interesting character beats that came up, especially as he began to be forced by the entity to act against the party in subtle ways. It was clear to everyone since it was discussed in the open, but watching the RP opportunities once the other players knew was particularly rewarding.
Honestly, I would LOVE to run a game like this. Every DM has some general idea of where a campaign is going to go, but if it follows that path to a T then it becomes predictable and boring. Adapting a campaign to the players' whims can be exciting and lead to a story no one expected. But to be fair, I've run several different campaigns and have enough experience under my belt to do some decent improv. I can understand how this could overwhelm and frustrate a new DM. Still... 😈
I've been on both sides of this. One was a new group (no session zero) and I took an "evil but can fit in with a mostly good party because of XYZ" type character. The problem was almost every other player did the same thing so we had 3 evil PCs and one neutral PC. We did not plan this at all, we'd created the characters separately. The one that got me as a DM was a GURPS, 1960s-ish gangster game which we had talked about before anyone built their characters. The problem was I was thinking 'GTA Vice City' the TTRPG, my players were thinking 'Godfather the TTRPG'. It worked but I had to rewrite most of it as we went.
Yeah...this went wrong at Session 0. One criminal might have been alright - perhaps a face turn could be added, but once all the players decided to become members of the Discord Crime Family, the DM should have stopped it and then be a bit more explicit on what her plan was.
If this were a one-shot - not part of a larger campaign, and not part of some open world that the characters would be exploring, I think it might have been better for the DM to have made pre-generated characters. She could have handed out a different secret character sketch to each player so that the players would be able to roleplay their characters' interaction with each other. She could also then make sure the party had the skills amongst them to do what the DM wanted them to do. For example, the party needs to get into the tower. Perhaps one character has a good Climb skill and she could sneak in and lower the rope for the others. Perhaps one has a good Fast Talk skill and he could trick the guards into letting them in, thinking they were there to fix the supposedly malfunctioning Palantir, because the party was born ready to slip in and out like the wind. Or, perhaps one has high attractiveness and a good Charm skill, and the plan will be to lure the guard into the alleyway where the others would jump and kill/otherwise incapacitate him, steal the keys and go it (I know these are all CoC/Runequest skills. D&D is too mainstream). This way the DM could still give the characters agency while still nudging them in the direction she wants
Reminds me of a group of players I had 15 years ago (I was a modestly experienced DM. Had run 2 full campaigns in AD&D and 3.0 that each lasted a few years). I explained upfront before character creation that the campaign I had in mind was intended to be "heroic" or inline with "neutral" characters. I didn't ban evil characters, but I warned it would clash with what I had in mind for the setting. Players were free to do as they like of course, but I also had a broad idea where things would go by level 20 in terms of world events go on around the players (how the players interacted with the world events was up to them). Turns out the party all decided to be neutral / chaotic. No "good" aligned players (which was fine, just had to adjust my expectations for what they were likely to do).
Turns out however "neutral" quickly became "We're gonna be evil murderous lunatics who rob towns, murder the locals etc." I felt annoyed at this as I quickly saw that these players just wanted a campaign of them running random amok killing farmers and creating their own hoard of gold like a dragon or something. I was bored and disinterested with this very quickly. "Ok. You murder all the villagers and take their meager posessions. Yay. Where do you go next?" On and on it went... until the day a band level 4 adventurers showed up and defeated (kill and captured) the entire party in a very close fight (they were also level 4, so it was "fair" in terms of CR). Players were outraged and said. "WTF why did you do that?"
"You razed and burned multiple villages to the ground, slaughtered hundreds of defenseless peasants. You inflicted more death and misery in the past month than the entire evil NPC faction currently at war with the nation you are in. Did you thing the king of these lands would not hire adventurers to hunt down the lunatic sociopaths killing their peasants? You are literally the evil menace of these lands the players in a "good" party would have been sent to hunt down as part of some small quest. Congrats, you played the bad guys and you lost. Campaign done."
I hate evil campaigns. 99% of them are just excused for players who want to play murder hobos killing level 0 peasants. It almost never leads to interesting stories or characters, just sociopaths who revel in random destruction for destructions sake.
