cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/41193567
All those people coming into town with the same facial scars are not members of a cult after some kind of initiation ritual like they guessed. It’s actually one person. A doppelganger. And they got those scars during a battle with the party several sessions back.
The extremely attractive and benevolent socialite with seemingly limitless wealth from mysterious sources that they are going on fetch quests for (which is about 60% of thr campaign) is actually a shapechanged amethyst dragon who is plotting an ascension ritual and is the big bad foe the campaign.
Also the seemingly benevolent order of monks are in actuality a cult for a far realm eldritch entity (a fact that only the highest ranking 5 members actually know), and the tattoo of a third eye all the acolytes get will actually anchor that entity to the world so it can come through and try to take over… but that’s next campaign.
Early on in their first game, my players suffered a T.P.K.
A squadron of horrible die rolls killed all three party members in their first battle.
I’m talking skeletons rolling nat 20s against level 3 characters who kept rolling twos and threes for the entire battle.
But they didn’t die.
Instead, they awoke to find themselves in front of the BBEG who enslaved them with a cursed crest and then sent them out to scour the world for a specific list of objects where they were contractually bound to be released once they delivered them all.
This effectively let me railroad the campaign just enough to get the party started.
(This is what I would be saying if I had realized that I could do this immediately instead of staring slackjawed in disbelief as 30 minutes into a well-planned campaign, every single party member died and then accused me of being too hard of a GM and… yeah.)
If sticking to the outcome of an extremely unlikely series of die roles is being too hard, your players are playing the wrong game.
It would have been pretty disheartening to me if that was how my first ever session went. When I started off DMing my current group 3/4 players were new to the game and I sorta made up the combat stats and rerolled some crits that would have instantly knocked a character out.
Now I’m a more strict but when they ran into the bbeg and decided to knock on their door (with a bad disguise and led by the experienced player lol) after being told not to come back. I decided not to be too hard on the players and now they aren’t really scared of the bbeg.
The reason for the name of their starter city, Shole
Tap for spoiler
Shithole
The druids of the world are creating a new god, and it’s not going to be happy about the beginning stages of the industrial revolution.
