So just finished GM'ing my first session of carrion crown. I have a very antagonistic player in my group who I thought may have toned down after a few few character deaths caused by his own actions. During the Return to Restlands section the party decide to go to the grave without permission and go in separately at night. Of course this player goes along despite being being poor at stealth gets caught and chucked out of the graveyard along with the other 2 players at the Restlands by grave diggers in scale mail (basically used the acolytes for gm guide). They decide to go back later in the same night the player was again caught and was warned to leave and refused to do so and drew his weapons. I tried to just use magic to force him away using cause fear. The player charged and nearly killed one of the grave diggers. The tactics used were then changed from removing the intruder to defending themselves. The character was killed but the party now find themselves with next to no trust points, losing the initial 2 points for intruding then have lost another 6 for the violent crime committed. Just wondering how you guys would work the trust points from then on with one dead character reducing the score by 8 in the opening session.
I never expected so much trust to be lost so early and I don't think the module did either. It does say that if trust takes a nosedive for the party later then the townsfolk form a mob and force the party into Harrowstone to the fix the problem they view as being started by the PCs.
This early however...
First, have Kendra step in on the offending PCs behalf. It doesn't look like anyone died so maybe she could vouch for him and say it was an accident. The PCs are supposed to be people that Lorrimor trusted and therefore she trusts as well. Most likely she will think there is more to it and be able to diffuse the situation from violence with the rest of the town. They should still be mistrusted, though, especially the one who attacked.
When enough spooky stuff happens that the town can blame on the PCs -then- have them form a mob and demand the party goes to Harrowstone to 'fix' things. This is assuming that the party isn't able to earn enough trust by then to pull them back into the black.
Edit: Also, impress upon the player that his actions will always have consequences and that future modules are no more forgiving.
First realize that there's been an editorial error and that a number of Trust points did not make it into the final manuscript. You'll need to find a way to add 15 more to even more it possible to reach the highest tier (assuming 0 mistakes).
As for your situation: I wouldn't let one bad actor ruin it for the whole group. I'm tracking Trust seperately per party member in my group, and I recommend you do the same. I even had them start at different levels: the Cleric of Pharasma started off at "Neutral" rather than "Disliked", for example. Remember, the PCs didn't know each other before this, they're not really a "group" yet, so there's not much in the way of "guilt by association."
However, you need to treat the root cause of the problem, and not just soothe the symptom. Your PC doesn't "get" the campaign and the mood of the AP. I don't know enough about your group to help you figure out how to best do this, but there's a number of mechanisms to do this through in-game means (better descriptions of how people react), but you might want to try a heavy-handed out-of-game talk with the group: "guys, this is about earning the town's trust" and ask them if they are even on-board with the premise. Because while the first book is the only one with an explicit trust mechanic, the idea of "needing to play nice or else the NPCs go berzerk" comes up in every.single.book.of.the.AP. They need to learn to deal with this problem, it's a major campaign theme.
Agreed. While they are separate and should be afforded separate trust up to a point... it will not take long before the people realize that they -are- a group and act as such. Right now? Not much. They're all friend's of the late professor. But soon people will notice that they are all staying with Kendra (or at least spending a lot of time with her). These are gossiping, rumor-mongering people after all and that's what gossipers do, the make (sometimes crazy) assumptions, draw parallels, and then spread them like wildfire. Small town syndrome works fast.
The PC was killed in the encounter with the grave diggers and at the end if the session I told the group about the trust mechanic but up until then I had kept it to myself as to not meta the players reactions to things in game. With one player going as far as trying to get a job within the apocathry (he is a halfling paladin of Iomedae with an oath of charity)and I felt after doing this he should be awarded a trust point for helping out in store for no charge. He also picked up a nice bit of rumour about the executioners axe patrolling the west balcony of the prison.
With the group beforehand I told them it was going to be a horror themed game where they would be outsiders in a small close knit community and to not jump into things before they knew the facts. Most of the PCs have adopted this change from their normal hack and slash mentality (see the paladin above who's last character was a kill hungry assassin in my kingmaker game)
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Something that might help you out is a document that Mortagon put together.
It basically expands on each of the NPCs in town and adds a small quest or similar to each of them which can give trust along with other small rewards. I went through it and it was pretty amazingly helpful. He has a link at the bottom of this thread to it.
I wouldn't worry too much about Trust in general in the module. It's heavy handed and not really necessary in my book. I used it, sure, but I used my own judgement for the most part as to when the PCs needed to reach the next level of trust.
In my campaign we had a character kill one of the farmers in the initial defense of Kendra's honor in the very first scene. The farmer tried to flee and provoked an AOO, the ninja character went for the attack, critted, and sliced the poor farmer in half. The character has been very interesting and carefully dragged herself out of this hole.
Some things she's done:
1: She tried to go visit the family of the farmer she killed and offer money in exchange for killing their breadwinner. It was a very funny, lawful thing to do.
2: When that didn't work, she ended up buying them livestock appropriate to replace the loss. That was also very interesting.
3: She's spent a lot of time in the tavern telling stories, rolling Bluffs and Diplomacy to help smooth over the reaction of the town.
4: She ended up single-handedly catching Gibs and gained a lot of favor for that - especially since the farmer she killed was working with Gibs.
5: She played off that this dead farmer might have been possessed like Gibs.
6: She played a large part in saving the townsfolk from the town hall fire and was very open and vocal about her contribution.
7: She has since been deputized by the sheriff and is carrying out Ravengro law about town. It's a long story and for another thread.
Anyway, in all, good role playing can get out of this. If you just have a jerk player who likes to push your buttons as DM and try and take you off the rails because he thinks it's fun to see you squirm or be put in hard places it's time to find another player or remind him that this is your campaign and keep killing him repeatedly until he gets the idea.
I like your last idea best, nothing beats a good killing of a PC
I like your last idea best, nothing beats a good killing of a PC
I'll drink to that! Seriously though, PC deaths make great gaming memories.
Anyway guys thanks for all your help, have adjusted the trust score to reflect character to character (the party are now better off with an average of 18 trust) and have had a chat with the player causing the problem if not adhered to the party are just about to enter harrowstone itself so plenty of deaths can come from there. I'm also about to spring the rising dead event upon the PCs
I could have been worse , trust me. Openning scene for me was the 4 Pcs carring the coffin to chuck it ( yes that literal ) and a wholesale slaughter of the guys that confronted them on the way to the funeral. So thats loosing trust for dropping the coffin and for 7 murders. I wish I could call it anything but murder but when they chase down runners.....
I could have been worse , trust me. Openning scene for me was the 4 Pcs carring the coffin to chuck it ( yes that literal ) and a wholesale slaughter of the guys that confronted them on the way to the funeral. So thats loosing trust for dropping the coffin and for 7 murders. I wish I could call it anything but murder but when they chase down runners.....
But... What... I don't even-
Shortest campaign ever!
I was lucky with the funeral in that theres a half orc in the party who just intimidated most of them away in the first round, the fighter also did this in the second round so most of the group were demoralized before combat really began.
I could have been worse , trust me. Openning scene for me was the 4 Pcs carring the coffin to chuck it ( yes that literal ) and a wholesale slaughter of the guys that confronted them on the way to the funeral. So thats loosing trust for dropping the coffin and for 7 murders. I wish I could call it anything but murder but when they chase down runners.....But... What... I don't even-
Shortest campaign ever!
Ya , they were run out of town the first night before the will reading. I had kendra , in were weaken and overwelmed state after the death and seeing the monsters her father called friend , take her own life a day or so later. We ended up starting over with out to much lost time.