Unhallowed Rites, Part 7: Resigned
“Don’t worry,” they said.
“He’ll be just fine,” they said.
“With all these extra magical foci, there’s no way the ritual will go wild and consume your puppy’s life force.”
Well the Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable too, you guys. And Patches the Unkicked is no Titanic. Poor little guy is hardly an S.S. Minnow. So while I’m unsure what kind of leverage Demon Queen has on Antipaladin, no early termination fee could be too high!
Anyhow, I guess this means that Paladin and Antipaladin both have some job hunting to do. But as the dust settles on this Unhallowed Rite, let’s turn our collective attention toward the real issue here: Knowing when to quit an unhealthy campaign.
Many years have passed since I last had to pull the plug on a game. It was so long ago in fact that I’d never even heard of Pathfinder. I couldn’t have told you the difference between an OSR and a BAB. I thought that Vampire: The Masquerade was the hot new thing, and I worried that owning three sets of dice might be a bit extravagant. I was well and truly noob you guys, but I had been thrown into the deep end.
“This is going to be an epic 3.5 campaign,” they said.
“We’ll help you build your character,” they said.
“With all us experienced players to help out, there’s no way that piloting a 20th-level PC will consume your life force.”
And honestly you guys? I was motivated. I put in the hours to learn about psionic fisting, relying on some size-altering shenanigans to flurry of blows at colossal size. My character was based on the old dude from Gremlins, and I was scrupulously polite to all the world’s NPCs despite my the ludicrous power level. I remember being particularly proud of my creative spell usage, turning my telepathic abilities to Unbreakable style psychometry during an investigation. All these years later and, with the benefit of experience, I still think I was pretty good for a noob. Imagine my chagrin when none of my attacks could get through the super golems’ DR 50/- in our first combat encounter.
“Don’t worry about it,” said the multiclass monstrosity with the greatsword. “I’ve got this one.” Then he proceeded to hit for ~200 damage per swing.
That was frustrating, but it wasn’t the breaking point. That came when we got to the first dungeon chamber. It was one of those anti-magic puzzles, with OBVIOUS TRAP covering the floor and only one exit on the far side. We couldn’t fly over. We couldn’t teleport past. What was a party of demigods to do?
“I grow to Size Colossal,” I said. “Since my guy is psionic, the anti-magic shouldn’t matter. And even if the perfectly-smooth walls are normally unclimbable, I should be able to brace myself between the opposite walls like climbing a chimney. The rest of the party can just stand on my back and avoid the sure-to-kill-us floor sludge.”
The DM’s brow furrowed. Books were consulted. “Nope,” he said at length. “The rules say that bracing only reduces the DC by 10. Infinity minus 10 is still infinity.”
To this day I remain unconvinced about this ruling. Maybe I’m just salty, and maybe the competitors on Ninja Warrior are higher level than my psionic master. I left that campaign shortly thereafter though, citing my “unfamiliarity with the rules.”
What about the rest of you guys though? Have you ever been obliged to quit a campaign? What were the circumstances, and what was the straw that broke the camel’s back? Tell us all about your own not-so-epic experiences down in the comments!
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I am so proud of Antipaladin right now. 🙂
Sure, it might be awkward when he runs into BBEG, Gestalt, or the other members of the Evil Party after this, but he stands by the puppy that loves and relies on him.
And yeah, I left a campaign where I was the sole Good-aligned player. It got so aggravating, dealing with the others ignoring my warnings, throwing me under the bus, and playing the part of petty jerks, I just said “Fine, I’m out”, and went to ask the party in the next room if I could join in.
I can still see the dumbstruck expression of the player who had annoyed me by consistently claiming ownership of my portable tower and ignoring me when I said the magical McGuffin we’d been sent to fetch was bad news. (It was. It started a diabolical invasion of our world when we delivered it.)
“Wait. You mean you were really angry?”
