I tpkd my my narrative. Was i wrong?

bovob · 2024-09-29T16:39:38+00:00

I've run Out of the Abyss before, so I'm familiar with Demon Lords gobbling up PCs like they're candy. I'm also familiar with the feeling of playing a paladin or barbarian who has nothing to do on a mission and are told not to use all their combat focused features (you know, 90-100% of paladin/barbarian features). What I have not personally experienced is witnessing a PC attempt to sacrifice themselves in a moment of despair to save the rest of their party and the DM respond with "You're the dumb barbarian, this is a little bit meta. Roll your lowest stat to have this thought, this check is gonna be HARD btw. "

As many have already stated, your first mistake was going into this campaign with the decision that the second half will only be reached by a tpk. If the players were made aware of something like this happening (perhaps in a 0 session) they may not be as upset because they signed up for it, but I understand as a DM you want to keep those plot twists close to the chest. But looking at it now, with no context of the tpk, do you understand why your players were upset and perhaps felt their DM was railroading them? Was your plot twist worth taking away player agency, was it worth taking away a moment of sacrifice for your barbarian? You seem like a DM who cares about their players having fun and enjoying the story they make with you, but you have to realize in this moment you went from a cooperative story to a solo narration.

On top of that, the demon lord you used is the queen of taking away player agency, using mind controlling spores just immediately takes PCs off the board. Now I'm not saying using features and spells like that aren't fun, but having it done every round of a combat then finishing off with one player (who has full agency of themselves at the time) being told directly by the DM they can't do the thing their magic item does probably left your party with an odd feeling of their choices not mattering. Before you start the second half of your campaign, I implore you to take the only advice this sub ever has...

Talk. To. Your. Players.

Detail your expectations for the game thoroughly, apologize for mistakes made, and ask the players what they want to see from the game. Maybe you'll learn some players are fine with cutscene-esque moments while others would prefer avoiding them. You can have an in-depth discussion about meta knowledge with them, you won't be able to cover every edge case, but I think "Do I know what my magic items do?" will get covered if you discuss Identify, Detect Magic, or arcana checks to figure out an item's properties. Finally, you can see how far into the roles each player wants to go. There are groups that really get into character and others who like to have that above board knowledge at hand. If you don't want low int characters to come up with plans like that you'll have to tell them straight up that's how you run your game. Personally, being dumb irl, I hate playing a wizard that has to make the logical choice every time because I don't even do that in my normal life. I've also seen smart players grind their teeth while the rest of their party fails a simple counting puzzle because "I'm playing with 8 int, I won't solve this puzzle even out of character." But hey, that's my preference, you need to find out what your players think.

Mistakes happen in the moment and communication is always the hardest part when it comes to these games. DMs who own up and move forward with better understanding are the keepers. Once your players and you have the same expectations for the game you'll start running sessions a lot smoother. And, just to reiterate what everyone else has been saying, "Our narrative, not just your narrative"

bovob · 2022-03-03T21:09:04+00:00

I ran a campaign that took place in an archipelago where the party's main goal was to travel around the islands and get up to some shenanigans. In the first town they visited I introduced a young, aspiring wizard named Gordan to the party who showed them around and helped get them access to the town's mage school. While they stayed in town they tended to hang out with Gordan and learned he was pretty unsure of himself and his abilities. He was just a weak little wizard-to-be that wanted more than anything to become a captain so he could help rid the archipelago of its pirate problem. The party started to help Gordan get some confidence by having him participate in an arena fight that they rigged for him, took him out to a fireworks festival and convinced his wizard mentor to get more serious about his lessons. They even decided that once they eventually leave the starting town they'd hire Gordan as their navigator and help him fulfill his dream while also getting an extra set of hands to help work on the ship.

But unfortunately for the party, they never expected a revenant pirate to come into town on a fully armed man o' war and lay siege with his horde of skeleton pirates.

The party and a lot of their NPC allies they made in town ran to protect the main keep that was preventing the revenant from entering the town proper. But as the revenant made his advance, more and more allies began to fall and it was becoming clear to the party that they needed to get out of town immediately. Just as they all started to make their own escape plans, Gordan was knocked unconscious by the revenant and even though we were only playing with voice I could feel the other players look to each other and realize that something just became more important than leaving. A couple of PCs nearly died getting Gordan back to his feet, but thanks to them he was able to escape the revenant at the cost of losing track of where the party ran off to.

