tl;dr OP joins a new PF campaign set in Eberron; plot-line was derailed by a player joining as a princess and then further derailed when said player didn’t show up for the following session. Confusion abounds as the whole campaign finds itself rudderless and tempers flare, until the GM divorces into an out-of-context side mission which kept us amused for the evening. The future of the campaign is uncertain.
Longer version:
Let me tell you a story about the campaign I’m in right now. It’s hosted at a public venue, and I hadn’t met any of the players prior to me joining up. The GM says that we’re going to be making level 5 characters, and that it’s going to take place in the Eberron campaign setting; specifically focused on the city of Sharn. I roll up a Lawful Good human Urban Ranger named Stefan; a vigilante who fights crime and stands up weak and helpless in Sharn’s gang-infested undercity. I was granted permission to choose the Lower City of Sharn as my “community” for archetype purposes, but I was concerned over what favored enemy I should pick. I was initially going to choose human, since that’s the most populated race in Sharn. But the GM said I could choose criminals as my favored enemy. I decided that I would have “punks” written down as my favored enemy; which me and the other people at the table found very amusing.
The first session went very well. There were five other players besides myself, and we were hired by House Madani (one of the powerful “Dragonmarked houses” of the setting) to go down into the city’s Depths and investigate a plague that has been spreading and turning people into monsters. We went down there, investigated, were ambushed by a group of punks who we swiftly dealt with, and interrogated their leader. He gave us the name of a merchant from the higher levels who sometimes comes down to the Depths to sell drugs. We went to go question him, and after panicking and holding out a knife at us, he suddenly underwent an involuntary transformation into a hideous, tentacled monstrosity of unknown origin. After several rounds of whaling on it, the monster exploded into a bunch of foot-long, extraplanar slugs (which were strange and disgusting but posed no threat in of themselves). We found a strange box in the shop that had suspicious markings all over it, an engraving of a spider on top of it, and pulsed with eldritch energy. We resolved to take the box back to House Madani to study it. We are informed (somehow, I forgot the precise reveal) that the box originates from the jungle continent of Xen’Drik, and that we will need to go to the port city of Stormreach to begin our investigation. End session.
Next session, next week. Three of the six members of the group have left, leaving me, the other two, and two new players who joined us. Let me identify these guys somewhat so I have something to go off. I will give you fake names, because it’s not necessary for you to know who they actually are.
*Yours truly, playing Stefan the punk-slaying Urban Ranger.
Darren, a pretty nice, chill guy IRL, who plays Somag the Neutral Evil orc Barbarian 1/Alchemist 4. Yes, he’s playing an NE character. I didn’t even know that at first.
Chris, who seems like a really smart dude and a good role player, who plays Ki’Dosh the Chaotic Neutral Slyph…rogue? Something roguish.
And lastly, our new players Victor and Sam.
So we meet with the head of House Madani. We study the box and try to open it. But the stone spider on top of it is some kind of trap, and it bites Somag. The box is protecting itself.
Sam joins the game as Kayama, a 12 year old princess and daughter of the Madani patriarch. And this is where things begin to unravel.
According to Sam and the GM, “Kaya” is essentially a player-controlled NPC. She has no class levels, and cannot take a significant role in combat. She lacks the ability to defend herself, with rock-bottom AC and a painfully low number of HP’s. All of her stats and bonuses will be ad-libbed, probably as low. This is by design, however. Sam wanted to portray a character who was more of a plot device, motivator to the party, and role player. Kaya wishes to escape from the gilded cage of House Madani and venture forth into the real world, living out the stories that she read about in her books when she was younger. Sam said that Kaya was a “level 0” character, and would remain that way even if the rest of the party reached level 20. He spoke of how ironic it would be if the rest of us became near-demigods acknowledged by kingdoms the world over; and Kaya simply came back as a 16-year old princess about to be married off for political convenience. Based on what I’ve seen, Sam is something of a theatrical roleplayer less interested in stats and more in dialogue. He claimed that 4th ed is the best edition for roleplaying, because you can just “shut the books” and simply RP until combat happens.
So Kaya asks the party to take her with them when they leave the city, essentially stealing her out from under her father’s nose. She offers the party members astounding wealth and rewards if they do this. Ki’Dosh is not impressed, since his character is more interested in obtaining secret and esoteric knowledge. Kaya promises him…something, relevant to those goals, that we aren’t allowed to know about. My character is very ambivalent about this, since he doesn’t want the burden of watching after an underage girl in the crossfire. Other then that, he doesn’t want to betray the trust of House Madani by acting so unlawfully. Somag doesn’t care either way. Victor is her Kitsune butler, who supports the idea of her sneaking out. Everyone else is absent, so they can’t comment.
Victor’s character tells us about how Kaya’s mother committed suicide because her husband overly protected her and wouldn’t let her outside the castle. When Stefan hears that, he doesn’t want Kaya to suffer the same fate. So after a bunch of Lawful Good inner struggle, he agrees with the plan to “kidnap” her.
We board an airship (the crew of which really isn’t in the loop as far as her dad is concerned) and depart.
Now THIS is where things get really weird. Sam/Kaya starts telling us that going to Xen’Drik to stop the plague is pointless, because her dad isn’t paying us enough (we’re still technically working for him even though we’ve taken his daughter along) to risk ourselves on such a deadly, dangerous mission. Instead, the princess says, we should go to Thronehold; a prosperous city nearby Sharn. Instead of dying in the jungle, we could be wining, dining, and getting rich, while her father hires more QUALIFIED adventurers to do the job instead of us.
…See what I mean?
