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hmm.....
Have they met Shalelu yet? One option for you is to send your PCs to Magnimar, put them on trial (also remember that Magnimar has no king and this is important to part 2 (you could always replace Haldmeer with a king and it would still work) and have Nualia attack the town, let her have moderate success, burn some more buildings, kill some NPCs, then have Shalelu show up at the last minute and help the town repel the attack (she is level 6 after all). Your PCs return from Magnimar to an even more desperate town, sure that the next attak will finish them off. Make it clear the town will not withstand another attack...with shalelu in tow (if that is your wish) send your PCs off to Thistletop...campaign back in line. Nualia is back at Thistletop furiously researching Malfeshnekor, now convinced that she needs her Lamashtu sent general to finally destroy the town.
Just remember!
I do have one question, though - why'd Nualia bother sending them towards the goblins? What'd she get out of it/how does it further her own ploys? I'm trying to understand the purpose behind, well, all of it - because I'm having some difficulty empathizing with your DM-woes.
I recommend following the advice of the Angry DM. In this post, he mentions the idea of the "Gun Safety Rule", which is "Never aim at something you aren't prepared to kill".
If you introduce something that is planning on blowing up the Town of Townville, then you'd better have a map prepared that shows a crater where Townville used to be. If the bad guy takes an NPC hostage, be ready for that NPC to no longer be around.
Well, a carriage can go more like 50 miles/day on a reasonable road - and the Lost Coast Road in early autumn shouldn't be too bad AFAICT. So get them to Magnimar in 1 day and you don't have to shoot your game in the head.
Spoilering, since you did.
How is Nualia gathering the resources to sack a town of 1200 humans in 8 days? The timeline seems utterly unrealistic in terms of necessary troops. When the party assaults Thistletop in Book 1, it has around 20 goblins. To have a chance of sacking an entire city she'd need close to 1000. And without Malfeshnekor, the high-level NPCs in the town are going to rip her goblins to shreds.
So I like the idea that she *thinks* she's going to sack the town, but she's a crappy general, so she attacks with maybe 200-300 goblins and destroys the entire northeastern corner of the town (new cathedral included) before being driven back, swearing to return.
Adds angst to the campaign without wiping Sandpoint off the map.
And I do loves me some angst.
So I tend to think a big battle with the town half burned and many defenders dead, but not wiped out, would be the way to go. I'd probably give 3 in 6 survival chance for named combatant PCs on both sides, 5 in 6 for civilians who hide when the goblins attack. That would imply 150/300 combatants dead and 150/900 civvies dead, 300 total - looks about right.
My thoughts:
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Defense: "Your honor. We stumbled upon a poor woman by the name of Natalie who told us of a tribe of goblins we had not heard of that had nearly killed her. Fearing that a new threat was emerging we took decisive action."
Prosecutor: "The goblins were fleeing and begging for their lives!"
Defense: "None of us spoke Goblin. Have you ever fought goblins? They behave erratically at best, though they can be surprisingly crafty. They are also a fairly cowardly lot. We had no way of knowing their panic and gibbering was an honest surrender, and not vicious goblins trying some ruse or caught up in the excitement of battle."
Prosecutor: "Well, you should have done research to avoid this sort of thing."
Defense: "Before we were sent off to cull the goblin threat surrounding Sandpoint, at the behest of the local government, we consulted an expert on goblins in the area. She gave us great details on all the goblin tribes in the area except this one. We had no reason to believe that she, or the local government, were omitting any information. Thus, we had no reason to assume that this particular tribe was unique and under the King's protection."
If the tribe of good goblins were that important to "the King"/leadership of Magnimar then someone in Sandpoint should have told the pc's about it. If no one did, then either the GM screwed up or the people and leaders in Sandpoint didn't trust this tribe or give a crap about them. And in that case, they aren't going to grieve overhard about the goblins demise. So someone in Magnimar may care but if the PC's are helping deal with the goblin problem, don't see why anyone in Sandpoint is going to turn that help down.
Simple suggestion:
The town is aware of the impending danger. The leadership agrees to delay the trial in exchange for help from the PCs in dealing with the goblin threat. With the added incentive that if they help out then they will be treated more leniently when it comes to their crime. A pragmatic solution?
Given being tried for mass murder versus helping the town defend itself the decision for the PCs should be an easy one.
If the village's existence is hidden by the conspiracy, then how do the town leaders instantly know that it is gone? Did the PCs come back to Sandpoint and said "Oh, hey, we kinda sorta slaughtered a gobling village nearby. Is it okay with you guys?"
Unrelated: how do you hide a village that is apparently located close to the Sandpoint?
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Aside from the timing issues, and the "why would they tell anyone?" question, I would ask why they are going to have a trial at all. I mean, this is a goblin village that the government actively hid from the party and the general populace. They decided that the best way to protect the village was to keep it secret, to the extent that when sent out a group of adventurers to kill off the potential goblin threats in the area they didn't tell them.
Having a public trial just doesn't make sense here. This is the end result as I see it:
The general populace thinks the government is incompetent for denying people vital information from the people who needed it. Sandpoint just had an initial attack from goblins, and the Mayor and Shalelu (who certainly are in the know) sent the PCs out to figure out what is going on and stop the goblin threat. Which means the government sent out a group to sort out the situation but denied them vital information. This is gross incompetence of the government. Say the town gets razed by goblins during the trial. Well, that means that the government chose to prosecute the PCs, the town's best hope of survival, for killing allegedly good goblins (post-razing, the only good goblin would be a dead goblin and the government is the only source of information regarding the goblins' good-ness). So the government enabled the destruction of the town by denying them their best source of protection by bringing them up on trumped up charges.
