TFBTDMS - Is it ok if the players want to give up?

0:14 hello everyone it is me l m Viking I am here with another one of my musings type videos that um uh I always plan on doing more of these um I have a rant that's growing uh in my brains maybe there'll be another uh old Viking rant coming sometime soon but this was one that uh it started growing from like the last time I played D and D with my group and then it really got driven home we played kak cthulu uh this weekend I ran that so just a little background so you can kind of know where I'm at as far as this entire story so you can kind of grasp uh what I'm trying to get at here so the D and D campaign that I'm involved in um it's about a couple years old now um the way our group works is that one person takes over runs a campaign until that goes to its end and then another person then creates a campaign and and so on and so forth and so this campaign like I said uh we've been running it for it's been a couple years a little bit longer if I I should probably take better notes we use you can maybe read this because of the light we use our our own rule set um this is Ed and D as you can say this is the Players guide version 1.0 honestly we've gone through probably 60 50 versions of these rules that we write up ourselves um we're actually most likely

1:44 going to do a rewrite again uh after this campaign is over uh and then you know is it's it's in a way it's a living rule set it's a play testing uh every campaign is play testing it in some way shape or form um that being said we have played actual rules uh from time to time we've played you know we've played every edition of D and D that ever existed um we've played uh you know Pathfinder um uh oh I mean I mean just Rune Quest I'm just trying to think of I'm trying to think of the fantasy ones that we've played uh Rune Quest Warhammer um no just what does it matter we've played a lot of rule sets anyway so my character uh it had been a long time since I played a straight fighter and so in this campaign I made the most dwarfish the dwarfish dwarf that ever was a fighter uh I made the classic grumpy Angry Dwarf my dogs are getting antsy so I apologize if you hear them here in a little bit um uh his name is Odin forgehammer of Clan forgehammer and and and the the the the lore of the world is that there is this uh crushing giant Empire that has its thumb on everyone and in a lot of cases the dwarves were very very uh independent and did not

3:18 want to have anything to do with the humans uh but the humans became so powerful that there was Wars and eventually a lot of the Dwarven Clans bent the knee and became subservient to the Empire Odin forgehammer did his clan did not as far as he he knows he is the last remaining member of of Clan forgehammer and and he has made it his job or his basically his life's goal to see the end of the empire in his lifetime he's very grouchy um he lost an eye uh in in you know pre you know our our campaigning he lost an eye in in a battle with the Empire when his plan was wiped out um he sworn Vengeance blah blah blah you know pretty standard stuff uh as they say boiler plate level things uh but it's been fun uh playing this uh the of course there's an elf Mage because of course there's an elf Mage um that has become friends with Odin uh Devin uh played by my friend Jason um there's a uh very big um LoveHate uh kind of relationship you know grudgingly Odin will admit that he cares about him and considers him a brother brother but you know he's he's constantly very angry and upset about most things um just standard it's very much a uh gimly legal loss type thing you know it's like sometimes hey you go back to the tropes because the tropes work one of the great things was that uh Devin got some spell

4:50 that allowed him to animate his own hand if he cut it off uh and um uh and then basically have like a thing you know Adam's family thing that could do things for him and then so we arranged for a regeneration spell to be cast on him uh but uh Odin deliciously volunteered uh uh to cut his hand off for him uh that was a wonderful moment in in the uh in the campaign but regardless um we uh uh we've gone on and now uh Odin I believe is 10th or 11th level and we're at the end um there's like basically there's a story line where we are going to have a chance to basically attack and possibly kill the emperor very very uh uh Return of the Jedi esque a small band of of willing adventurers uh who are willing to do um the the the dirty work while uh you know there's a there's an there's an assault done by the uh the actual like armies uh on on the last empire stronghold type of thing so the last time we played um I I find myself interested in what's going on in the game I like I like the interplay or whatever like we had a sailing and we had to fight some sea monster kind of thing and uh we ran into some Pirates and what have you um but

6:22 one of the things that I realized was like as we had a battle with some Giants because we were crossing over some mountains um at no point did I ever feel Odin was in danger um I mean he he's he's he's basically uh a killing machine at this point um I mean I guess theoretically if like 20 Giants jumped him they could probably kill him or anything but he was holding his own against like three Giants um and just handling them just fine uh and I know some people might say well that's stupid he the giant should be able to but I mean like his armor class is super high he's got a bunch of abilities bunch of magic weapons you know plus we have a cleric you know that can heal him if something really bad happens but um I can't remember the last time he was actually uh you know knocked down like like to negative hit points it's been a long long time since that has happened and something clicked in my brain where you go back to original DND and they talked about how when you got to ninth level uh you your adventure retires and like forms a stronghold and and uh basically uh becomes you know like an NPC sort of in a situation where then you start another character who like might live in that stronghold uh that that person has and you they get followers and whatever and and you kind of go into a world where now you're more of a a magistrate if you will instead of uh an actual adventure

7:54 and I realized that like me realizing that Odin was probably very bored um fighting these Giants I mean just going through the motions of swinging his Warhammer and and and clubbing these things to death and um you know while he saw the need to destroy them because they were evil and they were like killing patrols and things like that like there was no joy in it anymore I mean I can remember like when he was like third level and he was in the middle of a giant Goblin fight and and I I described it you you saw Odin just had this giant smile on his face his blood was spraying everywhere and as he was like killing Goblin after Goblin and he was just like cackling with Glee um but Odin in my mind just isn't there anymore he's he's he's done enough he's he's writed so many wrongs he needs to be done he needs to be done and there's been several times in the campaign where there has been situations where and Odin is not good he is like true neutral his his goal he is single-mindedly on the path of like the Empire must be destroyed and Clan Forge Hammer must be restarted that is all he wants that's all he wants to do if he can achieve those two things he can die happy and there's been several times when there has been something that we needed to do for the the greater good type of thing where it's like oh but these these Farmers over here they they they need help because of whatever werewolves or