Damn skippy, son. Damn. Skippy. =_=
It’ll be interesting to see where AP goes with this. He’s been serving evil, but has never to my recollection shown much sign of personal malevolence… maybe a redemption arc in his future? Perhaps he could team up with Paladin, who’s got some atoning to do after finding himself on the wrong side defending Necromancer.
It could be the feel-good buddy-knight arc of self-discovery for the coming year(s)! 🙂 I like the idea, and they do have quite a bit in common; they’re both beings of principle willing to step beyond the narrow confines of their class for the sake of their loved ones.
“team up with Paladin”?
No guys, this is a clear case of Switching Sides. Paladin for love of his woman, Anti-Paladin for puppers. We can have some ‘good’ natured hijinx as they both get used to their new respective roles. Paladin has always been Lawful Stupid anyway, and Anti has seemed just a shade too decent to be ‘capital e’ Evil.
Yes… Yes… Think this mess through so I don’t have to!
(Plot is hard. I love it, but it’s much more effort than silly one-off jokes.)
I just realized that there may be a “lone wolf and cub” joke in this comic’s future.
As it turns out, playing an evil character doesn’t have to mean “be as big a jerk as possible to your teammates.”
That’s what I used to tell my players. Or something like it.
“Play any alignment you like, but play it sensibly. Your character does not need to be a mass-murdering lunatic who backstabs his teammates, just because you’re playing CE.”
I actually got a compliment from one player, who played the LE alignment. She was a bit snide to everyone and towed the Chelaxian supremacy line, but not to the point that she rubbed everyone up the wrong way or endangered the team. In her words, I let her play the character she liked and wanted.
Such a fine line to walk, but brava to the player who can pull it off!
I‘d say with rubbery soles, or even bare feet that it’s possible to climb a perfectly smooth chimney. Just like it’s possible to lift up a sheet of glass by the edge with one hand.
It’s one of those things, if the DM needs to consult the rule book for it, they need to get out more often and get some life experience.
I haven’t actively quit a game, but a few I just stopped asking for sessions.
One game breaker was the DM not answering a question for 5 sessions which ran me dry of magic ink to write scrolls during Serpent‘s Skull. Which essentially broke a feat just by laziness.
The one I didn’t even get started was where the DM dissed my character backstory (it’s come up here before).
When I was DM the group disintegrated due to toxic player dynamics.
First Responder player with First Responder wife canceled one session too many due to changes in their shifts, another player lost his shit over it and two players took that as the trigger to drop out.
And with Carrion Crown the whole table just sort of decided that the AP is a „bad place“ to be in after the DM gave a quick preview of the next book.
I’m running the first book of Carrion Crown now. What was it that brought a halt to that one exactly? I want to make sure to avoid the issues with the AP where I can
what mostly got on our nerves was all the ability draining monsters and the general urgency in the campaign, with no full Cleric it was difficult or expansive to heal or cure the ability damage between fights. Also crafting items was near impossible due to the perceived urgency: Our Paladin got 1 item done in the first two books and that was nearly outdated by the time it was finished.
This was my take as well. And since I was (obviously) not the most rules-savvy player in that group, the strict by-the-book play put me at a major disadvantage. Thanks no thanks at that point.
In response to the hover question, I’d guess that the HR department is run by Gestalt. Malevolent use of bureaucracy seems very much her style.
She certainly has all the corporate speak down.
Again, been loving this arc! As usual A-P shows himself to be an extremely likeable character and dedicated pet owner, and all it’s cost him is his job, his friends and arguably his direction – all things I’m sure can be replaced. Now, if only there was a party that was not particularly inclined towards good or evil, liked animals, distinctly lacked a front-line fighter, and might have a few scores they’d like to settle with BBEG… Hmm, nothing springs to mind…
Cheers! Nice to let the character do plot things every once in a while.
But AP isn’t a dragon! Jeremy would surely reject him!
We can fix that.
We have the power… we have the technology…
But how could we even determine what Antipaladin Dragon’s breath weapon should be? I assure you, the logistics are quite impossible.
Considering he is a fire genasi, there’s one obvious answer here: halitosis! He did that to save his pet dog, so he gets a doggy breath breath weapon!
