So here's the context; it's gonna be lengthy, so please bear with me.
My party booked passage on a merchant ship. They don't really know the captain of the ship all that well. They paid her with a magic sword they had found on their travels. During the journey the captain sets some ground rules, one of which is not to go into the hold. When talking to the crew it's quite clear that the crew is divided; some of them think the captain is amazing, while some of them think the first mate would do better as captain. It's easy to see why: the captain is aloof, strict and quite rules-bearing, while the first mate is friendly, goes around fostering relationships and is generally the popular guy in high school.
On one of the nights the first mate goes over to the party's cabin and informs them of certain misdemeanors that the captain has been committing, including but not limited to the smuggling of banned substances and also the embezzling of funds. He asks for their help in overthrowing the captain ala mutiny style. The party instantly concludes that that's why the captain doesn't want them to go into the hold, and goes down to investigate for evidence. They do find a tightly sealed crate, but before they can look into it they're caught.
So the party resorts to violence, killing the sailor who caught them outright and jumpstarting the mutiny. They manage to ambush the captain and kill her (because you can't set non-lethality to a Catapult spell which ended up being the final blow), so she's dead now. The cleric of the party is very conflicted about this while the warlock and monk are more of "eh we chose our side".
Now we have to go outside the game. These three players are good people (in general). The guy playing the warlock couldn't even finish It Takes Two because of the stuffed elephant scene (if you know which one, you know which one), and the girl playing the cleric was so pissed at the monk for killing the sailor. So I think they'll all feel really bad about it if they found out that:
The captain has always had the ship as her first consideration. Business wasn't doing so well, so she had no choice but to take on smuggling to keep the ship afloat. And once you get in that business, you don't get out. She was planning to sell the sword and put it to ship's funds.
The captain never reported the extra funds from the smuggling operation because she wanted the crew to have plausible deniability. If they got found out by the authorities she was willing to take the fall.
None of the crew know about what she's done or is doing because she's too proud to share her problems. She shares them only with her second mate, who is fiercely loyal to her.
The first mate is a plant by the co-owner of the ship, one of her family members who owns land in Waterdeep and suspects her of embezzling, but the missing funds are covered in point two.
The first mate himself harbors thoughts about being captain. He saw the opportunity with the party members and took it.
If they had done a bit more investigation around the ship, I'd left clues to that effect, and they could have talked to the second mate a bit more, who would have given up some of this information or at least hinted at it with a fairly easy check. Or if they hadn't killed the sailor guard, I'm sure they could have talked with the captain, who generally isn't the most disposed towards violence. But they didn't, and the die lies where they fall.
Thing is, if I leave things as they are, I strongly believe that the three players would feel horrible about it, and directly impact the enjoyability of the game. I know D&D is a game about consequences, but at the end of the day it's a game they play to enjoy. And I want my players to enjoy themselves. So I plan to rework the captain (we ended the session just as she died) into someone a bit more hate-able in the next session by having her truly embezzle some of the gold, so the first mate wasn't exactly unjustified in the mutiny, but leave in the smuggling-for-the-ship part so that the party can still feel a bit bad about it.
I'm making my choice to compromise so that everyone can have a better game, but I get that in return I'm kinda compromising my own story and characters to do so. I guess I just wanted to know, what would you do as a DM?
The DM’s primary job is not to tell a story - it is to keep the players all together so everyone can tell a collaborative story. A DM who is so married to their own worldbuilding and story points that they would intentionally create table-level problems rather than pivot is, in my opinion, a pretty poor DM.
Right bow, your character exists in a limbo - things can be whatever you want them to be, since the players know nothing at this point. Until something actually is said at table, you, as DM, can always change it. That, however, does not mean there need to be no consequences - it just means you have to figure out difference consequences.