To be fair "Peaky Blinders X Teletubbies" is probably the D&D sweet spot for most groups.
Ironically, I doubt you'll be judged so much for the hilarious hijinks but rather for choosing the Stallone Dredd over Urban Dredd, lol. (I like both for different reasons. 😁 )
OMG, this is pure RPG fun at its best. As the DM, I would have laughed, thrown my "plan" out the window, and leaned into it.
Fun is more important than story.
Edit: But yes, the social contract should still be in place, and the DM and players should all be aligned on game expectations.
Same, sure an uprising and rebellion sounds fun but.. having the group become crime overlords themselves and uproot the city in their own way? Fuck yeah I'd lean into that more! Still the same premise, just with more hooliganry involved! Sadly, I can see why this ended badly, newbie DMs are not good at adapting to the group or changing their plans when the group wants to latch onto something else, and the group did communicate with the DM what they were doing.. The DM could have shut them down at any time, or stopped it from happening in the first place.
But, cest la vie.
"We'll give him a little friend, everybody needs a friend" - Bob Ross. By far the most sagely advice for DMs came from Bob Ross. Your final bosses need friends to protect them, and your important NPCs need friends that act as proxies.
Communication is the first part of a good game. Tell your players if this is mostly urban, wilderness, or dungeon crawl. Are you expecting intrigue or head-beating? What sort of alignements do you want. If you look at the player's guides for Paizo adventure paths, they give a good format of some of the things you should say about your game. (they are free, so look at few different ones) Not only does this help the GM and players get on the same page, it helps to let people know some options that will come up a lot and others that won't.
"Virgin" DMs have a well deserved reputation when dealing with...not good characters. A bad one too. Not even sure communication would have done much good in that case. Most of the things would seem completely obvious to all parties, thus not worth mentioning, until it became too late. If I could give any advice in this situation it would be, if your DM is inexperienced - ease up on the backstory and double up on in-session character development, ideally towards the end of session one or in session two. Use goals instead of history to motivate you characters. That way you're giving the DM something to work with, and aren't drowning him with extra stuff as they're trying to run a game for the first or second time.
"We were playing a gang... like the teletubbies!"
Lol
As a player and DM of a chaotic group of misfits, I have learn when it is my turn in the chair to just have an over all arc that is ever changing depending on the actions of the players. I have done the many hours of prep just to throw it out the window. So my advise to anyone wanting to try out dming. 1. Remember everyone is there to have fun. 2 It is a cooperative storytelling game, so remember improv yes and. 3 If you have this really cool encounter planned, It can always be where your players are heading regardless which direction they choose. 4 Player consequences, in a vast world your players aren't the only adventurers, Create a band to hunt down the players. In the case of this video, There could have been a more powerful crime syndicate not appreciative of this group rising gang. Or perhaps something they took from the tower was cursed that brought an evil down upon the city that they sold it to causing the leadership to turn on the group. And finally number 5 the most important one of them all, Its a game for everyone to have fun, including the DM and if that isn't happening then sit down with the group and discuss it
I...okay, so, this session zero you guys were running. It's usually best for the DM to come up with the campaign *setting* before the session zero and the story *afterwards*. This poor DM did get run into the ground, but first-time DMing comes with this kind of risk. Still, that...that was rough. I feel for him a little, even if he probably learned a *lot*. Too bad he didn't come back to the game.
Yeah, I suspect that they had a pre-determined plan for the general "arc" of the campaign, and that they expected us to play pretty traditional adventurers (which for a D&D game is pretty fair!)
Honestly it seems really easy to change motivations about mage tower. "Your boss told you to go there and sweep everything valuable, but most importantly >place for dungeon treasure item name
@@dungeonsanddiscourse well, now your group is hunted, I see even better Assassins in your future, lol waahaahaa,
Back in the old days, I ran two concurrent groups, one evil, one good, the good groups was always dealing with the mess the bad guys came up with, till the climax, when the evils party thought it would be a toe to toe fight, unbeknownst to them everyone the wronged, every community harmed either sent or hired paladin, rangers MUs and Clerics to get them,
They were hung in Gibbets, on the Main road, lol
This is why I stopped planning every little detail of my campaigns out. I come up with a bare bones theme and bring in one or two premade adventures that I can pluck content from and go from there. That way if it turns out that the party really doesn't want to do the plucky rebels theme, but instead an evil crime organization, I can adjust my ideas around to make that work instead.