The end result will be extreme animosity to the government from the people in the region, possibly extending throughout Varisia as they see how the government cares more about justice for an allegedly good tribe of goblins more than safety their own citizens. Peasant revolts and a possible revolution may ensue, and Cheliax could think, "Hey, I always wanted more control of Varisia . . . let's send some Hellknights there". A very cool turn for a campaign to be sure, but it sends the campaign completely away from the AP plot.
So, in my mind, any type of public trial would be out of the question. Now, perhaps a secret trial by a kangaroo court led by a certain corrupt Justice in Magnimar would be appropriate.
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Mulet, no one has run into this because the situation you contrived is not in the module.
Your party has not TPK'd, they have not "lost" the game...you can keep it going...and if your table desires it, it is kind of your job as the DM to do so. Yes your PCs made some very poor choices, but given that, the more I read about your situation in the other tread (about the village) the more clear it is that your intent was to trick them (and you went to great lengths to make sure they lacked the information to make informed decisions).
There is no "correct" way to run Burnt Offerings. It is your story, do with it what you want. But if you as a DM contrive a situation that is impossible for the PCs to overcome, then your players have not failed. The DM has.
This is not meant as a put down or to be mean (really!!!). Just some firm constructive criticism.
You have taken Burnt Offerings way off the rails (again...NOT a bad thing) and your question as to how others have handled your very specially designed situation seems odd.
In my game for example there is a nearby abbey (Windsong) to the north, that is particularly accepting of different peoples (even evil faiths). A cleric of Sarenrae there is investigating the concept of inherent evil and our 2 baby goblins were left in his care as wards. He will raise them and see if goblins are inherently evil, or if they can be taught and redeemed. Yea, it may not go well. But that is what we did in my game.
Best of luck with your game. It shows that you have put a lot of work into it, and I see above that you already have some ideas of what to do. Let us know how it plays out.
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DM: Now we have a real problem.
Paladin Player: What are you talking about?
DM: That Vrock you just killed was good aligned. You just committed an evil act.
Paladin Player: WHAT! How was I supposed to know?
DM: You didn't even bother to use Detect Evil to find out it wasn't Evil.
Paladin Player: You've spent the ENTIRE campaign complaining about Detect Evil every time I use it and how it ruins the game and have nerfed it six ways from Sunday.
DM: Nevertheless, you've committed an evil act. You're no longer a paladin.
<stunned silence>
Paladin Player gives "the signal." Rogue player throws a blanket over the DM and with the Cleric Player pins him to the ground. All Players proceed to pummel the DM unconscious or force him to pay for all the pizza or tickle him until he pees his pants.
When brought before a jury of their peers the verdict is: Justifiable GMicide.
why in the nine hells are you putting good goblins in an adventure where hunting and killing goblins is literally the ENTIRE plot of the adventure. Worst butchering of a published adventure is the award i would give you if they had awards for Worst Game Mastering 2014 (not that you're a bad GM but that was not your best moment)
I have to agree here with captain yesterday that throwing a tribe of "good" goblins onto this particular module, not letting the players know about them, and then penalizing the players when they kill them is pretty unfair.
Most people in Sandpoint won't care about these gobllins as they hadn't even heard about them and even if they had they probably wouldn't have trusted them or believed their "good" was genuine. As a result it should be easy for you to handwave the situation to grant the players leniency.
Peet
I have not read the other thread so this might not be helpful advice but instead of a trial, just have the sheriff find them guilty and their sentence is to protect Sandpoint.
I have not read the other thread so this might not be helpful advice but instead of a trial, just have the sheriff find them guilty and their sentence is to protect Sandpoint.
Hold on. Our comments should be helpful? Who knew? ;)
More seriously, Durngrun's suggestion seems like a good solution either as-is or as a basis for one. "Redeem yourselves by saving Sandpoint from the Thistletop goblins and Nualia and Malfeshnekor." Etc.
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Hehe,
This ended up working out quite well. More details in the other thread.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qyd6&page=5?My-Paladin-PC-just-slaughtered -a-village-of#249
Long story short, they art tasked with apprehending Naulia and restoring Ravenroost. They didn't fail burnt offerings, they instead made it a much more compelling story!
I'm not sure your story is compelling, but you certainly made it your own:)
Hold on. Our comments should be helpful? Who knew? ;)
All the people calling him out on his b*++!+!& in a futile attempt to make the game better for his players are the most helpful ones here.
He's made it clear over multiple threads that he's out to get his players, ESPECIALLY his Paladin for not following arbitrary made up rules he doesn't tell to anyone else ("Well, Paladins aren't supposed to play poker. You would know this if you were a mind reader.", for example), and this most recent scenario is merely the most recent (and most egregious) example of his poor judgement and antagonistic nature.
"Helping" him railroad them further for a mistake they had no way of NOT making given the information they were provided (I.e. Deliberately misleading information that left out the detail of this village's existence coupled with an NPC lying to them with information they had no opportunity to verify) if the very definition of Not Helping.
The only reason he likely HAS players at this point is because he expressly forbids them from reading the threads he makes that "explain" his convoluted and borderline insane ideas and so they're left with the impression that they actually HAVE done something wrong rather than being ham-fistedly railroaded into doing the "wrong" thing (which had no prior indicators that it WAS wrong).