Dicebreaker host and D&D Oxventure Dungeon Master Johnny Chiodini brings you the seven ways every DM will get derailed by their players -- and how to avoid it.
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7 Ways D&D Players Destroy Their DM's Plans
16 337 عدد المشاهدات 1.7 مليون
To celebrate the launch of new tabletop channel Dicebreaker, Oxventure DM Johnny Chiodini reveals the worst ways his best-laid plans have been derailed. Sorry Johnny! Enjoy, and subscribe to Dicebreaker: arpulse.info
@Johnny Terrance Cool! It took roughly 15 mins but it reallyworked!
Can we have a Part 2? I'd love to hear Johnny's thoughts on the skeletons saving the crew from the museum and the later adventure of repayment for it!
Eldrich blast.
How could some crazy prisoner possibly derail a prison guard scenario? I mean, just have the prisoner interrupt him mid-rant and poke in with his sidearm, cause a little bit of damage. Blood’s an excellent demotivator, don’t you think? Either that or just have him star slackjawed and, when it’s over, just have him say “You talk funny.” You don’t need to flesh a guy out all detailed, you just need to know what a guy in his position would *likely* do when this happened, ie. probably the above.
Me watching this as a player instead of a dm 👁👄👁 Edit: and a year later
The candy man existed Seriously All he did was sell us candy He’s now the main villain trying to over throw the ruling duke with his candy army and fire proof tent (thanks rent for rolling a NAT 20 on how little damage a fire ball would due to it.) Fun chaos
23:17 We weren't playing D&D when this happened, but my group essentially did the same thing during one of our games. We essentially created a plan to grease up a long corridor that led down a steep hill, straight into a thick metal door. The plan was initially meant to hold our attackers off until we could figure out something better, but it worked a little too well, and they ended up sliding down the corridor so fast they died from the impact. What started as an effort to stall an attack ended up becoming an automatic people masher.
Once the players lose the turn economy things get scary or when things start getting legendary actions and legendary resistances things get... fun
i can name one way instantly: creating a blackhole to a relm from using a bag of holding with other extra dimensional spaces in them
The greatest fun frequently comes with a healthy dose of DM anxiety 😅
I want a darn part two! This was great!
Seize the dungeon master: "Carpe D.M."
I wish there was a 2020 edition of this
My first time I DMed many things of those mentioned happened the one that puzzled me most was the door puzzle I so accurately prepared going but 0to find a shape hiding the form without being too difficult. The clue was supposed to be given all over the game before Tey arrived at the door. All npcs were singing either humming or playing a song related to the moon-blue moon, brain damage, moon shadow etc every npc was saying how important was the moon for the. Theoret they had to connect the dot and draw half moon. They didn't even consider the enormous circle with holes with dagger shape. They tried set it on fire, breaking it using magic... Hints were given. The wizard "Enough I pass under the door" (I really don't remember the spell used) and opened the door from the inside. I thought they were very clever... Hence my puzzle. I also learnt not to waste too much time on details. I am sill considering if dm again 😑
we were infiltrating a prison i was a sorcerer changeling i had changed into one of the prison guards that we killed i went up to meet with the boss and talked him to going to another room and we had bypassed the boss he had basically bypassed the entire thing with charisma need a key hey guard can you give us a key enemies in a room what are you doing the boss is furious
My first ever game was when we where searching for a man in a tavern, we went in and ignored the man and started playing poker so the dm had to make a poker game, long story short we got the taverns rightful owners back and melted a guy who cheated in poker.