When weighing who was at fault in this situation, comparing a brand new DM who wants to play "Dungeons and Dragons"TM and experienced players who a) KNEW they were brand new at DMing and b) signed on to play D&D but wanted to play BitD instead, the onus is on the players. We lost a potentially good DM just because their players didn't respect them and their newness enough. They could've been the next big DM but sadly we'll never know now.
Your amazing session zero missed one key element, what was the story that DM was going to tell ("I'm telling a story of the rebel vs the evil empire, and you need to have your character fit into that type of story.") And it doesn't help they were a new DM and didn't realize that 'no module plot outline outlasts the introduction of the characters'
If I was them I would have had, after you came back to town with a boatload of loot, a bunch of the evil overlords' thugs come by and rob your plunder. This gives you a reason to not like the evil overlord and perhaps get you into the mindset of overthrowing him. Especially if he uses his power to have your 'bribed officials' forgo their alliance with you, either by payment or oppression.
If that doesn't work, then have the thugs keep coming by to collect (ir)regular tithe/tax/insurance money. Until you can't afford it and now are desperate to 'fix this situation'.
Being a new DM, he relied a bit much on the idea you would be 'heroes' and lent too heavily into your 'agency'. IMHO.
This is why I give my players a few days to come up with their characters before I even make anything and then I build my campaign around what type of party I have to work with
Thing is there, there's a big secret to this hobby.
There's two types of games out there, those you're going to enjoy and those you're not. That's it, doesn't matter why, how, it either works for you or it doesn't.
I think the GM hadn't quite predicted where the players were going, what they wanted. I would have spun it, worked with the group as it was. Then again, I'm quite flexible, adaptable to this stuff.
Then again, this hobby is a funny one, it's a lot of give and take, a lot of patience and a bit of credit for the other side of the table.
Then again, I've always been on the players side. I would have completely rewritten the campaign when and where I saw it going more this way. Wouldn't be easy? There's means and ways to spin it. Vendettas, clans swearing vengeance against the characters. Rival organisations stepping up, needing to be managed, put down, fought. The promise of being able to go 'straight', the 'big score' and just how much trouble the players are willing to endure, how many guards are they were willing to trust, to keep that life style.
Again, I'm adaptable, I improvise, I build worlds and places for the group first, then I work the story into it. Always something going on, always something to be done and some trouble burbling in the background.
But would you have done this as a brand new GM? I doubt it.
People are way too fast to throw out alignment these days, but what is evident here is that the party rolled N/CN characters and the DM wanted to build an adventure for a G party.
Alignment doesn’t need to be some hard set rules for a game, but it’s actually quite handy with making sure everyone’s one the same page early on.
Alignment seems like a relic; especially the DnD alignment system.
@@davidbowles7281 And yet, 4 players writing two letters on a piece of paper can tell me a lot about whether or not their characters will gel with the campaign I want to run, and whether any further questions need to be raised before the game starts.
"...it wasn't."
O.O
I think I may have destroyed a game by being an anti-murderhobo.
Solving too many situations with diplomacy or trickery until the plot became too complex for the DM to keep track off.
I love these kinds of stories so much! This really strikes at the heart of the debate between plotting versus player agency. Sometimes you can have both but both parties have got to have a social contract: the DM will put in some work and the players will generally respect that. A collaboration requires this kind of understanding. Too much plot and players have no reason to be there, too much agency and we end up hearing about pet frogs for way too long or some such.
I was with you until the point where I found out the DM wasn't a baby.
The first thing that should be told to new DMs: 'Your players are egocentric morons, tell them what you want from them or they will build things that will implode the campaign.'
