So this isn't the greatest option. But sometimes you need to say "look I flubbed up and need to retcon X Y and Z"
If you're dead set against retconning (which I get. It's an inelegant solution)...hmm. I typically am really good at improvising. But my campaign are all usually "here's an end goal. Here's a dungeon that furthers that goal" style games and my players (there are only 2 of them) tend to be pretty easy to read. My latest campaign is more overarching then my last few and I had to retcon a couple items. But generally I just roll with it and see how the game goes.
You mentioned also the whole "flip sides when they go left and you need them to go right" personally I hate that solution if there's any other way to handle it. But if there isn't or you're put on the spot. There's nothing wrong with it. Good luck in the future. I hope this was some help
Ouch, I feel your pain. I had a similar experience years ago playing a high level wizard with quasit familiar under 3.5e that I hadn't got round to converting from 1e...
Anyway, there's no point crying over spilt milk, it's happened. As others have suggested you can insert some clues into the left belongings. You could also include some research notes that the cleric made about the demon and his sponsor and/or special items that account for the power difference.
Moving forward, since that encounter I prepare crib sheets with pertinent rules, typically monster abilities and environmental modifiers for significant or complex encounters.
If you have a break in the future you could also do a recap and highlight any plot points the players may have forgotten or observed but not picked up in detail at the time.
explore why this demon can do what other's can't.
is some special demon that is on lone from the real big bad? That can tie in nicely and get the group on track to discover that the BBEG exists and is a threat with his access to this special kind of demon.
my general advice for when a GM flub happens is don't let them see you sweat...or cry. As long as the game is still going, never reveal that anything was out of your control and pass off any lags in running the bad guy of having to run in a new medium.
I'd second the retcon. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Especially in instances where one mistake can echo through a game.
"Look guys, I wasn't as prepared for this game as I normally am. I'm just gonna say the demon was really a such-and-such."
It sounds like the biggest mistakes were a lack of prep time and overreaching in terms of what you could reasonably improvise.
And hey, honestly? By what you've mentioned in other threads, you put a ton of work into your games. So I think you're entitled to give a little less when real life creeps in on you from time to time.
also, don't be so hard on yourself. It's a past time and even if it were your job, nobody should expect perfection every time.
Just roll with it and learn from it. Focusing too much on it can only lead to tears
This seems to be a common issue with homebrew games. lack of thoroughness and preparedness. I understand wanting things to be more freeform and open sandbox, but the Adventure Paths will take care of all of these kinds of issues for you.
yeah, but then you have to run an adventure path...
As much as I want to run strange aeons. APs overwhelm me and I find it much easier to make my own stories
Never mind the poor on-the-fly performance; it's done. You know better now.
As for the rule-breaking (teleport, henchman undamaged), see if you can come up with an explanation for it. Like the henchman had Stoneskin from an item going so didn't really take much damage. They teleported to a pre-prepared location using a McGuffin. I've noticed that you come up with all manner of gonzo ideas, so they'll be ready for that.
Players often come up with their own explanations for what's going on. If any such ideas are good, adopt them.
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Sounds like you're a fantastic GM. Life sucks. Sometimes it hinders the game. No worries there. Glad we could be some help though
As much as I want to run strange aeons. APs overwhelm me and I find it much easier to make my own stories
this one I don't get. AP's are so easy. just read the next 30 pages and you're good for a whole evening of gaming. No need to calculate CR, Treasure, or anything.
to the OP, sounds like you had an off night, you're human and it happens. Fix what issue that you have to, apologize to your players and move on. If they are mature enough, it will be a non-issue.
As much as I want to run strange aeons. APs overwhelm me and I find it much easier to make my own storiesthis one I don't get. AP's are so easy. just read the next 30 pages and you're good for a whole evening of gaming. No need to calculate CR, Treasure, or anything.
