Sometimes being a DM feels cruel. When the players suffer a loss, there is a period of public morning. The group comes together and says "You know, that sucks, but it was a good character, and your next one will be great." I know that not every character will survive first contact with the PC's, but I do grow attached to some ideas, and in this last session things went sideways and my idea died. I can't tell them, because that's not how the game works, but I can tell you. So here's to an idea gone too soon.
I enjoy wrestling. I think it's fun, fairly low stakes and a great study of heroes and villains. So, I tried to wedge a wrestling side story into the Storm King's Thunder campaign I'm currently running. "The group meets a group of wrestlers, they then travel with the wrestlers during their travels as part of the troupe. There's Belts of Fire Giant Strength that is the most sought after item in the company. Themes of the importance of strength." I thought it was a decent pairing. So I made plans. I created 9 NPC's based around some of my favorite wrestlers, developed move sets to compliment their personalities, created a storyline connection for one of the characters. I laid the groundwork to make this group interesting and give the NPC's a reason to be interested. I just had to introduce them...
So this is probably my fault. I thought it would be cool to show my new toys as "Not just another NPC." I created a scenario where the group would be antagonistic to the wrestling troupe at first, but it would all resolve in a big misunderstanding. You see, some kids after being inspired by the show in the last town, have run away to join the group. The parents wake to find their kids missing, knowing that the debauchery the night before is the most interesting thing to happen all year, clearly those traveling folk have taken the children. Meanwhile the wrestlers find themselves being dogged by a couple of children, are are not really equipped to deal with them. All a big misunderstanding. The PC's come to town, hear about these kidnappers, and set off to find them (probably the biggest mistake was having a posse go with them, one that egged the group on). Then, the knives are pulled and the PC's see red.
I tried to show how the wrestlers were not a threat... Before combat, I showed the kids sharing a meal with the wrestlers, while the group snuck around releasing an ogre that was traveling with the group. When combat arose, the wrestlers used grappling maneuvers and spells to restrain, not damage the PC's and their posse. One martial artist was the only one to use damaging maneuvers. Meanwhile, the posse showed a desire to stoke fires, but a cowardice when it came (their contribution was to overwhelm a Firbolg as a group). I had a wrestler yell "Get those kids out of there, I think were under attack" and "Why are you attacking us?" The response was "We want those kids" said with an accompanying intimidation check. The wrestler I put over as the strongest spent the whole fight keeping the ogre in check, though most of her group was actively retreating and trying to heal up. She called to the group, "Hey, I think we need to put this guy down. Could you help me?" The players took that opportunity to actively kill the retreating wrestlers. Yeah... At the end of the fight, the PC's took a whole 14 points of damage (8 of which came from the rampaging ogre) in about 8 rounds of combat. All but three of the wrestlers were actively killed (I asked if they wanted lethal damage, the players said yes.) The idea is dead, my wrestlers are dead.
For the record, this is not the first time I played the "It's all a misunderstanding card." It's not the first time the players have ruined my plans either. But it is the first time I had to dumpster an idea I've been working on for a couple months.
Wrestling is all a game of make believe. It's an idea that through your actions and deeds, your philosophy of life can be proven true. It's an idea that the support of the crowd gives life to your resolve, and that your determination matters. D&D should have been a good match. Not all good match ups make good matches.
If your party is going to ignore other solutions to conflicts and just be murderhobos, which is the picture you're painting, then you'll probably need to shelve more "subtle" ideas like this as wasted on them
Or, if you want to try and break them of that habit, lean very heavily in the other direction. Have the kids be traumatized by their "rescue". Have the villagers, feeling guilty when they realize the mistake, transfer that guilt to the party and blame them. Have the wrestlers' far more powerful patrons/fans/friends come around looking for them and swearing revenge. Make things very difficult for the party for a while to try and teach them about consequences
This is probably worth an impromptu session 0 to discuss as a group which direction the campaign is going to go in
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
My players understand that Combat is the last resort for conflict resolution, I mean, it is sometimes the only option available, in which case the last resort becomes the only one :). But I laid down in session 0 that I am not running a murder hobo game. To that end Goblins, Orcs, Bug Bears etc all have established complex societies and are not auto evil (something the characters would know and the players where therefore made aware of in session 0).
This is about talking to and educating players, and just as it is ok for a player to tell the DM I really don't like this aspect of your game, or want more of this please. You as a DM can sit your players down and say please, can we try and move away from murder hoboing everything, I am setting up complex encounters with potential future allies and you go in swords waving and kill them.
Alternatively have the party come across a job soon after, man has gone to join the circus as a wrestler and not been heard of in days/weeks, suddenly the party are confronted with the fact that they killed an innocent who had a wife, and a 6 month old baby and was just trying to make a living to improve there life.
Passive Insight is a great tool for the "it's all a misunderstanding" situations. Even if the players are not picking up on any cues, the characters probably should be unless they all dumped wisdom. While it's usually more fun to have the players figure things out, this can be a way to present your players with a path to choose.
You can either be rigorous about it and set a high-ish DC that drops a bit every time you give them a clue, or you just wait until the point where everything is about to fall apart and interject with "with your passive insight, you realize that the wrestlers are not actually a threat." Then you go on to describe each clue that led the character to that conclusion.
Not only do you get to have your idea, you also prime the players to look for this kind of thing in the future.
I created a scenario where the group would be antagonistic to the wrestling troupe at first
The parents wake to find their kids missing... clearly those traveling folk have taken the children.
the biggest mistake was having a posse go with them, one that egged the group on
I had a wrestler yell "Get those kids out of there, I think were under attack" and "Why are you attacking us?"
