Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 178 - The Players Spoiled My Plans and the Paizo Remaster

Episode Date: June 4, 2023

DMs, what should you do when the players derail your entire adventure plan, reveal a secret or short circuit the story that you had planned for the group?  How can you recover from this?  Tune in and find out   #DMTips #dnd #Pathfinder #ORClicense   Resources: Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster Project:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiYCs0fPFnM&t=50s   Twitch stream of “Pathfinder Remastered” at Paizocon on Friday May 26th from 12-2 PDT.

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. Rather than lamenting the destruction of your meticulously planned adventure arc, I want you to try and reframe this in your mind to be a golden opportunity to make changes to your campaign on the fly, and sometimes, that can be a very good thing. Hey, wherever you're listening, thank you for tuning in to the Taking20 Podcast, episode 178, The Player Spoiled My Plans. Now what? I want to thank this week's sponsor, Math. I love math, and then some. What can I say? I'm a product of my times.

I guess, really, it makes no difference. talk about very soon, all it'll take is a $5 or more donation and I'll be happy to do that. Also, the podcast is now available on Podchaser and iHeartRadio. If you happen to find us there, drop me an email, feedback at taking20podcast.com to say hi and suggest some topics. Alternatively, you can always send me a message on social media. PaizoCon finished up this past weekend, and Paizo revealed some big news about the Pathfinder 2e remaster project. For those of you who haven't heard yet, Paizo has announced plans to remaster Pathfinder 2e. Now, hang on. D&D players, before you celebrate this as the beginning of the end of Pathfinder 2e, I need you to take a quick breath. The primary

reason for doing this is to incorporate errata into the rulebooks and, more importantly, break further away from the Open Gaming License in favor of the Open RPG Creative License, or ORC. Wizards of the Coast's shenanigans with the OGL License understandably made a lot of publishers very skittish about continuing to use it, and more than 1,500 publishers and content providers have pledged to release future content under this new vendor agnostic license. That means that anything that was in Pathfinder 2e that was licensed under the OGL, gotta go. There was a lot of speculation about what that would include, and Paizo gave

us some additional details about that over the weekend. Paizo has stated that, quote, this remaster is not a new edition, and existing Pathfinder 2e stat blocks, spells, monsters, and adventures should work just fine in the remastered edition without any problems. The announcement that garnered the most coverage is the retconning and removal of the Drow ancestry from Pathfinder 2e. The primary reason is to distance Pathfinder 2e from creatures protected by the OGL, but also, traditionally, Drow have been largely considered an evil race, quote-unquote. They're matriarchal, they're spider-loving, demon-worshipping, largely irredeemable monsters with dark skin. demon-worshipping, largely irredeemable monsters with dark skin. Given modern views on ancestry and Paizo's push away from ancestries being inherently good or evil, I think that contributed

to the push away from the Drow. However, it's not that Drow are being renamed cavern elves or underground elves or something like that. Their entire existence is rumored to be completely removed from all Galarian lore. Most of the previously published drow lore is being replaced by serpent folk, except for the massive drow city of, and I'm gonna mispronounce this, Zernakainen, which is now a desolate ruin. Serpent folk guard entrances to the ruined city and consider it forbidden. guard entrances to the ruined city and consider it forbidden. Who or what built that city and what may live there today remains unknown. There's going to be an in-world reason for this, but we'll have to wait until part three of Sky King's Tomb, which is due out in September, to read more about that. The good news is that we already have some rich history for serpent folk,

considering they used to be a really powerful surface race. They retreated to the dark lands, had wars with various humanoids, including cyclopes. I just heard at least one listener probably say, what? out loud because they love drow and they love drizzit and everything about playing an edgy min-maxed drow rogue with light sensitivity and everything else that comes with them. To listeners that are reacting like that, I would counsel patience for three reasons. One, right now we know very little about the contents of the remaster, and what's in the final version could be very different from what they're talking about now. Two, many of the features of the drow are being absorbed by the Sekhmen or Serpentful.

They're considered the villains of the Darklands with cities, their own society, and so forth. Three, if you love Drow in your game, there are already two e-stats released for Drow, and this will be compatible with the remaster, so your version of Galarian could still have Drow if you want to include them as homebrew in your game. Paizo is great about releasing lore for their world of Galarian, but you don't have to use any of it. If you want the Drow to rule the Darklands in your version of Galarian, go with the demon-worshipping gods, my friends.

I hope that you appreciate the difference between a major publisher like Paizo, including the OGL Drow that could be argued property of Wizards of the Coast, versus your home game doing it. You're not streaming your home game. You're not making money on your home game. Paizo's making lots of money on Pathfinder 2E, and that's the big difference. That's not the only change in the remaster. It just happened to be the one gaining the most press.

