So what are the plans after this arc? The rest of the stories are not exactly very serious compared to the two parter. (Unless you cut to discord that is. ) :3
Heh. Been there many times before. There comes a point in the lamentation where you realize you can either gripe about the truncation of your plotline, or you can use the event to do something epic that sets the stage for the next plotline.
Then, while everyone is thinking "Wow, the next plotline will be *better*?" You run a lot of fluff pieces while you figure out what the next uber plotline's going to be.
And you don't make it dependent on a set event or guessable condition they can come up with. Ideally, with a team like that, you make it a puzzle-piece quest which requires multiple parts scattered over the game map. So even if they *do* guess what it's all for, they still have to go *get* them.
I'm getting the impression the party just pulled an epic Dungeon Bypass here.
My take on the DM's plot was that NMM shatters the Elements, and the party spend several sessions figuring out how to reform them, who is which one, for the first five while dodging NMM and her minions. All in the background of a world being choked by endless night. Kind of hard to keep up Laughter in that? Then late in the campaign (and several levels later) figure out that Twilight is the last, and how to call forth her element. At which point it is time to storm Canterlot, defeat Nightmare Moon, and summon back Celestia.
Save the party jumped straight to the end, not only invalidating the whole campaign series set up, but also the follow ons, which assumed a much higher level and battle hardened party.
(The following assumes that the shows will be run on chronological order.)
Because of this epic Dungeon Bypass, the GM has to think up the entire next campaign in the span of one short week. When he can't devise anything clever, he pulls out The Ticket Master on a whim.
TS: So, the entire campaign is trying to split the treasure?
RD: Dibs.
AJ: Oh, no, I'm gonna boost Mah profits.
PP: A party? I want it!
R: A direct route to the top of Canterlot society? They're mine!
FS: I think... I would like to go... if it's not too much trouble.
TS: On the other hand, you're an evil mastermind, DM.
Yeah, I theorized something similar in my earlier posts. I think the "slice of life" episodes are the GM's attempt to incorporate the experiences of the longer campaign into smaller "missions". Although, there are potential consequences of skipping ahead.
DM: Celestia hugs the restored Princess Luna. The dawn of a new day shines forth.
Twilight: Great work, guys! Equestria is safe from one of its greatest threats.
RD: Still wish there was an actual fight.
AJ: Oh, quiet you. A level 1 group stood up to a final boss and won, isn't that enough?
RD: Well, yeah, but what can top fighting a god-empress?
DM: Fluttershy, you're in the back? Roll a Spot check.
FS: O..okay. *roll* 17.
DM: You see the two sistesr look startled, then immediately stare out the window.
Luna: He...he's awakening now?
Celestia: The Elements have new Bearers now. The seal of their inaction is breaking.
Luna: But...they are still so young! How can they...
Celestia: I had hoped they would have been stronger before defeating you. But there is still time. Their friendship will grow.
Luna: And if they fail?
Celestia: ...then chaos will reign once again.
FS:...*whimper*
I'm in a pretty great D&D game right now, because we do nothing BUT derail plans.
And this is as intended.
We bypassed about 12 clues by casting detect magic.
We accidentally alerted a goblin seige that we're investigating them, and this provoked them to send their best warriors, whom we interogated, and then he burned in the sunlight because he neglected to mention that would kill him as he was too busy being petty and antagonistic (we did get useful information out of him).
We captured a goblin scout that is a credit to diplomacy and thinking things through, because he gave us a lot of information. We ended up forming a plot to kill the goblin chief and install him as the new one. This will likely result in improved race relations.
This also led me to a line of reasoning that could very likely tear the campaign to shreds. Capture the warlock, bring him to authorities, cast spells on him to force him to reveal information. Sounds like a great way to make a DM cry right? Luckily he's awesome and would not only let such a thing happen, but would probably award us bonus experience for ruining his plans.