Has it cost Antipaladin his friends, though?
Evil-aligned people, especially those of a Chaotic persuasion, tend to take a dim view to people who tell them that they’re going to do a job until it’s done or it kills them. Might as be that Witch, Succubus and Necromancer won’t mind the fact that the rite was interrupted as much as BBEG and DQ will.
“Since my guy is psionic, the anti-magic shouldn’t matter.”
Ouch. Be really sure to check that with your DM at character creation.
The 3.5 Expanded Psionic Handbook has a few pages on this, p55-56 and 65-66. The basic rule is “Psionics–Magic Transparency”. Whatever magic does, psionics do it too, and vice-versa.
So whatever affect magic should affect psionics, too.
The alternative rule is about psionics being different from magic, but that’s a cartload of cans of worms, I found out. Keeping track of the different effects and bonus/penalties has no import most of the time, so it’s a difference without meaning. And when it counts, you either cripple your psionic PCs (sorry, you need magic for that) or cripple your magic users PCs and NPCs (sorry, that doesn’t work on that guy).
Also, I’m loathe to give even more powers to illithids. “I cast antimagic field” – “your fellow spellcasting adventurers curse at you and you hear the mindflayer laughing in your mind”
I did. The plan failed because it was impossible to chimney-climb down a hallway, not because I’d been prevented from going colossal.
the Alchemist is a similar can of worms:
Does alchemy, but imbues the items with a bit of personal magic to make them (not) function (inside an anti magic field)
I house rule the magic out when I DM but also limited the number of bombs to something reasonable.
In my headcanon, Antipaladin said “Bugger this for a game of soldiers”, and deliberately let the Party and Anti-Party into the ritual site so he could save Patches the Unkicked.
And possibly his friends as well.
I mean… Who’s to say what happened? In the fury and confusion of battle, who could possibly know whether Antipaladin grabbed Patches from mid-air, tucked him under his arm, and Heisman Trophy’d his way out of there with a stiff arm to BBEG’s dome?
Not gonna lie, I would’ve loved to see Antipaladin knock BBEG’s skull off his shoulders. 🙂
Laurel is available for commissions. 😛
For serious though: I lost all my “draw extra stuff” privileges after that scene with the goblins in the pews.
It really is a strange way to tell a story doing all these single panel “snapshots.” Figuring out which moments are truly plot-critical and which ones can be left to reader imagination is a balancing act!
Well, I for one think you guys are doing a great job. ^_^ There’s that, at least.
<3
I wonder whether the rest of the Anti-Party will actually be very bothered by Paladin’s fall – if he even fell. They’re not hardliners, and they have occasionally snarked about his Paladin class features.
Also, could this mean no more Snowflake? 😀 Because that deserves a happy dance!
I think Snowflake is getting ‘promoted’ to Nightmare form. Or we learn that Snowflake was moonlighting as a fiendish template mount when Paladin specs into Antipaladin.
Alternatively, Snowflake is now free of Paladin’s connection and can do all the Bad Horse activities she desires. Or is just stuck in the Celestial Plane now until summoned by someone like Paladin – it’s hard to decipher her existential status.
But everyone loves Snowflake! She is almost as big a fan favorite as Thaumaturge!
Yeees.
Exactly.
The campaign before last ended up dying a natural death of being un-fun for all involved.
Nobody really left the group, but i think by the end we all agreed that the particular campaign just wasnt working out. It felt like a chore to the players, which made the DM feel put-upon.
There were a lot of contributing factors, but i think the biggest two were the sheer number of players at the table (seven when we all showed up!) making it hard for anybody to actually get the desired screen time, and the DM’s idea for the nature of the campaign having changed a lot after he pitched it to the group. What he wanted was simply not what we were expecting.
Most of us are still friends, save the one player who basically invited himself to the game without really asking us if we were OK with that, and we still are playing together. With a smaller group, a lot of us are open to the idea of giving the game another pass, with some more polish and sanding down of some extra elements to give the campaign a bit more focus.