It's rumored that concepts like Chromatic and Metallic Dragons are going away. There's a new name for the Durgar, and other changes are in store, like the abolition of alignments to fully divorce Player Corps and GM Corps books from the previous OGL ones. Those books, by the way, they're due out later in 2023, and I can't wait to get my hands on one. Dorgar will now be known as Harangar. Previously, their entire society was driven by slavery, but they're reimagining the society as being driven by a pyramid scheme type mentality. They're continually maneuvering to not owe others and make others owe them. They were slavers, and now they're more akin to corporations.

And let's all just get right past the political jokes together. Something something corporate drones, something something slave for the rich, something something late stage capitalism. There. Okay, back to RPGs. The main thing I would say is I'm looking forward to seeing what's in the remaster, and I am withholding any reactionary judgment until I read at least a draft of what's going to be released, and I would advise you to do the same. Thank you for listening. Now on to the episode. You know, players are really good at ruining plans.

They really, really are. There's a key difference between the players ruining the party's plans and ruining the GM's plans. Players ruining the party's plans, a very bad thing. Oh, while we're sneaking into the zoo, I'm going to go punch the lion. LOL. I know we said we're going to return to our hideout, but I'm going to break into police headquarters and get my gun back. Or I just start pushing buttons on the console no matter what they do. If a player decides that their character is going to completely ruin the agreed-upon plan just because they can,

there are a few terms for that, like main character syndrome, where they think that their character is the only one that matters. They're not being a team player, or more succinctly, being a dick and a bad party member. Look, there are times when we are role-playing, we improvise something, and it completely blows up a plan. That's not what I'm talking about in this episode. I've been listening to the Find the Path podcast, playthrough of the Pathfinder Adventure Path Hell's Rebels that they converted to 2E, and one character had to improvise a diversion by themself and chose poorly. They then chose poorly to try to get out of it and chose poorly

to try to cover it up. They couldn't confer with their party members and hijinks ensued that included lying to the cops, making a break for it, trying to convince a late neighbor who doesn't know them to hide them from the police, jumping to the river and then trying to swim for it despite the presence of sharks and patrol boats. The player didn't set out to torpedo the plan, they just didn't think some of their choices through all the way and wound up in a bad situation because of it. You could argue that the distraction worked because the rest of the party were able to get away. That's not torpedoing the plan and being a bad teammate. Rocket stealing the batteries in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 was being a bad teammate. Steve backstabbing the group and taking their share of the loot is being a bad

teammate. Someone not telling the party about the tripwire because quote it'll be funny and ruining the plans to sneak up on the big bad is being a bad teammate. Thankfully, these players are rare and in my experience don't last long in gaming groups. When I'm talking about spoiled plans, I'm also not talking about players taking a session a completely different direction than you expected that puts the main story on pause. You show up ready to run two fights in a social encounter with the Dark Dwarves to have taken up residence in the Volno Ruins. The players are in a nearby city and you think they're ready to go when one player says, I need to go shopping. I need a new magic item or armor or hat or whatever. Suddenly the first half of your session is at Millie the Milliner's and the Barbarian's deciding whether he wants a

helmet with googly eyes on it or a tricorn hat with the word murder embroidered on it. That is going to happen, and for your own sanity, I suggest you just let the players play out the shopping. It's fine. There's no point in getting upset about it or demanding that the PCs go to the Volno ruins right now and forget this hat nonsense. No good comes of that. If the players are having fun,

then that's what we're going for behind the screen, and you can just cut down the number of encounters you're running tonight accordingly. Sometimes, though, players will ruin DM plans for the entire adventure or the campaign. Some grand secret or betrayal or hidden connection comes to light early, and the DM is thrown for a loop, caught a little flat-footed, so to speak. GMs, rather than lamenting the destruction of your meticulously planned adventure arc, I want you to try and reframe this in your mind

to be a golden opportunity to make changes to your campaign on the fly, and often, that can be a very good thing. If you DM for any length of time, this is going to happen to you. You're sowing the seeds for the town magistrate to betray the PCs to the big bad when one of your players says, I cast detect lies, or detect thoughts, or detect alignment, or read aura, or detect magic, or some other spell that gives them insight that you weren't planning on revealing yet.