See the thing is like...I have a very good handle in CR and treasure and all that so none of that bothers me. But when I'm doing everything I know it like the back of my hand and I can't really be caught entirely off guard and I can adlib without destroying too much. In an AP I have to be a guide through foreign territory and figure out how everything works and learn characters so I can give dialogue and so on and so forth
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The freedom of playing an open ended game also means that sometimes you will fall off of one of those open ends. A pre-written adventure doesn't "take care of these kinds of issues," it removes them by removing player choice. If you allow true player choice in an AP, then you have to let them go off the rails. Not only will you will run into the exact same issues then, but it is often harder to improvise because you don't have the understanding of the story that you do when you wrote it yourself.
Many times my execution of an idea doesn't come out the same as I envisioned it. I try to embrace that and keep moving ahead. So you executed the mechanics poorly, who cares, totally irrelevant to the story. So you didn't get across the information you wanted to? Again, oh well, not every encounter adds to the story. Sometimes a fight is just a fight. I guess you'll just have to design a new encounter that does give the players the info you wanted.
We (GMs) often try to be overly consistent. We write up some story and say this is what happened, then we accidentally get two characters confused and tell the players the wrong npc's name. You know what? That sort of stuff happens all the time in real life. Historical accounts are full of inconsistencies. Things are remembered incorrectly and people lie. When I realize I did something like that, I try to lampshade it. Have another npc tell the PCs, well that's not how I heard it went down, and give a different version of the story.
Frankly, if I'm honest I just had a bad week. Personal life got in the way of prepping and I barely did anything for the game session.
I think it's ok to cancel a session if it's a rare thing and the players get at least some time to make different plans. I did once and while a player expressed he was sad, nobody ever complained about it. It might even make the effort of preparing a session more visible to the players. After all, from their perspective the session begins once they sit down to play.
As much as I want to run strange aeons. APs overwhelm me and I find it much easier to make my own storiesthis one I don't get. AP's are so easy. just read the next 30 pages and you're good for a whole evening of gaming. No need to calculate CR, Treasure, or anything.
APs are easy to play poorly, but take reasonable amount of effort to do well.
There is the plot to understand, which can require reading all 6 books. As well as the BBEG, there are the other factions to understand. Then there's the local geography and culture. As the story progresses and the players invariably drift from the published plot or go on unscripted side excursions the GM will need to keep notes of the various off-screen plot progressions and adlib the onscreen action whilst setting up hooks to return the story to script.
If that work isn't done then the game world isn't immersive and all the NPCs feel frozen in place until they interact with the PCs.
Although it's more work initially, the level of knowledge required to achieve immersion are easier to reach with your own material.
As much as I want to run strange aeons. APs overwhelm me and I find it much easier to make my own storiesthis one I don't get. AP's are so easy. just read the next 30 pages and you're good for a whole evening of gaming. No need to calculate CR, Treasure, or anything.An AP can feel like railroading.
Or your players want to do something totally off the wall and you're left totally unprepared because you _thought_ you were prepared by knowing the AP.
Sure it takes player buy-in for the prepared adventure, but so does a homebrew game to an extent. I know there's been many many times my GM has prepared a great game and we just decided to turn left instead of right and all his hard work went right out the window.
If you want the party to engage in what you have prepared, there's got to be at least a little rail roading...
But for the same amount of my preparation time (which I don't have a lot considering I have a full time job and other hobbies) I can provide a more complete and compiled/polished weekly game by using AP's instead of making it all up myself.
As much as I want to run strange aeons. APs overwhelm me and I find it much easier to make my own storiesthis one I don't get. AP's are so easy. just read the next 30 pages and you're good for a whole evening of gaming. No need to calculate CR, Treasure, or anything.An AP can feel like railroading.
Or your players want to do something totally off the wall and you're left totally unprepared because you _thought_ you were prepared by knowing the AP.Sure it takes player buy-in for the prepared adventure, but so does a homebrew game to an extent. I know there's been many many times my GM has prepared a great game and we just decided to turn left instead of right and all his hard work went right out the window.
If you want the party to engage in what you have prepared, there's got to be at least a little rail roading...
But for the same amount of my preparation time (which I don't have a lot considering I have a full time job and other hobbies) I can provide a more complete and compiled/polished weekly game by using AP's instead of making it all up myself.