Ah. I may have forgotten the other campaign I quit: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/thief-wizard-part-4-5
I’m now thinking about the possibility of Paladin, Necromancer, and Antipaladin forming a new posse together.
But the real question is, do P and AP have to change their names?
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/23/a5/81/23a5816243f9fffbc23bfc3c2741c657–juggernaut-xmen.jpg
and which one of them gets to be called Oathbreaker?
Maybe they should just switch names. That sounds simpler.
Or maybe more confusing. Or maybe both!
Yeeeessss… exactly.
“Just because you’re a bad guy doesn’t mean you’re a BAD guy.”
I suspect you of being Zangief IRL.
Or at the very least it doesn’t mean you need to be Snidely Whiplash.
one of my spares is lawful/evil.
so yeah, he’s evil – but he’s not an arsehole.
“so yeah, he’s evil – but he’s not an arsehole.”
He said that he may be an… “a-hole”, but he’s not, and I quote, “100% a dick”.
Do you believe him?
Well, I don’t know if I believe anyone is 100% a dick…
https://media.giphy.com/media/vNy5P2bhOIXvO/giphy.gif
One nasty game I am glad I left was an Iron Gods game. The DM was rather toxic in it and ramped up the difficulty in an already deadly AP for drama’s sake. It didn’t help I was playing the party’s healer, a sub-optimal version of one as well, leaving me so strrsssed keeping people alive it was unfun to RP it.
The breaking point was when a beloved PC died when the DM misjudged the power of a mob of monsters who melted our rogues brain with psionic attacks. We were stuck in a nasty area and could not rez them in time / lacked the rez mats. The DM then had a druid show up and reincarnate them, which felt like a dickish one-upping. At that point I was IC and OOC at the limits of stress… And then the DM said he wanted me to leave. I gladly accepted the offer.
This turned out to be a good idea, as later, I learned from the other players that the DM rocks-falled the game with uber demons murdering the party, with the intent to end the game on purpose.
I recognize the impulse, and it can be difficult to combat it in yourself as a GM. Fights that come down to a hair’s breadth between victory and death are memorable. But they have to come about organically. Trying to engineer that mess is exactly how you wind up adversarial and unfun.
With how Patches was adorably drawn this strip, it looks as though the ritual turned him from a puppy to a very fluffy kitten. 😀
I always though he looked a bit catlike: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/puppy-kicking
Speaking of puppies and kittens – is Patches going to be a puppy forever (in-universe or meta-wise), or will they have some (literal) character growth into a proud canine? Dog years go by in a flash!
Hmmm… Does the antipaladin class get a mount?
I do know Halflings can get a riding dog mount on paladins.
So some giant ‘Fu-dog Temple Guardian’ mount? Ala “Dresden Files” Mouse?
Damn. All manner of Charleses in this thread….
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/400x/75317073.jpg
“Hmmm… Does the antipaladin class get a mount?”
Fiendish Boon is a summonable mount. Or can be one, anyway. Sort of. More attack dog than noble steed, like a Paladin.
Even bad guys have loved ones, AP.
As for the prompt. About a month ago I joined an online game, wanting to get a bit more D&D into my system. Upon joining, I got a strong feeling of unease after about an hour of communication with the group. The GM was genuinely abrasive and unpleasant, a very different mood to their ‘players wanted’ add – which had mentioned the group had lost a few members due to IRL issues. The remaining players were all very shy and eager to get on the GM’s good side. The GM in question was demeaning to their players, and had an egotistical bent that wasn’t the… ‘funny ha-ha for laughs’ kind.
The first session I played in with the group ended up having half the party sit out while the new players (myself and another) took part in a jailbreak in which we… didn’t participate in. All the enemies were way past what we could handle, so we had to wait for an NPC organization to help us. We were escorted out by some named NPC, and spent the rest of the session playing in-character Among Us with the NPC’s kobold henchmen?