They sense the motive of a speaker, make a perception check to notice the drop of blood on the serving girl's shoelace, or pull off a miraculously high die roll that reveals details that you were saving for a couple of sessions from now. Or you were planning on offering a marriage of convenience between NPC Lady What's-Her-Butt and one of the PCs as an opportunity to secure a home base, but one of the PCs just stabbed one of the guards and now it's a tooth and nail fight through the castle. I've said it before, I used to be a planner DM. I'd decide how every encounter was connected and I would make plans on how to carry the party along the railroad tracks from one encounter to another. When I DM'd that way, adventure-wrecking discoveries were a major source of stress.

But as I've said in previous episodes, I don't do that anymore. I plan encounters and let the PCs drive the story where they want to go. Now, because some PCs stabbed a guard, the PCs are fighting an entire keep's worth of foot soldiers. I get to roll out some minion rules from 4E and let the dice fall where they may. But how can something like that happen? How can the players figure things out so early? Well, first reason is players are really freaking smart. It doesn't matter their experience or age or anything else. Players can put the clues together really well and sometimes they figure out the big reveal ahead of time. Do not get distracted by the fact that your PCs can't solve

a puzzle you lifted from a kid's restaurant coloring mat. Don't let the fact that they chose the worst possible solution to the murder mystery just one session ago make you underestimate them. Sometimes players figure things out before you plan to reveal it to them. Those subtle clues were more obvious than you thought. Maybe they figured out that you lifted the entire third act of your story from Army of Darkness. Or maybe they've read a lot of plot and story in writing books and understand the hero's journey, the three-act story, and other esoteric theory and figure out the big reveal ahead of time. The Baron giving you their quest was the big bad in disguise. Someone has a

different soul bound in their body. The quest was a distraction for the real threat. No matter what the twist was, sometimes the players figure it out because they're smart. Or maybe you have this incredibly complex Janesian dungeon design where they can see the other levels they need to get to, but you forgot that the spell Featherfall exists. And just like that, the players have spoiled your plan for a complex dungeon and skipped over two meticulously planned levels. Let's face it, even if you are a brilliant DM, you can't think of every scenario and connection and how the clues you dropped might point to the end of the campaign. Not in every way at least. Maybe the players thought of one that you didn't. Maybe minds working together can

generally outpace one working alone. The players can brainstorm and use each other's ideas and springboard off of each other. Whereas GMs, we tend to do our work alone. That's the nature of the game. Smart players can figure out your secrets and can think of things that you may not have even considered. Or sometimes the twist is revealed because the players are paranoid. One too many mimics, one too many secrets, one too many cursed objects. Over time, the players are paranoid. One too many mimics, one too many secrets, one too many cursed objects. Over time, the players have learned to anticipate the worst in every situation when you DM, so they assume the betrayal is coming, or the MacGuffin is going to be the cause of their problems, or whatever big twist you had on deck for them. They read the thoughts of the secret

big bad and discovered they were a polymorphed dragon, or working for Evil Incorporated, or were rivals of the PCs hoping to get them killed on this next adventure. Because of their paranoia, they now know what the big reveal was going to be in a session or two or five or twenty. They may not blindly accept the help the innkeeper is willing to give, because they want to know what she's hiding. The gnome woman living alone is helping the PCs with instructions to the cave, hiding the lost entrance to the abandoned temple. You roleplay them as kind and giving, but the players automatically assume the worst. Yep, hag. The NPC is nothing but giving, and the PCs still don't trust them. Because of a healthy dose of paranoia, your twist never gets off the ground.

Well, you know what they say. Paranoia is just good thinking when everyone and everything really is out to get you. Maybe your plans are spoiled because the players are tenacious. You keep trying to distract them from investigating the cause of the Starship engine explosion that happened three planets over. Look, shiny, shiny, look over here, look over here.

But they won't take the bait. They're like a dog playing tug-of-war, and they've latched onto this one thing and are determined to get to the bottom of it. Never mind the fact that that bottom is the key to your plans, the secrets that you had. I'm sure there's a joke here about Kardashian plans and bottoms, but I'll let you connect those dots. Sometimes a reveal happens early by pure dumb luck. Players sometimes just make lucky choices.