So a group of performers go through a town, two kids disappear, the parents charge the PCs with getting them back, they go to do exactly that, egged on by NPCs that you've put with them, and then there's an expectation that the PCs will treat peacefully with the group of child abductors? Of course they're going to take them out.
You could still probably have pulled it around by having the kids shouting "Stop! They're our friends!" or some such, but you created a scenario in which everything led the PCs to believe they were dealing with scum who'd abducted children.
However. The key mistake (if there is such a thing in D&D - and given your regret about how it went, it certainly seems that you regretted it) that you made here was that you had a kind of script idea for how things should go, and expected the PCs to follow it. Your expectation was so high that you put loads of work into creating the NPCs, and the scenario to follow, but didn't count on the PCs actually showing any agency, having any preferences or making their own choices. When writing an adventure there's always a chance the PCs will do something nuts... there is however an unspoken agreement that the players will try to play the adventure that the DM is offering, and not just run around like lunatics. But in this scenario, they did exactly what you'd been guiding them towards doing! Your NPCs asked them to do it, then went with them and encouraged them!
I'm assuming that your players are all wrestling entertainment fans in some way? Otherwise they may just have wanted to purge WWE characters from the game they were in. That's what I'd have done if I'd found myself there, if I'm honest.
Passive Insight is a great tool for the "it's all a misunderstanding" situations. Even if the players are not picking up on any cues, the characters probably should be unless they all dumped wisdom. While it's usually more fun to have the players figure things out, this can be a way to present your players with a path to choose.
You can either be rigorous about it and set a high-ish DC that drops a bit every time you give them a clue, or you just wait until the point where everything is about to fall apart and interject with "with your passive insight, you realize that the wrestlers are not actually a threat." Then you go on to describe each clue that led the character to that conclusion.
Not only do you get to have your idea, you also prime the players to look for this kind of thing in the future.
Every DM should run their game however they want, but this is something I would never do. Using Passive Insight to effectively tell players what you think they should know is a bit like just handing them instructions. Often when you think PCs are 'missing' something, they are choosing to ignore it because they aren't interested in it, their character would not care about it, or they just downright disagree. Being told "Your realise that these guys are actually friendly" is like being told "Ignore what your character has witnessed and would think here, I'm injecting the truth into your brain because it suits the story I want to tell." I really wouldn't go down that route - what do you do when the player says "No, I don't notice or realise that. I'm going to keep attacking."
If your party is going to ignore other solutions to conflicts and just be murderhobos, which is the picture you're painting, then you'll probably need to shelve more "subtle" ideas like this as wasted on them
Or, if you want to try and break them of that habit, lean very heavily in the other direction. Have the kids be traumatized by their "rescue". Have the villagers, feeling guilty when they realize the mistake, transfer that guilt to the party and blame them. Have the wrestlers' far more powerful patrons/fans/friends come around looking for them and swearing revenge. Make things very difficult for the party for a while to try and teach them about consequences
This is probably worth an impromptu session 0 to discuss as a group which direction the campaign is going to go in
^------- +1 to this.
Often I find that subtle hints and plotlines are missed or possibly flat out ignored. I choose missed, as the players can be lazer focused on the task at hand, to the exclusion of other complications in their in-game life. Also, players are often, but not always, conditioned to react strongly to someone who is described in a negative manner. They take after the BBE, even if they aren't big, bad or evil. Just misunderstood. Players might enjoy playing a fantasy role-playing game because of the moral freedom to take drastic measures toward inciting actions that they have in real life. (Subtle way of saying that they feel good about killing someone suspected of kidnapping children.)
During the opening chapter of HotDQ a party member is given the opportunity to engage in a one-on-one fight with a foe that should be well outside their ability to withstand. The draw is, win-or-lose the captive woman is set free. Just prior to the fight, the woman's children are freed as a sign of good faith and honor. My party's barbarian took the challenge, engaged in the fight, and was loosing. The warlock started to head out onto the field, and the party rogue stopped her. (One of the conditions of the captive's death was party intervention or movement onto the field, or attempting to circumnavigate the field.) The fighter, not being present when the rogue intervened, leaps from the 20' castle wall and begins to circle around behind the combatants. Which causes the captors to execute the prisoner and the fight to end. The party has yet to let the fighter off the hook for that, neither has the woman's brother or the town leadership. The first concern for the rogue and the warlock was if the children saw what happened, not wheather or not the barbarian was dead.
Guilt, the reluctance to cause trauma to innocents and the protection of innocents are powerful tools. Used appropriately, they achieve a drastic effect. If you lose the gamble and the party acts with little or no conscience, there may be a triggering event. Use with caution.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
The beauty of the line "Something doesn't seem right to you about this." or "You feel like there is something you aren't seeing here." It's a pretty clear hint to the players that they're messing something up and, in my experience, usually to the least slows them down.
Yeah, sometimes players just kill off a character or plotline and it sucks, it really does. Spending a lot of time planning a story or characters you think they'll enjoy, just to have them do things out of malice/excessive force and ruin a storyline is always a bit sad.
I try to discourage this kind of behavior by realistic consequences (not punishments, mind you) for this sort of behavior- even if the PCs (perhaps willfully) ignored the fact that there seemed to be more going on, they might get a reputation for brutality, get in legal troubles for murder (after all, unless they're deputized for a task, killing other humanoids is usually a crime), or just have to hear people mention that someone murdered a wrestling troupe and have the kids they were "rescuing" paint them as evil. If the party actually cares, that should compel them to moderate their behavior a bit.
I know there are times when I, as a player, have jumped the gun, either because I thought it was what my character would do, or because I as a player misread a situation. However, going several rounds of combat without taking damage would make me wonder...
