My newest campaign is RIDDLED with problems stemming from player choices. How do I get them back on track?
Point blank: I am a top 10 DM in the world. I know that is tacky to say (and it took me a long time to accept), but it’s important to know for the story. You’ll have to take my word when I say every player I have ever DM’d has said as much.
Because of circumstances beyond my control, I had to find a completely new group to DM for over the past year or so. You might as well say that my old group died in a house fire, because they basically are rotting in the fiery pits of Bad DM Hades. My old friend Vetroiika, ever the minx, messaged me, begging me to DM again, but I responded with the gif of Isildur saying “no” and walking away, all epic. She said, “What the eff”? And I left her on red. But I knew that I won the interaction and that my old group would always rue the day that they decided to let a young, inexperienced goblin replace my DMing majesty.
Flash back to now, I started a new group by picking up people from my local Magic store plus my hot girlfriend. When I found them, they had never played DnD in their miserable, wasted lives (minus Adam, an old friend whom I reconnected with). Nowadays, they’re worse at playing DnD than Julius Randle is at ball handling. Hence the purpose of this post.
Allow me to cast our characters. There’s Adam the Warlock (heh); fun fact: he was almost an Olympic swimmer. Grundle the Artificer, and Harry Balzack the Bard (my problem player). Then there’s my amazing girlfriend Loretta the Wizard, who gives my life meaning and head. Loretta met me at one of the darkest periods of my life, after I lost my old group, and despite our differences in political opinions, we are soulmates, and she will one day bear my seed.
One last thing before starting the story: before the campaign, I demanded the following from my players: a written backstory in novella form, character alignment, favorite food, at least one backstory character, a song to be used as they’re theme, a list of secrets they are to keep from the group, and a fictional comparison (like Sasuke or Neville Longbottom) for me to use as a reference.
A quick side note about the table that will be important to know going forward. We usually do what I will refer to as a snack potluck wherein everyone brings at least one item. The usual suspects will be a family-size bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, an assortment of donuts, something my girlfriend cooked, and the prize jewel of the bunch: kolaches.
In our most recent session, which was the very beginning of our “Pirate’s Last Treasure” arc, the players were landlocked on an island in the middle of the ocean and told to search for “that which only shines in the moon’s glow”. Harry Balzack somehow immediately found the treasure in exactly the spot it was in, which ruined 5 ENTIRE sessions that I had planned. I told him “how the frick did you guess that?” and he had the nerve to say “I’ve seen the Pirates of the Caribbean movies”. Sadly, he was right. I watched those movies the week before and wrote down exactly the plot of the movies to use in my game. I had figured the films were too old and niche for my players to pick up references to.
One more side note. We had started playing at Adam’s house because my place was filled with termites. He has a really annoying dog named Napier that tends to demand to be the center of attention and (wouldn’t you know) bark like he is trying to win Mr. Dog competitions only WHEN I SPEAK. Napier is a terrier mix who is about 6 years old and has white fur that Adam cuts every two months. He is also afraid of water as a lot of terriers are.
Anyway, jumping back to the present. The players all said “wait, what? He’s right. The pirate ship with skeletons in the moonlight is from the first movie. You stole that idea” to which I used the great Brennan Lee Mulligan quote “if you aren’t stealing as a DM, then you aren’t DMing.” and they said that they don’t mind taking inspiration from media, but would rather not do a clone of the exact same adventure that these fictional characters went on. Can you believe they’d actually say that to me??? I spend HOURS watching movies and tv shows every day finding the right story for these people to go on, and they have the nerve to get mad that I sift through the best of the best to find what’s right for them? This takes me MONTHS if not YEARS. They were about to go on an entire adventure searching for one-eyed willy’s treasure and moving through different booby trapped caves (that’s from a movie you might not have heard of before called “The Goonies”. Really great film starring a young Thanos. Can’t recommend it enough.) But they want an ORIGINAL story??? Who am I, Brett Ratner????
I decided the only way to “up the stakes” and be original would be to kill Loretta’s character's sister, who was a beloved NPC. I did so by mind-controlling the party (DC 30 baby) and making them rip out her eyes and eat her face. This was, for whatever reason, seen as “in bad taste” (joker voice: very poor choice of words), so I said, “You wanna see bad taste?” And then I stole all of the kolaches and stormed off. Loretta followed after me and on the car ride home she told me that she actually thought it was interesting what happened and was looking forward to resolution next week. I told her there wouldn’t be a resolution and that we’d have to find a new group because I refuse to DM for those chuds until they apologized and agreed to stop bringing attention to the media that I improve upon to make my game so great.
It made me really miss my old group; they all basically lived under a rock and had never seen anything ever besides, like Indigo Prophecy. They worshipped the ground I DM’d on and knew they were in the presence of something special.
How do I make this new group realize that I am a top 5 DM internationally and make them feel my power? No game advice is needed, but I don’t people so well. If you help, I might even give you some advice on improving your campaign. Sic semper tyrannis!