It’s not always about killing your babies when you’re a DM, though the players will certainly do that, too. In this case, it’s about completely avoiding the NPCs I worked on all week to have them ready to interact with the party. You never know what a group of players is going to do, so you prepare options and alternatives, create multiple paths and populate those with interesting people. And then the party decides to strike out on their own, running away from problems, and avoiding the road or any NPCs who might weigh them down.
This week was the point where I wanted to head them towards the Call of the Netherdeep adventure. They knew this, and so were ready and eager to run headlong into it. I was unaware just how headlong they were willing to be. I was expecting to actually start the module next week, fortunately I’m an over-preparer.
I ended last week with a wanted poster for one of the characters who had asked for a familial confrontation to better illustrate her character to the party. Said character, this week, proceeded to down a psychedelic candy recovered from last week’s cultist, and begin hallucinating for four hours (bad luck on the d4 roll). The party, seeing her in this state, decided to go check out this bounty without her, discovered only her sister and one dwarven guard waiting to payout. However, my conflict-avoidant party decided it would be easier to just leave town instead of dealing with it, when offered another hunt and told the posters were up all over the place.
On to said hunt. Our huntmaster told them of two open ended hunts, one on the river north, and one just off the road north. When they decided on the river hunt, he suggest who to talk to in order to get a ride upriver. The group, however, decided they’d rather just walk the whole way, along the riverbank. Bypassing a dockmaster and an entire riverboat crew. Also completely avoiding the Tabaxi bard for the other mission, and the monster I’ve been trying to get in at every chance. That they’ve avoided every time. It’s not super plot relevant, I just think it’s neat and setting relevant. There have been several times it would have made sense, if they’d rolled or planned poorly. But they didn’t. LOL Maybe when they come back home, or I’ll just move on to the creepier and more horrible monsters in that sourcebook.
On the killing your babies front, they also straight up murdered the giant toads, again by good planning and tactics. I only got to swallow one person. I know I could adjust the fights, and I do, but I also don’t want to negate the advantage they gain through their planning and ridiculously good rolls this week (and my ridiculously bad rolls). The trick now, is adjusting the given fights in the published module for my over-sized group. They’re going to start leveling up fairly quickly, too.
I did decide to throw a second group of cultists at them in the middle of the night, so the travel up north wasn’t just ten days of nothing. That turned out strangely well. I fudged the hitpoints on the most important person in the group so he survived the first onslaught of the sniper, and then the bard made him surrender. They hadn’t meant to fight at all, but the party still killed their kobold, caused three to run away, and knocked out an orc. This gave the party a tiny bit more insight into the BBEG of the campaign (and hopefully some healthy paranoia about the upcoming not actually BBEG of the module). It also gave me an interesting new NPC that I hadn’t planned on.
They captured the Goblin caster and one Orc bandit and tied them up together. The Goblin just ranted about needing the key to open the prison for The Many. But when the Orc woke back up and they freed the pair to be on their way, he put the dead kobold on the fire to finish disposing of the corpse. I accidentally made reference to the Light of the Luxon when doing so, and our devout Drow caught it. This led to an interesting conversation with the orc about his duality of belief and possible redemption if he turns from the Chaos back to the Light. He was also offered help getting out from under the price on his head, but he doesn’t really believe they can help with that. So, now I have a conflicted Orc wandering the wastes of Xhorhas, trying to keep his more zealous friends safe, while not giving into the whispers himself.