All the advice given above put aside, your idea isn't dead. Are they the only wrestlers in the whole of the realm? Doesn't sound like the players even interacted with them, just reskin them, and have them show up again. Change some details, learn from the previous issues, and keep going.
Maybe the dead group and this new group are suppose to meet up and have a royal rumble in the next town, or city the players go to?
All the advice given above put aside, your idea isn't dead. Are they the only wrestlers in the whole of the realm? Doesn't sound like the players even interacted with them, just reskin them, and have them show up again. Change some details, learn from the previous issues, and keep going.
Maybe the dead group and this new group are suppose to meet up and have a royal rumble in the next town, or city the players go to?
I feel like this sort of advice can't be said often enough. The players don't know what's going on behind the scenes. I had a player decide to mess with the plot of one of my games for meta-reasoning. He killed a guy who was obviously intended to be a reoccuring villain-- before I had a chance to introduce him. It was pure dickery on the player's plot. However, because they-- didn't know anything about the ambassador before he tried to off him, that meant the character and all his plot significance could just be shifted to a new character.
Plot is a resiliant thing to an experienced GM. Hell, you could even have those new wrestlers have a big charity event for the fallen wrestlers. Or guilt trip the players into raising the fallen. A DM can do anything in a game, if they have some tact in covering their tracks.
So… The idea might not be dead, but the narrative weight I hoped these characters would provide is now misplaced. Spoilers for Storm King’s Thunder below:
*****SPOILERS*****
In Storm King’s Thunder, the giants are attacking in mass. Each clan is doing their own thing, causing chaos in their own way. The players are to learn that this is the Giant’s way of postruing, trying to gain influence to take the throne, due to the mysterious absence of the King of Giants (the Storm King). There is also a mysterious force, the Kraken Society, that killed the Storm Queen and a dark figure pulling strings in the background.
My desire to show misunderstandings stems is an attempt at conditioning the group for the fact that they may need to fight WITH the giants they are currently set to kill.
Information I do not know how to disciminate now: one of the wrestlers joined the group as a cover to run from Cloud Giants hunting them (they killed the Storm Queen), the introduction of the concept of a dark figure (that hired our new wrestler to said Storm Queen), there is a giant monument at the Spire of the Mountains called the Eye of the All-Father (where my wrestlers were headed to “perform their greatest show Under the Vision of the Strongest.”
Additionally, one of my players was set to find a locket from their mother (who disappeared after a bandit attack). One of the wrestlers had this locket, though they are too young to be the bandits that took the PC’s mother.
**** END SPOILERS****
Thank you for all the advice. With regards to the situation, it's fine. I can pick up the pieces, and move them where they need to be. But it’s hard to put alot of energy into a project and see it cut short before seeing any of your anticipated rewards. I don’t care that the players changed the script. I care that I was excited for how I could use this tool, and now I feel it’s taken away from me.
There will not be another wrestling troupe in this game. There may be one in the next one, but this group was important to this game, and will be played as such, looming in the rear view mirror long past this decision point.
From the sounds of it, if you wanted the party to consider a peaceful encounter with the wrestlers, then you needed to be a lot more explicit with setting the scene to make it clear that the children were not kidnapped.
In addition, consider the situation from the character perspective. The children have run off with a group of traveling performers. The parents and the NPCs are saying that they have been kidnapped. From the sounds of your description, the children weren't walking through the night on their own so why did the troupe NOT turn around and deliver the children back to their homes unless they were planning on keeping them? Just because the children are willing to run off doesn't make it any less kidnapping if the wrestlers aren't going to return the children.
"Meanwhile the wrestlers find themselves being dogged by a couple of children, are are not really equipped to deal with them."
Umm ... the simple answer here, if they are not "kidnapping" the children is to turn around and take them home. Do the wrestlers plan to let the children die of exposure/hunger/thirst as they follow along far from their village?
Finally, perhaps the wrestlers could have decided not to fight at all. It isn't obvious when in combat that the opponents are using non-violent techniques. On top of that, if the wrestlers are going to fight at all - why fight non-violently? It only reinforces the idea that the wrestlers are fighting back. If they aren't going to hurt anyone then they might as well surrender. Most players don't kill folks who have surrendered and THAT opens up the possibility for a dialogue and possible peaceful resolution allowing the wrestlers to explain why they haven't returned the children to the village.
Anyway, it's unfortunate given the effort you put into it but it doesn't seem surprising to me how the situation turned out given the circumstances.
Edit: PS ... that said, the idea isn't dead. You have already established at least one group of traveling wrestlers in your world. There can certainly be more and the party might have more positive interactions with other groups. The players have no idea what other content you have created. However, whatever happens, do not expect the plot to play out the one way you envisage it. Give the players the pieces and let them interact with the plot which will create a new and updated plot, rather than trying to make things turn out the way you want them to ...
Yeah my advice going forward would be never to plan an element of the game with only one outcome in mind. In fact, I try never to plan for any outcome. I just try to set up the world, put npc's/monsters in place, and then I see what happens.
It helps protect the DM from getting so invested in an idea and that idea going a certain way that they get discouraged when it doesn't go the way they planned.
It's really hard to predict player behavior, so instead, try and have the world *react* to player behavior. It takes the pressure off you to have a contingency for everything and makes the world feel more alive and player-centric, which players absolutely love.
