So a few weeks back my good friend Susan Steward introduced us to Caleb Stokes' No Security one-shot, "The Fall Without End." She, being a fantastic GM, converted the skill checks on the fly quite seamlessly to the Call of Cthulhu system, and we had a jolly time getting to know the setting and backstory of the scenario.
...Unfortunately, what Susan experienced on that day was a perfect storm of willful players twisting character motivations in such a way as to entirely derail a plot. If you want a perfect example of exactly the types of players you don't want at your table come one-shot day, listen in.
You see, sometimes players hit walls in your campaign, and you are eventually given a choice. You can either run with what idiotic decisions they decide to make, potentially ruining all your carefully-laid plans or you can be a good sport about it and let them dig themselves into a hole so deep the schadenfreude alone is enough to keep you warm at night.
Susan, I applaud you for letting go of the reins and allowing us to make a memorable game out of a catastrophic train derailment.
And if you're Caleb Stokes, we're really sorry.
Crit This: Call of Cthulhu one-shot: The Fall Without End
I'm going to listen to this later, but I'll just say that I had a similar experience with a Cthulhu mini-campaign I ran a while back where the players screwed the pooch to the extent that any chance of getting back to "the plot" was completely out of reach. At a certain point I just had to say, "You know what? You guys blew it. Shall we play through the denoument?" Which turned out to be lots of fun and resulted in half of Arkham getting leveled and one of the PCs getting eaten by a gug on his way to a frat party.
ReplyDeleteJust goes to show that even when players blow up a scenario, it can still be good times.
I don't want to spoil anything for you, so all I can respond to this with is Yes.
DeleteI kind of lost it when Scott was yelling after the guy falling down the shale slope, "Hey, are you one of the Hutchinson boys!?"
DeleteYeah, we're seriously terrible people in that game. Except for Cecilia. Poor Cecilia.
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