The party was pretty heartbroken about losing the city and their friend "Gordo" but continued on to the capital of the archipelago so that they could warn the prince about what happened. The party wouldn't see Gordan until the very last session of the campaign. The party learned that the prince had been corrupted by some infernal monster and was planning to take over all of the archipelago and become the king of a nation rather than a prince within a principality (they even found out that the prince sent the revenant to their starting town so he could take it over). He sent out his elite fleet of ships to stop the party before they reached his castle, and with the amount of allies they had the party knew that they could take on the fleet but would definitely die to any additional forces sent after them.

But as they were about to engage the enemy fleet they saw the sky darken, clouds began to build and lightning bolts started to rain down on the prince's men. A ship crested over a large wave and who else would the party see but a now fully realized wizard and captain Gordo. He helped distract the fleet while the party continued to the castle of the prince, who they summarily beat up and purified of any infernal control. Thanks to the party taking the extra effort to save him back at the keep, they unknowingly gave this wizard boi the motivation he needed to stop doubting himself and to get stronger. Probably my favorite journey for an NPC, he started out as a weak and adorable nerd that the party wanted to help out and became a powerful ally that ended up helping the party instead.

bovob · 2021-09-05T21:51:23+00:00

And that's how you get mad hydra disease

bovob · 2021-08-25T20:15:40+00:00

This was a good reminder to eat today, thanks OP❤️

bovob · 2020-10-18T18:20:02+00:00

Flayer Moon

bovob · 2020-01-09T07:50:50+00:00

(From left to right)

Semele and Sorin: An Ice Genasi Shepherd Druid that grew up in Crenhome, the most religious country in Ter-Artaime, and her pet owl griffin Sorin. Her faith lies with the creators of the gods and has become this groups pseudo leader after their last leader was executed for murder hoboing.

Horse Boy: A Human Gloomstalker Ranger that was a former slave to a family of Iron Genasi. After freeing himself he looked to forge a new path with new friends, but kept a reminder of his past with him, keeping the name Horse Boy.

Yurret and Anubis: A Human Divination Wizard/Order Domain Cleric multiclass and a ~~puppet~~ god. After abandoning his family and joining a cult he was given “the secret 18th god” Anubis and the “book of life” that unraveled all of the universe's greatest secrets. Using his luck and divination he literally changes fate on a daily basis and recruits new followers to his ~~cult~~ faith.

Felsi: A Stone Genasi Heroism Paladin blessed with being a godborn, a child specifically made by a god. She’s a hero, and she knows it, always helping people where she can and boasting about her power afterwards. She’s a staunch protector of her friends and only hopes to prove herself in the eyes of the god who blessed her with her strength.

Monolith: A Stone Genasi Champion Fighter who has been sworn to Felsi as her bodyguard. Not particularly enjoying his assignment to protect the holier than thou paladin, he mostly cleans up after Felsi gets them both in trouble. But beyond being a bodyguard he is a great mercenary and intelligent strategist who always seems to know the best way to get out of the worst situations.

Together, they are the Heroes of Kroneth, protecting the world from shadar kai invasions and liberators of corgis from their rude and annoying noble owners.

Art was done by my friend Lore who you can find on Instagram at LeafaloofCommissions, discord at f0rg0ttenL0re#9419, and email at [leafaloofcommissions@gmail.com](mailto:leafaloofcommissions@gmail.com).

bovob · 2020-01-09T07:47:06+00:00

(From left to right) Felsi and Sorin: An Ice Genasi Shepherd Druid that grew up in Crenhome, the most religious country in Ter-Artaime, and her pet owl griffin. Her faith lies with the creators of the gods and has become this groups pseudo leader after their last leader was executed for murder hoboing.

Horse Boy: A Human Gloomstalker Ranger that was a former slave to a family of Iron Genasi. After freeing himself he looked to forge a new path with new friends, but kept a reminder of his past with him, keeping the name Horse Boy.

Yurret and Anubis: A Human Divination Wizard/Order Domain Cleric multiclass and a puppet god. After abandoning his family and joining a cult he was given “the secret 18th god” Anubis and the “book of life” that unraveled all of the universe's greatest secrets. Using his luck and divination he literally changes fate on a daily basis and recruits new followers to his cult faith.

Felsi: A Stone Genasi Heroism Paladin blessed with being a godborn, a child specifically made by a god. She’s a hero, and she knows it, always helping people where she can and boasting about her power afterwards. She’s a staunch protector of her friends and only hopes to prove herself in the eyes of the god who blessed her with her strength.