I find it really hard to focus on digesting all the info needed to run a game from an AP, it gets overwhelming, maybe I'm just brilliant or something, but my homebrews are all prepared in about an hour or two per session and then I'm good to run it. meanwhile I've been trying to prepare a game of strange aeons for almost 2 months and I barely have the first area done. this is very much a me problem, but I get really overwhelmed and have issues with figuring out what is actually supposed to happen
Mark, like you, I think I'm pretty good at doing things on the fly during games, and I guess the fact my guys have been with me for three decades I think I do alright. But I did learn very early on in 3.x that it's a lot more difficult to do that than with 1e or 2e rules. For this particular campaign, we're using a lot of houserules, and I tend to do my best to pre-select creatures and NPCs before the games but I don't download or copy/paste them into documents to add in the houserules, though I really should. I do nearly all of the conversions in my head because I just open up tab after tab for the encounters that I actually have planned. It's not like I don't have time to actually do those things before a game, but after so many years I've gotten lazy where those sorts of things are concerned.
I find it really hard to focus on digesting all the info needed to run a game from an AP, it gets overwhelming, maybe I'm just brilliant or something, but my homebrews are all prepared in about an hour or two per session and then I'm good to run it. meanwhile I've been trying to prepare a game of strange aeons for almost 2 months and I barely have the first area done.
Well, you picked an AP where the entire first book is a common sandbox. While it's an amazing sandbox, it puts a big initial burden on the GM. But keep in mind this preparation covers you for 3 PC levels, and you will be mostly fine afterwards.
I faced this in another AP, where the heroes were supposed to scour a fortress for a villain. The fortress was a sandbox too, so I struggled to prepare it. It helped to print out the whole thing and add my very own notes to the rooms. When it comes to NPCs, background story etc., it might help to draw mind maps. Transform the content into a format you can work with. And if something is especially unwieldy, well, just cut it. If it's connected to many things, you might have to be careful to replace it properly, but that's a rare thing IMO.
I find it really hard to focus on digesting all the info needed to run a game from an AP, it gets overwhelming, maybe I'm just brilliant or something, but my homebrews are all prepared in about an hour or two per session and then I'm good to run it. meanwhile I've been trying to prepare a game of strange aeons for almost 2 months and I barely have the first area done. this is very much a me problem, but I get really overwhelmed and have issues with figuring out what is actually supposed to happenAs much as I want to run strange aeons. APs overwhelm me and I find it much easier to make my own storiesthis one I don't get. AP's are so easy. just read the next 30 pages and you're good for a whole evening of gaming. No need to calculate CR, Treasure, or anything.An AP can feel like railroading.
Or your players want to do something totally off the wall and you're left totally unprepared because you _thought_ you were prepared by knowing the AP.Sure it takes player buy-in for the prepared adventure, but so does a homebrew game to an extent. I know there's been many many times my GM has prepared a great game and we just decided to turn left instead of right and all his hard work went right out the window.
If you want the party to engage in what you have prepared, there's got to be at least a little rail roading...
But for the same amount of my preparation time (which I don't have a lot considering I have a full time job and other hobbies) I can provide a more complete and compiled/polished weekly game by using AP's instead of making it all up myself.
To each their own. I am running Carrion Crown right now. and we're on the second book. I only worry about one book at a time. Just before we start a book, I read it cover to cover. Then each Friday (the day before our session) I re-read the 5-6 pages that I think the game will cover that week, make sure I understand any spells or supernatural abilities the bad guys have and any motivations etc that will be dealt with. Then I make sure I print any maps that I will need, and then I find what minis I need for the bad guys. if I am feeling spry, I will get the maps and minis for the whole book prepared at once. Total weekly prep time is about 2 hours and my players all seem to have a great time. As the game progresses, I write notes down that will affect the game. I'll admit that our games are a little light on roleplay, but every group is different. YEs, there is a little railroading to keep them on the prepared story, but even with a homebrew game you would need that to keep them on your prepared stuff.
