Quick story from my game last night where a planning mishap led to a very cool outcome with food for thought for future sessions.
The party is making their way through a slot canyon. They’ve sent the fighter ahead to scout. He notices strange slime on the walls and bits of debris seemingly floating in mid-air. It’s a Chaos Ooze. The bard/channeler blasts it with his thunder voice. He opens a hole big enough to run through but the Ooze is rapidly reconstituting itself. Party sprints through the hole blown in the Ooze and most of them roll success with cost.
This is where the mishap comes in. I think, ok, they’ll get caught by the dripping ooze, take some damage, but make it to the other side. Except, the problem is when copying the monster’s stat block onto my cheat sheet I forgot to include the damage dice. On the fly, I look to the monster moves, see “Cause a change in appearance or substance” and decide that each of them gets a portion of their body or gear transmogrified into a new material. Through their own ideas, they all end up sporting permanent metallic scars including the ranger who’s face is now half metal. It was awesome and they loved it.
TLDR: Forgot to include damage stat for the monster and had to think of creative ways for the monster to affect my PC’s. It was way better than rolling D10 and ticking off a few hitpoints.
Takeaway: I think I’m going to “forget” what a creature’s damage die is much more often in the future.
Anyone ever have a mishap like this turn into something cool at the table?
Table: GM(me), my gf (evil thief), and 3 friends (good warrior/caster, neutral ranger/cleric, and neutral mage. And the mage is a bit crazy), all of us newbies at RPG and DW
There were supposed to be some cave spiders awating mid-dungeon, in a no light tunnel making a trap. I modified some stats for the spider “god” in the book, but completely forgot to save it online. As such I just described them the tunnel and they all forgot the cleric and mage light spells and went checking blind. Dragging them along with a couple defy dangers I came up with two traps:
Mine gas, wich explained why the torchs ended and they only figured out without burning by going blindly.
A sudden end of the tunnel with an elevator(the crazy mage said it was a “catvator”, used in cities to lift and lower cats) 2 meters away, which they could use to go to the lower level 10 meters below, but only worked by using two runes inside, one that would extend a bridge and another to change floors.
They figured out the floor ended(blindly), backtracked and figured out they had magic lights, used the warrior adventure bag to get some rope and a hook to bring the elevator closer. The mage jumped in and the evil thief decided it would be fun to let go of the rope. The ranger didn’t let go in time and between holding tight and trying to not roll over the edge decided on the last, but failed the die roll. Droping like a boulder he saw there were planks in the wall, then rolled a 12 in trying to stab one to hold hilmself, then a 10 to land a foot in the wall and backflip on a mine cart, harmless.
Overhead the mage had a hard ride, hitting his head by not holding properly to the bars, and detecting magic revealed the runes, but only to himself. He them threw a fit (in character) and made the warrior pigback the thief and try to make the jump (I told him about the runes by written note, so they had no idea) and as the warrior player asked if he rolled str, the mage activated the rune and a bridge extended, giving the warrior a hard but safe landing.
There was shouting, fingers pointed, people breathing hard by the idea of dead characters by just the third session, and it was probably a more memorable moment than the boss fight, which had cleverness, wild combat, a swamp turning desert and back to swamp, and more almost deaths, but wasn’t near as crazy.
That’s awesome. Improv can be tough but can also lead to some really cool snowballing situations that you’d never get with a pre determined sequence.
Well, just two weeks ago the party ran into a decimated town that existed within a “time bubble” (they’d already introduced several temporal anomalies into their campaign world in session #1, so I just went with it). While they’re within the boundaries of the bubble, they discover a “Vecna Coin” (basically a metal coin with 9 raised skulls emblazoned on it) that looks suspiciously like the very coin they destroyed earlier, in a previous adventure (I’d decided the bubble was actually in a past time frame, and that the coin actually WAS the same one they’d found in a different adventure “later;” planned to get into that whole time loop, but they did something to derail that [see below]).
The first coin had caused them all sorts of problems (hence their destroying it). This time, though, magic user decides to experiment with the coin. He keeps casting spells on it, which enter the coin, and shunt…somewhere else. Each time, a number of skulls go from light to dark, the # depending on spell level. The coin is basically turning dark (or the skulls are).
Anyway, he keeps doing this. Each time he does, they hear thunder roll, but don’t see any evidence of a storm. The coin seems to vibrate when he casts. A warning, surely? Who knows?
Or rather, who cares? Because Magic user consults tomes and determines that the coin is vibrating with a conductive temporal resonance (got to use Trek technobabble, which was cool, in a fantasy game). He thinks, “cool! I’ll conduct a ritual to use the coin to “realign the bubble” to restore the town to a pre-decimation time period, then bring that version into the present, thus restoring all the dead people. This is a big thing to do, but I’m a “say yes” GM.
So, okey doke…I figure, why the hell not? I have him roll to conduct the ritual…
Snakes…
So…really bad things start happening. The bubble turns black — they can actually see the boundaries. It starts to tremble and shake. Now, they really could just run out of it. BUT…wizard is like, “Okay, how about I just turn this puppy OFF?”
Sure. Let’s just reverse what you did, shall we? Simple enough. Even success with consequence should avoid whatever REALLY bad stuff is gonna happen (the actual extent of which, I haven’t really decided yet, because I’m following Wizard’s lead). So,, Wizard rolls, and…
Snakes. Again.
Urgh. What to do? That’s twice in a row, as bad as you can get. They’re looking to me, so what would be a REALLY bad consequence? Welllll…Just so happens all this ritualizing is taking place in the ruins of the only temple in the village, the one erected to Reyetta, the Goddess of Peace. Creation myth purports that Rey was set upon by the God of all Evil, Trant, who lustfully tried to force himself on her, and whom she avoided by collapsing into tears (thus forming all the rivers and lakes (and oceans, really) of the earth [and, in this world, fresh water is actually somewhat rare and valuable]). So, peaceful, benevolent, giving Reyetta is sort of a prime mover in this realm.
So, what happens? Since Wizard was out to “reverse what was happening,” I decide that he basically creates a “mirror universe” version of Reyetta. The statue of the goddess in the temple grows to gargantuan proportions, then announces it will purge the land of “lustful rapists.” After slapping them around, then concluding they are “but flies,” it heads toward their home village, intent on pretty much killing everybody there (because everyone is “filled with lust”). Now, she shoulda offed them, because, well, they’re “lustful,” too, but where’e the fun in just killing everyone (it’d be nice if they just ran away, but this group doesn’t seem to know the meaning of retreat (or the meaning of “messing with evil stuff [and time] can be really bad”).
And there we ended the session. Now, was this “cool?” I don’t know. I DO know it was a complete mess for the party, who now are trying to figure out how to undo what the wizard hath wrought (he actually “wroughts” a lot of bad stuff — the player just seems to have the worst luck). For me it was cool, because this was a completely unforeseen event that wouldn’t happen in systems hard-wired to levels (these guys are level 2).
The beauty of the game is working with what the players give you, and, as the rules say, “playing to find out what happens.” I’ve already got some ideas about what may happen if they fiddle with time again (like, an alternate timeline where those “Vecna Coins” are actually the coin of the realm, and the key to an evil entity’s earthly scheme. And I have the players to think for the original ideas. Easiest (and best) GMing job I’ve ever had.