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Today, our campaign and my character really clicked and we had one of those games where everyone's decisions and die rolls line up to make for satisfying conflict, pleasantly dramatic intraparty tensions, and strong characterization for everyone. We're deep in the jungle tagging along with an expeditionary force on a big spider-tank land-ship that's heading for a local Yuan-Ti stronghold. We want an extremely important magical artifact/macguffin from the Yuan-Ti, but have no particular attachment to the expedition, which is led by a self-absorbed duke seeking revenge for the death of his father and his far more competent but loyal sister, who commands the troops. We've hosed up several attempts to claim artifacts like this in the past, the last of which involved us inciting a peasant revolt and bombing a wealthy neighborhood as a distraction while we snuck into a castle vault, only to end up losing the artifact to a shocking act of betrayal and fleeing the city in shame as the revolt was brutally suppressed. The plan was enacted without everyone being on board, and simmering (IC) tensions still plague the party. Our tiefling sorcerer and goblin rogue carried out the bombings and refuse to acknowledge they may have been a mistake; our lizardfolk paladin is distracted by some kind of attempt by the Yuan-Ti to metaphysically usurp his lizardfolk god's place in the cosmos; and our human sorcerer, the reluctant party leader because she's the only PC everyone else trusts, is in over her head and unsure how to reconcile our murderhobo tendencies with her still relatively unblemished desire to do good and save everyone. My bard/warlock just learned that his patron, who has promised him his freedom if he helps collect these macguffins, is going mad for unclear reasons, and secretly fears that he's doomed to death or worse whether he succeeds in saving the world or not. A series of horrific murders has rocked the group, with the lead engineer of the ship, a dwarven commander, and the assistant engineer all being killed in ways that suggest a Yuan-Ti infiltrator. We've been on and off the ship running little side missions in the jungle, but we're only a day's march from the Yuan-Ti at this point, and the Duke intends to lay siege to the gates of the Yuan-Ti city with the ship's cannons. We've tried to persuade the Duke to slow his roll and let us finish our murder investigation and scout for a more favorable place to begin our assault. He stubbornly refused, so we've resolved to finish the murder investigation before the siege begins. We've narrowed our list of suspects to the commander (the sister) and the Duke's bodyguard. We've been below deck interrogating several commanders when my bard tries to call back his familiar, who's been told to keep watch on the deck. The raven doesn't come, so we rush up to find it and the tiefling sorcerer (absent this session) slumped against a wall, clearly the victims of a sleep spell. The Duke's bodyguard, who had been outside his door, and the commander, who'd been studying maps in the war room, are both missing. The Duke, as we learn once we kick down his door, is fast asleep. The bodyguard returns, having ostensibly been to the bathroom, and we find the commander in her quarters asleep. While we're catching the commander up on our findings, the Duke's lead creepy magical researcher rushes in to tell us the court wizard just turned up dead in the alchemical lab. He also informs us that the work we've been doing for him (side quests in the jungle) has borne fruit, and he's devised a way to identify shapeshifted Yuan-Ti. Our human sorcerer and rogue go to check the scene and make sure the wizard doesn't come back as some sort of Yuan-Ti abomination, while the lizardfolk paladin and my bard go with the researcher and commander to confirm whether the bodyguard is Yuan-Ti, which we're almost certain of. She's already wary of our paladin and won't let him test her, but she lets the commander approach her. Naturally, the next thing we hear is the cold sound of metal sliding on metal, and the commander falls to the floor. She's unconscious but only barely alive, and that only because the paladin used magical means to take on half the damage she suffered. The bodyguard/Yuan-Ti assassin mocks us for the slow pace of our investigation and failure to even apprehend them properly; I cast Wall of Force to trap all five of us in one place, which turns out to be a crucial error. We roll initiative, which I win, blasting the assassin and bringing the commander out of unconsciousness with Healing Word, though poison keeps her unmoving on the floor. On their turn, the assassin puts their saber to the commander's throat, and calmly informs us that the new plan is that we're going to escort them off the ship, killing anyone who sees us on the way. Not seeing a way to kill the assassin and save the commander, my bard drops the wall of force. By this point, our sorcerer and rogue have returned, and join our merry hostage situation. We step out onto the deck, and when we see guards, the assassin orders my bard to handle them. Instead, I cast Heat Metal, hoping