Players are more likely to care about npc's and story elements when they have a hand in shaping them. If you show them a group of fun quirky wrestlers they might kill them without question if they think they're bad guys, but every part invariably finds their own 'Boblin the goblin', a useless npc the party decides to care about and dote on. This 'boblinization' of npc's is almost completely random unless you really know what your players tend to go for, so to protect yourself from burnout, when planning to introduce fun quirky npc's that you already care about, you need to maybe come up with a few reasons the players should care about them first-- *without* trying to force it. And if the players don't go for it, then it wasn't meant to be.
Passive Insight is a great tool for the "it's all a misunderstanding" situations. Even if the players are not picking up on any cues, the characters probably should be unless they all dumped wisdom. While it's usually more fun to have the players figure things out, this can be a way to present your players with a path to choose.
You can either be rigorous about it and set a high-ish DC that drops a bit every time you give them a clue, or you just wait until the point where everything is about to fall apart and interject with "with your passive insight, you realize that the wrestlers are not actually a threat." Then you go on to describe each clue that led the character to that conclusion.
Not only do you get to have your idea, you also prime the players to look for this kind of thing in the future.
Every DM should run their game however they want, but this is something I would never do. Using Passive Insight to effectively tell players what you think they should know is a bit like just handing them instructions. Often when you think PCs are 'missing' something, they are choosing to ignore it because they aren't interested in it, their character would not care about it, or they just downright disagree. Being told "Your realise that these guys are actually friendly" is like being told "Ignore what your character has witnessed and would think here, I'm injecting the truth into your brain because it suits the story I want to tell." I really wouldn't go down that route - what do you do when the player says "No, I don't notice or realise that. I'm going to keep attacking."
If I wasn't clear enough, Passive Insight only illuminates a choice, it does not make that choice. I am not infallible as a DM, and I'd hazard a guess that others may not be as well. The players can only makes choices based on the information we give them about the world. OP was trying very hard to give them information and it wasn't getting through, so PI is just another way to do that. I mean at least half of DMing could be described as exactly "telling players what you think they should know." Where else are they getting any information about the world?
It's not saying what they should think or how they should act, just what they have noticed. If they already noticed it and chose to ignore it, they can (and in my experience - will), continue to do the same. If they did not notice it before, now they have additional information with which to make choices. It is a way to prevent opportunities lost due to my failure as a DM to properly convey the information I intended the PCs to have.
What you are talking about leads to a world where the characters' perceptions actually create the reality of the world. That's fine if you want to play a game like that, but its awful hard to run scenarios like this misunderstanding if the PCs never find out they misunderstood anything. Or do you believe it's somehow giving them more agency to only know they misunderstood after the fact? I would disagree with that.
I also think it's important to separate player expertise and character expertise. You should always give your players a chance to figure things out, but as you approach the point of no return in the scene you need to acknowledge that the 18 WIS Inquisitive Rogue is probably going to notice obvious social cues even if the player doesn't. After all, if the character's skill doesn't matter, why invest in it at all? And telling that player after the fact, "you just didn't notice this obvious thing" would just feel like an absolute gotcha moment where the DM basically ignored a primary character focus because they find it an unpalatable method of giving information.
Passive Insight is a great tool for the "it's all a misunderstanding" situations. Even if the players are not picking up on any cues, the characters probably should be unless they all dumped wisdom. While it's usually more fun to have the players figure things out, this can be a way to present your players with a path to choose.
You can either be rigorous about it and set a high-ish DC that drops a bit every time you give them a clue, or you just wait until the point where everything is about to fall apart and interject with "with your passive insight, you realize that the wrestlers are not actually a threat." Then you go on to describe each clue that led the character to that conclusion.
Not only do you get to have your idea, you also prime the players to look for this kind of thing in the future.
Every DM should run their game however they want, but this is something I would never do. Using Passive Insight to effectively tell players what you think they should know is a bit like just handing them instructions. Often when you think PCs are 'missing' something, they are choosing to ignore it because they aren't interested in it, their character would not care about it, or they just downright disagree. Being told "Your realise that these guys are actually friendly" is like being told "Ignore what your character has witnessed and would think here, I'm injecting the truth into your brain because it suits the story I want to tell." I really wouldn't go down that route - what do you do when the player says "No, I don't notice or realise that. I'm going to keep attacking."
If I wasn't clear enough, Passive Insight only illuminates a choice, it does not make that choice. I am not infallible as a DM, and I'd hazard a guess that others may not be as well. The players can only makes choices based on the information we give them about the world. OP was trying very hard to give them information and it wasn't getting through, so PI is just another way to do that. I mean at least half of DMing could be described as exactly "telling players what you think they should know." Where else are they getting any information about the world?
It's not saying what they should think or how they should act, just what they have noticed. If they already noticed it and chose to ignore it, they can (and in my experience - will), continue to do the same. If they did not notice it before, now they have additional information with which to make choices. It is a way to prevent opportunities lost due to my failure as a DM to properly convey the information I intended the PCs to have.
What you are talking about leads to a world where the characters' perceptions actually create the reality of the world. That's fine if you want to play a game like that, but its awful hard to run scenarios like this misunderstanding if the PCs never find out they misunderstood anything. Or do you believe it's somehow giving them more agency to only know they misunderstood after the fact? I would disagree with that.
I also think it's important to separate player expertise and character expertise. You should always give your players a chance to figure things out, but as you approach the point of no return in the scene you need to acknowledge that the 18 WIS Inquisitive Rogue is probably going to notice obvious social cues even if the player doesn't. After all, if the character's skill doesn't matter, why invest in it at all? And telling that player after the fact, "you just didn't notice this obvious thing" would just feel like an absolute gotcha moment where the DM basically ignored a primary character focus because they find it an unpalatable method of giving information.
