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Derailing a game.

   
Derailing a game.

So I was wondering if any one had any good stories about derailing the story in there games.
Let me just go ahead and set a ground rule.

#1: If you meant to do it. It don't count.
#2: If it ended the game, it don't count.

I'm talking about those de-rails that take the game in a competently different direction.

Don't worry, I will actually post mine. (I have two) But it will be in a bit.

Derailed a game? Who hasn't?

One time I was in a Realms game and the DM was running a module (a rather popular one, as I recall). It begins with the party at an Inn and a bard introduces himself to the table. We didn't particularly like bards and musicians and politely asked the little bastard to shove off. A group of Guards bursts into the inn, point to the bard and say that he's wanted by the law. What are we to do? We knocked the guy out, trussed him up and handed him over to the guards. We were quite pleased with ourselves for helping the authorities. Apparently the bard was Volo and the adventure expected us to help him escape from corrupt officials. Who knew?

well, i havent 'derailed' a game. It was the players in a game of mine currently running IRL.

So, they were stuck on an island but there was a woman standing there, waiting.
Of course, one of my players thought it'd be funny if he flirted with her, he got a slap for that.

Then another one of my players wanted her elven bard to have chickens, or she wouldnt play.
I said she had to buy them off a farmer, who was asking for a very high price (i think it was 50gp for 4 chickens)
she spent about five minutes haggling the price down to 35gp.
Whilst that was happening, two others were in an ale house, one was selling medicine that cured sea sickness for which he was thrown in jail.

The whole game has turned into a strictly Rp game, no one wants to go find the jailers necklace (to get that one character out of jail)
so they ended up, somehow, going to a ball where they are currently dancing....
Very weird.
And annoying, seeing as we arent getting anywhere. *sigh* its just more work for me.

Quote:
well, i havent 'derailed' a game. It was the players in a game of mine currently running IRL.

So, they were stuck on an island but there was a woman standing there, waiting.
Of course, one of my players thought it'd be funny if he flirted with her, he got a slap for that.

Then another one of my players wanted her elven bard to have chickens, or she wouldnt play.
I said she had to buy them off a farmer, who was asking for a very high price (i think it was 50gp for 4 chickens)
she spent about five minutes haggling the price down to 35gp.
Whilst that was happening, two others were in an ale house, one was selling medicine that cured sea sickness for which he was thrown in jail.

The whole game has turned into a strictly Rp game, no one wants to go find the jailers necklace (to get that one character out of jail)
so they ended up, somehow, going to a ball where they are currently dancing....
Very weird.
And annoying, seeing as we arent getting anywhere. *sigh* its just more work for me.
I'd suggest a solo adventure where the prisoner gets the opportunity to execute his own escape plan. And then run a branching adventure where he takes revenge on the rest of the party as the big bad?

This was rather fun. But the DM put what was supposed to be a reoccurring villain into an encounter (our first time meeting him) he was way out of our league via lv and everything..... however due to a silence spell from our sorcerer and a few lucky crits from me I ended up beheading him before we knew anything about him.... The dm's face was priceless...


In a second one Our entire party was supposed to be captured and imprisoned but once more due to a lucky nat 20 I managed to bluff the guards into thinking I was one of them (disguise as well was used) and freed everyone leaving a now burning city behind (after I had fun setting a distraction) and we fled to another part of the continent. originally we were supposed to stay in the city, get some info on certain artifacts, confront a sorcerer king, and run for our lives....... he also died in the fire.

Best one I had was pretty epic.

The general Ideal behind he game was as follows.
There are three country's, A human one, A elf one, and a Drow one. (The Drow kingdom was actually a surface kingdom that had been concoured by Drow and was being ruled as a puppet government)

The players (All 6 of them) Wear suppose to be the children of important people in the three kingdoms, and we where trying to keep them from going to war.
So we ended up with.
1: Youngest prince of the human kingdom. (A half elf) So very unpopular with his family. (Also a lawful good character)
2: Friend of the Prince. Son of the Kings Captain of the guard.
3: My character was a half Drow, The youngest of two children of the ruler of the Drow Puppet Kingdom.
My character was treated very badly by her family.
4: My Characters bodyguard. Picked up from the streets as a kid.
5: Son of a Elven General. (Betrothed to the sixth player)
6: Daughter of a wealthy elven merchant prince: Charisma based healer. (With 6 Wisdom) So played as a complete airhead.

The game actually went pretty well, but it didn't go the way any one expected.
Pretty much every one derailed the game at some point.
The sixth character got lost in the snow once, and the game revolved around finding her for a wile.

Put my character just seamed to be best at it, Simply because I didn't take any crap for being a half drow.
So in order.