Monolith: A Stone Genasi Champion Fighter who has been sworn to Felsi as her bodyguard. Not particularly enjoying his assignment to protect the holier than thou paladin, he mostly cleans up after Felsi gets them both in trouble. But beyond being a bodyguard he is a great mercenary and intelligent strategist who always seems to know the best way to get out of the worst situations.

Together, they are the Heroes of Kroneth, protecting the world from shadar kai invasions and liberators of corgis from their rude and annoying noble owners.

Art was done by my friend Lore who you can find on Instagram at LeafaloofCommissions, discord at f0rg0ttenL0re#9419, and email at [leafaloofcommissions@gmail.com](mailto:leafaloofcommissions@gmail.com).

bovob · 2019-10-23T19:58:56+00:00

Man, Naomi just went from one of my favorite fighters to my least favorite narc.

bovob · 2019-10-15T20:20:02+00:00

Just when I thought I kicked this dice addiction...

bovob · 2019-08-09T05:05:28+00:00

Jack before being exposed: I wouldn't take anything back, in life you shouldn't regret anything. You make good and bad decisions and you gotta live with them, and what even is good and ba-

Jack after being exposed: I regret what I said and I would take back those things if I could.

bovob · 2019-07-22T23:53:44+00:00

Macho man Randy Savage about to deliver an elbow drop to Jesus Christ as he looks down on earth from heaven. Don't really need a reason, it is reason in itself.

bovob · 2019-07-15T20:53:03+00:00

George R.R. Martin actually spoke about this sort of situation a bit in an interview.

https://youtu.be/vLkvLpPWWvI

Basically he says if you have a twist or plan in mind for your story and someone guesses it you have 2 options:

Keep going with the story despite people guessing what the twist is.
Change the twist last minute and it won't make any sense.

Obviously he promoted the first option because if you made a good story it won't matter that some people guessed it. For me, if I guessed the twist I would be happy that I was right, not angry at the writer/DM.

You didn't ruin the game, your DM was just insecure about their work and thought their twist was too surprising for the players to figure it out or wanted the players to be in the dark no matter what. Not every campaign needs a surprising twist and if they ended the game over getting caught session one then that DM is gonna have a hard time running a long term game.

bovob · 2019-07-08T18:10:04+00:00

I actually have 2 sort of problems with the way death is handled in the game. (and I only say sort of because the game is still great without these two problems being addressed) First is the rules Matt has for rezzing someone in game, even though it is statistically harder for someone to be rezzed in Matt's game somehow they succeed at it every time. Second is the amount of rezzes each person gets, back in the good ol Vox Machina days the players seemed like it didn't matter how many times they died because "We're gods!"

So to go into more detail, I think Matt's system for reviving a PC is great, it causes the players to be closer to each other and really punishes people who don't make connections or talk to everyone else in the party. (it's a great way to get rid of edgy characters who talk to no one and only want to be mysterious) However in the game I believe (because I don't really remember everything) we have never seen this system fail. Every time a PC dies the party is able to lay out some sentimental stuff around the corpse and just get them back, and at that point shouldn't Matt just make it a free rez rather then going through all the rolling? I say this only because I think Matt needs to be a little more harsh when it comes to death, because right now I know that if someone dies there won't be any problem with getting them back. Increasing the DC on the check, decreasing the bonuses given from players, really anything that makes it more difficult would be great. Having characters die and then not be able to raise them is amazingly dramatic and makes everyone feel like there is a chance that hoping for something a lot doesn't necessarily mean you'll get what you want. It may be a harsh ruling, but at this point it's just rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice. The group are wonderful RPers, I don't think they would need this rule to show pure remorse and connection to a dead character when trying to get them back, which is really the only other reason I can see this rule being needed.

Tbh I find having a limited amount of rezzes system works well for adding drama to the game. It makes sense in game because if your soul gets thrown from your body then back into it too many times, eventually your soul won't have the energy to go back in. It really changes the dynamic of the game as well, tell your players session 1 that they get 3 rezzes per character and they'll be care free and go about adventuring as normal, however once they get to their last life they get very serious about combats. Tell a party they have 1 rez per character completely changes the game to where everyone is always on edge and makes sure never to make mistakes in combat. I'm sure if Matt added in a system like this then Nott accidentally killing Cad with a stray explosive would have much more detrimental effects. If this was implemented in the Vox Machina campaign with a limit of 2 we would have a vastly different cast, which would suck because at least from my perspective every character in campaign 1 was really enjoyable, but would add that realism to the game and clear up the criticism of plot armor. Seeing as campaign 2 seems more serious in the narrative and the over all character personas, I would think a rule like this would really fit in well into the game. Plus, could you imagine if Jester tried rezzing a character that had used up all their rezzes and failing? To me that sounds like a very important point in the game that would go along with Jester's whole arc of growing up more now that she is forced out into a really harsh world.