Heheh mitosis lizard
Once, quite recently, my players started exploring the outskirts of a magical town, convinced that the teleportation system that kept them from leaving was important. ...It wasn't, but it gave me extra time to prepare at least
Just had my first session earlier this week. My character was the first to sustain damage by picking up a spider to make a joke, only to fail an animal handling check. Then we started hearing noise outside, and my character picked up on it. But rather than saying "hey what's that outside" he thought "hm I don't like this. Let's distract everyone else from the noise by being louder" so he hops on the tavern bar and starts performing (cuz he's a bard) until I failed a performance check and he fell off the bar. They finally hear the noise and all but one decide to break and climb through a window (we're wanted for destruction of public property now) after many failed perception checks, we FINALLY learn that the commotion is coming from a giant spider. Some of us went "not our business lol let's go" and others wanted to investigate. The session ended with the group druid casting a spell on herself just so she could flirt with the giant spider (which was so shocked by this, it literally stopped its murderous rage to search in horror for whatever tiny creature was saying these things to it) But in the middle of this horrifying confession of love, the tiefling in the group shot it through the eye and killed it, leaving the poor druid devastated and everyone else both awed and horrified. We found out after that we weren't meant to fight this monster at all
That’s a nice beard for 14 year old I wish I could have one
Probably one of my proudest derails was when the DM had this massive boss fight planned, and I managed to talk the boss out of the fight. Of course, next session, he had us “earn” the experience from that boss fight with a suped-up wereboar. So he flipped us all the middle finger for me beating the boss with a +1 to Charisma.
I'm literally watching this to derail my DM's game
I think my favourite part of the Sixty Who Serve moment here is that when the skeletons reveal they used orphans as mortar Luke, Jane, Andy and Mike all lose it laughing but Ellen just looks horrified.
Alfred Strangetide when the Oxventurers first meet him: Drinking heavily Oxventurers wherever they meet him again: No driving for you
Jokes on you i never plan anything
Please make more videos like this. It’s both hilarious and educational.
Derailed my dm because he didn’t know that I know a lot about Greek mythology. He had riddles he thought my party would never get and I didn’t even need any hints.
In a one shot, we were given a potion that would put something to sleep. We then ran into a dragon later and threw it in its mouth. All that was left was a few kobolds to clean up. A paladin with 29 strength and a few smites later, one room of very dead creatures.
me and my friends ses we are all dm's so we know how to ruin eachother's plans
Great advice for DMs to just not get attached to anything you have planned (or possibly even the rules of the game itself). Any scene, situation, plot point, or character you create may be turned on its head, thwarted instantly, or bypassed altogether, and when the wind is in the players' sails it's usually better to let them have fun with it, than to corral them or tell them they're not allowed to do something in the big fun fantasy magic world. The DM creates context and prompts that get the players going. Once they're going, just get out of their way, and do your best to have the world react interestingly.
Also, if you NEED them to find a certain clue for your story to work, you need to have that clue obtainable in multiple ways - like the mission stories in a Hitman level, you can pick up a piece of paper, overhear a conversation, find a file on the computer, or a date circled on a calendar, or blunder into the middle of it some other way. As the DM, once they've found some version of the clue, you just "delete" the other "instances". If you need players to figure something out, and you give them one path to it, they're going to go climb a mountain, cast charm person on a barkeep to get free drinks, make friends with a dolphin, and generally ANYTHING OTHER THAN follow the path to the clue you want them to find. When in doubt, just have an NPC tell them. That's what NPCs are for - they're supposed to LOOK LIKE they have their own lives and motivations, but their purpose as a game mechanic is to help or hinder the players.
The Prudence was so giddy and happy about orphans' mortar though! It's ever so adorable! And I just noticed that Jane's face got really confused and disappointed at Luke's solution in giving skeletons very specific orders...like her inner demon was really really liking forward to more chaos and destruction in the name of her fun and amusement...and divine(?) patron, yes, can't forget him(?)...nope
All the best D&D stories ive heard are moments when things go wrong in the best way.
I played a 5e campaign where the Dm allowed me to play as a minotaur. During a particular battle my friends bard, had crazy charisma, convinced me to throw our warrior into a group of npc baddies. DM asked for Floyds save roll to determine damage, his character was oafishly clumsy, like hurt hinself drawing his axe once, except this time and he Nat Crit. So flying through the air a-la human meat missile he decapitated two and landed om his feet a total badass. It became kbown as the Kaz-a-pult and we used it quite frequenty after that. Good fing times.
