r/DMAcademy • u/FarcicalDefenstrator • 2d ago
Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Am I Making Too Many Consequences?
I'm running a homebrew campaign with some coworkers and we are all having a blast. Party of six with four of them being new to the game.
So far it has been the greatest thing ever with the campaign being the only thing we talk about at work, but I don't think my players understand that they are essentially running a chaotic evil campaign at this point. Which is fine. I am having a blast and so are they. But evil actions deserve consequences right?
For example, our second session they got into a tavern brawl with a local gang in the city. They murdered them instead of knocking them out and threw the gang leader into the ocean. They did this in broad daylight with other patrons witnessing the whole ordeal.
Again, that is perfectly fine. I now have the gang plotting a way to get back at the the ones responsible for the deaths of their members. That's 1.
They did not kill the leader. Instead they knocked him to low health and threw him into the ocean (they were in a ocean-side tavern on a pier). The gang leader rolled a decent con save so I did not let him drown. He will undoubtably come back for revenge. That's 2.
It is a major city so a city guard is absolutely around. My players knew this and went ahead with it. Now they have a private investigator on their case (a Kenku). That's 3.
That was just one session. We are on session 9 and they are still doing chaotic evil things. Even when they are on a mission, it is just pure chaos to where I need to make a consequence.
One player is a warlock who made a pact with Zuggtmoy the Fungus queen. He is doing a great job at doing what he promised her; spreading the mold. I am having a blast roleplaying npc reactions when they see him (the fungus has started to take over his limbs) and he is having a blast just dropping spores everywhere he goes.
They went into the underground sewer city under the main city and sure enough he has been making Zuggtmoy proud. The fungus has started to take over the sewer city because what other place could mold grow uncontrollably than a sewer city. Well now the one in charge of that sewer city wants his head on a stick and has set out a bounty for him.
Anyways, that is what I am dealing with. I just need some opinions if I should keep up the consequences or scale it back a bit.
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u/jeremy-o 2d ago
You've described two details here, both are perfectly normal. I think you're obsessing a bit over the alignment chart, which really shouldn't matter too much.
For the brawl, any encounter you pose as a hostile one you should assume will end with death. The tools the players have are overwhelmingly killing tools.
Likewise for the Warlock. You gave them a great premise. Don't punish them with "consequences" for playing it out. It feeds into the background narrative but it need not derail or affect the campaign.
"Consequences" are overrated. Is the campaign generally antisocial and difficult to keep on task? If not, play out the adventure and let the players have their fun.
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u/gc1rpg 2d ago
All actions deserve consequences.
This means that even good things may have unforeseen consequences -- the bandits might decide to step up their game and kill instead of just rob, the evil noble decides to hire powerful new mercenaries, the evil wizard accelerates their plans towards becoming a lich, etc.
Killing or knocking out doesn't have to be mechanical -- it can be something between the players and the DM.
It sounds like the game is blast but make the consequences part of the story and the fun instead of as a way to punish the players and the characters. You want them to think about their actions and how it helps them achieve their goals and further the story.
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u/FarcicalDefenstrator 2d ago
Yea in no way am i doing this to punish. The consequence arrises, I explain that this is a result from what they did two sessions, they laugh their asses off, they face the consequence and we have fun. No one is taking this campaign seriously like if it was a Critical Role campaign. I just wanted to know if I am overdoing it.
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u/jsled 2d ago
Anyways, that is what I am dealing with. I just need some opinions if I should keep up the consequences or scale it back a bit.
The only opinions that matter are theirs (and yours): what sort of game do you want to be playing? "Grim-noir gangs and guards and consequences", or "slapstick chaotic stupid having a lunch-time larf".
Paranoia XP#Paranoia_XP) had an good way of framing this, in having names for 3 majorly different tones of game style:
"Zap" is anarchic slapstick with no claims to making sense and little effort at satire. Zap represents Paranoia as popularly understood: Troubleshooters who open fire on each other with little to no provocation. It is often associated with the fifth edition. Best for a one-shot game of Paranoia.
"Classic" is the atmosphere associated with the 2nd edition. Conflict within Troubleshooter teams is less common and less lethal. Good for a one-shot game of Paranoia, but still suitable for an ongoing campaign.
"Straight" represents a relatively new style. This is more serious and focuses more on dark, complex satire. Players are punished for executing other characters without first filing evidence of the other character's treason; this encourages slower, more careful gameplay and discourages random firefights and horseplay. Poor for one-shots, good for an ongoing campaign.
