The last session of Outcasts things went more than sideways. Things were wild, they were crazy, they didn't make any sense, nobody was acting in character, and the game ended up in a super strange place. What are we to do about this?
I've been running campaigns professionally for 11 years now, and I've got a lot of experience taking a situation that seems totally insane and putting it right again. That's not actually the hard part. The hard part is knowing when to step in and when to let things roll on.
The Problem
Last session, the party in Outcasts was rolling for random road encounters and deciding when and where to get involved. There were some mildly interesting things, some bandits attacking empire people, and a noble's carriage barreling down the road. It was late at night in the real world for our players and a whole chain of chaos happened.
1) Arachis (the mage) cast a paralyze spell on the horses of the carriage
2) The party pretend they had nothing to do with the incident
3) The party robbed the carriage
4) The followers said "wtf is going on here? This isn't what I signed up for. We're going to get caught, look at all these witnesses!"
5) The party started to kill the people in the carriage
6) There were kids in the carriage
7) The followers all decide to leave the party
8) The party looked around at what had happened and asked themselves "How did we get here? This isn't who we are. Why did we end up in this place?"
The Details
The first problematic action is the casting of Paralyze on the horses. Not because you can't do that, but because it is wildly out of character for Arachis. On an open road, with nobody else around, a horse suddenly being paralyzed or killed or affected in an unusual way right as you ride past a wizard is a clear, obvious, no brainer of "the wizard cast a spell". Even if something totally mundane happened, like the horse threw a shoe or had a sudden heart attack, if it happens right as you pass a wizard, you're gonna think the wizard did it. It's a magical world, so when strange things happen magic is at the top of the list for reasons why.
And Arachis should know this. He should know that if he casts a spell at the carriage, he's going to be the prime suspect. Arachis would also know that such an event, if it went poorly, could cause the carriage to crash, and everyone to die, and Arachis isn't the type to murder people on a whim. His player, Nick, also isn't the type. This random act of violence is very out of character.
The second problem is robbery. Also totally out of character for the party. Renatus has made a point of stealing things secretly (he is a thief), but highway robbery? Out of character for him. Out of character for the noble prince August. Out of character for the red robed mage who needs to keep a low profile. Out of character for a party who is on the way to get a job. Also, this is a well traveled road. Within an hour, someone else is going to see the wreck. Find the bodies. Anybody going the opposite way on the road will see the party, and then see the accident. Even if they don't assume the party did it, there will be a lot of witnesses who can place the party near the accident, and the party will get found out. The party has tried to keep a low profile, work with the world around them, and refrain from acts of random violence and robbery.
Our third problem is the murders. The followers made a point that you can't rob people and let them live. So the party killed (or sat by and watched the killing without objection) the people. Again, wildly out of character.
The forth problem is the killing of kids. Completely out of character for the party to be cool with it, totally out of character for Renatus who had his son at a young age, and not something anybody here would do or be OK with.
The last problem is that PotatoMcWhisky is going to be unavailable to play for a little while. This isn't really an in-game problem, but it does mean that either we play some sessions without him or that we have to wait a while for a resolution.
So, what do we do?
Our Options
Option 1: Play it out
We could stick with it and say, "This is what you did, live with the consequences" but it would mean a few things. The party would go from outcasts to outlaws, and be actively searched for and hunted by the Kingdom. You can't let your nobles get slaughtered on the road. Something must be done. This means the party must flee to a new area and start over, abandoning all the local things they've gotten involved with.
It also means the party has to find a way to understand their insane actions. But they didn't make any sense, so how is the party supposed to incorporate this madness into their characters?
With PotatoMcWhisky not around for a bit, how do we play this out without him? We'd have to suspend the campaign for many weeks.
Option 2: End the campaign
What happened was mad, it makes no sense, there's no real way to go forward, and we're going to throw in the towel and call it quits. We can do this, but it is very unsatisfying. The game was good. The characters were great. They had amazing moments. Should we really throw it all away? It feels wasteful.
Option 3: Roll it back
D&D campaigns come with the premise that there are no save points and there is no undoing of actions outside a few powerful time altering spells. It's a game of decision making and problem solving, and it only works if you live with the consequences of your actions.
That said, we do have the power to roll things back. It happens all the time in small doses. Example:
DM: "After venturing into the hills for 3 days, you run out of food"PC: "No, I would have bought rations at the last town"DM: "But you didn't say you bought extras and you normally travel with only 3 days of food."PC: "Yeah, but I wouldn't have gone forward without them. We knew this was going to be a longer trip and we were just in town"DM: "Ok, that makes sense. You wouldn't have ignored such an obvious issue. How many rations would you have packed? Anything else you would have wanted to pick up?"
When the party opened a door to a Death Knight in Tides of Death and they all died, it ended the campaign abruptly; however, that decision was totally in character. The party was on fire. They were on a roll. They had just done some crazy stuff on a magic ship. The Death Knight, while campaign ending, was a good, clean, sensible end for that game.
What happened in Outcasts was weird. Awkward. Nonsensical. Abrupt. Out of Character.
At the end of the 1st chapter of Outcasts, they started a bar fight in bar filled with enemies and things went real sideways. We didn't rollback those actions. They were mad, but they were in character. Garp had started fights in bars before. He was arrogant. He was violent and wild. This, while insane, was in character. It was resolved with imprisonment and the passage of time.
What happened in the last session of Outcasts doesn't even make sense. It was my responsibility as a DM to slow things down when they got too crazy. It was my responsibility to make sure the players understood what their characters were doing. It was my responsibility to give the players time to really feel out their decisions.
This situation we are in is very clearly deserving of some space and reconsideration. This is one of those extremely rare moments when we really ought to take the last half hour of the game and say, "ok, I don't think we're going to keep those actions".
The #1 rule of D&D is that we are here to have fun playing a game with our friends. If something is going on that makes the game unfun, there's no reason we must be slaves to the system and do the unfun thing.
The Resolution
The last encounter at the end of the last session was weird. It was out of character for everyone, and one of our players is going to be unavailable for a little while so even if we wanted to play out the consequences, we really can't. As the DM, I am making the executive decision that the carriage rolled past, the party got to Valebrook, and Renatus Fur talked to Magistrate Zerrah about the job posting. The party picked up the quest, but Zerrah had something different in mind for Renatus. So these 3 members of the party are going off one one quest, while Renatus does a solo quest for the Magistrate.
This will be the most substantial rolling back of character action I can remember doing. I think if you have to rollback one encounter every decade, that's not terrible.
Lastly, while this is my decision on how things should go forward, I want to acknowledge that anything can happen in the 2 weeks before our next session. This is the plan for now, but plans change.
Wish us luck
gl hfNeal / Koibu