Johnny, that's not how grappled works in 5e... Grappled characters only have their speed reduced to zero. They still have both hands free to attack and cast with. The grappling character only uses one hand to grapple with and they still have one free to attack. Even a character with the grappler feat can at best only restrain someone, which still lets them cast. To stop a caster with grappling you'd need to cast zone of silence and then hold them in there. You don't need to play by every rule, but some like these ones can save you if your campaign is getting completely derailed.
Heck, that's not how animal friendship works either. It targets a single animal, plus one extra per spell level, and only charms them. That means they can't attack you until you harm them, and you have advantage on social interaction rolls with them to persuade, lie to, intimidate, etc. You don't get control over them. On top of that, animals with an intelligence under 4 aren't smart enough to understand verbal commands. You'd have to also cast speak with animals, which lets you understand the general impressions that make up an animal's thoughts, and, verbatim from the spell's description: "you might be able to persuade a beast to perform a *small favor* for you." Not quite aquaman.
Can someone explain the first one? "Be prepared to make several trips." How did that inspire that there would be a meeting? I don't even see the logic, they didn't just go for the red herring, they invented it!
My DM friend once summed it up by saying "Give them a door and they'll jump through the window"
i feel you bro.... its sometimes very hard....
"what is the mortar, is it orphans?"
Six gamers all white. Wow, I would feel so welcome at their table. Any reason why we do not see more POC in these gaming shows?
That was not even the players fault. That was entirely piss poor doing. 3am meet at docks, whar did you expect?
With the NPC's comment... we decided to make the remaining horse pulling our wagon into our deity and the group and the DM just ran with it. He's been a meme in our group ever since. Here's to you Elmer, our horse deity!
I had a sword as a piece of loot one of my players picked up. As a joke, because of RL stuff we had going on, I had INSANE levels of detail about what was on the sword. It was completely not meant to be anything besides a hilarious bit of vendor trash. My player assumed it was the most valuable and important sword in the world and brought it up constantly. I had to write bit parts for the sword history into every damn adventure forever, otherwise he'd ask about it. Putting something in made him hungry for more, but leaving it out made him assume he missed it and he'd spend a RL hour searching the room it "had to be in". He wrote a 200 page story about the sword once.
this the brings back memories that I don’t want to remember being a DM is pain
I REALLY want more videos with Johnny giving DM advice, especially on Homebrewing stories
Playing Tyranny of Dragons. (spoilers below) My players decided to follow the map in Frulam Mondath's quarters instead of going to Elturel. They managed to catch up to the wagons and, silly me, I thought, "Maybe they'll just trail the wagons from a distance." Oh no. They waited until the wagons made camp, snuck into Rezmir's tent while she was sleeping, stole her stuff and then booked it out of there like the fires of Tiamat were licking their feet. They just left Beregost for Baldur's Gate after some hastily crafted plot hooks, but they have the Black Dragon Mask before they're even supposed to know the masks exists and I'm still not certain they're not just going to take over the cult before this is over.
I love the small things of these channels, like the little jokes in the number cards e.g Papoose Almighty.
Luke: All Caps, GO TO THE DOCKS YOU IDIOTS! Mike: DON’T go to the docks!! Luke: Sorry, I will get there Johnny! Johnny: Case in point.
My friends and I just ruined our DMs campaign by creating a Gnome uprising
I'm the worst... I've done the most plans disruptive things ever. Let's see... I stole an alien battleship in stargate d20, I took over the kingdom we were trying to save in D&D one time... OH and I built a *CRUISE MISSILE* in pathfinder to deal with a giant fucking monster.
