So last night was episode 8 of our ongoing adventures in a world of collapsing multiverses, a mash up genre game of fantasy creatures pulled into our world with each "convergence event".  Generally it's been a hard campaign to run because I left it more open on each session's goals and I've struggled to understand my players and what it takes for them to "go find the plot points".  I thought that giving them item A would lead them out into the wilds and I could then easily use a combat encounter to lure them into a major dungeon area for a few weeks of kicking down doors and killing cannibalistic gnolls.  Instead they meandered to and fro while I figure out how to steer them to the major NPC they "needed" to get the story going into a given direction as with the main arc of the game.

Session starts off with the players having circumvented the entire gnoll compound and going right for a hidden back door that lead to the "mysterious god-like creature"'s lair in the back of the mall, specifically that movie theater complex part.  They discover that the god-like creatures that the gnolls have been "following" or at least paying reverence to is nothing more than a gnome with a flair for the dramatic (yes, it's a trope, and I don't care; I like that trope).

His name is Ted.

Ted has this whole thing figured out where he can "fix" the collapsing multiverse.  He can return each reality to it's pre-convergence state and by going one reality at a time, restore Reality Prime to it's non-fantasy status.  He can send people home to their loved ones.  Only as I was doing my last second prep, I realized "why on earth would Ted explain this whole plan to 4 adventurers who wandered into his lair?"  So my "fix" was "okay if the PC's agree to be his 'minions', he'll explain to them how to save the world.  What could go wrong?"  My brain figured that being called minions was so low on the cost scale that the idea of saving the world AND having one of the characters reunited with her love would create the story arc that would put them at an "okay, the guy's kind of a jerk but we can put up with this to, you know, SAVE THE WORLD".

What I wasn't ready for is the party to first insist they didn't need to be told how to save the world and that they would 100% figure it out on their own, thankyouverymuch.  I also wasn't ready for them to pull a great sword and say "I don't like your tone and maybe we should take your research for ourselves".  I really wasn't ready for them to continue to ask OOC why Ted was being so arrogant when clearly he needed their help (he did, he needed them to bring him the McGuffin to power the saving of the world), yet seem not see their own hostility and aggression.

It got to a point where I was actively angry.  Like "do you not see what jerks you're being?" coupled with "dangit all we've been at this story for 3 months and you're going to derail it now because you THINK you can just waltz into the Imperial City (which only one of you had ever been to) and get all those answers (despite the fact that you scammed the royal army with a fake convergence crystal and that said army company is probably hunting you now?)"  I was like "why are you all taking a crap on my story line?"  I very nearly said "roll for initiative because the doors open and those gnolls that cleaned your clocks 2 sessions ago are now coming after you with a vengeance because you threatened their god".  And I could see it in them too.  They were frustrated that they couldn't puzzle out "what they were supposed to do".  If we had been in person, I think we might have even been at a point of raised voices but thanks to distance gaming we all had to keep some semblance of propriety (plus, you know, people were WATCHING).

So I called a Time Out.  I pulled out a red card and paused the action.  I didn't put us off line to talk but I did say "we need to talk, OOC, as a table to figure out what the FORK is going on here."  I laid out why I was confused and frustrated.  I listened while they did the same.  I brought up story elements they had forgotten (you did just show up uninvited, you did threaten him, you did belittle his work as something you would totally learn on your own).  They did the same (as players we don't take well to people telling us we're not smart enough, the word minion is deeply problematic, we all have had bad experiences with this "archetype" both in game and in real life). I laid out that this was "our game" and that if they wanted to close this avenue of story, they could and I would adjust accordingly.  I made it clear that I could make any choice work but I'd have to adjust because this door was closing based on their actions.  We hashed it out on camera which I'm kind of glad we did because I think we modeled how to resolve conflict.  I would have preferred we didn't get to that point but we rolled back the scene, we picked up at a point before the "point of no return".  We all toned down our characters, came at it with fresh eyes and pressed on. 

Ted explained this plan for saving the world and at that point one of the players goes "oh.. he's giving a TED talk... and his name is Ted... Ooooohhhhh."

THEN, because of course no night can be complete without other drama... someone comes into chat and wants to talk about the new race changes from WOTC.  As the players are digesting the whole Ted Talk in character I turn to chat and type that I'd rather we not talk about a charged topic "right now".  I point him at my discord and twitter and say "not during the game because I can't monitor chat and run a game at the same time well enough to go into something that should be talked about with some level of respect and reverence.  He demands to talk about and I pause the game to tell him, on stream, to get bent and then ban him.