The alternative is to do everything purely off the top of your head and quite frankly, I've only met one GM who could handle that well enough to make it fun. All the others just grab a random monster and stick in front of us.
If I were to homebrew, I'd spend the same amount of time each week doing prep for the encounters (spells, abilities, minis, mas etc), but then I would also need to spend extra time creating the story, checking AP, WBL, balance, etc. and quite frankly, I don't have the time to recreate the wheel, since the AP's already to that for you.
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Cool advice guys. I appreciate it. I'll work on "translating" strange aeons into formats I can work with. As far as why I'd like to run an AP over my own stuff. It just interests me. The AP strange aeons is hugely lovecraft inspired and he's one of mine and my player's favorite worlds to use. And while I could make my own lovecraft inspired world (and in fact I have) strange aeons just seems neat
I've never run an AP. I've played in only one. Early on in said AP, there is an NPC you fight but, should she survive, she returns to an encounter area where you can question her.
Turns out, she doesn't like the protagonists of the AP, however the source material makes a note that she's not committed to joining the PCs. I didn't know that, at the time.
So we meet this NPC a second time and she's willing to parley. My PC has Cha as his second-highest stat and has maxed out Diplomacy. He also has the spell Enhanced Diplomacy running.
What followed was me going through verbal gymnastics with the GM, illustrating all the ways that this NPC could help us, the PCs, defeat the protagonists. I made a ridiculously high Diplomacy check, enough of a check to improve ANY attitude by at least 1 step. Despite my obvious logic and passion in character and the roll I made, this NPC wouldn't budge.
I don't know if this was a GM thing or an AP thing, but from comments in this thread and others coupled with this experience, it seems like APs don't offer a lot of deviation from the published info, without a significant amount of work from the GM to account for that deviation.
Well, if you're going to have to create and manage a bunch of stuff in case your players want to deviate from the AP, why not just run your OWN stuff in the first place?
AP's do offer some variance, but not a lot (King maker actually offers too much), but that's a different story). Like I have said, there needs to be buy in from the players to somewhat go along with the story, but most APs still have plenty of leeway for lots of stuff, and If you need to improvise some items, the framework and background is already there so you don't need to create it, but you would have the same problem with homebrew and players deviating from your prepared stories.
Here's the bottom line, I and my players are all in our late 40's and have full time jobs and other hobbies, etc. None of us have the time to build a fully fleshed out adventure or a custom world for that adventure to exist in. Using what prep time we do have, we can put forth a better adventure using the AP's, one that has a great world for it to exist in, than we can trying to do it homebrew, or on the fly. If that means the players get railroaded a little bit to somewhat keep them on the adventure path, then so be it, it's a sacrifice we make to have a better story than we would have otherwise.
My experience with other GMs and their homebrew games has been that most often their stories are usually ill prepared and the adventure suffers from being ad-hoc/on the fly. And more often than not, their ability to build balanced encounters is severely lacking.
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If that means the players get railroaded a little bit to somewhat keep them on the adventure path, then so be it, it's a sacrifice we make to have a better story than we would have otherwise.
Railroads have further benefits: For players they reduce choice paralysis, provide clear goals and skip uninteresting parts. For GMs they improve the (actual and subjective) control and lessen the preparation effort.
IMO for many campaigns and tables a mix of railroads and sandboxes is superior to a strict focus on either.
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Reading these posts, I feel like there are people here who have only ever played published content and don't actually understand just how different a good home brew game can be.
An AP has an ending; the players can either make it to that ending, or fail and the game is over. While a home brew game could be written in the same format, it doesn't have to be. It's certainly not how I run the game.
When I write a home brew campaign, I write up plots, factions, settings, and goals, not endings. Nothing is pre-ordained. Players won't try to stop the evil cult from resurrecting and ancient demon lord because I (the GM) told them to. They'll do it because they uncovered that plot and decided to pursue it. When players actions are driven by their own agency, they become much more involved. They feel like they have a stake in the outcome, it's their story, and their actions will determine the outcome. When they fail, they live with the consequences and the story goes on. The ending is the culmination of their choices, not written by someone else before we even started. Imo, a good home brew rpg campaign is the pinnacle of entertainment. Pre-written games can be fun, but it's not the same thing. There's really nothing else like it.