9:26 something and repeatedly in that moment Odin was like no I I I don't want to do this I don't care um you know maybe they shouldn't have made a pasture you're a werewolf Den uh you know it's it's not my problem it's nothing I need to be worried about I don't want to deal with this but eventually the party drags him along and he does the right thing that's been a common story but in many cases I believe that if he had ever convinced them of like saying you know we need to just not do this we need to stay focused on the bigger goal he would have been fine no black marks on his soul about it he would been completely fine uh with the process and but we never did that and and then so now you kind of go into this thing like do adventurers ever kind of give up which is like the the whole point of this is it okay for the players to give up and just say we're done and then strangely enough this weekend I was running a colak cthulu adventure um uh it is um we it was kind of last minute I didn't we we have normally we just do one shots for kak cthulu because your players don't really survive that much but I I mentioned this in a few videos um but we're we have recurring characters now where we have um players that uh they have the same characters they're all part of this

10:57 miskatonic astronomers Guild and occasionally they go out and investigate something weird something happens like whether it's like uh one of the people that's in charge of the the the guild asks them to look into something they stumble upon some clue and they go and then after they go insane or get hurt or whatever they return they they go through a a convalescing period where they get fine and then they're and then the next time we run an adventure um they they go out and do it again and and yes they are slowly but surely because one one of the rules in in in cthulu is that like as you gain insight into the world of uh uh the the the bigger world the cthulu Mythos if you will like you slowly but surely lose your sanity and it never comes back because you've just seen things you shouldn't have seen um but anyway the whole point of this is that I ran a relatively quick Adventure um I I apologize a I'm trying to remember the name of it but it was it's it's in the um uh uh like the scenario book from chaosium um doors to Darkness I Believe It's called it's there are like five easier Adventures things that can be run in one evening and the whole premise behind uh the the adventure is that one person who has f is who is friends with uh just this MPC gets a letter from them that says they are being held captive in an asylum

12:28 and they need to be saved um and when they travel to that Asylum they start to find out that there's something really really Sinister going on in the background and then they start to find out that like um something big and immense and huge is living within the confines of the Asylum um that is driving everybody even more crazy and it's feeding off those negative uh feelings and I I'm trying to stay relatively spoiler-free so um players are having a good time and we were running this because uh the person that normally would run our D and D campaign uh wasn't able to make it that night so we just kind of slap dashed this together and it was a scenario that I written read a few times I had no problems in running it and uh as they kind of dove into the mystery bad things start as as happens in cthul bad things started happening to them and the people people around them uh and um one of the characters this uh student by the name of fern um she suffered massive bodily injuries uh from a car accident from being pushed on a flight of stairs um she was like spending time like she had to go to like the emergency room like twice uh in the campaign and plus the people were like starting like everybody El and everybody was starting to lose their mind again you know like because they're facing this and what happened was is that

13:58 basically Bally they found out that they basically had a limited amount of time that they had to be able to save this guy's friend and all of them had this moment where they were sitting at the table three players and they just said we can't do this it's like you know Fern is like nearly dead like she was down to like one hit point um both the other players were on the edge of losing their mind like like literally like they were you know in you know mechanically wise if either of them lost a point of sanity they would go mad um but you know playerwise it's like they could feel cuz they had they had definitely gone insane before and and and had been committed before like the players the characters even knew that like they could feel that old anxieties and those old fears coming coming to grips and and all of them basically agreed like we and and like one of the um characters actually had like a a friend that they brought with them who is their limo driver um he was a very rich antiquarian type of character um that person got killed and so he had a friend died and all of them just said we can't do this I mean it's like we aren't strong enough uh or powerful enough at this point to do anything to to to to save this guy and they all just agreed they were going to get into um they were GNA like basically catch a train and and head back to Arkham and and they just

15:29 and they were like that's fine and and and and all of them lost some permanent sanity because they knew they had abandoned somebody to die but I kind of commended them for it like they all just basically said if we go back and do this it's a really good chance that Fern's gonna die because and and and we're going to lose our minds so we're just it's horrible um but we need to we need to retreat we need to gather our martial our forces or whatever get better and then we can go back maybe maybe in the future and um and solve something and and so yeah we may revisit uh that that scenario again but I guess it was one of those things where it's like I never thought I'd have a situation where the players would just give up right but in this situation it was completely 100% normal and honest and true and actually kind of cool um to just give up and just say we're not going to do this and we're GNA go away and um I guess it was just one of those things where I wanted to make sure I commented on it and I I wanted to make sure that I I I said I think in this situation it it made sense and I've never experienced that before you know it just in in all my years of uh of role playing games and and doing all this stuff I've never had um that kind of a uh situation where those things happen so um there you go uh it's just it's kind of like a story

16:59 time kind of amusing if you will uh but um I guess I'd love to hear from you guys out there if if uh uh if any of you ever experienced a role playing game where you the players just said we're out we're done we're not going to do this you know and and left um if so how did it affect the campaign uh how did it affect uh the the adventure or the players or the or the referee running it and um I guess I'd love to hear that story so so there you go uh thanks for listening to me kind of blather on about this uh until next time like I'm trying to do one of these videos a week maybe more if if if the mood suits me um so uh take care of yourself uh and until next time uh this is me beond backing