I learned afterward that the campaign had been about eight sessions long, and this was the running theme. Enemies way too strong to fight, so it had been minigame after minigame. Combined with the mean-spirited jabs of the GM, I just… really wasn’t into it. I really wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons, after all. When I made my distaste known, the GM said that ‘no one else had a problem with it’, ‘we can talk about this privately’, and ‘are we going to start or are you going to hold us up all night?’
It was at this moment that I had a sort of epiphany. I told them that I had better things to do that night. The GM’s reply, ‘okay then do it, no balls’ sort of solidified it and I left. He messaged me asking if I was coming back about thirty minutes later.
I ended up having a fantastic night anyway, watching some shows on Hulu. Equally as productive. I believe the phrase is “Having no D&D is better than having bad D&D”?
We have sort of an added houserule in my group. I started it, my friends who take turns GMing campaigns have copied it since. As follows…
“We do play this game, ostensibly, for fun. If we’re not having fun-if anyone is not having fun-you’re not obligated to play it.”
Any violation of the ‘fun’ rule is an immediate invitation to examine what is unfun. Our table is… demi-democratic? Like when there are problems, I ask people come forward, I tell them it’s cool they can bring someone to mediate if they’re really worried about it, and I offer to mediate for all of them. Obviously there is a ‘time and place’ corrolary in which I request that we not bring EVERYONE’S night to a screeching halt, but there’s even times to put the full brakes on too. It’s a social hobby, a social game-we each have to try to be socially cognizant.
I like the part of the story where the GM messaged you a MERE half hour later. I’m imagining, vividly, what sort of abusive, stock insults were used. Props to you for not decking the guy as you walked out-I can say that I have found my restraint sometimes lacking with people of his persuasion.
Yeah, my normal group have a similar demi-democratic feel.
As for the jerk DM, couldn’t have socked him if I wanted to, it was online. Certainly made it easier to leave without regret.
Your soundtrack:
https://youtu.be/nCQGQ5qBQTA
For non-tournament lameness, my worst D&D experience is a tie:
a) I once quit a group after two adventures (two different campaigns), wherein the objective was to fawn over the DM’s (N)PC, who handily defeated everything as the party applauded, accompanied by the DM’s girlfriend playing an Houri (magic seductress from White Dwarf #13) who used enslavement kisses to steal magic items from other party members.
b) Our regular game night crew were railroaded into a dungeon full of undead that sat inside a giant anti-magic field that
i) somehow cancelled not only spells, magic items, supernatural and spell-like abilities, but also extraordinary abilities like a monk’s bonus to AC and flurry of blows, and
ii) fully permitted the NPCs and Big Bad’s plot-magic to function just fine.
DM: “A door opens. You enter the room.”
US: “We haven’t finished looting this one yet, we’ll go in a minute.”
DM: “You go inside.”
US: “Don’t we get a saving throw or something?”
DM: “No.”
And so it went all evening long. Extradimensional mind-controlling mushroom spores, exponentially increasing Will save DCs–Eventually only two PCs were left: the monk who punched his way out by breaking through a secret door and the druid, whose player was smart enough to see where this was going 5 minutes into the adventure and declared he was “keeping watch in hawk form” while the party fed ourselves to one player’s wish to retire his character with something “big” and the DM’s effort to show how “tough” an adventure he could make. If left such a bad taste in our mouths that most of us did retire our characters rather than finish the dungeon in some future session.
Yo… Those are some infuriating encounters. Hard dungeons are fine for a sometimes food, but at least put in the effort to makw them awmi-fair! Exponential DCs indeed…. Hoh!
DM’s girlfriend, on the other hand, is its own special stupid. It takes a special kind of ego to believe that mess is fun for anyone else.
Since we are the same people always we haven’t need to left things. We have wrapped things quickly if anything. We do left the campaign we were playing unfinished because the plague. The campaign plot having some parallels with the situation. So don’t really know if that counts. Time will tell 😀
Because this hobby of ours is so time intensive, it can be tough to tell if we play for the game or for the people we ostensibly like spending time with. Ideally it’s both, but there’s nothing that says you can’t reroll with a new group.