If you bypassed clues by using something as simple as Detect Magic, I can only assume that your DM actually intended you to do so. Detect Magic is a cantrip, after all. Anyone that has it should probably be spamming it every round they're not doing something important.
No. He explicitly said it was a sequence break. It didn't really change things dramatically, but it was fairly disruptive and amusing.
Not sure how much I should really say about settng details, but the easiest way to put it is that the setting more or less is intended to be "realistic". In the sense of that how would things be if magic and monsters existed.
It's really more that a setting was created, and the plot is whatever it is we do that interacts with it. DM also said that he felt it was his job to create problems, not solutions.
What this means is that the world is not scaled to us. I brought up that story about the troll a few days ago, kind of what I mean. Yeah, some of these things stand a very real chance of being a total party kill. But the PCs are expected to be even more brutal than the monsters.
Scary thing is, that was also our first encounter!
BTW - If I was in his/her shoes, I'd probably be crying at the sheer awesomeness of my players right about now. Twi did give a pretty nice speech, and it fits the world perfectly.
If my players somehow stumbled on EXACTLY what the solution was to the problem that was supposed to be the ENTIRE first story arc using nothing but raw, unfiltered anti-backwards-logic, they'd probably earn a slow clap from me. At least. Probably a few high-fives too. But slow clap first. DM must always come off as an evil mastermind prior to admitting defeat.
The DM's plot starts off with a Drow breaking into my room at the inn and hitting me with a slow acting lethal poison. Then, in order to get the natidote, I had to smuggle some goods out to a trading post where I would be healed, but then hit with a slow-acting disease. To get the cure for THAT, I had to obtain a McGuffin in a dungeon near the trading post (The dungeon was supposed to be raided by another party prior to us arriving).
Although we were low level, we had a psionic in the party who figured out how to neutralize the poison in my character. Figuring the McGuffin was worth something, we fenced off the goods and went straight to the dungeon, using the acquired funds to research its location. We get ther before the other raiding party.
DM's plot thus is mostly derailed.
After surviving the dungeon, we have the McGuffin and decided that it should go to the church that would benefit the most from it. The DM goes along with the idea, designing the adventure around it, but our psionic steals the McGuffin from us and runs off, derailing the plot a *SECOND* time.
Sadly the DM had to leave for a new job before we could conclude that adventure.
I wish I could spoonfeed my players. If you leave any hint whatsoever, including forshadowing they'll just kinda skip ahead when it's convienent. My players are the type who'll attack before being threatened for combat advantage and occasionally make Batman's powers of deduction look sad by comparison.
Im always that guy who puts excess points into Wis even when my class isnt Wis based, and solve every Percep/Insight skill check for the party. My current characters can easily break 50 and on average get 60 for their active percep.
DM has come to expect me to find everything whenever the party decides to check a room... to the point where he just says "roll just to see how badly you beat me"
I figure the Slice-of-Life format is a result of the DM trying to neutralize the EoH by ruining the Mane 6's friendship without throwing monsters at them that they can just blast away. The players then come up with 'friendship reports' to prove their friendship is in tact (and for the rp xp).
That's why you get episodes where there are monsters, but have them be in a situation where the EoH aren't readily available. If it's done subtley, RD won't realize it's all a ruse.
More like crazy man with convoluted backstory (allowing him to use skills out of thin air), a fondness for explosives (and a disregard for property damage), and a single-minded desire to his lawn gnome back. Ended up killing one of the Elder Gods with explosives. Yes really.
Nono, the best was a player in an awful tentacles-with-everything campaign turning into a moped to escape this. Then one of the other players burned the GM's books and screens.
See, that's why a good DM needs to know when to rail road. Not so much that he pisses off the players and they rebel, not so obvious that they know what you are doing, but just enough that all the work you have done on the campaign doesn't go down the toilet.
