Hey /tg/. I've been feeling bad about a call I made recently

>52774612
I've read this pasta before. You're still retarded, as are your players. Go home and make something better to troll for (you)s with.

>>52774655
>pasta
>(yous)

Nah. I posted it exactly once, last month in a "dumbest mistakes your players have made" thread when it was a recent event and I felt particularly vindicated about screwing the party over for it.

It's since ground the game to a halt and led to a lot of infighting, so I've started to really reconsider how justified I was in the whole ordeal and now I'm looking for feedback and discussion. Not everything is "bait" anon.

>>52774718
Well, sorry about your game and sorry about your players being shitters, but it doesn't actually look like you did anything wrong.

>>52774612
Honestly the best thing you can do in these scenarios is to make sure your players understand what you were saying.

'Miscommunication' is frustrating when you're a player. The thing you did wrong was not going 'Wait, are you sure you want to do that? A possible interpretation of the dark elf's words is that the 'baroness' is not a sorceress, it's the 'Baroness' stealing their lives that is. If you do this, it might not pull any fruit. Are you sure?'

It's handholdy, but coming at it from that perspective should get your players back. Let them retcon.

>>52774987
That's definitely a place to start, but I'm not sure how comfortable I am with rolling back a session.

>>52774987
Condamn them to some kind of jail/forced labour, make a few « prison break » session, and add motivations to kill your Baroness. Like, she try to make the PC have an « unfortunate accident » inside their jail/labour camp.
Then, when they esacpe, discreetly railroad them to their confiscated possession. They have now to take care of the Baroness without raising the attention, as they are now fugitives.
Bonus point if you convince them they need to unmask the Baroness to clean themselves.

>>52774718
Is say you should send them to Riddick 2 prison. Have them be thrown in a hole filled with people that the Baroness hates and monsters on top of that. Make it a crazy mega-dungeon called the Cellar

>>52774612
>the party is in prison awaiting their trial
>baroness comes in and makes them a proposition
>she proposes that they do a favor for her that can only be done by a team who knows her secret and in trade she will set them free but on the condition that they keep her secret and never come back
>their mission is to help the baroness by killing some other evil thing/group/person who is an enemy of her
>make it look that that was what you had planned all along

>>52774612
I'm here to ask where to find this comic

To answer the only thing different would have been to let him roll, and then it wouldn't matter for the exact reason you gave. Also was he just asking to straight roll or actually trying to convince people of something?

>>52774612
your players are fucking dumb

>>52774612
What I would suggest is that you reaffirm that they understand that this world has people with logical thought processes, and that they are not always going to be seen in a good light. Remind them that actions have consequences and that if they act like criminals they will be regarded as such, regardless of the purpose of their actions. If they seem to understand, consider rolling back to an earlier point, or giving them a break by somehow having her secret be able to be revealed from within their jail or something (guy in the jail knows that if you present some certain material to her, she will be forced to show her colors or something, then let them do that at trial). Basically, give them a free pass this time, but explain to them out of game that they need to remember that actions have consequences, and they won't be getting get out of jail free cards past this point. Your players likely were acting as though this was a video game and that everything would work out, and were not expecting the people in game to realistically react to them. They were lucky the guards didnt kill them where they stood.

>>52776931

What luck! I'm only here to share this comic.

https://mega.nz/#!iF0QFLLL!yBdmIeenM-zZP4zZW2lMsxFnZEPTBS4AdMwCoGi2LMk

>>52779196
>They were lucky the guards didnt kill them where they stood.

Yeah desu it sounds like you were too easy on them, I would have just killed my players for that shit

>>52776832
This, easy fix

>>52776931
Good taste, those comics are great. The Pathfinder ones are pretty good too

>>52774612
Dude. Have a courtroom adventure! Let the players argue their innocence in a fun gamey way with all kinds of character witnesses like in chrono trigger.

>>52779862
Why kill someone that you could send in a penal mining facility?

>>52776832
Now this right here ain't such a bad idea.

>>52779845
Sweet, thank you based anon.

>>52775545
Stolen

>>52774612
This is just fine. Don't regret a thing. It's a twist AND a great read. You just made the storyline and the entire campaign interesting. "Courtroom adventure" by other anon is a good suggestion.

>>52780196
OH! Then the baroness shows up outside the PC's cell in disguise to gloat over them; affirming they were right all along, but still the big bad is just out of reach and gets away again (grr).

Then they can go all Charles Bronson in The Great Escape!

>>52780196
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn4DEa1MEvw

>>52775295

Don't roll back, double down. Have the entire party "executed" in public.

Next thing the party knows, they're waking up in the Underdark as slaves to the drow. Or in the Baroness' double-secret dungeon.

Alternatively, have local rebels attack the execution and free the party (they heard the party knows her secret!). I don't like the idea of a trial because as much as I love Phoenix Wright (or Chrono Trigger), the Baroness is the law and she isn't giving out anything but a "Guilty". A trial just prolongs the pain of failure here.

>>52774918
>Persuasion check
>Literally "It could go either way, let's let randomness weighted incrementally in the favor of one option based upon the qualities it is described as having decide."
>This is mostly what systems are for.
>"No, there's no way you could convince the guard of anything, I've decided that he is too obstinate."