Of course as the players get back into the scene ANOTHER person chimes in wanting to know why I swore at and banned a guy "just for wanting to talk about DND".  I ended up putting chat into Emote Only mode (so no text just emotes) just to get things to calm down and at that point we get Raided by another streamer.

So, it's like, "Hi, welcome, we have a great channel here for you to hang in, btw, you can't talk because we've been having problems keeping chat civil.  Please don't leave!"

Things calm down a bit, I get chat back to normal, we're getting to the end of the night and we get another raid. Who's this from?  Well.... that's a different story but I'll just say in this context that it put me in a weird spot given the situation and timelines.

And then we called it a night, sent our viewers off to watch a non-DND stream that a friend had up (one of the chat redeemed "guide the raid") and had another layer of "debrief" to talk about things we wished had happened or we wished we had resolved differently.  I always end a game with the players talking about their "stars" (one thing they loved about the session) and once the viewers are gone, we talk about one "wish" (something they wished was different, not present, more of, etc).

Thanks for letting me recount and vent.

Rob aka Lantern Noir

Hey man, sorry to hear that your session was frustrating, it happens to all of us.

Something that stroke me reading, is that what might be frustrating you and your players is that you are trying very hard to engage them into a particular storyline, which might make the game a bit clunky. (Even if the story is very good, in a D&D context they might feel as if their choices doesn't matter)

I don't know the specifics, just what you're telling here, but it appears as though you've been trying very hard for your players to take your plot hooks and they have constantly avoiding those and, in the peak of your frustration, you put an NPC that looks down on them - psychologically, I would ask if that was not a projection of your feelings towards your players at the moment, you know?

Maybe, it might help to use elements of the characters backstories on the game to increase their interest on the things you are trying to nudge them. Don't know, I feel like you could try to ground your PCs more into the storyline somehow.

Anyway, that's a feel fully based on what I read, which is just a slice of your whole experience with the table, so, I hope things get better - Once again, bad sessions happen to all of us.

First, kudos to you for hitting pause and checking in with your players about your collective frustrations. That was a good move, and not one that gets employed enough. Honest communication fixes so many problems.

I get where you're coming from with respect to irritation over players circumventing the plot. It happens to all of us from time to time, and you can be sure it will happen to you again. Players are oblivious and stubborn like that, bless their hearts. Here's what I do when my group of chaotic dimwits keep running aground:

1. Give passive information. If they're missing something obvious and their characters would know, intuit or remember a tidbit that will help them see the bigger picture, I either ask for insight/perception checks or I use their passive scores. "Hey cleric, you get the sense that this guy isn't trying to be confrontational; he's just worried about the town." "Ranger, you spot some muddy pawprints that remind you of the monster you fought in the woods." I find this helps players zero in on pertinent information and refocus.

2. Lean into it. Sometimes it's better to switch the train to another track than be rigid and have things derail. Feels sucky on our end because of the work we put into it, but we have to remember this is a collaborative game. Maybe the new direction will lead to more fun and creativity than we could have done on our own.

Unsolicited advice aside, I agree with RaSeyssel about psychology playing a role. The more we as DMs are in tune with ourselves and our players, the better the game experience will be. Also, I can see why your players reacted that way. I would chafe at the notion of being anyone's "minion" - I'm a powerful and cool adventurer! 

Overall, I'm sorry you had a tough session and that some of your viewers were unreasonable. Here's to better days and high rolls!

Appreciate the feedback and suggestions.

Mostly I wanted to clear my head and spend some time writing about it before I tried to write this week's DM log of my thoughts and plans for the game.

A little more back story:

I've got the main story mapped for this "Season" of the campaign.  It's pretty loose and I'm perfectly fine with the players meandering a bit.  And the backstory integration is good, which is actually something I've been doing.  And so far they all keep saying they're having fun though they also lament that they're not sure what they're supposed to do.  So rather than do something "wrong" they spend time trying to figure out what the "right thing".  And one of my players made an interesting point in our debrief:  In a video game, there are clear quest givers that say "go do this" and you don't have to barter or negotiate with them, or accept conditions on the quest.   And while all of them have some RP experience it's not a 'regular' part of their gaming.  