so now I have good ways to derail the DM's plans thank you
he said “with this stone” but he didn’t say anything about the mortar. i would have had them build it just out of stone and nothing else making it an absolutely terrible building.... and have it crush some children
one time as a player i caused a whole new plot point to be created out of a random event. the event was essentially that something had disappeared. so we were passing where a small village should have been but there wasn’t one so we looked around and found these stones with strange symbols on them. my character, a cleric, and the only magic user failed an arcana check to figure out what they were so i was like “i wonder what would happen if i used sacred flame on it” so i did that and we had to succeed on a save, i don’t remember what type of save, or get sucked into the stone. my character was the only one to pass. so the others get sent to a different plane and they have a long conversation with some demon chick about some plane wars before getting spit back out with no time having been passed. when they got back my character was like “mass hallucination?” jk, she was freaked out and apologetic. it took awhile for the others to forgive her
Our party needed to get from this side of the mountains to the other side. We huddled in a camp at the base of this side before stepping out on our crossing of the cold and obviously perilous heights. As a bit of flavour the GM threw in a Dwarven door carved into the side of the mountain where we camped. One of the party (who was absolutely not me) decided to knock loudly on the door, that we could not find a way open (cos it was just for flavour). The GM liked this so much that the door was opened, and he ad libbed the whole journey through the Dwarven tunnels to the other side of the mountain. Completely abandoning all of his prepaired stuff for us crossing the peaks. Another time, our party came upon a door that was obviously seriously trapped. There was a riddle or somthing that needed to be solved to open the door safely. One of the party (who was absolutely not me) did not have a high enough intelligence to participate in trying to solve the puzzle. He got bored and opened the door. The entire party got wiped out, and the GM had to ad lib a whole bunch of stuff involving us waking up battered and naked in a pit full of bodies, just to avoid us all having to re roll characters and start all over again On another occasion we were travelling through the 'Ways'. Walking across bridges between islands, floating above a whole lot of nothing. A nothing that went a long way down. As a set piece he attacked us with a winged demonic nasty. A big winged demonic nasty! But in a previous encounter, one of the pieces of loot was a single charge wand of change. Someone (who was absolutely not me) happened to have this wand. Rather than getting our rather low level arses royally kicked, someone (who was still absolutely not me) pulled out the wand and changed the epic winged nasty into a hobbit. The hobbit then plummeted into the abyssal depths of the ways. The GM was not happy. The moral of the story... Never let someone (who is absolutely not me) join your game.
Great stories. Despite wondrous and storied DMs and hard work planning, those times it goes wrong, by the seat of the pants or skin of the teeth, are always the most memorable.
One time the group was captured and taken to the nations capital. They we’re supposed to get sent there to kick off the rest of the main story, but The rouge in the group seduced the guards transporting them and was about to free the rest of the group and go awol. Luckily, there was a ninja watching the group as well and managed to recapture the rouge before things could get derailed to badly 😅. It was either that or have to re work all of the work I’ve done on the campaign for the last two months lol
1st campaign I'd ever been in, we had to go up against 2 giants. Our Dm did not expect us to convince one of the giants to help us kill the other, and had to go to plan b, which got us stuck in the fey wild. After that, my DM needed a break from the DnD system, and another player started her campaign.
My party literally skipped 3 years of travel, and defeated the big bad at lv 2....it was supposed to be an epic battle at around if 10 -12 we just kinda bulldozed it and managed to come out unharmed (somehow)
10:16 just started getting into DnD and we got onto an airship, and the DM was talking about the capitan, some of the crew, and where we were traveling past, and i happened to ask the captain the history of the ship to make some small talk and get a little roleplaying in cuz its a game for newbies, and the DM just went silent for a minute and just quietly said _"fuck"_ before making up some backstory on the spot while the rest of us were laughing from making the DM break character Another time a player spent over an HOUR deciding what train he wanted to get, it was, interesting to say the least
Airship theft
Had a player tell the NPCs of town that he and his group were spies and were there to free the town of a band the NPCs actually thought are heroes, but are actually evil monsters... I actually gave him an opportunity to rethink his statement and the entire table were telling him to shut up, but he said, no, he wanted to say that.... I physically crushed the entire day's planned mission, threw it across the room and had the day turn into a 2 hour chase out of town. Now this would have been slightly understandable if he wasn't used to being a spy... but they had been a group of spies since the start of the campaign, 6 months earlier....