Maybe on US you can hit a tree and several groups will fall for you to choose. Here there isn’t that much people to play with. On the country i mean 🙂
Gotta quest for it, bro!
You want me to go on an epic quest so i can go on a epic quest? 😛
I am okay, even if i don’t play i can still pass them notes on plot and setting so they can play and have a good time 😀
Ah, I knew it was here somewhere. Climbing a perfectly smooth vertical surface is DC 70, so 60 if you’re bracing yourself. Incidentally, a perfectly smooth and flat ceiling is DC 100. This is 3.5, you can just be that good. https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm
From a physics standpoint, a perfectly frictionless, flat, vertical surface would be unclimbable no matter how strong you were, since friction would be the only force that could oppose gravity. In practice, not only do perfectly frictionless surfaces not exist, if you were strong enough and had a brace you could just push on them hard enough that they indented slightly, letting you use that little ‘lip’ to support your weight.
But yeah, sometimes you just have to use common sense and look up the rule later that night. Or just stick with the common sense ruling, if that worked.
The phrase in the book is, “A perfectly smooth, flat, vertical surface.” I always read that as “glass wall” rather than “frictionless physics thought experiment.”
Only game I ever quit from was a savage words game in a setting where the world was slowly freezing over and new ice-imbued creatures were popping up like aasimars and tieflings do. One major plot point for the slow freezing of the world was that fire and fire magic were both rare and difficult to do. So I figure, I can make one of these ice -infused people for my character and give him the major flaw of a phobia of fire. That’ll comes up later. Also sometimes the DM doesn’t have the best grasp of the rules and I like to point out all the ways there’s already a rule for handling X right under the description of skill Y right here in the main book, etc.
Early in the game the party comes across a treasure trove and finds a unique magic item inside for each of them. Since magic items are usually especially rare in savage worlds, we were all pretty stoked. From then on, things just went downhill. Pretty much every other item we found was cursed. NPCs were antagonistic-to-hostile to us even though we’d never met and they’d never heard of us. Oh, and that pyrophobia of my character’s? Over half the party and several ‘friendly’ npcs we met up with all ended up using fire magic all over the place, so my choices most combats were wither stay and fight with big penalties for being so near the source of my phobia, or do the IC thing and run away screaming until it stopped.
It finally came to a head when the party was contracted to find one specific magic item in a recently-discovered vault full of rare finds. Which, at this point, nobody in the party wanted to even touch any of because we suspected that every single thing in there was cursed in some way. But fine, we’ll do it Disney’s Aladdin style and touch only the lamp before buggering out. In one of the last rooms, we’re in the middle of a fight. My character is once again in panic mode because FIRE so he runs for the nearest door and tries to flee out of it. It’s locked. OK, fine, my guy’s pretty good in lockpicking so I’ll unlock it and keep going. DM asks me to roll a stealth check to unlock it. Not a lockpicking check, a stealth check. Which my guy is not good at. We get into a rules argument that leads to an early break for everyone.
Next game session once we’re out of the vault my guy turns to the nearest friendly PC, hands over the magical lucky hedgehog that he’s been taking care of, tells them some tip for caring for it, then walks off into an approaching blizzard (which he’s immune to, since, ice) to get away from “these fire shooting maniacs”. Last session I went to with that GM, and according to one of the other players the game ended a few sessions later with everyone else deciding not to game with that DM any more either.
Hate to see “I want to challenge the PCs” turn into adversarial GMing. I feel like that’s what happened with the fire magic, and it’s exactly the kind of move that drives players nuts.
Good old Anti-Paladin… Wait, those are definitely not the right terms for AP, but hey, at least his dog is safe 🙂
He and Paladin have grown quite a bit over time, with Paladin taking out at least one of the sticks up his butt and AP finding his moral backbone.
I generally haven’t had to quit a campaign. The ones that have these kinds of issues tend to fall apart all on their own as either the DM/GM hasn’t quite considered that what they consider fun may not be nearly as fun for the players or they’re not nearly as familiar with the rules or as prepared for each session as they think they are.