I think that all your points are interesting, but it's the DM's responsibility to create the world by describing it, not telling the characters what they think and when you tell a player "Something is off here" you are telling them what they ought to think. Moreover, you're giving them meta knowledge that the DM wants you to change the way your character is thinking, which forces you to then ignore it (knowing that the DM wants you to change) or change it (when you don't think your character would). This makes difficult situations. It's similar to the thing where as DM you have to describe a room and it's important that the PCs look at the tapestry, and just by mentioning it, they know it's super important.
The old adage "Show, don't tell" should be employed. But in this specific scenario, thinking of it from how I'd approach it as a player. Sometimes, if a player is asking what they can see/discern then it's fair to say "It seems like..." but passive insight used this way leads to my character's thought processes being taken away from me, which won't fly.
Passive Perception: You notice stuff. The DM might say something like "With your high passive perception, you notice one of the stones is a different colour." They don't say "You notice a different coloured stone, you think it's a secret door."
Passive Insight is typically used to detect lies. That's fair enough: the DM can't be expected to sweat on command, or look shifty if acting isn't their forte. It can also indicate if they are about to act in a hostile way towards you, or if they want to snatch a purse. But I'd stall out using it to convey that a whole group of characters, in a combat situation, are actually friends with some children. That's way too much.
In this example, I'm playing a character of mine called Alric. Alric is a neutral, heavily scarred, grey skinned, yellow eyed wizard who has no qualms about killing those he considers enemies. Using what the OP said:
The DM created a scenario where my group would be antagonistic to the wrestling troupe
The parents woke to find their kids missing... clearly those traveling folk have taken the children.
Alric's group are accompanied by a posse encouraging them
The DM has a wrestler yell "Get those kids out of there, I think were under attack" and "Why are you attacking us?"
Now, Alric has no time for child abductors. The kids have been abducted. When the wrestlers discovered them, they should not have sat down and had a meal with them: they should have taken them home. Through the night, if need be. These are children. There is no way for Alric to ever know (outside of a zone of truth) what the wrestlers did to entice the kids, what their intentions are etc. The kids could well be brainwashed, charmed, or otherwise subjected to undue influence. Maybe they've been threatened with their parents being hurt if they don't follow the wrestlers. The parents seem to think so.
The situation would be different if the parents had said "Those kids love those wrestlers, they were desperate to go with them." But the DM deliberately didn't do this, and instead did everything possible to convince the PCs that the wrestlers abducted them.
Who is Alric gonna believe? The terrified parents of the missing children, or some wrestlers who somehow have the kids in their camp? He's going in with maximum lethality, to get those kids back in one piece.
And here's where the Insight check comes in.
DM: You think that something feels off about this situation.
Me: Nope. Alric knows what he's doing, and casts Lightning Bolt at the biggest target.
DM: You notice that the kids are huddling protectively around one of the wrestlers.
Me: I'd be scared of me too. I use Magic Missile on the one they're holding on to. Gotta get him back to his parents.
DM: Ok, Ok, I know everything I told you before indicated that these guys abducted the kids, but because of an Insight check, you realise that everything I led you to believe was wrong, so... you realise the kids like the wrestlers and they're friends.
Me: No. Alric would never think that, and you can't tell me what I 'realise.' I'm taking them home. I polymorph one of the kids into a mammoth to protect him. Next turn it's going to be more lightning.
Sometimes being a DM feels cruel. When the players suffer a loss, there is a period of public morning. The group comes together and says "You know, that sucks, but it was a good character, and your next one will be great." I know that not every character will survive first contact with the PC's, but I do grow attached to some ideas, and in this last session things went sideways and my idea died. I can't tell them, because that's not how the game works, but I can tell you. So here's to an idea gone too soon.
I enjoy wrestling. I think it's fun, fairly low stakes and a great study of heroes and villains. So, I tried to wedge a wrestling side story into the Storm King's Thunder campaign I'm currently running. "The group meets a group of wrestlers, they then travel with the wrestlers during their travels as part of the troupe. There's Belts of Fire Giant Strength that is the most sought after item in the company. Themes of the importance of strength." I thought it was a decent pairing. So I made plans. I created 9 NPC's based around some of my favorite wrestlers, developed move sets to compliment their personalities, created a storyline connection for one of the characters. I laid the groundwork to make this group interesting and give the NPC's a reason to be interested. I just had to introduce them...
So this is probably my fault. I thought it would be cool to show my new toys as "Not just another NPC." I created a scenario where the group would be antagonistic to the wrestling troupe at first, but it would all resolve in a big misunderstanding. You see, some kids after being inspired by the show in the last town, have run away to join the group. The parents wake to find their kids missing, knowing that the debauchery the night before is the most interesting thing to happen all year, clearly those traveling folk have taken the children. Meanwhile the wrestlers find themselves being dogged by a couple of children, are are not really equipped to deal with them. All a big misunderstanding. The PC's come to town, hear about these kidnappers, and set off to find them (probably the biggest mistake was having a posse go with them, one that egged the group on). Then, the knives are pulled and the PC's see red.
I tried to show how the wrestlers were not a threat... Before combat, I showed the kids sharing a meal with the wrestlers, while the group snuck around releasing an ogre that was traveling with the group. When combat arose, the wrestlers used grappling maneuvers and spells to restrain, not damage the PC's and their posse. One martial artist was the only one to use damaging maneuvers. Meanwhile, the posse showed a desire to stoke fires, but a cowardice when it came (their contribution was to overwhelm a Firbolg as a group). I had a wrestler yell "Get those kids out of there, I think were under attack" and "Why are you attacking us?" The response was "We want those kids" said with an accompanying intimidation check. The wrestler I put over as the strongest spent the whole fight keeping the ogre in check, though most of her group was actively retreating and trying to heal up. She called to the group, "Hey, I think we need to put this guy down. Could you help me?" The players took that opportunity to actively kill the retreating wrestlers. Yeah... At the end of the fight, the PC's took a whole 14 points of damage (8 of which came from the rampaging ogre) in about 8 rounds of combat. All but three of the wrestlers were actively killed (I asked if they wanted lethal damage, the players said yes.) The idea is dead, my wrestlers are dead.
