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http://www.dungeonmastering.com/tools-resources/question-keith-yeah-that-keith-3-those-meddling-pcs

Información:

Question Keith (Yeah, that Keith) #3: Those Meddling PCs

When all you have is a hammer...

We’re proud to present the 3rd in a series of monthly articles by Keith Baker. Best known for creating the Eberron Campaign Setting for Dungeons & Dragons and the card game Gloom he’s also worked on at least five games that you’ve never heard of. Yet.

Question:

What should be done if a player does something that destroys the plot? (Like the person that sent the PCs on a mission is evil but before they even go on the adventure they just kill him) It just happened in one of my campaigns. Has this ever happened to you? If so please tell me how you handled it. -MH {waiting to hear back from MH}

To me, choice is one of the vital elements that defines the RPG experience. If you watch a slasher film, you can shout “DON’T OPEN THAT DOOR!” at the screen—but the hapless teen is still going to open the door and die horribly. An RPG puts the player in the starring role and gives them the power to choose where the story leads.

Of course, there still needs to BE a story… and as DM, it’s your job to create it. You need to come up with the mysteries and the puzzles, the reasons for people to go on quests and the challenges they must overcome.

In the process, you may encounter players who take a perverse pleasure in undermining the story—taking actions that are obviously going to ruin your plans. Perhaps the fighter shoots the mysterious old man as he starts to tell his tale. Maybe the rogue refuses to enter the Tomb of Hadora, and goes back to the inn to play cards. If this is intentionally disruptive—if the player knows that his actions are going to needlessly upset the story—this is an appropriate time to talk to the player and tell him to alter his behavior or find a different group. The excuse that “My character is a sociopath who hates old men, and I was just roleplaying that” doesn’t hold water with me. If the player has intentionally made a character who will regularly disrupt the story and interfere with other players’ enjoyment of the game, I’ll tell them to come up with another idea. An RPG is a communal experience, and the fun of the many should outweigh the destructive desires of the one.

With that said, as DM it’s your job to gauge what your players actually enjoy. If ALL of your players would rather play cards at the inn than go to the Tomb of Hadora, than you should probably have more poker tournaments and fewer dungeon crawls. As long as the players are excited about the story, you shouldn’t have to deal with people intentionally wrecking the game.

But… what do you do when they wreck it UNintentionally? I’ve seen all of the following things happen:

Those Meddling Kids. The party has been hired by a disguised villain to do their dirty work. They pick up on unexpected clues and realize they shouldn’t complete the job. Now what?
Red Herring’s Revenge. The party is investigating a murder. By misinterpreting clues, they come to the wrong conclusion, but they are very excited that they have “solved the mystery” and consider the case closed.
Kobayashi Maru. The adventurers are surrounded by an overwhelming force and called upon to surrender a treasure. They are hopelessly outnumbered and there is no chance for victory: However, the characters refuse to surrender and instead choose to fight.
An Explosive Situation. The adventurers are threatened by a villain with a powerful bomb tied to a deadman switch. The plan for the adventure is that the players will have to do some negotiations and figure out a way to talk the villain down and safely dispose of the explosive. Instead, they attack the villain, with no plans whatsoever for dealing with the bomb.

In examples one and two, it’s the story that falls apart. You were trusting that the adventurers wouldn’t realize their employer was a bad guy, and the adventure was supposed to end with a big reveal as they hand over the Wand of Schmorkus and he says “HAHAHA! YOU FOOLS!” only they weren’t so foolish. I’d say that the best way to avoid this is never to rely on your players being stupid, but there are times when this is an excellent story. So instead, my advice is to be prepared to be flexible. The PCs are supposed to hand over the Wand of Schmorkus. If they figure it out, have an encounter prepped where the employer shows up with another gang of mercenary thugs and says “You’re smarter than I thought. But now you know too much, and I’m afraid you have to die.” It means you need to prep a backup encounter that you hope you won’t have to actually use, so it’s potentially wasted time… but it gives the players full control of their destiny.

In the case of example two, I had a choice. The players had studied the evidence and come to the wrong conclusion. They were thrilled with their sleuthing. So, I could have just stuck with my plan, revealed the villain and had them all say “It was THAT guy? I don’t get it.” Instead, I changed the final villain to fit their deductions – and when they saw that they’d been right, there were cheers and high-fives all around. It wasn’t the story I’d planned, but it was the story they all wanted it to be… and again, one of the advantages an RPG has over a book or movie is that it is the story about YOU. Of course, one of the reasons I did this is because they had thought things through. If they were just being lazy, I would have tried to push them to delve deeper. But as it was, they’d done a good job. They’d found all the clues I’d set out for them. They’d just come to a different conclusion than I had… but one that made for a solid story on its own.

Examples three and four are more difficult. In both cases, the party should simply be killed if they engage the enemy. This is a simple common sense “You cannot win this fight with brute force” situation. So what do you do if they stubbornly resort to brute force? Do you wipe out the party to prove a point? Do you let them win the impossible fight and thus set their expectations even higher next time?

One option is to punish the players in other ways for their hubris. Let them live but suffer some other loss: a treasured item is sundered, a beloved NPC is slain (whether as collateral damage or in reprisal). Rather than killing a character who’s dropped to negative hit points in the battle, maim him; have him lose a hand or an eye, or suffer a disfiguring injury. He’ll live, and someday he can get that would healed or replaced with a spiffy magical prosthetic – but maybe he won’t be so rash next time.

The problem with that answer is that it’s not the story the players wanted. Both these situations actually came up in my campaigns. In my view, example #3 was like the initial encounter between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. There was no shame in the defeat because there was no chance for victory; it served to establish the long term villain and to give the players a reason to want him dead. But that particular group of players simply didn’t want their characters to be humiliated, even if there would be a chance for revenge down the line. My chopping off hands and poking out eyes wouldn’t teach them a valuable lesson about humility; it would simply frustrate them even more. I needed to learn that this just wasn’t a group to back against a wall. They wanted to be challenged in combat, but they’d rather die than surrender. If I wanted them to have fun, I needed to design future adventures with that in mind.

So the short answer: If a player is INTENTIONALLY wrecking the game, tell him the shape up or find another game. If the fault lies with the players either being smarter than you anticipated or simply preferring a different sort of story than you had in mind, my advice is to do the best you can to design the adventure with wiggle room. Try to predict your players’ desires and actions, but always have a trick in your back pocket for when they don’t do what you expect.

Rating: 4.4/5 (9 votes cast)