Actually, my DM has learned to use vague plots that can be adapted to what ever random crap we do. We were suppose to negotiate with the orc chief that we killed, we now have to negotiate with the gnome rebel. We were suppose to go north and instead go south. The village that we needed to go to is now south. In their case, "yea, you know that princess you just defeated, Nightmare Moon? Well, she was being mind controlled by an ancient demon. And now you have to learn how to master those elements that you have. Have fun."
And Celestia needs to hold onto them so that you don't accidentally blow yourselves or the town, or the planet, into ashes. And no, he elements wouldn't help you survive.
My Deadlands party manage to derail the DM a bit, even after we were railroaded pretty hard. Iiteraly. We were ambushed with ridiculous amounts of knockout gas, and shipped under heavy guard on a train to the capital. Once there, we promptly busted out of a high-security prison and hid in a church to attack the imposter President when he attended a funeral. We decided to split the party. One group was to kill the president and his dozens of elite guards, while the other group was to storm the very same heavily-guarded prison fortress we had escaped in order to deactivate the Ghostrock bombs that the president was going to use to blow up his own city, and, by blaming the Union, cotinue the civil war for several more bloody decades. Both of our plans succeded. The GM later admitted that the latter objective should not have been possible at all, yet we did it with half a party.
I'm starting to wonder about everyone's attention spans on here. So many topics already covered, so many predictions of what comes next that are exactly the same.
Starting to feel like either I'm the only one who reads the vast majority of the comments, or there is a serious glitch in the Matrix.
Not to sound like a dick or anything, but, you know...
Celestia: Do not try to stop the party, that is impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.
Pinkie: What is the truth?
Celestia: There is no party.
Speaking of players completely derailing a DM's plans, the latest installment of Spoony's "Counter Monkeys" series describes a truly epic one that he encountered. Warning: language is NSFW...and the video is like 2 hours long.
Haha, bit more then just the language that isn't safe for work! Simply put? Be ready to be very shocked, and very amazed at some of the lengths the GM and players are driven to.
Still though, this would have been one EPIC campaign!
Nonononononono not BE evil. LOOK evil. Subtle difference. Also, work on the evil laugh. A lot of people forget the laugh, and that's about standards.
(It's also worth noting that I actually have THREE different evil laughs. Only one of which I use. The other two are too awe-inspiring to use in public. And loud and obnoxious. VERY loud and obnoxious.)
Really? He's breaking down and crying over ONE campaign derailment? WOW, he's a bad DM. I've never left big enough holes for a player to use to derail a campaign, but I've suffered having Big Bads coup de grace'd with genetalia. Take your licks like a man, PLEASE. End the session, take a week to plan, and then come back and PUNISH the party for DARING to even THINK about your plot rails.
So if the players manage to derail the DM's plot, he's a bad DM?
But if he punishes the players for it the next session, doesn't that make him an even worse DM for using the game for his own personal satisfaction?
Railroading is usually unintentional and a good DM has to roll with the punches.
Or just be prepared for anything, which is more my style ^^
(save for just one thing...)
... Isn't disrupting the plot a good thing? I mean, it demonstrates that the players have had a serious impact and have become involved with the game.
Seriously, I've been in groups where no one was capable of making a decision and got pissed off when people tried to actively pursue some agenda. It's distressingly frequent the number of times when my fellow PCs stand there waiting for the GM to tell them what to do. It's enough to make me demand other characters submit to a turing test before I agree to associate with them.
Also... am I reading that wrong, or did you just tell a fictional character what to do in a condescending manner?
That's not how DM's will react unless they are vindictive and angry, me, I just pull out the possibility of a slime and stop their plans to derail mine before it begins.
Okay, pretty sure I missed the "Talk about a derail" prompt, but this comic matches a pathfinder campaign of mine so well I couldn't resist.
Okay, so let me set the stage. They were in a city-state with a new, super racist king. He believed in human superiority and what not, and both the non-humans in the party (dwarf and elf) had been enslaved in an underground cavern. Meanwhile, the wizard had faked being an alchemist well enough that he got a job working on the secret project of the city, which was a steam giant (Basically a steam powered mech). The other two members had joined the underground resistance.