For the record, this is not the first time I played the "It's all a misunderstanding card." It's not the first time the players have ruined my plans either. But it is the first time I had to dumpster an idea I've been working on for a couple months.
Wrestling is all a game of make believe. It's an idea that through your actions and deeds, your philosophy of life can be proven true. It's an idea that the support of the crowd gives life to your resolve, and that your determination matters. D&D should have been a good match. Not all good match ups make good matches.
If your party is going to ignore other solutions to conflicts and just be murderhobos, which is the picture you're painting, then you'll probably need to shelve more "subtle" ideas like this as wasted on them
Or, if you want to try and break them of that habit, lean very heavily in the other direction. Have the kids be traumatized by their "rescue". Have the villagers, feeling guilty when they realize the mistake, transfer that guilt to the party and blame them. Have the wrestlers' far more powerful patrons/fans/friends come around looking for them and swearing revenge. Make things very difficult for the party for a while to try and teach them about consequences
This is probably worth an impromptu session 0 to discuss as a group which direction the campaign is going to go in
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
My players understand that Combat is the last resort for conflict resolution, I mean, it is sometimes the only option available, in which case the last resort becomes the only one :). But I laid down in session 0 that I am not running a murder hobo game. To that end Goblins, Orcs, Bug Bears etc all have established complex societies and are not auto evil (something the characters would know and the players where therefore made aware of in session 0).
This is about talking to and educating players, and just as it is ok for a player to tell the DM I really don't like this aspect of your game, or want more of this please. You as a DM can sit your players down and say please, can we try and move away from murder hoboing everything, I am setting up complex encounters with potential future allies and you go in swords waving and kill them.
Alternatively have the party come across a job soon after, man has gone to join the circus as a wrestler and not been heard of in days/weeks, suddenly the party are confronted with the fact that they killed an innocent who had a wife, and a 6 month old baby and was just trying to make a living to improve there life.
Passive Insight is a great tool for the "it's all a misunderstanding" situations. Even if the players are not picking up on any cues, the characters probably should be unless they all dumped wisdom. While it's usually more fun to have the players figure things out, this can be a way to present your players with a path to choose.
You can either be rigorous about it and set a high-ish DC that drops a bit every time you give them a clue, or you just wait until the point where everything is about to fall apart and interject with "with your passive insight, you realize that the wrestlers are not actually a threat." Then you go on to describe each clue that led the character to that conclusion.
Not only do you get to have your idea, you also prime the players to look for this kind of thing in the future.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Strictly from what you've described:
So a group of performers go through a town, two kids disappear, the parents charge the PCs with getting them back, they go to do exactly that, egged on by NPCs that you've put with them, and then there's an expectation that the PCs will treat peacefully with the group of child abductors? Of course they're going to take them out.
You could still probably have pulled it around by having the kids shouting "Stop! They're our friends!" or some such, but you created a scenario in which everything led the PCs to believe they were dealing with scum who'd abducted children.
However. The key mistake (if there is such a thing in D&D - and given your regret about how it went, it certainly seems that you regretted it) that you made here was that you had a kind of script idea for how things should go, and expected the PCs to follow it. Your expectation was so high that you put loads of work into creating the NPCs, and the scenario to follow, but didn't count on the PCs actually showing any agency, having any preferences or making their own choices. When writing an adventure there's always a chance the PCs will do something nuts... there is however an unspoken agreement that the players will try to play the adventure that the DM is offering, and not just run around like lunatics. But in this scenario, they did exactly what you'd been guiding them towards doing! Your NPCs asked them to do it, then went with them and encouraged them!
I'm assuming that your players are all wrestling entertainment fans in some way? Otherwise they may just have wanted to purge WWE characters from the game they were in. That's what I'd have done if I'd found myself there, if I'm honest.
Every DM should run their game however they want, but this is something I would never do. Using Passive Insight to effectively tell players what you think they should know is a bit like just handing them instructions. Often when you think PCs are 'missing' something, they are choosing to ignore it because they aren't interested in it, their character would not care about it, or they just downright disagree. Being told "Your realise that these guys are actually friendly" is like being told "Ignore what your character has witnessed and would think here, I'm injecting the truth into your brain because it suits the story I want to tell." I really wouldn't go down that route - what do you do when the player says "No, I don't notice or realise that. I'm going to keep attacking."
^------- +1 to this.
Often I find that subtle hints and plotlines are missed or possibly flat out ignored. I choose missed, as the players can be lazer focused on the task at hand, to the exclusion of other complications in their in-game life. Also, players are often, but not always, conditioned to react strongly to someone who is described in a negative manner. They take after the BBE, even if they aren't big, bad or evil. Just misunderstood. Players might enjoy playing a fantasy role-playing game because of the moral freedom to take drastic measures toward inciting actions that they have in real life. (Subtle way of saying that they feel good about killing someone suspected of kidnapping children.)
