Campaign Derailment

One of my favourite things about roleplaying games is that as a game master I will never be able to predict where the campaign will go. The players are quite good at surprising me -- they decide where to go, they decide what to do, and because I give them free reign, they can go on tangents I never expect.

For example? I had the PCs encounter a young green dragon disguised as a bandit - she charged 'protection' from anyone who goes through her area, and utterly destroys anyone who doesn't pay. So what happens? One of the PCs negotiates. They pay the tithe, but he offers to make her business 'legitimate' with the local city paying her for the safe passage of anyone going through, and the utter destruction of any threats that are coming through. Being an artificer, he's offering to craft her some things to help her, and to keep in touch with her in case she ever needs help.

... not something I'd expected.

In a friend's campaign, the group is supposed to be helping construct the equivalent to the Panama Canal, helping local communities benefit from it, and establishing a lot of goodwill to allow the colonies to construct it in the first place.

Then the PCs found an ancient city with temples to all the gods -- including some dead ones. The PCs learn how the goddess of the moon sacrificed herself when the aboleth dropped a meteor on the world.

And our Neutral Evil rogue was inspired to resurrect this goddess.  Instead, she was given the choice to attempt to ascend and become the new goddess of the moon. And she's grasped that quest with both hands.

Now we're off in Australia, New Zealand, the Moon, and eventually we're waging war against an infernal cult of Asmodeus in Europe. Then she tries to ascend. And then we might get back to South America and deal with things there -- which might take a year or more to get around to.

Not what the game master expected - we're on one hell of a tangent.

And sometimes, something you think is in the can goes unexpectedly. The heroes completely trounce your villain NPC before he can monologue and give the group some information important to the campaign.

Many GMs would suggest allowing the PCs to get the information some other way - finding the enemy's journals, allowing the enemy a dying speech, having some random NPC drop a clue.

Sure, you can go that route.

But what if ... the PCs don't find out at all? What if, because they were too good, or simply didn't allow the villain to talk, they're completely unprepared for what comes next?

And that's the thing I like - PCs can make mistakes, or get blind-sided. They're not perfect. This isn't a finely crafted book where everything falls into place tidily to move the story forward.

The PCs actions are the story, what they do, what they fail to do, what they discover, what they miss, it's what makes the game different from a book, or movie, or TV series. Unexpected things happen.

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