Retrospect, one player got a nat 20 on an insight check and I could have used that better say "Okay, Molly, here's what else you're getting from what he's saying".  He was omitting something which I did admit to and when Molly (the player) went all in on "He's HIDING SOMETHIGN!I!!!!" I should have used that as an OOC chance to roll it back and say "woah woah.. it's not hiding anything that big".

So that was another misstep on my part, things I could have done differently in hindsight.

But yeah, the note about "go with the flow" is taken.  I tend to suffer a bit from the "okay, the party needs to move through these three plot elements for the main story" when I'm not running an even more railed game.  Which in retrospect this probably should have been.  Other games I've done have been built around "The story will take 8 sessions and here are the major bullet points we need to hit by the end of the session".  Upside of that game is that each session was written to end on a cliff hanger question, some kind of "Okay, what next?" element.  The Convergence mostly just ends when we're close to 3 hours of playing and sometimes I'm able to get us to a cliff hanger, sometimes we just end after some satisfying RP or combat.

I'm generally feeling better about it all but I really needed to "air it out" with an audience likely to be sympathetic and there was no way I could thread all of this on Twitter under the #DND hashtag.

I've followed your post since you posted it and I really wanted to give a reply because I really, really feel you. Been there myself and I really learned something from how you handled it, as stated kudos to you for handling it so well in my opinion. I have a lot in my mind on the topic but I realize that I'm not sure what I want to type on the matter, however I just wanted to give you my support! 

When conveying information to your players, you have to not only consider what information you are providing, but also its source.  You, the DM, know that the information is accurate, necessary, and important for the campaign to continue--the players just have the context you give them to determine the validity of information.  Hard as it may be to hear, the problem in this case lies mostly with you, the DM, not your players--you created a situation where you were trying to present campaign-defining information from a source that was not trustworthy.

Let's look at the Ted for a bit:

1. He is a gnome.  Players have ingrained ideas of what different races are (accurate or not), and gnomes are often seen as tinkerers and artisans, with a bit of a mischievous streak and sometimes a bit touched in the head.  So, from the start, you would have to overcome stereotypes players have about the race or they would be skeptical of the information provided.

2. The way you established him--someone who has tricked a bunch of gnoll into treating him as a god--really does not lend credibility to the gnome's trustworthiness.  He's clearly established he is a bit of a troublemaker--it is one of the few pieces of information the party knows about him.

3. No one likes exposition dumps and they hardly ever feel realistic.  It is rare for someone in the real world to have all the answers immediately--they tend to have ideas of where to start or where to solve small-scale problems, with those small-scale solutions opening up doors to additional information and solutions to the big problem. I have found most players (myself included) hate when the DM spoon feeds me a solution to a major campaign problem.  Some of them just follow the ropes, but there are a lot of them who want to react against the exposition dump and forge their own path.  This kind of reaction is common enough that there is a good chance any party might have it, and thus you should plan how you feed players information accordingly. 

4. The solution to the problem seems like it would take a very intensive study of the planes, realities, etc. to derive--would you trust a random person you met, who has seemingly decided he wants a life of ease living as a gnoll god, to have this kind of knowledge that likely even gods do not have?  I doubt it, and your players probably felt the same way.

5. Almost every party has one person who is going to react poorly to being disrespected by an NPC and is going to react accordingly.  Consider the situation.  They are already distrustful of the gnome, who seems to have information he shouldn't and who is living amongst gnoll.  He is alone and there are no witnesses.  He has no established authority or other reason to look down on the party.  The player might be frustrated at the exposition dump.  All of that breeds a high likelihood that a player might escalate to threats of violence. 

-----

Moving on to the second issue:   Next time, I would probably address it as simply and neutrally as possible.  By saying the conversation was charged and one that needed to be monitored, you likely incised those who are against a lot of the changes.  A lot of those people feel they are unfairly over moderated (they're generally wrong and are, in fact, fairly over moderated) and the idea of moderation can make them angry.  They likely saw you saying "I cannot moderate this right now" as "I cannot use my moderation powers to suppress your free speech right now" which likely escalated the situation--even if that interpretation is a foolish one.  Follow that up with publicly shaming and banning one of their users--who clearly deserved to be banned--and the rest of them are going to circle their wagons and double down.  It's not fair to you as the host of the stream, but that's just how things like this tend to operate.  