During the opening chapter of HotDQ a party member is given the opportunity to engage in a one-on-one fight with a foe that should be well outside their ability to withstand. The draw is, win-or-lose the captive woman is set free. Just prior to the fight, the woman's children are freed as a sign of good faith and honor. My party's barbarian took the challenge, engaged in the fight, and was loosing. The warlock started to head out onto the field, and the party rogue stopped her. (One of the conditions of the captive's death was party intervention or movement onto the field, or attempting to circumnavigate the field.) The fighter, not being present when the rogue intervened, leaps from the 20' castle wall and begins to circle around behind the combatants. Which causes the captors to execute the prisoner and the fight to end. The party has yet to let the fighter off the hook for that, neither has the woman's brother or the town leadership. The first concern for the rogue and the warlock was if the children saw what happened, not wheather or not the barbarian was dead.
Guilt, the reluctance to cause trauma to innocents and the protection of innocents are powerful tools. Used appropriately, they achieve a drastic effect. If you lose the gamble and the party acts with little or no conscience, there may be a triggering event. Use with caution.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
The beauty of the line "Something doesn't seem right to you about this." or "You feel like there is something you aren't seeing here." It's a pretty clear hint to the players that they're messing something up and, in my experience, usually to the least slows them down.
Yeah, sometimes players just kill off a character or plotline and it sucks, it really does. Spending a lot of time planning a story or characters you think they'll enjoy, just to have them do things out of malice/excessive force and ruin a storyline is always a bit sad.
I try to discourage this kind of behavior by realistic consequences (not punishments, mind you) for this sort of behavior- even if the PCs (perhaps willfully) ignored the fact that there seemed to be more going on, they might get a reputation for brutality, get in legal troubles for murder (after all, unless they're deputized for a task, killing other humanoids is usually a crime), or just have to hear people mention that someone murdered a wrestling troupe and have the kids they were "rescuing" paint them as evil. If the party actually cares, that should compel them to moderate their behavior a bit.
I know there are times when I, as a player, have jumped the gun, either because I thought it was what my character would do, or because I as a player misread a situation. However, going several rounds of combat without taking damage would make me wonder...
All the advice given above put aside, your idea isn't dead. Are they the only wrestlers in the whole of the realm? Doesn't sound like the players even interacted with them, just reskin them, and have them show up again. Change some details, learn from the previous issues, and keep going.
Maybe the dead group and this new group are suppose to meet up and have a royal rumble in the next town, or city the players go to?
I feel like this sort of advice can't be said often enough. The players don't know what's going on behind the scenes. I had a player decide to mess with the plot of one of my games for meta-reasoning. He killed a guy who was obviously intended to be a reoccuring villain-- before I had a chance to introduce him. It was pure dickery on the player's plot. However, because they-- didn't know anything about the ambassador before he tried to off him, that meant the character and all his plot significance could just be shifted to a new character.
Plot is a resiliant thing to an experienced GM. Hell, you could even have those new wrestlers have a big charity event for the fallen wrestlers. Or guilt trip the players into raising the fallen. A DM can do anything in a game, if they have some tact in covering their tracks.
So… The idea might not be dead, but the narrative weight I hoped these characters would provide is now misplaced. Spoilers for Storm King’s Thunder below:
*****SPOILERS*****
In Storm King’s Thunder, the giants are attacking in mass. Each clan is doing their own thing, causing chaos in their own way. The players are to learn that this is the Giant’s way of postruing, trying to gain influence to take the throne, due to the mysterious absence of the King of Giants (the Storm King). There is also a mysterious force, the Kraken Society, that killed the Storm Queen and a dark figure pulling strings in the background.
My desire to show misunderstandings stems is an attempt at conditioning the group for the fact that they may need to fight WITH the giants they are currently set to kill.
Information I do not know how to disciminate now: one of the wrestlers joined the group as a cover to run from Cloud Giants hunting them (they killed the Storm Queen), the introduction of the concept of a dark figure (that hired our new wrestler to said Storm Queen), there is a giant monument at the Spire of the Mountains called the Eye of the All-Father (where my wrestlers were headed to “perform their greatest show Under the Vision of the Strongest.”
Additionally, one of my players was set to find a locket from their mother (who disappeared after a bandit attack). One of the wrestlers had this locket, though they are too young to be the bandits that took the PC’s mother.
**** END SPOILERS****
Thank you for all the advice. With regards to the situation, it's fine. I can pick up the pieces, and move them where they need to be. But it’s hard to put alot of energy into a project and see it cut short before seeing any of your anticipated rewards. I don’t care that the players changed the script. I care that I was excited for how I could use this tool, and now I feel it’s taken away from me.
There will not be another wrestling troupe in this game. There may be one in the next one, but this group was important to this game, and will be played as such, looming in the rear view mirror long past this decision point.
From the sounds of it, if you wanted the party to consider a peaceful encounter with the wrestlers, then you needed to be a lot more explicit with setting the scene to make it clear that the children were not kidnapped.
In addition, consider the situation from the character perspective. The children have run off with a group of traveling performers. The parents and the NPCs are saying that they have been kidnapped. From the sounds of your description, the children weren't walking through the night on their own so why did the troupe NOT turn around and deliver the children back to their homes unless they were planning on keeping them? Just because the children are willing to run off doesn't make it any less kidnapping if the wrestlers aren't going to return the children.
"Meanwhile the wrestlers find themselves being dogged by a couple of children, are are not really equipped to deal with them."
Umm ... the simple answer here, if they are not "kidnapping" the children is to turn around and take them home. Do the wrestlers plan to let the children die of exposure/hunger/thirst as they follow along far from their village?