Thanks for providing the player perspective on this type of kerfuffel (sp?). Your recount to me only heightens the value of a “pitch” from the DM/GM/Chief Cats Herder of what they envision for their theme, mood, and tone. And thanks as always for your sense of humor!
This is when I run a game I don't like to make the campaign until the character are made.
I think it ends up being more like signs of a rookie GM: Instead of trying to get the party back on track he could have lean into what they were doing: No interest in overthrowing the evil overlord? Well the Dwarven ruler has decided that he will get "Tough on crime" and really cut right into their profits and maybe even capture a party member: if greed and power is the motivation for the party lean into it in a way that would caught their attention.
But of course this goes way far back into a rookie GM trying to feel comfortable running the game through careful planning of story beats and encounters and not rely too much on winging it according to player actions but hey, that part comes with time and experience.
Still if I was a player and knew the GM was a rookie I would try to help them a bit: I'd try something like falling in love with the rebel leader and getting dirt on other party members or something among those lines to corral the party into at least a compromise version of the planned adventure, but well some rookie and even veteran GMs really don't take to such efforts at all anyway either it goes over their head or they are really invested in their prescriptibe plot beats than it ends up not mattering.
I feel really bad for rookie GMs nowadays because of the expectations put on them to smoothly pivot to whatever the players seem to want at the time. At a certain point, a GM has material for some type of adventuring and not for others, and if players go too far trying to "break" the adventure, it's just going to mean a cancelled session while the GM tries to cobble something together for next week. I really appreciate experienced players who try to help nudge the group back into sanity - it's part of being a good sport in a game that a lot of people miss in their efforts to find exploits and loopholes. Pushing a rookie GM into completely unprepped content is just going to result in a shallow game that is less fun for everyone. Instead, helping to build the confidence of a rookie GM can lead to them having more confidence to be more flexible in future games.
@@domenceuspriest Not even rookie GM. If you ignore my prep and want to do random shenanigan with a cookie cutter build then download Skyrim and give your seat to someone interested in my prep.
@@Minodrec Preach! But see, you're not a rookie, so you have the self-confidence to tell them this (I do that too). I worry that new GMs are only getting messages about indulging players, and very few about where boundaries can be drawn and how to do it. I know when I was younger, I had a lot of trouble setting and maintaining appropriate boundaries and dealing with social pressure from people I considered friends. Hopefully we can reach them to let them know it's okay to draw a line and set expectations.
@@domenceuspriest I agree. Learning how to set proper boundaries is hard especially for young DM.
Lessons for the beginning DM:
1) Alignment Matters.
2) If you don't want players biting people, don't let the players roll up vipers.
3) Think it through. This party just ransacked a place that they know is reputedly cursed. This means that they've got thousands of gp worth of cursed objects. Every single piece can have its own consequences for the party and for whomever buys this stuff. Not the best way to start a criminal empire, messing up your customer base like that - not to mention what may happen when whatever's occupying that tower decides it wants its stuff back.
We have learned two things from this video...
One, your DM utterly failed. I would have swerved hard, created a rival gang come at you like sharks after blood, and made it advantageous for the party to side with rebels against the rival gang. There are dozens of other solutions to this problem, and your DM didn't take any of them.
You shouldn't feel bad because your DM utterly failed.
Two... we need more Discourse DM... that voice was amazing.
the idea of a crime faction sounds fun. all the GM needed to do is somehow get the rebel party to swear an oath of vengeance against your party
11:40 as a DM, he could have had the Betrayal be because the big bad and other bad guys in power were threatened by how good a gang you were and how fast you had been raising. Also, the fact that they could just betray you, kill you, not pay you, take all your power/money, and still get the rebel leader could have been too much to pass up. A classic "No Honor Among Thrives" Betrayal.
Then, the party would now be wanted and untrusted by both sides, the bad guys and the rebels, and on the run.
The only way to ever be safe is to do the job asked of them to begin with. Take down the evil in power, but now they get to do it their way.
This starts the grueling journey for redemption or for Payback. Ether way the campaign keeps going with a little bit of rewrites.