to force the assassin to drop their saber. They succeed on the save, but our DM offers to let us take one more action before the assassin can slit the commander's throat. The sorcerer (who's been played as having some sort of mixed infatuation with/admiration for the commander) turns, slams her staff on the ground, and disintegrates the assassin into a pile of dust (not only did the assassin fail the DEX save, she took enough damage to just go straight to dead). Having just failed to solve the murders in time, been (accurately) called stupid and slow, and having just nearly gotten the commander killed, my bard stalks back to the Duke's quarters and proceeds to have a little tantrum. He berates the Duke for his incompetence in failing to recognize that his bodyguard of ten years was a Yuan-Ti plant and tells him that his new attack plan is almost certainly going to get all his men killed. The Duke reminds my bard that he's a lowborn sellsword who has no honor or sense of duty, and that he isn't from here and has no idea what it's like to lose family to the Yuan-Ti. My bard goes, oh poo poo, he's right, I'm not from here and I don't give a rat's rear end about any of these people. As he opens the door to leave, he shouts back that the only reason the Yuan-Ti didn't kill the Duke after all these years of having him at their mercy is because they know he's far less a threat to them than his sister, who would inherit the title. The rest of the party, who stuck around to actually help heal the commander and clean up after the fight, is dumbfounded by this, and even more surprised when my bard (after much OOC apologizing that I really don't want to split the party but am absolutely certain my character would not stick around at this point) gets on his griffin, tells them that they can stick around here and die but that he'll be departing tomorrow at midday to do what they actually came here to do and steal the macguffin, and flies off to a back entrance to the Yuan-Ti stronghold that we'd previously discovered. The Duke gathers his commanders and our paladin (he denies our sorcerer and rogue access, somewhat implied to be because he feels they lack the nobility and breeding to be trustworthy) and calmly informs them that while it seems we may have walked into a Yuan-Ti trap, at this point we don't have the ability to leave. The loss of the murdered engineers means returning through the jungle is not an option, since the fortress ship is an intricate machine and at this point will basically just have to run until it overheats, since we lack the expertise to properly shut it down and start it up again. Sieging the Yuan-Ti isn't just a dumb option, it's also the only option, because even the slight chance of victory it affords is the best hope remaining. The Duke says that while our party isn't obliged to stick around, he very much intends to go down with his ship. We ended there, with the party split and our path unclear. We agreed OOC that the most likely course of action was that my bard could be persuaded to return to the ship after cooling off a bit, though the DM made clear that he didn't mind splitting the party for a bit if that's what we wanted to do. All in all, easily the best session I've had in ages, and the first time in a while that I've felt comfortable enough to spark big intraparty conflict without worrying about derailing the game or upsetting someone. Nice big moments for the paladin and sorcerer too, and our party is clearly clicking and getting into character and developing differentiated relationships with NPCs and each other. In conclusion, elfgames good. Valentin fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Oct 25, 2018 |
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Oct 25, 2018 06:58
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 22:50 |
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had a campaign get totally swerved. running a game of DIE with my friends, kieron gillen's collab with the rowan rook and decard (spire, heart) people to make a game based on his comic (also called DIE). DIE is an isekai/jumanji fantasy where your characters get pulled into the world of their roleplaying game for real and have to find their way home while contending with enemies that are thematically and visually reminiscent of their character's personal problems and media interests. this post will have a lot of spoilers for both the RPG and comic and might not make sense without them, just as a heads up. DIE is also very dramatic and violent and is designed to basically force intra-party conflict that may or may not rise to the level of pvp, because (spoilers for both game and comic because this detail is intentionally hidden from players until play starts) everyone has to agree unanimously to go home or to stay in the fictional world, or the fictional world will end killing everyone. dead players arise as zombies, but they don't get to vote. if the party returns home, dead players appear to return as a corpse, but (double spoilers for the comic here:) their zombie remains behind in DIE. our particular plan for this game was to have a party that goes to the DIE world as teens in 1999 