I was GM'ing this game. The premise was that the goddesses created the world as this perfectly idyllic place -- an absolute utopia that I frequently compared to Mayberry RFD -- until the shit hit the fan. An ancient evil awakened and turned it into an absolute post-apocalyptic wasteland. Except for the single most populous city which the goddesses managed to shield from the corrupting influence of the ancient evil (before themselves succumbing to the corrupting influence). (A few fortunate pockets here and there also escaped the corruption.)
The PCs were the most murder-hobo of murder hobos. There was a town of halflings who continued their happy lives from before the calamity by day but turned into demons by night, not remembering anything come morning. The party marched them all (children included) into the schoolhouse, barricaded them in, and set fire to it. When they ran across a few dwarves who had retained their sanity, they robbed them blind. In the one city which was fully shielded from the ancient evil, they fireballed a procession of a dozen or so devout monks to take out one cultist hiding among them. That all just to name a few of their heinous crimes.
Of course, in response to all of this, the central city put out arrest warrants on the party. They were going to be dragged into court and hung out to dry whether they liked it or not. I had a whole court scene planned.
But it never happened.
They sneaked into town, publicly executed the mayor and the sheriff, and installed the local crime boss as the new mayor.
I'm sure you don't need to be told, but for those who are reading and need to hear it: the most powerful and healthy thing a GM can do is say no. The GM gets to arbitrate the tone of the game and setting, and healthy boundaries are conducive to both fun and creativity.
Actually OP handled it pretty well, at least in the end . PC face consequences for their actions (a trial with the risk of being hung) and end up having to act to solve the problem. It's somehow created more game opportunities.
Jfc, that group goes hard
Was it fun for you to GM that game?
Short answer: yes.
I was definitely looking to do a game that was basically as far from "railroad" as possible. And Dungeon World (the system in which we were playing) definitely encourages that sort of way of playing. (Though to be fair, we weren't doing Dungeon World quite how it was supposed to be played. There was player churn at the beginning of the campaign, so trying to ) It definitely ended up being more "comedy" than I anticipated, but the players loved it and I got some great stories out of that game. (Well, mostly the one story I just told, but yeah.)
One of my favourite lines from the internet I've enjoyed recently ....
"If you don't fuck around .... how are you ever going to find out?"
Putting a "random" encounter that didn't exist five minutes earlier in the path of your players, knowing it will be a TPK, is the DM version of murder hobo-ing. You're ignoring the logic of the game and the feelings of the other players so you can have fun killing things. You're not fixing the problem, you're becoming part of it.
i don't see the issue, in theory. if players have chosen to live by the sword, the dm is meeting them on their level by allowing them to die by the sword.
and you never know, maybe it's an op party that could make it a close match. maybe the players had warnings and brought the god's wrath on their heads anyway.
as with all things, there are contexts where it is appropriate and contexts where it is a wild overreaction. but this is a meme comm, not a nuance factory.
Then the meme doesn't make sense. The DM doesn't look like they're having fun, they look spiteful. If the DM's actions aren't spiteful, the meme is poorly made.
"They hated him because he told them the truth"
I agree, there are tons of different approaches a DM should take instead of just killing their party for no reason.
The main one would be to have a discussion with their players about what kind of campaign they want to run, so that everyone is on the same page.
Everyone at the table has the right to have fun, players and DM alike. But it should be a team effort.
I never get more hate than when I say "hey, this toxic DM behaviour is bad and you shouldn't do it." This time, it's "responding to violent PCs with an unreasonably powerful NPC out of spite just reinforces a player vs DM mentality."
See also "the illusion of choice isn't a brilliant trick, it just removes player agency" and "if one person's idea of fun doesn't match the rest of the group, remove that person, even if that person is you."
It's called teaching a lesson. Murder hobos do not respect the game. By giving them this encounter, they will get down from their high horses learning that sometimes things are not what they look like and they should be more careful and smart about what they're doing.
That's not the lesson they'll learn. The problem is that they don't care about the game as a living story, but as a game they can win through violence. Using this encounter will just tell them that the DM can cheat to win.
To quote the show Sharpe: "Flogging teaches a soldier only one lesson. How to turn his back."
Bahamut isn't going to kill them unless they force him to, and even then one of those "canaries" will have ressurections prepared specifically for that contingency. Bahamut is going to force them to atone, and stop getting the attention of literal gods.