Here is one example: Just because you make the captain evil does not mean the cargo she is transporting is evil. One of the things she is smuggling could be an experimental medication to a plague which has broken out somewhere not quite on the party’s journey. The party learns she was willing to deliver it… but was not making it a high priority, and would have been willing to sacrifice her crew to finish the delivery. Perhaps she was going to send the first mate and a couple other potential mutineers to the shore with the medicine, then “see through her spyglass the signs of plague” and leave them behind.
Now the party has a choice - they could convince the first mate to abandon their main objective and rush the medicines to the town. But, since some crew died in the fight, they are short handed and the parry will have to help with the sailing. If they want to go fast, they might face exhaustion on the way - and thus be more susceptible to the plague when they arrive. And, once they are there, they have to figure out how to deliver the medicine without infecting the crew.
Now you have consequences they get to make an informed decision about - they can delay their own goals, which might have rippling consequences, to save a town… or they might put their own goals first, which then gives the plague longer time to take hold, which could be a problem later in the campaign.
Whatever you end up doing, you do not need to have no consequences, nor should you have no consequences. You just need to come up with different consequences than you initially intended.
Let the players find a way to correct things themselves.
Have the first mate arrested for mutiny and murder of the captain. Find out something about the ship owners and have them arrested for killing the captain or smuggling. Give the party a couple missions for personal atonement. They can make things better for the captains family for one.
This could be a very good learning lesson for the players. Don't kill the only guy who could legally clear their names.
I honestly have no problem allowing people to declare spells non-lethal. Unless it's something like a pumped up fireball, you can catapult something into the captain's leg or less forcefully into her head.
I would sit the group down and ask the catapult-er if they could have finished her non-lethally, would they have? If they say yes, I might retcon her death and help everyone arrive at a story they feel more comfortable with.
I honestly have no problem allowing people to declare spells non-lethal. Unless it's something like a pumped up fireball, you can catapult something into the captain's leg or less forcefully into her head.
I would sit the group down and ask the catapult-er if they could have finished her non-lethally, would they have? If they say yes, I might retcon her death and help everyone arrive at a story they feel more comfortable with.
Thats just a gi'me. A gift from the Dm. Players learn to rely on them eventually. Unless your willing to let the next problem(mistake they make) totally kill the quest do not start to retcon things. At least not that the players know about. If you think about it there is a way for the players to get out of it all on their own.
I honestly have no problem allowing people to declare spells non-lethal. Unless it's something like a pumped up fireball, you can catapult something into the captain's leg or less forcefully into her head.
I would sit the group down and ask the catapult-er if they could have finished her non-lethally, would they have? If they say yes, I might retcon her death and help everyone arrive at a story they feel more comfortable with.
Thats just a gi'me. A gift from the Dm. Players learn to rely on them eventually. Unless your willing to let the next problem(mistake they make) totally kill the quest do not start to retcon things. At least not that the players know about. If you think about it there is a way for the players to get out of it all on their own.
I would not retcon the story. However, this is a very different circumstance, and one where being dismissive of the suggestion is not really warranted.
In this case, the players‘ actions stemmed not from their own choices, but from a ruling of the DM (“No non lethal spell damage.”). A DM is within their rights to say “that was a bad call, I will be willing to undo my bad call if you want.” That kind of retconning, where there is a very definitive reason for it stemming not from the players but from the DM acknowledging a mistake is unlikely to result in the slippery slope of players relying on the DM. After all, they know they can still have to face consequences for their own actions; just that they might have consequences of the DM’s actions change.
Again, it is not the route I would pick - I think retcons feel awkward and they remind folks that this is a game, not an ever-moving-forward collaborative story. But I do not think it is fair to dismiss the suggestion out of hand on the basis of it training bad habits - I think most players are smart enough to realize there is a very big difference between a DM admitting a mistake and fixing their mistake than the DM fixing players’ mistakes for them.
I've been sitting down and wondering how to deal with the situation, and to write the follow-up prep for the next session. And honestly? I think I'm making too big a mountain out of this molehill.