Sorry OP, I didn't want it to sound like I don't understand occasionally making mistakes. It was not a fair call, just based off of what I think is the spirit of an RPG. Move on, good luck recovering your game. Remember to roll with the punches, that's what all the dice are for. The dice, you, and the players are all a storytelling team.

>>52782625

It is written right in the damn book that you cannot attempt a check to perform an impossible task, and it is the DMs discretion as to what is, or is not, impossible.

I'm picturing a guy scaling the white house lawn, being tackled by the Secret Service, and starts yelling how the president is secretly a dinosaur in disguise and is trying to conquer earth for his species.

You do not even have the slightest chance at succeeding on that persuasion attempt unless there are massive extenuating circumstances.

>>52782625
The concept of a guard ceasing to apprehend would-be murderers of the baroness to "hear them out" on their reasoning is ludicrous. It isn't that it is impossible to somehow persuade the guard that the Baroness is actually not what she appears to be (though it would be incredibly hard), the issue is that the guard wouldn't care what they are saying in this situation. He isn't going to stop fighting until his Baroness is safe. Perhaps, once they are behind bars, then he would listen to them, but while they still pose a threat, why would he ever even pay attention to what they are saying?

>>52775371
>jail/forced labor
>for trying to assassinate a noblewoman
Fuck that, they should be executed. Time to start a new campaign.

>>52774612
>Did I make a bad call?

No.

Always roll with realistic consequences, otherwise the game swiftly loses meaning.

To rescue the situation:

The noblewoman obviously has enemies, because everybody in power has enemies. Those enemies might very well sneak, oh, say, five knives and a metal file into the cell in the hope that these obvious lunatics will still want to kill the baroness once they've escaped.

>>52774612
This reminds me of my old group I DM'd

>Had to infiltrate a city that was being magically watched over
>lvl5 Guards patrolling the city in plentiful numbers
>The players (lvl 10+) are aware of these factors
>Decide the best way to handle 5 guards they encounter is to start summoning monsters and casting flare spells to 'blind' them along with explosives they'd made
>Are spotted by the magical eye in the sky
>Guards are summoned, the party are told to lay down their weapons
>They choose to fight on and every dies
>I'm blamed for making such a difficult mission

>>52779862

>I would have just killed my players for that shit
>I would have just killed my players
>my players

Seems this anon dungeon-masters for keeps.

>>52774612
You did make a bad call, because it pulled out of the game. It sounds like you were just frustrated by players acting naively stupid, but that's all part of the fun of DMing really.

There's no reason the Bard couldn't have tried to interject with something as the guards were dragging him off, it's just highly unlikely the guards would be convinced by anything - at least not in the here and now. But maybe if he argued the case well enough via dice or in character one of the rank and file could have the shadow of doubt cast over his mind and visit the party when they're in prison.

It was a missed opportunity, but not a bad one. It's easily recoverable. DMs fuck up all the time.

>>52774612
Without having been there, it sounds like your players are morons.

In saying that I'd handle it one of two ways.

A) Power hungry noble see's their chance to usurp power and uses their connections and favors to break you out. Alternitivly on the same route, the nobles started noticing changes in the 12 year old girl because they were now looking for it and so broke you out to try and prove it.

B) >>52776832

>>52782625
>It was not a fair call
It most certainly was a fair call. Persuasion isn't magical, it's just you talking to someone. If they don't want to listen (mostly because the party attacked first and talked second), then that's the end of that.

you can tell if someone is a sorceress by kissing their belly buttons, tell your players this

hey /tg/, OP here. Just wanted to let you guys know that this particular story has a happy ending. I talked things over with the PCs a bit more and we took a lot of what was discussed in this thread into account, and we think this is going to be a good way to segue into underdark adventures.Things are back on track now.

Thanks for all the feedback, it's been a lot of help.

>>52774612
No dude, your right. Those players are fucking morons for how they went about it, if they bitch remind them its their fault.

>>52782800
Maybe they're just being jailed/forced into labor until their trial date? Although, its hard to imagine that there would be much waiting time between an attempt at regicide and the following trial.

Perhaps you can explain it by having it so that the Baroness wants to keep them alive and wear down their spirit so she can interrogate them as to how they learned of her secret.

>>52787380
Glad you're campaign's back on track OP. Have fun getting murder-raped by Drows.

>>52774612
You did everything properly. Without any magical intervention, the guards shouldn't give a single fuck. They are only doing their job.

Why are players always thinking that guards have anything to say in handling the prisoners? There are people higher up, that may hear players out, but I wouldn't expect them to meet with the dude before they are thrown into a cell.

Yes, this applies both to personal guards and town guards. These personal guards are probably just loyal and doing their jobs, so they protect someone the best they can and leave decision making to some kind of leader.

In this situation, the leader was probably present at the coronation, but he should be enraged by this attempt at assassination if he himself doesn't suspect that there is something off with the Baroness' family.

There is no reason for anyone to even hear the players out, treating them as anything more than a simple assassins. If someone is anti-Baroness, he should stay silent and try to help players after they were captured, he can't do much now. Players should live by a little hand waving - to keep them for later interrogation.

Personally, I wouldn't even give players the chance to speak during the coronation and just straight out throw them into the dungeon. If there is no outside help, then they better prepare these dice for few rolls during interrogations, because it would be brutal, painful and probably maim or kill someone.