for a set of prologue sessions, gets out, then has to return as adults for a full campaign reasons we'd concoct during the teen prologue. we're running DIE in a slightly modified way because it's mostly designed for limited play and I don't love some of the calls made for a campaign-length game, but these don't matter unless you already know about DIE: player fallen get to retain their special abilities in this game because playing a literal zombie with no advancement is lame at campaign length, they just can't go home and are steadily losing their sense of self. also, the Master in the teen session was being played not as an intentional villain but as a kidnapped member of the party, whose henchmen had basically seized the reins from her. the DIE classes are all very heightened takes on standard D&D fare, and the ones that matter particularly here are the Dictator (the bard turned sour, a walking mind control machine that NPCs distrust) and the Master (the in-universe DM and also the actual game DM's special DMPC villain, which is generally a riff on arcane spellcasters). also, as mentioned, the NPCs in DIE are explicitly supposed to echo both real world and fictional influences on the PCs; an early riff in the comic features the hobbits from LOTR in a nightmarish eternal verdun as part of the game world. It was supposed to be a very light-hearted session! The isekai'd teens were in the middle of an errand for the villain (the Lady of Pain, who had been the in-game villain of a prior normal D&D campaign their PCs played as part of their background) to try to save the Master, who had part of her soul stolen and stuck in a phylactery which was preventing her from returning home. in this particular leg of the journey the party had gotten to a spooky castle that was actually pro wrestling themed (....yes it was named wrestlevania), which was a chance to just do some silly fights and also play with one character's issues relating to being bullied by the wrestling team. the party engaged in some wacky fights against enemies like "a slime that mimics you" and "your character's AD&D character, resurrected as part of a skeleton tag team," while the bullied character had a main event no DQ match against a mysterious black knight and ghosts that looked like the wrestling team. he proved victorious, and the black knight turned out to be (this didn't end up being relevant but it's another DIE spoiler) a player zombie from some past fictional iteration of the game, a woman who died in DIE and so was never able to return to her daughter, who was supposed to be a little plot hint about the nature of some of the zombies they were fighting and what would happen to them if they died. she dropped a photo that would have, and probably still will, been an important lever the players could pull during the time skip to learn more about DIE. out of the five players, three had finished their matches and were still standing, the main eventer had finished his match but got knocked out as it ended, and the dictator had gotten pulled along on a side thread away from the action. the dictator's wrestling match opponent was a certain beloved fictional starship captain (it was Kirk) who had been captured by a green-skinned alien space pirate queen and forced to fight for the freedom of his crew. the captain ended up pretty seriously wounded due to their match, and the dictator followed him to the medical tent because he was being played as a teen with sincerely heroic intentions who couldn't just ditch a pit fighter he seriously injured. this got him locked in a standoff with a third party, a robed mystical warrior with a blade of light who apparently had come to buy the captain from the pirate queen (it was qui gon jinn, a running player in-joke in this game is that the phantom menace trailer has come out but the movie hasn't yet, and trying to get back to see it is one of the group's motivations). he distrusts the dictator because DIE NPCs are aware of the player classes as in-universe concepts/powersets and distrust the one with mind control for understandable reasons. then all hell broke loose. I had mentioned off-hand that the lady of pain and the Master (the kidnapped NPC party member) were actually also there in box seats to watch the wrestling. so the three conscious PCs decided that this was a great time to try to ambush the lady of pain, steal back the phylactery, shortcut the adventure, and return home. i stressed that this was an extremely risky plan given that while this version of the lady was definitely altered to fit DIE, she was still capable of godlike things and this was probably a bad idea. nonetheless, they went with it, committing so hard that they attacked her before they even healed their KOed teammate to consciousness, so he woke up with absolutely no idea what was going on. after a series of disastrous rolls and literal in-game cheating by the Master, they succeeded by the skin of their teeth, with one player knocked out in the process. The Master cheated to summon them all to her side, then cast Wall of Force to give them a breather and a chance to chat and maybe try to return home now that they had the whole party. The