Once Upon a Dungeons and Dragons Campaign....
The Blind Eternities forum
Posted on April 10, 2017, 7:35 p.m. by Homura_Akemi
Ok, so as a forenote, this is the only Dungeons and Dragons group I've been in, and I'm pretty sure our Dungeon Master is terrible and not running campaigns correctly compared to how it's supposed to be done, but it's still fun and he's consistent, so his style works out for us casuals. We also play 4e.
So, today we finished participating in the "Great Hunt", and event in which competitors try to catch the most, rarest animals and then prizes accordingly.1 We did not even come close to winning, and some guy named Victor won the grand prize of this magical axe. So, we being us, decided that we wanted the axe and that we would get it. Most of the group wanted the axe, I just wanted to kill someone in the game and another friend only wanted to steal it instead of using Murder.
1 Note: In the previous week while fighting an owlbear, all of my party except for me was paralyzed so it was hilarious; I'm the only controller in our group (a Psion) and I never move anyway to attack, so it was deeply ironic.
Victor was at an afterparty at a tavern for winning and was mildly intoxicated, making our job easier (or so we thought). So we came up with 4 plans:-Frederick the Great's plan: lure him into the forest to gang attack and kill him to get the axe.-Gasai Yuno's plan: have herself and the other female player character Juneau go up to Victor, seduce him into going into the inn with them to...do things, and then kill him while vulnerable in bed and take the axe.-Plan 3 (by our pixie assassin whose name I cannot remember): use an item that we previously stole from him to lure him into the woods and kill him and take the axe, much like the first plan, but with some bait.-Plan 4 (by our warlord whose name I also cannot remember): just try stealing the axe.
Now, our names are just chosen after favorite characters in fiction or history (mine being Gasai Yuno <3) or randomly developed (like Industrial Doorknob, how is that an actual pc name, ikr) if you were wondering.
I just went with my plan and our DM was cool with it, so I, Yuno, and Juneau walked up to Victor.
"Hey," I said to him, "wanna go over to that inn and have some fun?" wink wink
My DM responded as Victor with something along the lines of this "Sure, I would enjoy having fun over there playing cards."
Frowns (in real life)
"I mean," I retorted, "if you like playing cards under the covers."2
"I don't understand what you're talking about, but we can build a pillowfort. Let's go over to the inn."
2 Note: While I thought I was being incredibly witty, my friends said this interaction was cringeworthy and that my skills hitting on guys in real life are probably just as bad :_(And that I could learn a life lesson or two from D&D.
So, we all go over to the inn, where Victor tells us to get more pillows and then go to his room. He goes into his room, followed only by our pixie assassin to keep an eye on him.
Then we roll for initiative to arrive at the room, and our DM is like "Screw it, you go first and then counterclockwise" to me.
So, I just barge into the room and use my daily, Telekinetic Anchor, on him, but miss, and my DM said that it caused a big vibration in the inn, where I didn't even close the door behind me. Then I stupidly used my action point to say "That was just a psychic pillow" and then Victor charged me with a woodern table.
Luckily for me, he missed with his table, being drunk and all, and landed right in front of me.
Then the whole party showed up and our bard Frederick the Great calmed Victor down to not attack me. No one does anything, so the turn rotates back to me.
And what do I do? Use Force Punch on Victor and miss ;;. Then Victor used his axe to take out most of my health (from 23 to 6).
Suddenly the innkeeper, who somehow had a bunch of soldiers with him, came and told us all to stop what we were doing. So, our angsty cleric, angsty because almost everyone in our group thinks clerics are priests and have to be nonviolent and our DM won't let him make a new pc, throws a knife at him, only to miss. And to conclude, all of us, except for our stealthy assassin pixie, were apprehended by the soldiers and thrown into jail for the time being.
My DM commented on how he had a great plot planned and that I, "as always", ruined it (not entirely wrong, but the game is supposed to change and story is developed by the pcs, not written out by the DM for all of us to follow step by step) and that I was way too impulsive, just going straight after Victor on my own, not closing the door, and not waiting for the rest of the party to do a group attack in a closed space (Victor's room) where we could have easily taken him out together.
So, any thoughts? Am I a total Rakdos? Or what? How badly is my DM running this campaign? Any crazy D&D stories of your own?
Homura_Akemi says... #3
Lol, you got someone to ritually sacrifice themself; that's great. Soon, my DM is stopping to become a pc and we are getting a new DM which will hopefully be a nice change. I like your idea of just redoing player characters; I'm way too aggressive to just be a controller.
April 10, 2017 9:04 p.m.
Yeah, the character was getting a little too evil and found out what happens when you step into the dark side... It led to her getting the overpowered as crap artifact that she knew nothing about in a shady location that she was led to by another evil guy and thought that the dagger wasn't cursed lol. Soon as she picked it up, her will was overpowered by its malevolence and made her stab herself in the heart with it. She's still salty about it but it made for a better story. D&D is all about flexibility between players and DMs, when you find the right balance it can be an incredible story and memory.
April 10, 2017 9:12 p.m.
I think tabletop role-playing is a bit like EDH in that it can be extremely playgroup dependent.
I think the DM did a good job with realistic logical NPC / world reactions but not a great job at planning and responding to player tendencies and choices.
My biggest improvement as a player came from giving up on running obscure squarepeg/round hole misfit fringey fairies/dragons/anti-establishment characters. I was able to fix my problem at the character creation stage with the help of DMs(GMs actually because I play GURPS) who made characters for me to choose from instead of allowing me to make characters that would neither fit with the group nor have any reason to join the adventure.
I was accused of "having too much fun" once and given a seating chart apart from my conspirator accordingly.
You might need more of a swashbuckling cinematic lawless wild wild west style game than a realistic subtle campaign.
I GMed a few times but while no one complained (except about my name choices which were funny-bad), I didn't stand up beside more popular GMs for whatever reason or draw a large playgroup.
I was able to fit impetuous characters in well but generally don't rise to the top of social situations so I only ran games when regular GMs needed a break or had fallings-out.
As a group, you could all have more fun if you consciously looked for reasons and rationalizations for keeping your group together instead of breaking off from each other.
Zaueski says... #2
As both a player and a Dungeon Master myself, I think I might be able to shed some light...
You definitely seem like the wild card of the group. In the future, try to remember that DMs work hard on their stories and as long as they aren't horrible... following their plot is usually enjoyable. Being Obstinate and resistant to the plot just for the sake of doing so isn't fun, it makes you a dick. If it's your character's nature to covet, then roleplay an envious person, but don't play it like a video game where you hunt the highest stats.
Your DM does sound pretty bad, as a DM myself, I make it a point to learn my players and their characters extremely well. Doing that makes it insanely easy to deal with Wild Cards and resistant PCs like yourself. As long as it's your character being obstinate and not yourself then its really easy to lead someone along. There was a campaign I ran last year where I had two problematic PCs and I got one of them to ritually sacrifice themselves against their will and the other to follow a fake treasure map straight into an Ooze. They rolled up new characters, didn't make themselves flat and lifeless, and everyone had a much better time from then on out.
Tl;dr: You need to make sure you're accurately roleplaying your character and your DM needs to learn how to manipulate people lmao
April 10, 2017 8:51 p.m.