Now, I pictured this as a few sessions of hiding from guards, sneaking around, busting out their enslaved companions, and then maybe assassinating the king. What happened was... not that.
The dwarf and the elf managed to sneak over to where their equipment was held and kill the man guarding it. They had their stuff back, and I expected them to sneak out and find the others.
Instead, they woke up all the other prisoners and armed them, making a prison break. As they were swarming out of the whole in the ground, the wizard saw them from the factory and decided to hijack the mech.
So what I pictured as a multi-session bring down the system adventure, was ended in an hour with the use of a cannon-wielding mech and an army of very angry former slaves.
Tactical Rainbow Strike. I'll have to remember those words if I'm ever a DM. Chances are my god of murder and beauty will show up in there somewhere and that sounds like the kind of thing he'd do.
Derailing. We've had a few instances of that, but this one was more cool than mind-breaking.
Our characters have stumbled into this clearing. None of us know each other, and some diplomacy ensues. Suddenly a dire wolverine leaps out of the forest! Roll Initia-
The sorceress hit it with a scorching ray. Her mina bird copies it. They drop the thing before the rest of us can touch it.
Dm: Pause.
Suddenly the wolves that have been following you for days leap out of the forest. Roll Initiative!
Defeated after a few rounds.
Dm: Stare
You hear voices and rustling foliage. An arrow shoots past your head. Fight OR Flight?
We took the hint.
Wait. Was the DM's entire plan this first game was to make the characters lose or enter a meat grinder situation with no victory? Wow, that doesn't strike me as fair play.
Epic derails... There was this one time my group was running the nWoD Free RPG Day module. First, I decided to pick a lock instead of going to go get the key, so we skipped pretty much an entire floor. Then we realized that the way the module suggested destroying the Plot Device made no scientific sense and even less magical sense, so we used the Science skill to whip up a batch of acid to dunk it in, thus skipping the boss fight entirely.
You know, I just noticed something about Twilight's Cutie Mark.
"Represents Magic...a large purple star surrounded by five white stars..."
Her Cutie Mark doesn't just represent magic...it's the Element of Magic! Magic backed by the five other Elements of Harmony, as represented by the five white stars.
... Right?
Then, while everyone is thinking "Wow, the next plotline will be *better*?" You run a lot of fluff pieces while you figure out what the next uber plotline's going to be.
And you don't make it dependent on a set event or guessable condition they can come up with. Ideally, with a team like that, you make it a puzzle-piece quest which requires multiple parts scattered over the game map. So even if they *do* guess what it's all for, they still have to go *get* them.
EDIT 1: And, the episode "Swarm Of The Century" can be viewed as commentary on locust plagues.
Sometimes.
That's god damn fantastic.
And I don't want to see it before then.
My take on the DM's plot was that NMM shatters the Elements, and the party spend several sessions figuring out how to reform them, who is which one, for the first five while dodging NMM and her minions. All in the background of a world being choked by endless night. Kind of hard to keep up Laughter in that? Then late in the campaign (and several levels later) figure out that Twilight is the last, and how to call forth her element. At which point it is time to storm Canterlot, defeat Nightmare Moon, and summon back Celestia.
Save the party jumped straight to the end, not only invalidating the whole campaign series set up, but also the follow ons, which assumed a much higher level and battle hardened party.
Because of this epic Dungeon Bypass, the GM has to think up the entire next campaign in the span of one short week. When he can't devise anything clever, he pulls out The Ticket Master on a whim.
TS: So, the entire campaign is trying to split the treasure?
RD: Dibs.
AJ: Oh, no, I'm gonna boost Mah profits.
PP: A party? I want it!
R: A direct route to the top of Canterlot society? They're mine!
FS: I think... I would like to go... if it's not too much trouble.