Next time, I would try and address this as neutrally as possible.  "Hey, we are in the middle of a session, let's try and keep the chat focused on the campaign, not D&D generally."  Then I would just quietly kick people from the chat if they ignore that request, not make a big deal out of it.  If you have had to kick a few people, then you can always follow that up by noting "I have had to kick a few people on both sides of this argument.  Remember, let's try to keep the conversation campaign-related."

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr>>

Moving on to the second issue:   Next time, I would probably address it as simply and neutrally as possible.  By saying the conversation was charged and one that needed to be monitored, you likely incised those who are against a lot of the changes.  A lot of those people feel they are unfairly over moderated (they're generally wrong and are, in fact, fairly over moderated) and the idea of moderation can make them angry.  They likely saw you saying "I cannot moderate this right now" as "I cannot use my moderation powers to suppress your free speech right now" which likely escalated the situation--even if that interpretation is a foolish one.  Follow that up with publicly shaming and banning one of their users--who clearly deserved to be banned--and the rest of them are going to circle their wagons and double down.  It's not fair to you as the host of the stream, but that's just how things like this tend to operate.  

Word.

It's way more likely that next time out I'll toss the chat into emote only or "Follower for 30 min" mode rather than engage much past the "I'm happy to talk about this at another time/ in another venue."  It's a shame because I was open to seeing what they did with it and give them the benefit of the doubt at first.  But the tantrum of "I'm here to talk about this!" was like "oh no you didn't."  Oddly my players were on my case for not kickbanning dude #2 even faster.  As soon as he signaled he was also circling the wagons and my own chat took the "dude, drop it" they advised I just quietly ban him as well.  

Community building is a thing.

Just watched the part of the episode you mentioned and found the open discussion between you all a great example of people dealing with an issue in a respectful manner. As a completely inexperienced DM/player hopefully this sticks in the back of my head if i have to deal with similar.

also the safety card system is something i had not considered and will keep in mind.

Just a couple of comments.

I think your hitting pause on the proceedings to discuss why everyone was getting upset was a great intervention. I think it was the exactly right approach to address a conflict developing in the game before the players become more upset than the characters.

However, I think you need to look at the roots of the problem.

In many D&D games, the world is a sandbox, the characters acquire information and in combination with the nature of the characters, the players make decisions about what their characters will do and how they will react to that information. The DM controls the flow of information but can't make the players take any particular action. In this example, the DM was giving the players information that they were either misinterpreting, missing the point or simply not reacting in the way the DM expected. The DM got upset because the plot wasn't going how they wanted it to go.

The problem there is railroading. The DM has a Vision (tm) and the players are expected to fall in line. When this fails to happen, either the DM gets upset or the players do or both as the DM feels invested in their plan and the players NEVER like being forced or having their choices made for them.

Your comment ...

"I tend to suffer a bit from the "okay, the party needs to move through these three plot elements for the main story" when I'm not running an even more railed game.  Which in retrospect this probably should have been.  Other games I've done have been built around "The story will take 8 sessions and here are the major bullet points we need to hit by the end of the session".  Upside of that game is that each session was written to end on a cliff hanger question, some kind of "Okay, what next?" element."

... illustrates the point. You are used to running a scripted and railroaded game where the players have been given instructions so that the stream ends on a cliffhanger. The players then have the characters act however is required to reach the overall entertainment goal rather than what their characters might necessarily choose to do.

The important point to remember in a sandbox is that the players have limited information, they don't have any idea of all the wheels that might be turning or interactions occurring. This means that some things that are obvious to the DM or should be interpreted in a different way by the characters are missed by the players. The DM has two choices, make the information even more explicit or adjust the plot line.

Two examples - you mentioned an important NPC that the players need to meet to advance the plot - however, it sounds like you have placed the NPC at a particular location and the players are not picking up the clues - either give them more explicit clues or move the NPC so that the party encounters them in another way.

In the encounter with Ted, I think the party did the exactly right thing finding a back door, avoiding the conflict (why risk death when you don't have to?) and finally reaching an encounter with the "god-like" creature and discovering that they were a gnome. Ted begins by treating the PCs as if they were inferior - "Yes! You are needed to save the world! You can be my minions and kneel before me while doing my bidding!" ... Umm no - most PCs will react negatively to being treated as inferiors no matter what the circumstances - so this isn't likely to go well with an arrogant little gnome issuing orders.