Something I've noticed in a lot of rules light systems is an EMPHASIS on OUT OF CHARACTER communication. Something that I think works real good in general.
the proper response to this (which the DM would not have known, being new to DMing) would be to go 'that's all great, now go away and come back with adventurers.'
I inadvertently killed the game I’ve been playing in for the last few years. The DM was very very tactical with the games. RP consisted of the party being talk at for a while with details and names no one would bother to remember because it rarely ever came up.
The last handful of sessions got to “kingdom building.” The party were high enough level (average 15) that we were going to be taking over a country etc etc. and the sessions would turn into 2 hours plus of it, when over half the players flat said they aren’t interested in it, and once all is done their character would ride off into the sunset having nothing to do with it.
Then we would have the standard (for our game) warhammer session of combat that we couldn’t finish in our session because we spent half or more on kingdom building no one but the DM and one player was interested in.
I had to miss a session because of other plans I had. And I realized I had more fun freeing up my Saturday night than going to the game. And I bowed out. Released my character in to the D&D beyond campaign so anyone could use it. It then devolved into a conversation of death of game because people would rather make other plans instead of playing.
Maybe it’s because I as player had to chase everyone down with scheduling and because of where we live we would rent a shared workspace for cheap to play and I was the one who would do that. Even though everyone has everyone’s contact info and the other players have the office’s info as well….
But they haven’t played a session since.
I also feel as a DM you need to not have a story so hard worn in that they characters can’t be who they are and have a world they are lived in. Most players want to DM but as a DM it’s super hard and not as fun if you aren’t actually enjoying people be who they are.
For DMs out there I recommend starting off your homebrew campaign by running a sort of sandbox to see how the players interact with it. Have a few minor side quest plot hooks and establish the stuff going on in the background politically or otherwise, and see where it goes. I ran a more or less sandbox adventure where the PCs got to choose what to do, and some of the hooks were based on the character's personal goals and others were related to stuff they had done or things they learned about in game, and it was probably the most memorable and best adventure I've run and the players were more engaged with it than when I've run published adventures or linear homebrew ones. After a session or two you can get a feel for if the players can make their own adventure or if they want something more concrete.
This reminds me of the time I played “the big bad Wolf” at a festival larp. It was a bit of a joke concept; our group had a beastkin! Except it was just a gigantic wolf monster they’d found in the woods. I played it as barely tame. So when the local resistance leader the entire player base was negotiating with wandered alone through the woods, I murdered him. What? I was hungry!
Changed the plot for the entire year or so. My character was killed - rightly so - and no one listened to my zany character ideas ever again. Rightly so.
Unpopular take: the emphasis on huge amounts of player agency in world building and narrative that is built into newer games is not necessarily a good thing for all campaigns. Not suggesting insane amounts of railroading, but players need to read the room, and if a DM makes clear the TYPE of story and the types of heroes they’re imagining then players should improvise and be imaginative within those bounds, and the DM should be hoping for players to surprise them with the actions they take within those bounds.
How I see this specific case. You have a virgin DM with no experience running a campaign. They might not know all the ins and outs of how to fix things or how to communicate everything yet. If there are seasoned DMs or players around the table they should help the new DM out, ask questions, give relevant and useful feedback, and so on. But sure, when the DM noticed that the party simply was playing a gang of thugs they should have called a timeout and talk things through.
I was once part of a campaign. Three of us decided we would play the D&D equivalent of the Three Musketeers. I got to plat Porthos the dwarf Rogue-Swashbuckler. Ah the shenanigans. The poor DM had the toughest time managing the mayhem.
Old grognard here. I think to much emphasis is put into session zero. You want them to go after the tyrant overlord. They want to play a gang of thieves.
Don't introduce them to a brave, honest and true rebel leader.
Simply have the Overlord's men show up heavily armed and armoured accompanied by a lieutenant and collect all the "tax" they owe the overlord. Start it as casually threatening. Let them keep their clothes. Take every copper coin or item they have collected. Tell them their working tax is 50% from now on. Pretty soon the Overlord is going to on their most wanted list.