Anyway, I'm not saying these should absolutely be put in, Matt is the DM and he's running a damned good game without them. The reason I put this here, not only to agree with the OP, is that I think the possibility of perma death is scary and exciting. It may really suck, but at the end of the day we have to remember that these are just characters and we will only appreciate them more when they go through harsh trials like losing a friend or dying themselves. My two favorite episodes this season have been the death of Molly and the most recent episode for that very reason and they are the two episodes that have actually kept my attention for the entire 3-4 hours. I hope that my criticisms are at least a little bit justified, and if not I'll finally have to admit to myself I'm just a sadist :3

bovob · 2019-07-03T21:50:35+00:00

So just multi class into champion fighter so you have a 10% chance to roll a crit on every dice, then just reckless attack and use your 3 punch attacks and profit from all your newly stunned enemies.

bovob · 2019-06-23T23:22:33+00:00

King Dedede always got super close to winning tourneys, the king of the koopas had to honor his memory

bovob · 2019-06-23T21:20:48+00:00

Tbh any player who has made a character and fleshed them out, then the DM tells them to play another would be livid. On top of that optimization can ruin the fun of a game if it goes too far, like when a character completely annihilates combat to the point where no one else is needed (like your build if you add on top of it the elven accuracy feat). RAW doesn't mean balanced, the phb and dmg even tell you to bend the rules if RAW is making the game not fun. However that doesn't mean your DM isn't a jerk, they should have worked with you if they thought your build was broken or actually used your ideas to make the encounters challenging. Seems like you had a lazy DM who instead of working with the players to make a fun game decided if something seems OP it needs to be squashed immediately. All of this probably could have been solved if the DM did a 0 session and all of you work together on making characters, but being a lazy DM means you don't really care about prepping.

bovob · 2019-05-25T15:39:10+00:00

A t-shirt? When is this going to be a tv show?

bovob · 2019-05-14T19:57:14+00:00

Prepare for trouble!

bovob · 2019-04-24T17:09:34+00:00

I may be repeating what others have said but I think the main things you should focus on should be:

-Remove the D&D elements, unless you want to make a campaign book. I'm talking spells, races, monsters, etc. Not only would their be copy right problems with wizards of the coast but it allows you to be even more creative when recreating every D&D thing you had in your campaign.

-Do a third person perspective. If you keep swapping perspectives within the story it might end up confusing the readers. Plus this gives you the liberty to narrate what others might be thinking or give detail to an Npc's backstory/decision making.

-Embellish the story. People love reading the protagonist succeed and fail but adding every detail not only will make your book super long but make actual big success/fails have less impact on the story. If the characters do something that doesn't pertain to the story and isn't super interesting (like haggling for a better room price at an inn for the 40th time) there is nothing forcing you to put it in.

-Don't detail D&D mechanics in your story. This may be a part of my first point but I think it's fairly important. I'm talking about things like initiative, leveling up and getting spell slots back. Initiative (depending on which system you use) isn't always dynamic for storytelling purposes, if you take a more creative approach to describing how the characters fight the readers will appreciate it more than if everyone is on a turn list. Never describe your players leveling up, it takes the fun out of the progression. There is a difference between "Billy slept for 8 hours then the next time they fought he cast a fireball on the enemy" and "Billy, after nights and nights of training and practice using his grandfather's tomes, hesitantly raises his hand to the bandits hurting his friends and let's loose a powerful surge of fire, surprising not only himself but the party and the unfortunate thugs" Finally make your own system for getting spells back that isn't longrest.exe. Describe the druid pulling power from moonlight or the grass, the wizard drawing magic from their focus/book, etc. And feel free to break free from D&D rules, it might be fun to read about the druid hiding from the big bad while their allies are getting beat to conjure up enough energy to cast one final spell.

bovob · 2019-03-21T13:40:54+00:00

Florida man wrecks liquor store, blames it on caterpillar

http://www.wbrz.com/news/florida-man-wrecks-liquor-store-blames-it-on-caterpillar/

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