Finally, perhaps the wrestlers could have decided not to fight at all. It isn't obvious when in combat that the opponents are using non-violent techniques. On top of that, if the wrestlers are going to fight at all - why fight non-violently? It only reinforces the idea that the wrestlers are fighting back. If they aren't going to hurt anyone then they might as well surrender. Most players don't kill folks who have surrendered and THAT opens up the possibility for a dialogue and possible peaceful resolution allowing the wrestlers to explain why they haven't returned the children to the village.
Anyway, it's unfortunate given the effort you put into it but it doesn't seem surprising to me how the situation turned out given the circumstances.
Edit: PS ... that said, the idea isn't dead. You have already established at least one group of traveling wrestlers in your world. There can certainly be more and the party might have more positive interactions with other groups. The players have no idea what other content you have created. However, whatever happens, do not expect the plot to play out the one way you envisage it. Give the players the pieces and let them interact with the plot which will create a new and updated plot, rather than trying to make things turn out the way you want them to ...
Yeah my advice going forward would be never to plan an element of the game with only one outcome in mind. In fact, I try never to plan for any outcome. I just try to set up the world, put npc's/monsters in place, and then I see what happens.
It helps protect the DM from getting so invested in an idea and that idea going a certain way that they get discouraged when it doesn't go the way they planned.
It's really hard to predict player behavior, so instead, try and have the world *react* to player behavior. It takes the pressure off you to have a contingency for everything and makes the world feel more alive and player-centric, which players absolutely love.
Players are more likely to care about npc's and story elements when they have a hand in shaping them. If you show them a group of fun quirky wrestlers they might kill them without question if they think they're bad guys, but every part invariably finds their own 'Boblin the goblin', a useless npc the party decides to care about and dote on. This 'boblinization' of npc's is almost completely random unless you really know what your players tend to go for, so to protect yourself from burnout, when planning to introduce fun quirky npc's that you already care about, you need to maybe come up with a few reasons the players should care about them first-- *without* trying to force it. And if the players don't go for it, then it wasn't meant to be.
If I wasn't clear enough, Passive Insight only illuminates a choice, it does not make that choice. I am not infallible as a DM, and I'd hazard a guess that others may not be as well. The players can only makes choices based on the information we give them about the world. OP was trying very hard to give them information and it wasn't getting through, so PI is just another way to do that. I mean at least half of DMing could be described as exactly "telling players what you think they should know." Where else are they getting any information about the world?
It's not saying what they should think or how they should act, just what they have noticed. If they already noticed it and chose to ignore it, they can (and in my experience - will), continue to do the same. If they did not notice it before, now they have additional information with which to make choices. It is a way to prevent opportunities lost due to my failure as a DM to properly convey the information I intended the PCs to have.
What you are talking about leads to a world where the characters' perceptions actually create the reality of the world. That's fine if you want to play a game like that, but its awful hard to run scenarios like this misunderstanding if the PCs never find out they misunderstood anything. Or do you believe it's somehow giving them more agency to only know they misunderstood after the fact? I would disagree with that.
I also think it's important to separate player expertise and character expertise. You should always give your players a chance to figure things out, but as you approach the point of no return in the scene you need to acknowledge that the 18 WIS Inquisitive Rogue is probably going to notice obvious social cues even if the player doesn't. After all, if the character's skill doesn't matter, why invest in it at all? And telling that player after the fact, "you just didn't notice this obvious thing" would just feel like an absolute gotcha moment where the DM basically ignored a primary character focus because they find it an unpalatable method of giving information.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I think that all your points are interesting, but it's the DM's responsibility to create the world by describing it, not telling the characters what they think and when you tell a player "Something is off here" you are telling them what they ought to think. Moreover, you're giving them meta knowledge that the DM wants you to change the way your character is thinking, which forces you to then ignore it (knowing that the DM wants you to change) or change it (when you don't think your character would). This makes difficult situations. It's similar to the thing where as DM you have to describe a room and it's important that the PCs look at the tapestry, and just by mentioning it, they know it's super important.
The old adage "Show, don't tell" should be employed. But in this specific scenario, thinking of it from how I'd approach it as a player. Sometimes, if a player is asking what they can see/discern then it's fair to say "It seems like..." but passive insight used this way leads to my character's thought processes being taken away from me, which won't fly.
Passive Perception: You notice stuff. The DM might say something like "With your high passive perception, you notice one of the stones is a different colour." They don't say "You notice a different coloured stone, you think it's a secret door."
Passive Insight is typically used to detect lies. That's fair enough: the DM can't be expected to sweat on command, or look shifty if acting isn't their forte. It can also indicate if they are about to act in a hostile way towards you, or if they want to snatch a purse. But I'd stall out using it to convey that a whole group of characters, in a combat situation, are actually friends with some children. That's way too much.
In this example, I'm playing a character of mine called Alric. Alric is a neutral, heavily scarred, grey skinned, yellow eyed wizard who has no qualms about killing those he considers enemies. Using what the OP said:
Now, Alric has no time for child abductors. The kids have been abducted. When the wrestlers discovered them, they should not have sat down and had a meal with them: they should have taken them home. Through the night, if need be. These are children. There is no way for Alric to ever know (outside of a zone of truth) what the wrestlers did to entice the kids, what their intentions are etc. The kids could well be brainwashed, charmed, or otherwise subjected to undue influence. Maybe they've been threatened with their parents being hurt if they don't follow the wrestlers. The parents seem to think so.
The situation would be different if the parents had said "Those kids love those wrestlers, they were desperate to go with them." But the DM deliberately didn't do this, and instead did everything possible to convince the PCs that the wrestlers abducted them.
Who is Alric gonna believe? The terrified parents of the missing children, or some wrestlers who somehow have the kids in their camp? He's going in with maximum lethality, to get those kids back in one piece.
And here's where the Insight check comes in.