TS: On the other hand, you're an evil mastermind, DM.
DM: Celestia hugs the restored Princess Luna. The dawn of a new day shines forth.
Twilight: Great work, guys! Equestria is safe from one of its greatest threats.
RD: Still wish there was an actual fight.
AJ: Oh, quiet you. A level 1 group stood up to a final boss and won, isn't that enough?
RD: Well, yeah, but what can top fighting a god-empress?
DM: Fluttershy, you're in the back? Roll a Spot check.
FS: O..okay. *roll* 17.
DM: You see the two sistesr look startled, then immediately stare out the window.
Luna: He...he's awakening now?
Celestia: The Elements have new Bearers now. The seal of their inaction is breaking.
Luna: But...they are still so young! How can they...
Celestia: I had hoped they would have been stronger before defeating you. But there is still time. Their friendship will grow.
Luna: And if they fail?
Celestia: ...then chaos will reign once again.
FS:...*whimper*
And this is as intended.
We bypassed about 12 clues by casting detect magic.
We accidentally alerted a goblin seige that we're investigating them, and this provoked them to send their best warriors, whom we interogated, and then he burned in the sunlight because he neglected to mention that would kill him as he was too busy being petty and antagonistic (we did get useful information out of him).
We captured a goblin scout that is a credit to diplomacy and thinking things through, because he gave us a lot of information. We ended up forming a plot to kill the goblin chief and install him as the new one. This will likely result in improved race relations.
This also led me to a line of reasoning that could very likely tear the campaign to shreds. Capture the warlock, bring him to authorities, cast spells on him to force him to reveal information. Sounds like a great way to make a DM cry right? Luckily he's awesome and would not only let such a thing happen, but would probably award us bonus experience for ruining his plans.
Not sure how much I should really say about settng details, but the easiest way to put it is that the setting more or less is intended to be "realistic". In the sense of that how would things be if magic and monsters existed.
It's really more that a setting was created, and the plot is whatever it is we do that interacts with it. DM also said that he felt it was his job to create problems, not solutions.
What this means is that the world is not scaled to us. I brought up that story about the troll a few days ago, kind of what I mean. Yeah, some of these things stand a very real chance of being a total party kill. But the PCs are expected to be even more brutal than the monsters.
Scary thing is, that was also our first encounter!
It's a pretty brutal setting.
Good thing the party is brutal too.
I'm shaking my head here.
BTW - If I was in his/her shoes, I'd probably be crying at the sheer awesomeness of my players right about now. Twi did give a pretty nice speech, and it fits the world perfectly.
The DM's plot starts off with a Drow breaking into my room at the inn and hitting me with a slow acting lethal poison. Then, in order to get the natidote, I had to smuggle some goods out to a trading post where I would be healed, but then hit with a slow-acting disease. To get the cure for THAT, I had to obtain a McGuffin in a dungeon near the trading post (The dungeon was supposed to be raided by another party prior to us arriving).
Although we were low level, we had a psionic in the party who figured out how to neutralize the poison in my character. Figuring the McGuffin was worth something, we fenced off the goods and went straight to the dungeon, using the acquired funds to research its location. We get ther before the other raiding party.
DM's plot thus is mostly derailed.
After surviving the dungeon, we have the McGuffin and decided that it should go to the church that would benefit the most from it. The DM goes along with the idea, designing the adventure around it, but our psionic steals the McGuffin from us and runs off, derailing the plot a *SECOND* time.
Sadly the DM had to leave for a new job before we could conclude that adventure.
SKYWRITING: What is six inches tall, lives in a tree, and is very, very dangerous?
ROBIN: A sparrow with a machine gun!
DM has come to expect me to find everything whenever the party decides to check a room... to the point where he just says "roll just to see how badly you beat me"
Good times XD
Of course,t he players will at least want to roll it, and will barely survive.
However, the best derailing I ever heard of was Old Man Henderson, the man who won Call of Cthulhu.