1) Is the gnome clearly stronger than the party put together? Does he feel threatened by the party? Unless the gnome is particularly capable then he should know that the party could kill him before the gnoll cannibals could rescue him. This should moderate Ted's behaviour somewhat.

2) Does Ted really need the help of the PCs to save the world? Does he really want to save the world? If yes, why would Ted treat the people he NEEDS to complete his plan as minions, talk down to them and act arrogant and superior when he KNOWS that his plan will fail without the assistance of these folks or some very much like them? The answer is that he probably would not unless he was a megalomaniac more addicted to his own power than saving the multiverse.

So ... back things up to the point where it starts to go off track. The characters are upset by their treatment by an NPC, they aren't minions or slaves. The NPC (and DM) can clearly see that these adventurers are now farther away from helping him save the world. At this point, the DM can shift the paradigm (as long as the DM has remained objective and not stuck on only one course of action working). In this case, Ted unexpectedly drops to his knees, begins to apologize profusely and babble a bit about how time is limited, he really needs their help, it is important, we might be able to save the multiverse together. (Since the DMs initial confrontational approach fails with this group of players the DM simply changes the approach midstream to play to the mercy/sympathy side of the characters since the arrogant/orders approach wasn't working). Given that the gnome is playing to a particular trope - that switch would be entirely in character and fits the trope while the arrogant all powerful all knowing gnome is the front/act. 

The key here is to get the players to LISTEN to the information that Ted (the DM) wants to give them so that they can have enough information to pick up the next part of the plot on their own.

The bottom line is that the DM probably wants to keep the overall objectives in mind (getting the information to the players) rather than being so invested in a scene that they can't change up the scene midway through to adjust to how the players are reacting to it.

Quote from SirRaticus >>

Just watched the part of the episode you mentioned and found the open discussion between you all a great example of people dealing with an issue in a respectful manner. As a completely inexperienced DM/player hopefully this sticks in the back of my head if i have to deal with similar.

also the safety card system is something i had not considered and will keep in mind.

Hey man, thanks for that.  I know that my players have all said that they're glad we did it the way we did.  One even said more than once that doing it live and modeling conflict resolution is really a good thing for the greater DND community.  It's the same reason I always stream a Session 0 with new players and include things like "safety cards" and "fade to black" and other tools for communication around the table.

Quote from David42 >>

 

The problem there is railroading. The DM has a Vision (tm) and the players are expected to fall in line. When this fails to happen, either the DM gets upset or the players do or both as the DM feels invested in their plan and the players NEVER like being forced or having their choices made for them.

 

For me there is a real issue to the term "Rail Roading".  The implication is that "no matter what the outcome is decided".  And when that happens for the sake of story, it happens but it's not done in a way that excludes the players.  If the "plot" requires X and Y to happen, I usually know in advance that the players are okay with X and Y.  Granted, this time, I thought I had a handle on my player's comfort zones and interests but did not indeed have that handle.  Thus the conflict.

I do generally run games that follow a rough script.  You can frame it as a bad thing but even away from streaming my games I didn't have the patience for groups that would sit around the table and randomly brainstorm things to do only to have the bulk of the session end in a "meh... I don't know, what do you want to do?"  Similarly I really want every NPC to be a person, every challenge to have multiple solutions etc.  So if the players say "we want to go explore the local ruins", I want anything there to be interesting rather than "kick down the door, kill the random monster, take it's stuff".  I want a cult that's been stealing children to random to a demon.  I want someone to rescue that will always be questioned as about to betray the party.  

But the flip side of all of that is it takes prep.  My time is too precious for me to spend hours preparing an adventure setting only to have the PC's turn around and say "meh... we didn't like the old lady at the tavern so we're going to leave and head to the next town over". 

I feel you as to the game being a sandbox like Fallout or Skyrim.  Here's a world, go explore it!  But even away from streaming I really like the idea of having a session of purpose to the session rather than random go as you will.  If that's your jam, dude, I totally support that.  It's not my style and 95/100 times it works out for me and mine.