What? Noooo! My stereotypical trope characters named after their classes can’t grow and develop! How will I preserve my precious shtick if they stop being caricatures!?
I’ve quit two campaigns. One was a horrible DM who regularly ‘My magical realm’d players without consent- he was trying to run a living world based on the universe of Darkest Dungeon, except he thought ‘gritty, dark realities of the danger of adventuring in a land filled with eldritch horrors’ was equivalent with ‘npcs regularly make rape jokes.’ I countered this by playing a cleric who was an icon of ‘looks pure and nice on the outside, will kick you in the balls so hard they come out your nose if you look at her the wrong way.’ until that game inevitably collapsed under the weight of the DM being a dickhead. I can’t be too mad though as I met the majority of my current friend group through that game.
the other game I quit was a Pathfinder game, they were playing Iron Gods over Roll20. I joined in a session that was mid-combat- which, immediately, struck me as odd, because ending a session mid-fight is weird to me. Then I realized why.
I took my first turn about 30 minutes into the session.
My second turn came three hours later, just before session ended.
I made my excuses and dropped the game.
Yikes! Was it analysis paralysis, rules lawyering, or a lack of familiarity with the rules?
First and third. Everyone in the game but me was brand new to the system, which I can excuse because let’s be real, we all took a while to learn. But their first foray into the system was a heavily homebrewed Iron Gods, which is already a complex campaign due to multiple subsystems in play like the High Tech rules.
This is where I think actual plays can help. Even if a new GM wants to find a game so that they can play and learn before piloting an AP themselves, it isn’t always easy to make that happen. But reading the combat chapter and then following along with a podcast scan give you a sense for “how the game works.” If you try to come into it cold… Oof. I don’t know that I could have done that.
The only RPG I remember actually deciding to quit was a GURPS Fantasy game back in college. I think it was shortly after the first publication; most of us were still playing first edition AD&D or Champions back then.
The GM sold us on the idea that the system was so versatile we could make more interesting characters and do more than just go dungeon crawling, so I decided to make a fast talking thief and conman, who, while completely amoral in regards to property, was not a murderer, which after discussion with the GM was modeled by having him take the Pacifist disadvantage. To support this, his main weapon was a sap, so he was doing non-lethal damage.
So the first game session, we pretty quickly get railroaded into a combat focused mission tracking down some bandits or something similar, and during the inevitable big combat (when I tried to use my BS skills to talk the bandits out of fighting, the GM ruled that there was no way they would fall for that), I was trying to sneak around and make myself useful by scouting, stealing stuff, and ineffectively trying to sap enemies. After the session was over, the GM took me aside and complained about how ineffective my character was, that I wasn’t participating in the combat, and suggested that I needed to spend some experience to get better at using a more effective weapon, suggesting that a rapier was just the thing. When I mentioned that it wasn’t really in line with my character concept, he insisted, so I went along.
Next game session, we once more wound up running into enemies who were immune to conversation, so I wound up using my new rapier skills to support the party in the combat, and while I didn’t kill anybody, I did manage to inflict some damage on a couple of foes, and the party won the day, with everybody gaining extra experience for our great victory.
Except at the end, the GM ruled that I actually got nothing, because I had violated my Pacifist disadvantage by making lethal damage attacks against enemies using the skills and weapon he had insisted I get after the first session. When I pointed that out, he just shrugged and said I should have played my character better.
A few days later, the GM came to me and told me that he thought my character wasn’t working out in the party and that I needed to make a new, more combat focused character and be a better player if I wanted to continue in his game. I told him I had already decided that I wasn’t interested in continuing, and never regretted that decision.
This doesn’t add up. How could one GM fit all that bullshit in one douche canoe?
For serious though, misaligned expectations are the friggin’ worst. Remember that time I told my players I’d be running a courtly intrigue game, only to turn it into Baron Munchausen? Fastest way to kill player enthusiasm that I’ve yet encountered.