Kaya devotes most of her attention to convincing me that this is a good idea. Stefan is extremely skeptical; he’s altruistic and noble, and he knows that the plague is still spreading. He doesn’t think that wasting time in some decadent city while dark forces are at work is a good idea, and he thinks deferring the task to other adventurers is cowardly. I didn’t say this to Sam, but to support my argument here…by the GM’s standard, level five characters are highly exceptional, i.e “The kind of people you read about in books”. He offered Mike Tyson as a level 5 brawler. So as Stefan sees it, we are the most qualified people!
Sam informs me out of character that Kaya is still a kid, and has no power over the party whatsoever. Essentially, that her power ends when we say “nope”. Also, he points out that the reason why Kaya is trying to so hard to influence Stefan is because he’s the one truly good character of the bunch, and that convincing him to follow her way of thinking would legitimize her as a person in her eyes.
The party decides to go to Thronehold (Stefan is not supportive of this but is outvoted) and the session ends.
Session 3!
In the beginning of the session, Somag grows a scorpion stinger tail that squirts poison; as a result of him being bitten by the box-spider last session. The orc tests it by spraying it into a crew-member’s eyes. This provokes immediate contempt and confrontation from Stefan. I reprimand him, but Somag doesn’t seem to care, and thought that blinding (temporarily but painfully I believe) the crew member was funny. I try to explain that you can’t just randomly attack people on your crew without provocation. I try to bring Ki’Dosh in on my side, but he gets all lawyer-y (in character) and says “TECHNICALLY, they’re not OUR crew.” and basically shows complete apathy towards Somag’s actions. I now realize that I am a lone LG character dealing with a reckless, needlessly cruel orc and a classically amoral and selfish CN rogue who doesn’t seem to be bothered with anything or anyone so long as it doesn’t concern his own quest for power and profit. Essentially the “evil” kind of CN.
Here’s what really messes up the session:
Sam and Victor are not present. It is only me, Darren, and Chris. Sam was apparently sick.
This severely sabotages the GM’s plans, since SUPPOSEDLY there was some plot that Sam was going to share with the GM; the reason for us being in Thronehold. It had to do with her and what she promised Ki’Dosh, but Sam didn’t tell Chris either (or Chris isn’t willing to tell). So we’re left completely adrift in this new city, which isn’t related to the plot of the campaign, trying to figure out what the hell we’re supposed to do. NPC!Kaya shows true stupidity, telling the party that she can just randomly shelter with a noble family here just so long as she puts herself on their doorstep and begs for their help. When told why that wouldn’t work, she says she can just go to the Madani embassy and that they’ll help her. Stefan points out that they will drag her back to her father. I’m not sure if Kaya is really this stupid, or it was the result of Sam not being there to play her. In any case, the GM refuses to play her any longer.
With literally NO LEADS, NO PLOT, and NOTHING to do, we just sit there for 30-40 minutes describing minor actions that our characters take. Stefan begins chartering a ship to Stormreach. After this drudgery drags on for awhile and the GM seems incapable of getting us out of it, Darren tells Chris that nothing is happening and asks him to cough up what Sam told him that Kaya offered him. Chris says it’s relevant to the plot. Darren asks “What plot?”. He is visibly annoyed IRL and his temper is starting to rise.
Eventually, Chris asks the GM if there are any bounties in the city. There are some. Ki’Dosh asks Stefan if he wants to go bash some punks. Stefan agrees to this. We meet with an information broker to ask about the gang that the bounty is being offered for, the “Sewer Rats”. We get their location. We go down, and Stefan, Ki’Dosh, and Somag slaughter a whole bunch of punks. Early on, Stefan tries to show his LG-ness by playing good cop bad cop with Somag and promising a captured Sewer Rat mercy if he gives us information and renounces his criminal ways. Somag kills him anyway. The perils of being a LG character in an evil/quasi-evil group. We fight rat-shaped golems serving as bodyguards to the leader of the Sewer Rats; a large, grotesque rat-man sitting on a pile of loot. I execute him.
So, now we’re back where we started. If Sam comes back next session, we might have some idea of what we need to do. Or we can just hurry up and go to Xen’Drik. Sometimes, derailment of a campaign can be very fun. This is…not one of those times. Two of the people who left early (gone for two weeks, allegedly going to come back) are a middle-aged going on older couple who met playing AD&D in the seventies/eighties. They both seem pretty cool; maybe they can help sort out this complete train-wreck of a game, or at least be motivated to, GEE, I DUNNO, do the quest! Darren wants to do the quest, but he feels as though the choice is not in his hands. Sam and Chris seem to be the only ones who want to be in Thronehold, and Sam admits out of character that we can just MAKE Kaya obey us. Maybe the GM can throw us a bone here.
So, what do I do next?
So, your options are:
Roll with it and deal with whatever random nonsense happens next
Quit the game (games with low attendance rates tend to dissolve pretty quickly anyway)
Or try to fix the problems yourself
Since you're not the GM, fixing the problems is going to be difficult.
If it was the GM asking for help, I'd advise agreeing some guidelines as to the type of game it is in advance.
A game where the party is a mixture of lawful good and borderline chaotic evil makes very little sense unless the party is forced to work together for some reason. Why would your character stay with the guy who murders someone after you promised mercy?
And a GM should not take on a co-GM/NPC role-player and make the campaign plot dependent on them and then run a session without them with no plans.
This is a DM issue, and nto player one.
The DM let the player take the game in a different direction and seems to just be going with it. This is great a DM can do this, but they must be able to continue the game if they are not there
When I Dm I let players make up the world that involves their characters's backgrounds, but any holes I get to make up. So if the player is missing going on their quest. I will get to fill int he holes when they are gone and that becomes canon.
So what you're saying is that "Your princess is in another castle" and you wish she'd stay there so you can kick some Koopa butt on your own terms?
You sir provided a better response than I ever could and I am jealous