As a content creator that challenge is even tougher:  Nothing is worse for chat retention than seeing 5 people all sitting around asking "what do you want to do?"  In fact one of the most successful channels on Twitch, Critical Role, is a DND channel that's not only accused of having a game that runs on light rails but a game one that even the PC interactions are scripted. (I have heard from multiple people that the game is indeed improv and the apparent scripting is the result of just having really talented actors as players)

So to the point about shifting Ted's Tone prior to the Ted Talk the notes are well given.  And what I could have done is better prepped a reaction that fit the moment without rewarding the players for something I thought of as a bit out of line as well.  I think groveling might have been a stretch but that was coupled with the shocking arrogance of the players in the face of someone who knew way more than they did about reuniting them with their homes.  I get it, though, players are the protagonists.  We can do anything is usually stock and trade.

So appreciate the feedback and the discussion of sandbox vs roller coaster.  

Quote from LanternNoir >>

It got to a point where I was actively angry.  Like "do you not see what jerks you're being?" coupled with "dangit all we've been at this story for 3 months and you're going to derail it now because you THINK you can just waltz into the Imperial City (which only one of you had ever been to) and get all those answers (despite the fact that you scammed the royal army with a fake convergence crystal and that said army company is probably hunting you now?)"  I was like "why are you all taking a crap on my story line?" 

 You kind of said it yourself. For whatever reason your players just weren't working with what you wanted. People can call that railroading because it is your story and your plan and the players aren't going along with it. Sometimes there are things you think are obvious but the players just didn't get it. Sometimes they get tired of whatever is going on and want to do something different. It really is just how people are. You getting upset about them messing with your grand plan is kind of a flag. 

Every good GM works hard I'm not denying that. But you have to accept that players will not always do what you want them to.

You bring up Critical Role as being railroady but I think what it is is that the players are always willing to pick up what the GM is putting down. They are also good about taking campaign breaks. This is where you have the players GM and run one-shots or the players play something other than D&D.

Quote from Wysperra >>

Quote from LanternNoir >>

It got to a point where I was actively angry.  Like "do you not see what jerks you're being?" coupled with "dangit all we've been at this story for 3 months and you're going to derail it now because you THINK you can just waltz into the Imperial City (which only one of you had ever been to) and get all those answers (despite the fact that you scammed the royal army with a fake convergence crystal and that said army company is probably hunting you now?)"  I was like "why are you all taking a crap on my story line?" 

 You kind of said it yourself. For whatever reason your players just weren't working with what you wanted. People can call that railroading because it is your story and your plan and the players aren't going along with it. Sometimes there are things you think are obvious but the players just didn't get it. Sometimes they get tired of whatever is going on and want to do something different. It really is just how people are. You getting upset about them messing with your grand plan is kind of a flag. 

 

I see where you're coming and I see what you're saying and where you're getting it from.

Some of my frustration, yes, is from "The Plan" being disrupted.  It's a bit of a running gag at the table that things were supposed to happen but then we'd have an hour long RP session about how to dispose of a body in a way that didn't lead to more drama later.  So my "vision" of the game going A to B to C got turned into A to Q to Z to little b to J then to B..."  So yeah frustrating.

But also part of my frustration was I know from the players assuming options that were never expressly put on the table.  The "I can figure this out on my own" by the party Artificer was a bit of a "you're an adventuring tinkerer; this guy has done literally nothing for years but work on this problem; you are not going to reach the same results as he is".  It was not so much that they upset the plan as it was "you're not being logical".  That also goes with my own personal baggage of "stop dismissing my expertise; this is something I've done for decades and you think you're able to master it in a few weeks" and by this I don't mean DMing I mean professional activities.  

At the same time I know that Molly, the player, has been the personal target of "you can't do this, shut up while I explain it to you" professionally and that was triggering for her.

So it wasn't really about "the plan" as it was player assumptions, I think.  "We can just go get this information from the empire" which, sure, they COULD have.  In fact, part of me was ready to start them down that road.  If we had agreed that they wanted to close this pathway off, they could absolutely have TRIED to go see who in the Imperial City would explain this, or let them experiment, etc etc.  Logically, based on the party actions, they were are more likely to end up in Jail than in a University Laboratory.  And I could see that.

Which, I could also have just said "screw it, they don't like this NPC", I'll toss one they like at them somewhere else.  It could have worked but I wasn't sure that was what the party wanted, really.  Did they really want to spend a session or two trying not to get nabbed by the very army they had lied to and stolen from?  Maybe? 

All fair points and I appreciate the push back; it makes me think harder about where I was.