If they kill his lieutenant, then they are suddenly on his most wanted list.
You want them to go into dungeons. Don't try to convince them how virtuous it would be. Have the lieutenant show up to give them "tax recovery" missions.
Slowly introduce the rebel leader. Don't let them know it is the rebel leader. Make it somebody the characters like long before they find out they are the "rebel leader". Better still why do we want an NPC rebel? The story should be about the characters.
The GM approaches one of the players and says "Hey sweaty dwarf fighter would you be adverse with your character being the secret rebel leader?"
Just my old two cents worth. Everything above is not punitive (or railroaded) it is a logical consequence that could come from a tyrant of a corrupt government finding some poacher in his business that are not giving them his cut.
Both sides get what they want. They get to be a band of thieves and the GM gets to run a story where the heroes (reluctant to do it for reasons of conscience but instead willing to do it because the bad guy is taking their stuff) Give your players the chance to get their own reasons to take out the bad guy.
If youre a new DM and need advice for this particular scenario. Just tell the players youre running a railroad and not a sandbox. Nothing wrong with writing an adventure for your party to play through, most adventure modules are just that. For expert DMs, you already know. All loot in the wizards tower would disappear as soon as they crossed the threshold of entrance, only remaining tangible after the "curse" is lifted by doing whatever the original quest was. The ole "Sure its a sandbox, on my railroad!" Ha!
One thing I've learned about DM-ing is that you really need to roll with these things. I'd probably let you capture the rebel leader, give him to the big bad, and the big bad double crosses you all, throws you all into a dungeon and strips you from your equipment. You then have to hatch an escape. When you finally do, you find out the human town was burnt to a crisp and you all need to assume alternate identities. You now all have a reason to hate the big bad and it's personal.
That's not something that is obvious to a new DM and you have to learn these things through hearing stories about "difficult" parties. Steering a rambunctious party that's just trying to have fun is not easy, but you really do need to find the fun in it as a DM.
The worst case scenario is that your party really does team up with the big bad and the DM's new job is to get them to fight the rebellion and make a NEW big bad (big good?)
There's fun in the chaos and you need to let the plot be a setting and not a goal. This is difficult to let go.
If I were that dm I would end up making it a campaign about the players becoming the new crime boss. They'd still have to defeat the evil dwarf boss but they'd take his place.
honestly... I could totally adjust to a criminal empire rising. TIME TO OUST THE HUTTS
I keep seeing a lot of comments about DM and player communication being important as a means to avoid scenarios like this but I think the communication from the DM here was fine. They admit in the video that as a player they knew the DM was trying to get the players back on track with the adventure/campaign the DM had planned. "But they said it as an NPC and not as the DM" is just a weak excuse. They knew what the DM had intended and chose to ignore it. Then they decided to take the one action most likely to completely destroy the DMs adventure by planning to betray the rebel leader. I would have probably killed their character too and started a new game with players that actually respected the effort I put into DM a game for them.
One of my players wants to DM a game she's been concocting. I plan to co-DM with her to help her understand and practice communication with our friend group who are joining her campaign. I don't want to scare her off from DMing, and horror stories like these have helped my resolve in helping her as much as possible so she doesn't have a bad time DMing for the first time. She even said that it all goes well and the gang wants to continue after the first "arc", I can switch over to being a player and she can solo DM when she's more confident, helping her out only when she has questions.
As a GM you never know where you're players are going and what they are up to. I would of just run with this and see where it would go.
Or have the dwarf double-cross the group after they bring him the rebel.
Back in 3.5 I had a player focus on appraise, bluff and survival. The combination meant any encounter would lead to a big chunk of load I wasn't expecting the party to get. One time it all got spent doing "pimp my ride"-style modifications on their dragon's howdah.
I had a comment about communication being vital between the Dm and players, but you covered that well, so have an algorithm boosting comment instead!
thanks Jackal!
OMG - Now I just want to be in a game with you! And I am laughing thinking of all the plot hooks YOU just gave to the DM!