Here you go.
"Well, you've wrapped up a months' long campaign in a single session, but hey, I can fix this! ...maybe."
Actually, my DM has learned to use vague plots that can be adapted to what ever random crap we do. We were suppose to negotiate with the orc chief that we killed, we now have to negotiate with the gnome rebel. We were suppose to go north and instead go south. The village that we needed to go to is now south. In their case, "yea, you know that princess you just defeated, Nightmare Moon? Well, she was being mind controlled by an ancient demon. And now you have to learn how to master those elements that you have. Have fun."
Starting to feel like either I'm the only one who reads the vast majority of the comments, or there is a serious glitch in the Matrix.
Not to sound like a dick or anything, but, you know...
Pinkie: What is the truth?
Celestia: There is no party.
http://spoonyexperiment.com/2012/03/04/counter-monkey-thieves-world-part-1-poor-impulse-control/
http://spoonyexperiment.com/2012/03/04/counter-monkey-thieves-world-part-2-the-chicago-way/
Still though, this would have been one EPIC campaign!
(It's also worth noting that I actually have THREE different evil laughs. Only one of which I use. The other two are too awe-inspiring to use in public. And loud and obnoxious. VERY loud and obnoxious.)
That's all I got, someone tag in.
But if he punishes the players for it the next session, doesn't that make him an even worse DM for using the game for his own personal satisfaction?
Railroading is usually unintentional and a good DM has to roll with the punches.
Or just be prepared for anything, which is more my style ^^
(save for just one thing...)
Seriously, I've been in groups where no one was capable of making a decision and got pissed off when people tried to actively pursue some agenda. It's distressingly frequent the number of times when my fellow PCs stand there waiting for the GM to tell them what to do. It's enough to make me demand other characters submit to a turing test before I agree to associate with them.
Also... am I reading that wrong, or did you just tell a fictional character what to do in a condescending manner?
Also, what was I supposed to get? If you're talking about innuendo, I don't really think about that kind of thing.
But now that you've got me thinking...
PUNISH the party... for... THINK(ING) about your plot...
Kinky.
What a mature bunch we all are.
I was NOT pointing and laughing at innuendo's. Though good job finding them.
Okay, so let me set the stage. They were in a city-state with a new, super racist king. He believed in human superiority and what not, and both the non-humans in the party (dwarf and elf) had been enslaved in an underground cavern. Meanwhile, the wizard had faked being an alchemist well enough that he got a job working on the secret project of the city, which was a steam giant (Basically a steam powered mech). The other two members had joined the underground resistance.
Now, I pictured this as a few sessions of hiding from guards, sneaking around, busting out their enslaved companions, and then maybe assassinating the king. What happened was... not that.
The dwarf and the elf managed to sneak over to where their equipment was held and kill the man guarding it. They had their stuff back, and I expected them to sneak out and find the others.
Instead, they woke up all the other prisoners and armed them, making a prison break. As they were swarming out of the whole in the ground, the wizard saw them from the factory and decided to hijack the mech.
So what I pictured as a multi-session bring down the system adventure, was ended in an hour with the use of a cannon-wielding mech and an army of very angry former slaves.
Our characters have stumbled into this clearing. None of us know each other, and some diplomacy ensues. Suddenly a dire wolverine leaps out of the forest! Roll Initia-
The sorceress hit it with a scorching ray. Her mina bird copies it. They drop the thing before the rest of us can touch it.
Dm: Pause.
Suddenly the wolves that have been following you for days leap out of the forest. Roll Initiative!
Defeated after a few rounds.
Dm: Stare
You hear voices and rustling foliage. An arrow shoots past your head. Fight OR Flight?
We took the hint.
"Represents Magic...a large purple star surrounded by five white stars..."
Her Cutie Mark doesn't just represent magic...it's the Element of Magic! Magic backed by the five other Elements of Harmony, as represented by the five white stars.