Why do so many DMs have a problem saying "sort of"? Even the D &D quest with Stephen Colbert few years back had this problem.
My group had a strange pattern for destroying every city we entered back in my first campaign
You look good for 14.... I thought you'd be only 10.
Good video. Shows that (in a way) de-railing is actually desirable. It is most fun for players to feel that they have 'agency' and are themselves driving the narrative. The DM should design the setting and have an idea of a 'story'. How that story eventually unfolds though should be dictated by the players, their actions and the choices they make. This is the most fun for players and is the key to be being a good DM and running a fun adventure. Contrary to the vid description, you didn't avoid it, you went with it, exactly what a good DM does.
Never forget when Johnny gave the 30 lads all a name in preparation but no one asked
As a DM, I have a few tricks up my sleeve. At any time, I have no less than 5 fully built NPC backstories with names and families and the whole shebang that I can whip out and attach to any faceless NPC my players decide to randomly pull into the story. Second, no matter what I always have several combats planned that can be seamlessly inserted or removed from a dungeon/quest/scenario just incase the players manage to completely miss one or circumvent it by being clever. That isn't to say I always put a combat in front of them but if they are hankering for a fight and accidentally avoid one because they don't recognize it I can satiate them. Third, I always have a backup plan for if my players kill an NPC and I never put an NPC I can't live without in front of them. More than once my players have correctly surmised the identity of the BBEG and started the boss fight several sessions early. And finally, I just got really good at improvisation. I'll scatter plot hooks and evil NPCs everywhere like caltrops and whatever ones the players step on get used. It takes quite a bit more work tbh but you'd be surprised how easily a dank necromancer's dungeon can be turned into a evil Witch's tower of evil on the fly.
I am surprised no one thought to simply cast Detect Magic when looking for the rat, that is, if anyone had access to it (it's a common and useful spell that all classes with even minimal magic can access). It would have immediately revealed the rat was enchanted in some way.
As a guy who has been a DM for many years, I can't help but wonder why on earth you would plan a linear campaign... Being a DM is like improv storytelling. You might be trying to guide them in a certain direction, but you need to be prepared for whatever direction several people relying on dice to make decisions, are going to decide to go. It's not that they're stupid, it's that you're uncreative and can't adapt to the unpredictable of people role playing characters.
LIES YOU ARE AT LEAST 26
"used a whale to ram a ship" I got a flash of Dory from Finding Nemo for a second there...
I don't believe that you're only 14 😑
Should uhhhh jumping into a kraken’s mouth, killing it, and surviving count?
A way to avoid most of these: Come up with problems, not solutions. If your players solve the problem, good job, they’re playing the game! It doesn’t matter how they did it. If they don’t solve it and there’s no way they possibly would solve it, but they were Creative and it was reasonably a solution to everyone who didn’t know what the solution was... good job, they solved it! Adapt accordingly.
Old people hate me Young people hate me DMs hate me I should hide under an inconspicuous rock when we initiate the purge...
My DM set up a whole quest to kill a Leshen (monster from the Witcher 3) with quick mini side quests for us to earn money for the shopkeeper. The fucking monk. Decided to take a job for the local magistrate. All he had to do was give him a sponge bath. But NOOOOOO. He decided he wanted to punch him in the face and have the entire castle guard try to arrest him. So I (a ranger) had to assassinate the magistrate, get the monk arrested and thrown in prison (which he was never able to escape because the sole purpose of his character was “let’s punch everything”) and THEN continue on the quest. A five minute side quest turned into a three hour ordeal.
The most important thing about being DM is being able to think on the fly so whatever the party does, it always seems like it was meant to happen.
