Dungeon Court Cases Pleases!
Added 2021-10-18 12:15:29 +0000 UTCHelloooo NADDPOLES. Jake here seeking to right the wrongs committed at your table. Please comment with a (brief, I BEG) description of the event and I will personally deliver your case to The Highest Crit in The Land.
Yours in humility,
Jake
Comments
May it please the court, specifically the wise justice Murphy and venerable brooklynite bailiff Jake. I am a DM and I humbly request your divine judgement. My players recently returned from the abyss and our cleric lost his goddess’s favor after completing a quest for vampiric Dua Lipa resulting in the minotaur fighter becoming a creature of the night. The cleric’s casting was taken away and prayers were left on read. In an attempt to regain favor while also caring for their bloodthirsty minotaur they came across a greater soul devouring demon. His cause now just, I was waiting for the cleric to cast a spell to return their power. However the breakup from his deity led them to attempt this fight without magic. The power reawakened as the fight became desperate and a TPK felt imminent, however the cleric was killed and another pc offered their true name in exchange for renewed life. Having proven themselves it was granted though the minotaur enraged at the pain inflicted attacked the demon and the demon plane shifted to the abyss with the cleric in tow. Is this fate worse than death justified? Should I have provided other ways for the cleric to regain their power, or do the players deserve death, does the cleric deserve the fate as a result of his party’s actions? I graciously request your wisdom in this matter.
Pedro Gomez
2021-10-29 16:02:25 +0000 UTCTo the honorable Supreme Crit Justices and Mighty bailiff. I’m a DM for a relatively long running game with my friends and husband. My husband loves playing bits but sometimes that get him and the party into tense (but never outright dangerous) situations. A recent session was very tense, the long and short of it being that it dealt with discrimination against owlfolk and solving the murder of a mousefolk that was being blamed on an owl. When talking about the game I called the session a “murder mystery” which was my first mistake. My husband took this to mean a “Golden Girls” style Clue game with a high camp factor, and framed the character accordingly. My husband decided that his character had misheard “this is our last resort” and was going to treat the whole thing like they were at a Disney resort and vacation (including Hawaiian shirt, Fannypack, and goofy dog hat). I didn’t mind that and thought it would add some laughs to lighten up the overall mood. They other player got a good kick out of it- but then my husband tried to make jokes to a gruff bouncer. This guy essentially said “get lost, and don’t start any trouble”. They went into a bar as part of the investigation and met a few more gruff bouncers and my husband started pushing their buttons, I tried to make it clear that these nameless mean guys would not be able to take a joke with about three variations of “stop/get lost/just go to the bar” and still the pushing persisted. So I had the bouncer make a big deal to up the tension and had the other character get the insight that if they drew any more unwanted attention this area would no longer be viable because the mousefolk were already suspicious of bigfolk. For the rest of the game my husband was completely disconnected. Wouldn’t talk, when given scenes said one or two words. I had to pause the session (easy since the other player was on zoom) to address it. He basically said “I thought this was going to be Clue, not SVU” and felt stupid with the character choices he had made for this session. I felt pretty gutted and brainstormed ways to help him feel more engaged, saying it wasn’t the bit but what characters he was pushing that was the problem. He didn’t have fun basically the rest of the night which in turn made me have a pretty bad time as well. I never like the feeling of players straight up not having fun. I want to make some kind of visual “bit barometer” or “ shenanigan scale” so that players can have fun but also show when a bit is flying too close to the sun. Am I pushing my players too hard? I humbly turn the case into your hands.
Logan
2021-10-27 13:22:15 +0000 UTC