1: Romanced the first character, Convinced him we should get married. Then convinced his father and my characters mother that it would be a good ideal.
The king went for it because he was a nice guy, one of the only people who was nice to my character.
My mother went for it because she thought it would give her some one close to her enemy's.

2:Got in a fight with my fiances middle brother and almost killed him with a knife.
It was a pretty epic fight to, we rolled down a river bank and ended up fighting in a the mud.
Which was to my advantage, sense my fighting tactics wear all dirty tricks and feinting for sneak attack.

3:Got into a... altercation with the middle brother latter, egged him on until he attacked me, I was actually losing the fight until my bodyguard burst in. (She was easy the best fighter)
When she burst in, The older prince had grappled me to keep me from attacking him. (He actually didn't want to hurt me at the time)
So when my body guard and Faience burst in, hes hold me down bent over a table in a... compromising position.
So I of coarse screamed rape and he actually got haled off for it.

4: In the.. well mostly final act of the game my character sister and my fiances family. (Oldest brother and father) All when to find a sword. (Epically powerful and kind of a symbol of the human kings authority) We end up splitting up to go so three different things.
A: Find the sword.
B: Find and kill a group of Drow sent to stop us.
C: Find a lore master that knows how to get the sword to respond.
So I went with the king and healer to get the sword. (Because my brother in law didn't trust me to fighting besides him against "other drow")

5: So when the epic fight goes down with the king and I. The bad guy ends up dieing when the cliff we are standing on cracks and most of the people involved fall into a volcano. (No shit) So me the healer and the king end up hanging off the cliff. So I pull my self up and go over to the king.
He is hold on with one hand and holding the sword with the other.
Me: "Give me your hand father!" (First time I have called him father)
The throws his hand and the sword up to me, and I take his hand... And pause. I give him a very thoughtful look.
King: "No.. You don't have to do this."
Me: "I'm sorry." (Picks up the sword with my free hand and points it at him.)
Me: "Long live the king..." (Stabs the king with the sword and then pushed him into the Volcano)
On an note I always wanted to have a Scar Moment.
Me: Walks over to the healer who's still handing off the cliff and gives her a questioning look.
Healer: Looks up at me fearfully. "Long live the Queen?" I help her up.

6: I start going back to my Fiance with the sword and on the way there I run into a battle.
The battle is between my sister and her men and my brother in law and his men.
I weight until most of them are dead then I sneak attack my sister.
Older Prince: "Good you have finally proven you loyal.." Get cut short as I stab him with the sword, then kill the last two of his guards.

By this point in the game my DM was rolling on the floor and totally going with my train of thought.

7: Gets back to my soon to be husband and the rest of the party, and tells him that his father fell into a volcano and his older brother was killed by a Drow in a fight with my older sister. (Non of that is Technically a lie) I break down and cry about my now dead father. (I actually had very good Bluff and Acting, Because you know, Fighter/Rouges are awesome)

By the end of the game I had literally Managed to place my fiances on the thrown and he was the only one in the party who didn't relies what had happened.

A somewhat derailed adventure:

We were playing a spy game and the bad guys had stolen a disk full of secrets and retired to their island hideout (which wasn't a good hideout since we were told about it). But since intelligence said there were only bad guys on it, we wanted our government to drop something nasty on them, like anthrax, so recovery of the disk would be a cake walk. Instead, the GM decided on a fast-acting chemical poison that broke down quickly. It kill about half the bad guys and we had to go in and deal with the rest. Of course, by then they knew somebody was coming...

That's not made entirely of plotholes at all. Seriously, though? Stealing back secrets? From a bombable facility? That didn't have a negative air pressure barrier? That story should have ended with a hellfire missile barrage, resulting in the immediate end of every life form and piece of machinery on the island.


Let's see. I run a fantasy campaign. The characters were suppose to go into a lair, defeat a hydra, and claim an artifact that radiated powerful life energy. Granted health and rapid growth of plantlife and the reversal of aging in a radius of about a mile. This was so they could take it back to their keep and improve their slowly growing fortress/city (set in an old dwarven mountain fort... that they decided to *keep* after killing off the orcs and undead that infested it).

Well... they managed to convince the hydra to join them. By marching about captive and/or mind controlled orcs to the lair and feeding the hydra until it was full... and promising it a nice home near their castle where it would be safe and well fed.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TanaNari View Post
That's not made entirely of plotholes at all. Seriously, though? Stealing back secrets? From a bombable facility? That didn't have a negative air pressure barrier? That story should have ended with a hellfire missile barrage, resulting in the immediate end of every life form and piece of machinery on the island.
Mission failure. The disk had to be recovered. You can't recover it if you destroyed it.




 

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