this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
271 points (99.6% liked)
RPGMemes
11777 readers
1267 users here now
Humor, jokes, memes about TTRPGs
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Having your complex plot get fast forwarded because of a cantrip, priceless ๐๐๐๐๐
I once fast-forwarded a complex plot through a GM-sanctioned bit of fluff.
The party had been invited by their uncle who turned out to be recently murdered when they arrived. Of course they investigated. At one point I had my character wrote a letter to the rest of the family to inform them of what was going on. I actually produced the letter as a handout. Since I had no idea about the date I asked the GM and he told me to pick anything in summer.
The GM s happy with the handout and it was deemed canonical.
A few sessions later he noticed that I had picked something ahead the end of the summer and the bad guys' plot was about to kick off at a specific date right after summer ends. So suddenly the adventure went from "careful slow-burn investigation" to "mad rush to the location of the finale".
Oops.
Couldn't they have gone the other route and made the villain's plans a year later? But sounds like it was a lot of fun the way it was run!
The idea was to have some kind of urgency but only once the players were far enough to understand the basics of what was going on. To that end, the date was supposed to be vague so that the GM was free to say "you figured out that the ritual will happen right after summer ends โ which is in less than a week".
Then he forgot that the timeframe was vague when I wrote the letter and told me to pick a date.
Unfortunately, this cut out a side plot where our party would've hired another party to hunt down some artifact. That artifact retroactively got downgraded to a red herring for time reasons.
On the other hand, we got an absolutely precious scene where the one party member who wasn't magic-affine and didn't want to be involved with any supernatural stuff had to ride an unnaturally fast six-legged half-demon horse in order to catch up with the bad guys.
Also, it cut down on all the "three wizards and a vintner have breakfast and discuss the state of the investigation" episodes. We had a lot of those.