So on Friday night we had our mostly regular once a fortnight game. In this game we are playing in a scratch-built fantasy world of mine where magic is a-plenty and monsters love to eat people.

In the game the players are attempting to rescue the sister of the one of them. The slavers, using a scrying artifact with some minor divinations found out that they had some competition gunning for them and shipwrecked the players on route to the rescue.

So far the ensuing adventures have been fun with a mixture of deadly where they have realised that the once historically glorious ancient Great Mallaric Empire ended abruptly at the height of their power in some apocalyptic event. As a result, they have been side questing the ancient ruins of the empire for magical artefacts to help them realise their goal of rescuing the girl.

On Friday night, they were in pursuit of a rogue monster (minotaur) that had been harassing the local township. Success would give them access to their final piece of transportation to the home of the slavers themselves. They chose this task primarily because it involved the ancient ruins of the Empire, thus effectively killing two birds with one stone.

I presented the party with a puzzle instead of the fight they were expecting. A mostly ruined tower with a ensorcelled trapdoor in the centre of the overgrown remains. Surrounding this was the 'turned-to-stone'/petrified remains of a previous hero sent to deal with the minotaur.

The players failed to find/look some of the clues, but decided that they had to open the ensorcelled trapdoor, even though they detected a great malevolent presence beneath the trapdoor.

The end result is that they had awoken an ancient evil and removed the enchantment they kept it trapped deep in the depths (yeah, I've been reading a bit of Lovecraft/etc recently). Using a bit of luck and excellent piece of on-the-fly player duping/lying/roleplaying they managed to convince the ancient evil that time was not yet right but they were off to speed things up for it.

The big, bad evil sent a minion to expedite matters.

In short order, one player decided he was going to convince the town that the other player characters were to be cast out. He succeeded.

A player vs player battle ensued. This final schism led to the end of the session ... possibly the campaign.

One comment was that the story was great, but the final player vs player action left a bad taste in their mouth.

Another felt that having a big, bad evil hanging over their actions frustrated them, having no clear method of fixing it right then and there.

Personally, I suspect I failed along the way by trying to scare the characters and the players with a strong evil. Have others had a game like this?

Quote from: telliusPersonally, I suspect I failed along the way by trying to scare the characters and the players with a strong evil. Have others had a game like this?

Yeah I have, albeit usually I give riddle, or prophetic clues for how to resolve the big bad evil in some way. Or advisor NPC's who know enough about whatever (magic, ancient evils), to advise them. I do this usually to let the players know that it is possible to prevent the evils release, IF they look for a way. I've had them fail horribly too. Leaving the world crushed by the great evil (or nearly crushed and avoided by slim interactions of others, but full well knowing they made the wrong choices.) I hate the latter, and use it rarely though because I want the players to handle things not some NPC's.


In the primary case I'm recalling I wanted the current evil to survive, and not be gobbled up by a greater force--the players unwittingly aided in opening the door by killing the "lesser" evil--so I had a new person bound with the ritualistic spells to hold the greater evil off. Think "Ancient Undying Wizard" vs Cthulhu monsters that eat the world just because its on the way to wherever they're going.) Mind you the 'lesser evil' controlled 90% of the world, had undead ARMIES in the millions (all with the once living human souls still in the undead bodies, imprisoned and unable to stop their bodies from doing the will of the Lord of Whispers.)


So he being the "lesser" evil was a campaign element, despite being terribly monstrous and evil--he'd become that way to STOP the greater evils he knew about, and the players offed him letting the door open. Since I like the campaign world, I had a new host for the spells brought forward. ONLY because they wanted the world to continue *LOL*

But yeah it is tough at times to balance player's wants, and campaign events that DO go on around them, without their direct influence. I prefer PC's to shape the world, but that doesn't mean I relent and let the world not be shaped by other forces I see ongoing around them..

I would honestly talk to your player's and ask them about the PC vs PC stuff and ask if in the future they can keep it all such PC conflicts to only verbal sparring rather than game driving actions that make it unfun for everyone else.

Oddly enough though there were doubts about the game being a fail. The following game was an absolute success, probably the best game in years.

I would almost go as far as saying as there was some sort of in group requirement for it to dip to a low point to rise to a high point.

Next game after was, while not quite as soaringly high, still unusually good with some excellent gaming from the players and fantastic story line completion.

For those playing at home, the big bad was temporarily thwarted but there still is a threat gently looming over the game that it wasn't completely destroyed.