And yes, a good home brew game takes a lot more effort to pull off.
Gods, I know this pain.
I'm on the no retcon train, or minor retcons.
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I don't know. Avoid it when you can, but don't shy away from it when you have to.
Back in my early days, one of my players managed a very lucky parting shot with a rather powerful NPC, killing a recurring villain about six levels before I had really thought it possible. After two sessions with lvl8 characters carrying around rings of protection +4 and gloves of dexterity +6, a high-level spellbook and an assortment of staves, wands and rods, I sat down with my players, pointed out my mistakes and how they'd mucked up the game, and asked them if they'd help me out.
The NPC remained dead, but the magical goodies they took from her corpse were substantially more manageable.
In another game, one of my party members cast a fireball on top of all of us, despite the fact that we were greviously wounded to begin with. Our horses died, a ton of our equipment was destroyed, and if two of the three party members did not have evasion, they'd have been dead. Not unconscious. Dead.
My character, paranoid, grim and determined to survive in this crazy world, threatened the sorceress, "if you ever do that again, I will kill you."
She argued that her actions were justified.
My character's sister, as paranoid and jaded as he was, seconded his threat.
And the priest of the god of vengeance. Well. You can guess where that went.
So then it was three-on-one, and the one player felt singled out and bullied (they were so new to the game, they had a hard time separating character's words from their players, and weren't the best at tactical decisions--see: casting fireball on all of us--but werealso too stubborn to admit when they'd made a mistake). I asked the GM if we could just rewind the clock and say none of that happened. And everyone felt much, much better for it.
Better to undo a mistake and deal with the loss of immersion now than to hang onto it and deal with the damage it does to the game long-term.
I’d tke a different approach to this one. Don’t retcon it, leave it as is, and keep this as a seed for a brand new plotline.
Who was the evil cleric? Who was his surprisingly competent demonic associate? They’re bad guys unrelated to the current plot who just happened to be in the same place as the party on this particular day. Your party now have a new thing to investigate once they’ve finished their current story.
OP, as long as your players enjoyed the session, you did your job. Sometimes we just have to wing EVERYTHING and it might not work out like we had in mind. As long as you never apologize or peek out from behind the curtain, you are fine. You are the Dungeon Master (TM) and you did what needed to be done.
You can adjust any demon's powers any time you like. Now that you have a little time to think about it, you have plenty of options available to you. You can just leave it as a hand-waved ability and not worry about it. It's not your job to explain anything to your players, you just present the world and the story.
Or you could make an actual template that would explain how your demon had slightly stronger abilities. Personally, I'd just leave it at GM Fiat. It's perfectly fine.
In the future, just make sure you have access to your NPC stat-blocks as needed. Keep the NPC Codex or something similar nearby and just flip to whatever seems closest to the encounter you had in mind. When it comes time to drop the loot, don't worry about everything on the statblock, just adjust it as you need to.
As for dealing with players going left when you need them to go right, never underestimate the power of a well-placed NPC!
There are always ways to introduce a local of some sort to point the PCs in the right direction. It can be a friendly NPC or even a hostile one. As long as you use it as a mouth-piece to offer the information you want the players to have, it does its job. It could be the local farmer, a former ally, or a captured goblin. It doesn't matter.
Don't beat yourself up for thinking this didn't have the subtlety or nuance that you were looking for. Remind yourself that it IS just a game and sometimes treating it like a mechanical function of a game is the absolute best way to go. It's not a published story, so you don't have to beat yourself up thinking "Man, that farmer really was Mr. Exposition."
Get the info across and move on. It's all good. They'll forget about it by the time they make their next initiative roll.
If you do turn it all into a story one day, then you can worry about cleaning it up and adding a bit more nuance to the way you tell the tale.