They pick the one tavern that has the back room rented out to the Crimson Robe Society. Or they go to the town where the Big Bad's plans are about to unfold, but that was supposed to be off-screen. Sometimes they don't know the answer to the puzzle and just pick a lever to pull and it happens to be the right damn one. Whoops! Well, I guess that skips that part of the adventure, doesn't it? Or the twist is sometimes revealed early thanks to lucky die rolls by the players or unlucky die rolls by the GM. Your big bad, who's posing as an anesthesiologist in the local med bay rolls a natural one on that

will save to avoid some spell effect like reading their mind, their alignment, or other plans secret reveal. Sometimes, GMs, you know this, the dice gods are cruel and they laugh at our misery. Whatever the cause is, one of the above or maybe two or three simultaneously, the players have figured out your secret, the twist, the major plot point, or maybe even bypassed a big chunk of your adventure because of it. In that case, what can you do behind the screen besides mop the sweat off your brow and go change your underwear? You're sitting behind the screen, listening to the player characters brainstorm and banter when one says, I bet corrupt leaders of the bank

of Abadar are behind this to give them a legal way to seize property from the town and the murders are there to drive property values down. On the outside, you just look from one player to another because you have a great poker face. You've learned over years of running adventures. You're not going to give it away with a facial expression. You act like you're taking notes about something, but in reality, your brain is screaming, F***! Now what? That was supposed to be the next five sessions,

and the corrupt leadership would lead to a devil-worshipping plot to weaken the Church of Sarenrae, and the players were going to be unwitting pawns, stealing a major artifact, F***! F***! F***! F***!

F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***!! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F***! F unwitting pawn stealing a major artifact. My beloved GMs out there, I know you're frustrated when this happens, but believe me when I tell you, now is not the time to panic. Now is the time to make one critical decision about this early plot reveal. Do you tell the players that they figured it out or not? You can spill the beans and congratulate them, saying, doggone it, you figured it out.

You're so very clever. Players love being right. Or you could keep it hidden that they've spoiled your plans. Your choices for a path forward depend on this one decision you make. Whether you choose to tell them or not may depend on how many clues you've already dropped. If all the clues point to an elf as the killer and you suddenly make it a goblin,

you'd better have a damn good reason why the previous clues were there and how they could have pointed to the goblin instead. For me, the more clues I've dropped leading up to the PC's lucky guess or great die rolls or deductive reasoning, the more likely it is that I'll tell them that they've figured it out. If it's early on with a few hints or clues, then I'm more likely to change my plans, adjust things behind the screen, and keep the PCs guessing. Yes, celebrate that they figured it out. You could say something

like, well, y'all figured out that twist and then continue the campaign even though the twist has been spoiled. Knowing the end of a campaign and resolving it successfully are two very different things. Knowing that gnome is a hag is a lot different than getting her to move or changing her nature or killing her. The PCs knowing that the kindly innkeeper is the midnight murderer is different than catching her and bringing her to justice. It can still be exciting if your reveal came out a bit early.

Knowing that the PCs were about to steal the MacGuffin by Corporation A doesn't mean the PCs know what to do about it. How do they even attack a corporation? It's not like they have hit points. Unless... Alternatively, you can smile, say something like, that would have been interesting, and then adjust your plans behind the screen in secret. It actually doesn't matter that they figured it out. The polymorphed silver dragon was Sylvara, the wife of the queen, but you pivot and now instead it's the silver dragon is Malcolm, the queen's advisor. You can look at the clues you dropped and the hints you revealed

and find another possible solution that still meets the clues clues even if they're twisted versions of those clues. Play all of it off as if you were going that route the entire time. Your players will think that you're so smart to include that twist with the red herring of the queen's wife without any idea that you had to adjust everything on the fly, maybe even in the middle of a mild panic. My final piece of advice for hard-working DMs out there. If you find yourself getting frustrated that the PCs figured out the big reveal early, do not get angry or let it bother you at all. Take a break. Take a breath. Ask yourself one question. Okay, they figured this out, but how can I use this unexpected reveal to my advantage? How can I make the PCs feel additional pressure if they try to execute a plan based on just the knowledge that they have?

How can I make the ending memorable, even if I don't have another twist to throw in? And then how can I make the final approach to landing the campaign fun? Remember, you and your players are collaborating on a story. It's not you versus them. Their figuring it out should not be a source of stress for you. Sometimes through good role playing, smart choices, or blind dumbass luck, the PCs figure out the twist that you're planning to throw at them. Maybe in-game weeks or even years before the twist was going to drop. Keep cool, maybe add another twist, or spend some time thinking how you can make the final sessions memorable even though the twist has been revealed. Revealed secrets don't derail campaigns, they can

reinvigorate them. Think about how you can use the twist, and I bet you and your players would have fun doing it. Do you have any feedback for me? Feel free to send me a message on social media or email to feedback at taking20podcast.com. Tune in next week when we'll talk about how you can encourage character interaction by letting your adventure breathe. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Math.

I know some of you didn't like the math puns at the beginning of the episode. I know some of you didn't like the math puns at the beginning of the episode. I'm sorry it was so divisive. This has been episode 178, The Player Spoiled My Plans. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2023. References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.