GreenGoo wrote:one of the PC's said, yeah, and of course he's going to be our antagonist for the rest of the campaign or something to that effect.
This kind of thing isn't unusual at all. It happens all the time in my games, and no matter how clever I think I am, the players will figure it out in a way that makes it sound like a cliché. It has taught me to think differently. That long-dead necromancer the group is trying to uncover the tomb of? He's actually dead, and won't face off against the players in a climatic battle. In fact, I'll go out of my way to make that part as anticlimatic as possible while introducing other elements. I had that exact scenario going on recently, as a matter of fact. The group was fighting their way through a large, ruined town in order to reach the powerful necromancer's tomb. They were fully convinced he was behind all the bad stuff around them. They were also aware that another group was trying to get to the same objective. When they finally reached the tomb, they saw the other group unceremoniously dump the necromancer's mummified body off a ledge and into a bottomless pit, in a way that made it clear he'd never return. Instead the climatic battle at the end of the scenario was against the opposing group, people the players had fully expected to face as a mere roadblock before the real enemy.
Playing with player expectations is fun, but it's important to let the players be right too. In fact, you might want to go out of your way to make them right at times, even going so far as to change your plot to fit with their crazy theories if they sound cool enough.
Blackhawk wrote:I've toyed with having a campaign start with a bunch of kids kidnapped by kobolds/goblins, but making the PCs the kids.
Neat. Make them the kobolds and you've got yourself a deal.
Heh. We Be Goblins from Paizo has received great reviews for doing exactly that (well, with goblins.)
My idea was to make a stack of characters with the 'Youth' hindrance from Savage Worlds, probably just farmboys, then have them work it off. Perhaps have the kobold attack be the beginning of their career, then jump ahead a year at a time per session, exploring the 'misadventures' they had growing up. After four or five sessions they'd lose the 'Youth' hindrance, become adults, and the campaign-proper would begin.
It was a brainstorming point, though, never anything I fleshed out.
Any RPG which encourages death for extra-smart meta gaming is a plus in my experience. I want you to have fun, not outwit the GM.
Plus, there's the Horrible Kobold Random Death Chart(s)! All Hail King Torg!
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein "I don't stand by anything." - Trump “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867 “It is the impractical things in this tumultuous hell-scape of a world that matter most. A book, a name, chicken soup. They help us remember that, even in our darkest hour, life is still to be savored.” - Poe, Altered Carbon
BH - I ran a similar campaign where I had a prelude with the players as tweens. I watched Goonies and Stand By Me, and read books like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn for inspiration. I had the players pre-roll their adult characters and started them off by encouraging them to play like kids with big dreams of becoming those characters some day. I wanted them over-the-top.
IIRC: The entire adventure took place during a storm that raged for a few days and caused floods and such. I think I started them in good weather during a festival and ran them through some minor hijinks of their choosing until they were separated and in trouble with a couple having fled to a grove that served as their hideaway. At that time, I had the storm roll in. It was the stick I used to drive them together. If they had initiative they went out to rescue their friends. If they stayed in one place I had a tree fall on it or something. Once they were mostly together, the started encountering the the enemy of the adventure -- a mixed group that included human pirates, half-orcs, and a half-ogre -- that were driven ashore and shipwrecked and were scavenging gear to try to make it through the civilized coastal area.
The storm ended up being a great tool to keep thing moving along and balanced. If the players were about to die; I would have some enemy get struck by lightning or a falling tree branch; or I would have a tree fall and provide a barricade. I made it comical and would do stuff like having a wind-blown chicken land on the face of a half-orc and have him trip down a well while trying to pull it off. Additionally, if the players were hiding and strategizing too long, a random enemy would discover their hiding place while scavenging or taking shelter; or I would have their shelter blow away. I always have enjoyed heavy use of The Carrot & The Stick when running games.
I can't remember exactly how I wrapped it up - I think they each ended up discovering that they had some real power - the future fighter took up a sword and killed the big half-ogre, the future mage pulled off a cantrip and found he had some power; that sort of thing. They didn't find any significant treasure - but they did get learn that the pirates had run aground, and heard that they had buried some treasure. They couldn't haul it through hostile territory and had secured it in a cave. That was my hook for later use. In the end, the remaining enemies were swept away when a bridge collapsed; leaving with no evidence that they had been there, and leaving the players with an unbelievable story about where they had gone during the storm. I had them return to town when the storm broke, to find their families grieving over their deaths. They had no time to say where they had been, and after their glorious adventure they couldn't really celebrate due to the devastation brought down on the region.
As young adults when the real campaign began, they all had the reputation of being wild dreamers who sometimes told tall tales about where they had been during the Great Storm. It was something that had kept them together though the interim years and also separated them from the rank and file. I started the campaign-proper off with a rumor that somebody had found an old strange shipwreck up the coast...
My nephew, Jake - "I mean is there really anything more pure? Than sweet zombie monkey love?"
We're well into the campaign. I just finished GMing a session where the group ended up in a town of 400 in a nation at war, who just recently suffered a nasty attack coordinated by people within the town itself. One of the conspirators, in the process, murdered a town official, and was then himself murdered by another party, both of whom worked for the same person who in turn worked for yet another party, and the entire incident was a test run for a similar act being planned on a neighboring nation. The players, working on behalf of that nation (allied in the war with the nation in which the conspiracy took place,) were to investigate the incident and figure out what had really been going on.
The whole session was pure investigation and roleplaying, with only one combat encounter with only two enemies. It was a ten-hour session.
The whole thing was a blast, and everybody loved it. They actually figured out most of the events and who did what to whom and on whose behalf.
I'm getting a lot more comfortable with this style of GMing. Of course, I have a massive headache from keeping everything straight in this session.