- make the loot tied to the curse and infect the town,
- have the creature in the tower seek vengeance for the party waking it up from its nap (yes petty intelligent monster here we come) ,
- have the quest giver employed by the beneficiary of the tower who needed it cleaned out and now the party just stole their inheritance - Just SO Many options...
Assuming the DM is willing to pivot and sandbox the world instead of stick to the script. Never over-plan a campaign it will never go well.
Now I am insane and LOVE seeing where the players go. I run the game like a baseball catcher just slinging back whatever is handed to me, but that took years of running to develop.
The "Necessary Evil" campaign for Savage Worlds has a huge assumption in it. The premise is that aliens invade and most of the heroes are wiped out. The bulk of the people in the resistance to the alien invasion are actually the surviving supervillains. Midway in the campaign the book says something like "now that the players are starting to enjoy being heroes...". When our GM read that to us we just broke into laughter.
We actually see one of the major benefits of the often shunned Alignment system in action: It gives the whole table, including the GM, a guideline how the PCs will actually interact with the world. If everybody wants to play the CE bastards, the GM can easily intervene, and tell the players that his campaign is by no means suited for this play style.
I am a GM for 20 years and I still come across players like this, they are called 30th warriors and they really make me feel like not GMing anymore.
It's unusual to get a whole party like this tho... usually it is just one player that isn't on board with the theme of the campaing, even if you tell them.
I do agree that the theme of the campaign should always be clear to the players tho, that is a common problem with Shadowrun for instance even the official modules don't have a synopsis on what this is going to be about, so players struggle trying to make characters that fit.
The only time I got a whole party not on board with a campaign theme was when I told my players there wouldn't be too much opportunity for developing their characters backstories in my game cause it was focused on investigative exploration (Meaning I wanted them to roll characters that were more like detectives) then they rolled a bunch of murder hobos.
I wish the DM had been able to adapt as your Fantasy Peaky Blinders sound like it was full of unintentional humour.
I could totally see my party doing what your party did. Fortunately the DM's in the group know this, and they're very flexible when we go completely off the rails - like spending an hour trying to figure out what part a random cat that the DM mentioned in an aside is supposed to play later in the campaign, so we adopted it. Or when we went completely the wrong way while exploring and managed to bypass the big bad monsters. Or when the rogue determined that the only way our paladin in plate mail would ever be able to sneak into the fortified warehouse would be if the guards were taken out stealthily (the bad guys were using an orphanage to turn all of the older kids into criminals, and using them as guards).
So, I have been playing D&D for a little over 40 years now. I do agree with your statement that the DM should have spoken up about the characters during the creation. For example, as the DM in the game I am playing in now said, "Characters in the world are the heros. The world needs heros, not more trouble. Generally, you will be battling evil." Now, that still allowed for evil characters, for thieves, for all kinds of things. But, it gave us an idea how our characters were supposed to act in the world, in general. Now, where I disagree is where the DM should have told you about the plot. I would be highly disappointed if my DM did that. Our characters have pretty much free reign on where they go and what they do. The DM prepares things, but if we choose not to go to it, he comes up with something else. There is plenty of adventure in the world. Had I been your DM, the party probably would have ended up running afoul of the rebellion, leading to some sort of climatic showdown. Or, maybe the dwarves or humans in authority would have turned on them, leaving no choice but for them to side with the rebellion to save their skins. He definitely could have handled it differently. But, new DM's make mistakes and hind sight is 20/20. Personally, rather than write a story of how things should go, I decide how the things around the PC's will go, and they can decide their reaction to it. Take the PC's plan and monkey wrench it. Get creative. Don't let the leader of the rebellion be taken alive. A new one springs up, and now the PC's are on their shit list. Or maybe the rebellion is led by a group of assassins that want to take over the dwarf city for themselves. Either way, the story goes on.
Yup that's happened to me, DM says something off hand and the party goes full loot goblin, in our case it was a door made of solid Laen (magical elvish glass, worth more than it's weight in gold), the door was neigh unbreakable but he walls were stone, one powder stone spell later and the party was leaving the dungeon with a door.
its entertaining to hear you say 'game' or 'campaign' :D thanks for cutting out all the pauses