At the end of the day, the ship's mutiny is a side quest. A speed bump, at best. I care about the captain and the backstory, the situation that led her to smuggling, the politics between the first mate and the captain. But that's because I wrote the characters, I wrote the story and I want to show them off.
But the party is on their way to complete The Main Quest. They want to proceed with the story to see where it goes. There's an objective they have to fulfill, and that's why they booked passage on the ship. This random mode of transportation with its random set of problems is a distraction - and they might not be interested in a distraction. While I really like this side-story I've written, it's up to the players to spin it.
I feel like enforcing this drama of 'whether the Captain was doing good or not' is just additional drama that the players might not like. So if they pursue this line of play, I'll be more than happy to show it off; if they don't, then I'll just move them forward to the main questline. So I guess the lesson I've taken away from all this is, don't get so attached to the characters I've made that I force it on the players.
So here's the context; it's gonna be lengthy, so please bear with me.
My party booked passage on a merchant ship. They don't really know the captain of the ship all that well. They paid her with a magic sword they had found on their travels. During the journey the captain sets some ground rules, one of which is not to go into the hold. When talking to the crew it's quite clear that the crew is divided; some of them think the captain is amazing, while some of them think the first mate would do better as captain. It's easy to see why: the captain is aloof, strict and quite rules-bearing, while the first mate is friendly, goes around fostering relationships and is generally the popular guy in high school.
On one of the nights the first mate goes over to the party's cabin and informs them of certain misdemeanors that the captain has been committing, including but not limited to the smuggling of banned substances and also the embezzling of funds. He asks for their help in overthrowing the captain ala mutiny style. The party instantly concludes that that's why the captain doesn't want them to go into the hold, and goes down to investigate for evidence. They do find a tightly sealed crate, but before they can look into it they're caught.
So the party resorts to violence, killing the sailor who caught them outright and jumpstarting the mutiny. They manage to ambush the captain and kill her (because you can't set non-lethality to a Catapult spell which ended up being the final blow), so she's dead now. The cleric of the party is very conflicted about this while the warlock and monk are more of "eh we chose our side".
Now we have to go outside the game. These three players are good people (in general). The guy playing the warlock couldn't even finish It Takes Two because of the stuffed elephant scene (if you know which one, you know which one), and the girl playing the cleric was so pissed at the monk for killing the sailor. So I think they'll all feel really bad about it if they found out that:
If they had done a bit more investigation around the ship, I'd left clues to that effect, and they could have talked to the second mate a bit more, who would have given up some of this information or at least hinted at it with a fairly easy check. Or if they hadn't killed the sailor guard, I'm sure they could have talked with the captain, who generally isn't the most disposed towards violence. But they didn't, and the die lies where they fall.
Thing is, if I leave things as they are, I strongly believe that the three players would feel horrible about it, and directly impact the enjoyability of the game. I know D&D is a game about consequences, but at the end of the day it's a game they play to enjoy. And I want my players to enjoy themselves. So I plan to rework the captain (we ended the session just as she died) into someone a bit more hate-able in the next session by having her truly embezzle some of the gold, so the first mate wasn't exactly unjustified in the mutiny, but leave in the smuggling-for-the-ship part so that the party can still feel a bit bad about it.
I'm making my choice to compromise so that everyone can have a better game, but I get that in return I'm kinda compromising my own story and characters to do so. I guess I just wanted to know, what would you do as a DM?
The DM’s primary job is not to tell a story - it is to keep the players all together so everyone can tell a collaborative story. A DM who is so married to their own worldbuilding and story points that they would intentionally create table-level problems rather than pivot is, in my opinion, a pretty poor DM.
Right bow, your character exists in a limbo - things can be whatever you want them to be, since the players know nothing at this point. Until something actually is said at table, you, as DM, can always change it. That, however, does not mean there need to be no consequences - it just means you have to figure out difference consequences.