My DM tried to tell me that Charisma was a bad stat to dump into. Joke's on him! Between my absurd score and a perfect 20, we ended up with a dragon on call- as well as being given his whole friggin hoard. The DM was sooooo pissed! He had to rework the entire campaign to fit the dragon and our absurd wealth into it!
I just finished DMing for a group of freshman last night, and I had an epic boss battle planned and a whole storyline to the mission so the evil mastermind would be one nobody expected, but to get through to this, they had to pass through a dungeon. The first puzzle of the dungeon was as follows: "You step into the room beneath the temple, and you can see the frame of a door on the far side of the wall. However, there is no actual door, but a stone wall. The room is lined with skulls, bodies, and discarded weapons, and on each of the side walls is an indent. In one indent, there sits a skull, and you can feel air coming from this indent. The other concave has no skull, and no air. What are you thinking?" I thought this would be a relatively easy puzzle. All they had to do was place a skull in the other hole, and the door would open up. I had harder ones up ahead, but I figured this would be one of the first things they tried. It was not. They looked at this, and the entire party just...walked out. Like they didnt want to solve the puzzle. The next day they came back and I thought, "I'll help them along." So I removed the skull from the other hole, and mentioned that there was no longer an opening for air. I figured this would tip them off. It did not. So heres what they did do. Gorrosh the Goliath Paladin decided he wanted to try and break open the walls to the temple, thinking there was a hidden room. I took a look at the way I built the temple, and realized that, yes, breaking through the wall would actually lead to the boss room, but this was completely unintentional. So immediately I started trying to convince him otherwise. I has several NPCs comment on the poor structural stability of the building, and how it's a holy temple, so you shouldn't destroy it, and even the other party members said this was a bad idea. But he didnt care whatsoever, because Intelligence was his dump stat. So he said he swings his hammer at the wall, and I thought, "This is way to big for him to logically break through with his mediocre strength stat, he would have to roll a-" Nat 20. Needless to say, he busted a hole in the wall that lead to a 40 foot drop into the boss room, a cluster of angry NPCs and Party Members, and them skipping 90% of the side quest puzzles. I had so many fun puzzles written out, I spent so much time on all of them, and they got ruined by one 8 foot tall guy saying he wants to hit the wall.
First rule of LARP: name every NPC, and be ready for anyone to die.
"Is orphans, boss"
when you have a party member who can produce fire and one who doesnt have dark vision a lot of little things should fear the one who cant see
We killed the campaign boss during the prologue. 🤣 The DM was not expecting I would have changed him and the party would follow, he wasn't ready
Also, how the heck is "Merilwen's Meat Grinder" not already a t-shirt?
Honestly as far as the Oxventures go, I find the combat the least interesting part. I love all the ways they manage to avoid these big boss battles. Way more entertaining. I realize I'm probably in the minority though
“You don’t know it yet, but this is the greatest day of your life.”
The barbarian and the rogue (me) stole a pillar from a castle. The barbarian catered lunch for the whole castle while I snuck upstairs and snagged it with an empty bag of holding.
The spell Animal Frienship works on *BEASTS*. An Owlbear is a *Monstrosity*. Therefore, it's not affected by Animal Friendship. Unless, and this is the only exception I know of: The spell is cast by a Mark of Handling Human (From Eberron) that's 3rd level or above. Which have a Dragonmark feature that allows them to affect Monstrosities with the spells Animal Friendship and Speak with Animals. That said, it's a single word in the Owlbear's statblock that's fairly simple to overlook, *ESPECIALLY* when you're lowkey panicking that your party might be sidestepping this bossfight you've prepared. Edited: I paused the video, and Johnny realized his 'mistake' regarding the Owlbear's typing.
All D&D games are ruined by that one guy who insists on knowing the exact number he needs to roll to hit the monster he’s just surprisingly encountered. They refuse to roll until they know what they need, you spend 3 minutes figuring it out then they roll a fucking 2. Oh look, you missed, maybe in future roll first then if you roll like between like a 9 and a 14 we’ll check! Just think of the flow of the story for once.
