Expect the Unexpected
written by Donat P. Fevre
May 29th, 2007 · 3 Comments
I’m sure that any one of you who have DMed for any length of time have ended up in a situation where the players did something wholly unexpected. Perhaps you wanted the PCs to lay low in a city for a while, but the party Damage Monkey decided to not only start a war with the city guard, but manage to wipe out half of it. Or, conversely, you may have allowed the party to quest for something like the Necrotic Cradle (pg. 203 in Player’s Handbook II), and one of your players used its power to do something that totally screws up your long term plans for campaign.
And if you’re wondering, yes, both of those things happened in my Eberron campaign the weekend after last. 
So, I figure I may as well share some ideas of how to handle the situation.
Send Hoards of Enemies After the PCs
This could be a way to get your PCs to do what you want, especially if you want them to lay low. With an army searching for them, they would basically be forced to go into hiding. This is a great way to get them to meet up with NPCs in organizations such as the local thief’s or assasin’s guild. Or, in the the case of my campaign, the underground resistance.
However, if you have a Damage Monkey with at least Greater Cleave, you’d better have NPCs that are strong enough to stop the cleave. If not, they will all die in as few rounds as possible. Time for the next plan…
Working on the Railroad
Railroading. The worst possible thing you can do as a DM. However, in this situation, it might be just enough to get the PCs to a place where you can assess the situation a little better than before. Just railroad them right into a more low-key situation where all the players can have fun roleplaying, and while they’re distracted, reassess the situation.
In my case, I simply had agents of the underground resistance summon globes of darkness around the whole battlefield, then lead the PCs to an underground complex beneath the city. Thankfully, this happened in a way such that it didn’t seem so much like blatant railroading. However, once in the underground complex, some very good roleplaying occurred, and the players had a lot of fun while I was trying to figure out what to do next, since my plans had been completely thrown out the window.
However when you’re doing this kind of railroading, do try to not make it noticeable. If the players notice, this could tick them off. Unless they’re the kind of players that don’t mind the hand-holding. 
Morph Your Plans
If you end up in a situation where your plans for an adventure, or even the entire campaign, get completely screwed up by the players, all is not lost. You can still salvage your original plans, and still lead the players where you want them to eventually end up. Just take the plans that were screwed up by your players, and morph them into something that can be usable for the new situation that the players are in.
What I ended up doing was taking an assassin’s guild that I was going to have hunt down the PCs and having them be a part of the underground resistance. So instead being the enemy, they ended up becoming allies instead, which is a complete turnaround from what I originally intended. However, this still works, as there was an underground resistance to begin with, and the assassin’s guild was original only a minor deal. This new situation actually ended up putting more of a spotlight on the assassins, which can lead to much more interesting roleplay than my original ideas.
Adhoc DMing for the Win, Yo!
Whenever you plan an adventure, and the players screw it up, just adhoc. However, this doesn’t mean that you have to throw the adventure idea out the window. There will be a way, somehow, to still send the players on the adventure, whether it be throwing an army at the PCs, railroading (but only as last resort), or morphing your original ideas to still make it work.
So the next time a player sets a building on fire, grabs a couple guards, flies up above said burning building, and drops them into the flames in the name of a banned religion, don’t freak out. See if you somehow take this in a direction that still leads to whatever you have planned. And hey, it may turn out to be much more fun than your previous ideas. 
Now I’m sure that the ideas I listed above aren’t the only ways to deal with the unexpected. What other ways have you dealt with unexpected situations?
If you like this post, buy me an ale!Topics: D&D General
Well you guys have not yet screwed up my plans that badly as of yet (certainly not to the extent that Azriel did) but I’ve had to do some (all?) of those to varying degrees.
Now part of it is just natural progression rather than control or punishment: I told you from the beginning that in the Evil Campaign, you can of course do evil things to towns, but there would be consequences and guards.
The railroading was more of a joke, as it was literally NPC!Az running beside an actual railroad. Most of what I’ve done is morphing…usually, if you guys shut a door, a window opens.
I have no illusions that it’s not frustrating, but it can also keep DMing more interesting, because you have to start thinking on your feet almost as much as the PCs sometimes.
Also, as a PC, it’s important to know that what you do matters, and it makes victories sweeter. I remember once, magically ripping the heart out of a boss, ending the fight much faster than if she had made the save, totally pwning her into the ground. It was AWESOME. It’s the powerful feeling of magic, AND the magical feeling of *power.*
[...] Morph Your Dreams Now that you’re able to better remember your dreams, and perhaps even have a dream journal of sorts, you can now refer back to them for ideas that you can use in your next adventure or campaign. Some dreams may be very fitting for an adventure or an entire campaign, but others may not be right off. Those that may not necessarily fit could be morphed such that they do, similar to what I briefly touched upon in Expect the Unexpected. [...]
I’m a big fan of improvization. Whatever material I don’t use is not lost - I usually manage to modify it slightly and reuse it later.