Your 'Wait I wasn't planning that...' Moment
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Staff doesn't always know what they're doing.
Staff doesn't always ... plan for things.We don't keep things on rails, much as it might look like we are.
And when you're staffing on a team, sometimes the right hand doesn't talk to the left.What are the moments where things went wildly off the rails? In a good way? In a bad way? In a hilarious way?
For my SGM players:
Pagan shooting at that statue was unplanned. I think it threw @Paradox's plans off the rails. I'm not sure how far off. He didn't tell me.
In the end, it fucked up my own plot. I was the ruination of my own plot, as Staff. I can't say I've ever done that. I had to scramble to plan out something new for a contingency plan.
It's not that Paradox and I don't plan with each other, but we're more 'meet once a week to compare notes' than keep each other on the same page at all times (this way we can play in each other's scenes).
So yes, my own PC's actions set off a chain of events that fucked up my own plot.
Has anyone ever done the same?
Have you ever placed something in a scene that PCs picked up on that set off a chain of events that ruined the plot in the long-term? Because I've absolutely done that, too. (Hello, well. I'm never putting a goddamn well in a scene as flavor again lemme tell you what.)
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There was a baddie at a big gala scene. I was playing an agent. Biiig gala, super fancy. I always carried the tranquilizer gun our agents were supposed to carry. I shot the guy. Dead to right, he was our boogey man. Bless staff and their armored ice cream truck the plowed into the middle of this gala to try and get their guy. They snagged some other pc’s in the process too but I don’t think they saved their bad guy. Staff ran with it all. I felt bad, realized I probably shouldn’t have done that years later, it gets reminisced about by others. That armored ice cream truck plowing through a police gala.
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My entire life.. oh wait.. sorry, you meant IC. Oh sorry. Yeah.
I once (a million years ago when I would still ST) had this huge arc of small little plants. I ran the first one. Everything was fine. I got over confident at my awesomeness and ran the second one. A player managed to figure out what my big bad was (and meant knew the way to kill it). The other PC's thought this player was stupid insane and wrong. I neither encouraged nor discouraged. I secretly hoped mob mentality would win out (don't judge me). The player rolled a convince type roll, convinced them to at least try it.
BOOM.
Plot over. It was OOC hilarious. I think I might have laughed cried while I tried to come up with another avenue. I gave the player MAD props though. They figured it out. Stood their ground. Everything stayed IC, even the disagreements. It was a beautiful, beautiful mess.
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Two armies squared off in the Near Dreaming. The local militia outnumbered 3 to 1. The invading army demands a parley. The PCs are the local nobility.
One pulls out a gun and fires a shot in response.
Which goes through the opposing commander’s head.
This ended the invasion and about six months of my planning.
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I was running a shadowrun campaign, and they were rescuing some pods of technomancers. One of the players decided he would link to them all, rolled incredible rolls over and over so I let him. Now he lives with ten technomancers dropping into his head at various moments who I have control over...
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Shadowrun.
Trapped on the 23rd floor of a mega-corp tower.
Hacker screwed up and set off the alarms.
Mag-locked doors sealed off every exit.
We fought off the first wave of local security.
Heavily wounded, just trying to get out alive.
Pulled up schematics for the tower and found the elevator shaft went all the way to the top.
Checked and the elevator doors were not mag-locked!
Thought we caught a break till someone leaned in and looked up the shaft. Gunfire almost took off his head.
Security was repelling down the shaft from the roof.
We were screwed.
Then I had a "Bright idea!" (
️)
Closed the doors until there was only enough room for a finger to stick through, stuck my finger in, pointed up...FIREBALL!!!
Burning corpses of security agents caught in a confined space with a fireball-blast fell past us.
Their ammo and explosives start detonating as they fall.
We levitate up to the roof and steal their heli.
Ditched it in the river.
We drove away as the building burns like a Roman candle.The person who hired us to hack the database only wanted to make sure she got a promotion.
She was supposed to be a major player in several upcoming plots...
We destroyed her life.Ooopsie...
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Shadowrun.
My mage was kind of an idiot. All arcane knowledge, not much common sense.
The cyber-ninja in the party was not much better.
You pointed us at things you wanted dead.
We were not invited to the strategy meetings with the smart people.
...After almost dying to a nest of vampires ICLY we needed to figure out a way to kill them so the 4 players of the smart people got together ICly and planned out the next attack with the GM int he middle of my apartment's living room floor.
My bestie (who played the Ninja) and I sat at the apartment's kitchen island drinking whiskey shots trying to 1-up each other while playing "101 uses for a dead hooker" ICly. (Real drinks)
About 20 minutes in, we get bored and come up with a plan. We pass the GM a note explaining that while they have their meeting, we ICLY go to the store and buy a tarp and some fake vampire fangs. We put some camo makeup on the ninja's face, turn the tarp into a shredded looking hood and cape, then put the fangs in and spread catsup around his mouth then enact our plan.
The GM makes the rest of the party make checks. Unfortunately, they all pass the combat checks but no one passes the check to realize what is happening so the GM tells them that they see what must be an elder vampire fly up to the balcony window facing out over the bay and bang on the glass while snarling at them in the middle of the bright sunlight.
They all immediately grab their guns and start shooting and this is where the oopsie happens...
You see, normally our cyber-ninja was so freaking fast he could have used his reaction and agility to get out of the line of fire but what we didn't take into account was the fact that I was levitating him so he didn't get to go on his reaction... he could only be moved on my reaction.
What followed was 4 seconds of him trying hilariously to dodge a wall of machine-gun fire while held in place mid-air, blowing off one of his arms and taking him to the brink of death. By the time it was my turn to go and I could release the spell, he was pretty much a bloody stump missing one arm and a foot.
The new cyber-arm and replacement cyber leg came out of our cut of the bank.
Fortunately, we had a great doc wagon package or he would have been soooo dead.
