DM support group (for when the players derail the campaign)

Mostly just a joke post. But anyone can put their gripes about their players here.

Like my most recent session, I had a combat encounter ready to go, figured it would at least last the whole session and at worst a couple of sessions. But noooo, the ranger who could speak goblin decided to bluff their way through the whole goblin camp and convinced the goblins that the party were not even there. Ending the session in 30 minutes and leaving me without any ideas as to how to move forward. Both love and hate my players 🤣🤣🤣

Oh, I 100% just had that happen in my campaign. I had a whole long-term idea for a mid/high level ghost who would become an ongoing midlevel villain. I wanted her to become essentially a dishonest information broker, who could provide essential information that they needed... if they could find a way to either parse the truth from the lies or get her to tell them the truth.

It was going to be a whole thing. I pulled a CR 9 stat block just so that my group of three level-4 players couldn't possibly just attack her and deal with the bad guy that way. But of course that's exactly what they decided to do. So I made sure an NPC gave them a spirit circle so they could retreat once the battle started going badly. But thanks to some very clever roleplaying and a bunch of amazing rolls (they opened with 24 points of damage on the barbarian's first attack), they managed to down her.

So much for that entire quest line.

Oh, man, there was tons of lore in this prison my players were going to break into but they went into two rooms and walked right back out with almost NOTHING. Additionally, they almost didn't even break into the jail after saying they were going to from the START OF THE CAMPAIGN.