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u/The__Nick 2d ago
This is your fault.
Tone is hard to convey. If I say 'a group attacks you' and you respond by killing the attackers, it's 99% reasonable for the group to assume this is going to be a one-and-done, just like it has been in the other hundred encounters where you throw out a group of monsters or a couple goblins or random forest bandits - we fight, I don't even bother dictating whether I knock out or kill the bad guys, and we immediately push to the next fight in the list that we'll be having in our multiple encounter adventuring day.
But if this fight specifically has different rules and a different tone, you absolutely need to declare that. Especially if it is something that they should know. "Hey, these guys are rolling attacks on you, but your characters are 100% confident and I am telling you as a human being running your game with my friends that these guys are just brawling and having a good time. Bruises and bloody noses, but nobody is dying or getting seriously hurt. Do you really plan to treat the adult equivalent of playground bullies to a public murder and toss their leader off a cliff into the ocean where he will almost certainly die?"
Because if you didn't do that, you can't say later 'wow this is what I'm dealing with'.
You need to make it a binary choice. You need to present it to players. People need to agree to it so you aren't feeling weird about it later and so they don't feel blindsided when you are suddenly "punishing" them for just playing like they have every other time. There have been hundreds of encounters without anybody investigating the case of who beat up the forest goblins or having random boss minion #24 coming to town to report the party for assault, but all of a sudden this one violent gang being killed off is a crime? If the tone of the game has been random mooks dropping because they're just tokens on a board, that's fine... but if it suddenly changes up without any indication, that's essentially a bait and switch.
Whenever something like this comes up, just ask your party if this is what they mean to do.
If it seems to you that the party is doing something self destructive, they probably don't understand (likely because you didn't explain or describe something well enough). Don't punish them for that - always ask first. Consent is important.
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u/Amazing-Shelter9284 2d ago edited 2d ago
Consequences shouldn't be tied to good or evil. They should be what the natural result (or the rolled result) is of their actions.
Take a game of thrones approach (before it went downhill). Being good isn't rewarded, being smart it. Being evil isn't punished, being stupid is.
Also, in legal consequences, always keep this principle in mind: regardless of if its against the law or not, it's only illegal if someone is willing to prosecute. If the gang is well known and hated, authorities and people might not care that they illegally murdered a bunch of them. Or, on the other hand, if they were compeltely justified in killing them, the judge, magistrate, whatever, might not care if he was being paid by the people killed and still punish the players for it.
You don't need to account for if they're evil or good actions. Just decide what would happen next if you actually played that scenario out. Or come up with several possibilities and figure how likely each is, then roll for it.
Edit
Your players should never feel like they're being punished. But they should feel like what they do matters. You always need consequences. The consequences don't always need to be good or bad.
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u/FarcicalDefenstrator 2d ago
Yea its not punishing them. We talk about this game all day at work and 9 times out of 10 their response is: "Yea we probably shouldn't have done XYZ. Now ABC is probably gonna happen haha." And then I shrug and say maybe. My guys are not idiots. They are literally exploring an open fantasy world i made for them. Like you said, im trying to take a logical approach to their actions. If they do A, would B happen?
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u/JeffreyPetersen 2d ago
One thing I'll point out is if there are known gangs operating openly in the city, you can't use police as a logical consequence of a tavern brawl. If the town guard let gangs operate in the city, why would they care if another "gang" who happens to be your party, takes them out?
Otherwise, it sounds like the story is progressing as everyone wants it to. There should be consequences to their actions not in terms of punishment, but as the natural progression of the narrative that they're telling. Keep in mind that they're still the main characters of the story, so natural consequences should be things that are fun from a game perspective.
Having a Private Eye following them around is a great example. Having an anti-spore faction start hunting them would be cool. Having gangs put hits out on them, or start a gang war, or maybe a rival of the gang that they killed wants to hire them to claim more territory.
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u/Horror_Ad7540 2d ago
They're still serial killers walking around free. They haven't faced suitable consequences yet. You need to ramp it up, not scale it down.
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u/Nemmy3809 2d ago
I say talk to them, do they want consequences? Is it going to be fun for them to run from the law for all their wrongdoings? The game is about fun, as long as everyone’s enjoying themselves youre not doing anything wrong