Here is one example: Just because you make the captain evil does not mean the cargo she is transporting is evil. One of the things she is smuggling could be an experimental medication to a plague which has broken out somewhere not quite on the party’s journey. The party learns she was willing to deliver it… but was not making it a high priority, and would have been willing to sacrifice her crew to finish the delivery. Perhaps she was going to send the first mate and a couple other potential mutineers to the shore with the medicine, then “see through her spyglass the signs of plague” and leave them behind.
Now the party has a choice - they could convince the first mate to abandon their main objective and rush the medicines to the town. But, since some crew died in the fight, they are short handed and the parry will have to help with the sailing. If they want to go fast, they might face exhaustion on the way - and thus be more susceptible to the plague when they arrive. And, once they are there, they have to figure out how to deliver the medicine without infecting the crew.
Now you have consequences they get to make an informed decision about - they can delay their own goals, which might have rippling consequences, to save a town… or they might put their own goals first, which then gives the plague longer time to take hold, which could be a problem later in the campaign.
Whatever you end up doing, you do not need to have no consequences, nor should you have no consequences. You just need to come up with different consequences than you initially intended.
Let the players find a way to correct things themselves.
Have the first mate arrested for mutiny and murder of the captain.
Find out something about the ship owners and have them arrested for killing the captain or smuggling.
Give the party a couple missions for personal atonement. They can make things better for the captains family for one.
This could be a very good learning lesson for the players. Don't kill the only guy who could legally clear their names.
I honestly have no problem allowing people to declare spells non-lethal. Unless it's something like a pumped up fireball, you can catapult something into the captain's leg or less forcefully into her head.
I would sit the group down and ask the catapult-er if they could have finished her non-lethally, would they have? If they say yes, I might retcon her death and help everyone arrive at a story they feel more comfortable with.
Thats just a gi'me. A gift from the Dm. Players learn to rely on them eventually. Unless your willing to let the next problem(mistake they make) totally kill the quest do not start to retcon things. At least not that the players know about. If you think about it there is a way for the players to get out of it all on their own.
I would not retcon the story. However, this is a very different circumstance, and one where being dismissive of the suggestion is not really warranted.
In this case, the players‘ actions stemmed not from their own choices, but from a ruling of the DM (“No non lethal spell damage.”). A DM is within their rights to say “that was a bad call, I will be willing to undo my bad call if you want.” That kind of retconning, where there is a very definitive reason for it stemming not from the players but from the DM acknowledging a mistake is unlikely to result in the slippery slope of players relying on the DM. After all, they know they can still have to face consequences for their own actions; just that they might have consequences of the DM’s actions change.
Again, it is not the route I would pick - I think retcons feel awkward and they remind folks that this is a game, not an ever-moving-forward collaborative story. But I do not think it is fair to dismiss the suggestion out of hand on the basis of it training bad habits - I think most players are smart enough to realize there is a very big difference between a DM admitting a mistake and fixing their mistake than the DM fixing players’ mistakes for them.
I've been sitting down and wondering how to deal with the situation, and to write the follow-up prep for the next session. And honestly? I think I'm making too big a mountain out of this molehill.
At the end of the day, the ship's mutiny is a side quest. A speed bump, at best. I care about the captain and the backstory, the situation that led her to smuggling, the politics between the first mate and the captain. But that's because I wrote the characters, I wrote the story and I want to show them off.
But the party is on their way to complete The Main Quest. They want to proceed with the story to see where it goes. There's an objective they have to fulfill, and that's why they booked passage on the ship. This random mode of transportation with its random set of problems is a distraction - and they might not be interested in a distraction. While I really like this side-story I've written, it's up to the players to spin it.
I feel like enforcing this drama of 'whether the Captain was doing good or not' is just additional drama that the players might not like. So if they pursue this line of play, I'll be more than happy to show it off; if they don't, then I'll just move them forward to the main questline. So I guess the lesson I've taken away from all this is, don't get so attached to the characters I've made that I force it on the players.