I know this is late, but I messed up the DM’s plans by planeshifting the players to another plane. I messed up the roll and we ended up on the planet of the artificers home world where magic doesn’t exist and I ended up making a religion by accident which later ended up making me a God as they worshipped me. This is also where I learned about The Movie Life Of Brian
Being a DM is to expect the unexpected as the dice grants no mercy
"I really want to mash these orphans up, cause I think it'll be so funny"
we burned down the hand crafted villian's mansion with wild fire. aparently we where supposed to spend a good 6-8 sessions in there
I managed to win a hard fight with my first turn of attacking in a solo session
In my first campaign (which was home made by my dm) I deceived the BBEG and instead of having an epic end of campaign battle my tiefling rogue just falsely pledged his allegiance, then got behind it and I rolled a Nat 20 on an Assassinate, which took down the bad guy in like two seconds
Hey, our party once was climbing a spire of a god that is known for trickery and we spent 5 minutes investigating a ladder even though the dnd kept saying "you ser it's made out of sticks"
We derailed and ignored an entire fantasy epic style adventure in lieu of building and running a brothel as well as harassing all of the towns officials until they grant is complete freedom from the law and dominion over the area so long as we, and I quote, "just fuck off". The campaign became known as brothelquest and the DM has never lived it down
I shot an arrow when the DM thought I’d sneak around. Completely broke the encounter...
One of my favorite stories as a young DM is the story of "Bunkrat" (granted the name by his bootleg Junkrat voice). I like to be nice to the players but I sometines forget how eager they are to wreck havoc (two of them robbed a completely innocent shop and tied the shopkeeper & an unrelated customer in the back of the store just for fun). Therefore, I created the most annoying NPC: Bunkrat. He doesn't fight, he's just somehow always where the havoc is. So when they started robbing the store, he came to talk to them, and then did so two more times when they were tying up the two people in the back. Granted, I wasn't really trying to stop them: it's really easy to pass a deception check on Bunkrat, as he's.. not the brightest. He was just meant to annoy the heck out of them for their decisions. Ever since then, he's been making appearances in each campaign we do, gaining Bunkrat lore along the way - at this rate, I'm pretty sure Bunkrat is the reincarnation of an immortal deity, I'd have to check
Murder hobos: write that down, write that down
PCs will always behave accordingly
1 wasn't a derailing by the player's it was your attempt at red herring them and it worked it was part of the plan you just didn't think they would fuck about so much with it 2 not them destroying your plans they out smarted you because they payed attention 3 doesn't sound like they derailed it more like you gave them a make a wish kid and they treated him like he could die from a breeze the guard you should have some random preprepared names 4 the loop holes were well not derailing at all from what he said you could have just made it so that the skeleton's destroyed tree's and slaughtered the local wildlife too the point were they would need to fix it or the town would die from famine 5 the spells you prepared would work you just need a hand free and your focus in your hand to cast the somatic part of a spell restrained you can still move your hands the owlbear getting around your encounter's isn't being derailed either they out foxed you and you broke the balance by modifying the owlbear to let it happen 6 YOU MENTIONED THE WHALE when you had a druid what did you expect and that still isn't derailing and from the sound of it you didn't read the spell in question right either 7 that is them planning out so well and you not knowing what a spell does grease knocks you prone not that it causes you to slide heck think about when you slip on ice you fall on your ass not slide away unless your on a hill or a incline soo not a single derail mentioned a Derailment is when the party goes and does something where you had 0 plans for where they might be going or who they might encounter
One of my friend is a fire loving Cobalt named Holeesh... He derailed us for 2 sessions(6+hrs) by attacking random drunk guys cause they wouldn't bow to the Lord of Fire 🔥🔥🔥 after they started to insult us for no reason. Well that got the whole city guard on us, in a country we had no official power... It took a long time to figure out how to get out
I often forget what sweaty players the Oxventurers used to be XD They've come so far from Ellen's Spicy Rat list to actively derailing the roleplay just to confound Johnny! LOL