lady of pain basically just pulled up a chair to wait out the timer on the spell (because I as DM realized the conversation they were about to have was way more interesting than any possible fight). while this was all happening, events proceeded in the medical tent to the point where the mystic killed the Dictator. So the Master summoned back his corpse to the rest of the party and panicked. unlike everyone else in the party, she knows that death in DIE means that you rise as a zombie with the certain knowledge that you cannot return home while dead but can return to life, and therefore can go home again, if you kill another member of the party. since the Dictator has access to mind control, she believes that if he rises again, they will not be able to defeat him. So she immediately spills the beans to the entire party about the implications of this and the fact that if they want, they can all vote now to go home since the dictator no longer gets a vote, which will mean when they get back the Dictator is just dead. I am still DMing here but since I am supposed to play the Master directly i am very focused on this party conflict. at this point the Dictator's player asks how long wall of force lasts and pulls out a physical timer to make us all have the conversation in 10 minutes. I tell them that at minute 8 they will rise as a zombie. I explain the stakes of the choice to the rest of the party: vote to leave now, and the Dictator dies. he will not return with everyone else. if the party stays, he comes back as a bloodthirsty zombie, might want to kill us more than he can resist, and probably none of us can stop him on account of the mind control. and for him to come back to life he'll have to murder one of us, or we'll be taking the slimmest possible hope that there is some other way to figure this out, which the character couldn't guarantee and i as DM was trying to indicate would be exceedingly difficult and maybe mean instead of doing the timeskip we just do a whole campaign as the teen PCs. which would have been fine! but just a different choice narratively. in one of the more shocking moments i've had in a game i've run, they all pretty much immediately decided to abandon their friend to his fate (for what i think are going to end up being compelling in-character reasons but there literally wasn't time to break it down). the PCs voted to leave. the Master couldn't decide. she stalled for time until the zombie player woke up. still in shock about his own death and coming to terms with everything, but wanting to be a hero, he told them to leave him behind. so she voted to leave too. time froze, the world turned strange colors, and two massive blue holograms, representatives of DIE (comic spoilers obviously these are the fair but the party hadn't really had a chance to deal with them yet) appeared before them. They told the PCs that with votes cast, the game had ended, but they offered a chance to say goodbye. the party....really seriously botched their farewells to the dead character. the PC who got woken up mid-final fight was still in shock and didn't say anything. the PC rogue awkwardly gave him all his equipment in case some of it might help. the PC sorcerer (in one of the most painful moments of character-accurate thoughtlessness i've watched in a game) straight up expressed her jealousy that he got to stay behind in this magic world. the Master apologized over and over and promised to find a way back. the PC cleric just wept, piteously, until the Dictator offered to take her pain away. She agreed, and he mind-controlled her into agreeing to leave him behind and into believing this was the right choice. One of the great blue holograms put a benevolent hand on her shoulder and smiled at her. "Thank you for playing DIE," it said, and then they all vanished, leaving the Dictator behind in the ruins of Wrestlevania. now i'm making the surviving players talk about the length of the timeskip until they return to DIE as adults and start thinking about just exactly how badly this ruined their lives and when/why they'll return. then they'll get to be surprised next session when instead of timeskipping we immediately snap to the moments after they teleport back, when the police will undoubtedly have a lot of questions. meanwhile the dictator and i are figuring out what it all means.
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Mar 4, 2024 22:33
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yeah the players are denied OOC knowledge of how death works intentionally until the first player dies, and then when the dead player decided to slap an actual 10 minute timer on it so that everyone else would intentionally not get a chance to digest the consequences of the death before they decided, everyone was like oh okay i guess we're doing this! at a couple points i considered stopping so they could get their bearings but checking back in today everyone was like "i felt confused but in a way that seemed accurate to what my character would have felt in the moment so i'm happy with it"
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Mar 5, 2024 00:11
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