I’m glad Antipaladin got out of there with his spell slots and hit points intact. Poor guy really seemed like he was stuck in a bad group, although he seems to have to have sat out the entire encounter at the table to get there. Here’s to finding a good group in the future, and a nice DM who likes redemption arcs.
The sad thing is that he’s already rejected Gunslinger once….
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/starting-level
“This is going to be an epic 3.5 campaign…”
Oh no. Oh you poor sweet summer child. At least you lived through it and came out the other side with the experience for the better.
Despite his bad calls, I feel like the GM was a genuinely OK dude. But that kind of campaign is not place to start out as a newcomer. Nice of him to try to include me I guess, but oof. No idea how you’d even go about making that a fun first time experience.
Outside of the system not clicking with the group, I can think of … two campaigns that really failed badly for my group.
1, a campaign where I meant to be the token evil teammate. When the demon-worshipping vampiric Drow (not a Drizz’t expy, a stereotypical Drow that the expies are on the run from) loses their patience with the rest of the party’s antics (and is the only one bright enough to NOT bargain with the Fey) and just stealth-solves an entire dungeon to keep a low profile, you know the rest of the party is cackling mad, and needs a few more points in Wis to boot. That one lasted a couple levels, but the party frontline was a glory hog who was actively stealing the spotlight and making things worse. (Polearm fighter, Psyko-pyrokineticist, some sort of support class, and I was a Spheres of Power Sorcerer)
2, my first character was intended to be an Evil Necromancer (as in, ambitious and sees people as tools, Wizard who specializes in Necromancy-school [de]buffs, not mucking around with the undead) was vetoed for evil. My replacement idea didn’t mesh with the party, which included no less than two people who were more evil than my necromancer would have been. One of whom was an angsty brooder who rubbed the wrong way, so instead of bringing character 3, I just left after a couple sessions. The campaign itself didn’t actually seem like it was set up to do anything after the first session or two. Oh, you got your revenge, now you have no reason to work together! Just a city in chaos, which the campaign said nothing about making a character that wants to solve it – just to get revenge on one person, who gets offed very soon into the game.
Oh, and 3, a game I hosted. It was Mythic. We got rather far, actually, before realizing that no, despite my skill at balancing things, Mythic Magic couldn’t be balanced.
Good luck to Antipaladin in a potential redemption arc. If we see him again, that is.
Quick correction, since I can’t edit: Felt like Campaign 2 wasn’t set up to keep us going after our revenge. It had plenty more material, but there was a definite mental disconnect between vengeance on a minor crime lord with some other people he wronged and working with people we only just met afterwards when we presumably had lives to get back to after our vengeance.
Evil characters can work, but gat-dang does it take the right group to make it fly.
More than the evil though it’s the GM who runs out of ideas that bothers me. Put together an arc, guy! You don’t have to lay down railroad tracks, but you need to let your players know whether “save the city” or “rule the ashes” is the name of the game.
Actually it was a published adventure path with an awkward transition from meet by revenge to save the city
Curse of the Crimson Throne? I’m actually playing through that now and yeah, that transition could be smoother. Not one of Paizo’s finer AP moments.
Yep. Crimson Throne. Also the Campaign Traits had nothing to do with anything after vengeance (and were just reskinned normal traits)… so it was building up the campaign (or first book) to be about that issue, not the first session or two. I’d rather have had a variant Concerned Citizen from Hell’s Rebels than have been wronged. It’d be better for the transition, too. At least for why I’m not just nailing down my corner of the world now that I’ve done what I wanted.
“More than the evil though”
Now that I have more time (home on computer and not on break at work/using dinosaur-era phone), I’ll add in that the other players probably called their characters Neutral. Or my standards for an evil character are what others would call Neutral. Or the GM didn’t get caught on Necromancer before we could get to “no undead; they’re a waste of time. I’m just ambitious and self-aware about adventurer tendencies.”
Which, come to think of it… has there been anything in the Handbook about a player calling an Evil character Neutral to make it fly, so to speak? I can’t remember.