Game in Review

So we actually managed to game this past Saturday and overall it was a great success. Sending out a story advancing e-mail allowed me to skip the last bit of the prologue and move the players into the main part of the campaign.

The players rescued the townsfolk from the previous session and returned home. After a month of time has passed the mayor looks rather ill and a "special ops" character from the capital has come to collect the PCs to escort them to the capital. Turns out they weren't the only people in the world that were suddenly granted powers and levels. The players weren't terribly fond of this character as he was all business and little in the way of social skills.

They set out and were ambushed one night the PCs drove off the attacker, but did not notice the assassin that executed the Spec Ops character. This is where my story took a turn off the rails. I had intended the PCs to get captured by this group and in order to facilitate that, I had them all be of a higher level than them. They were supposed to be ordered to surrender so they could be captured. Instead, one of the characters grapples the assassin and ties her up while her goons advance. The dwarf orders her to surrender, she tells him to shove it, and promptly gets beaten by another character.

Had I allowed actions to go where they were headed, the players would have offed the assassin only to be killed by her goons. So I took my plans, threw them away, and started flying by the seat of my pants. As a result, she turned into a rebel agent, trying to overthrow the government of the land so that all races can rule themselves. She was ordered to "rescue" the PCs and escort them to the capital city, to be delivered to the Rebel Organization instead of the Senate to try and find out what happened.

Of course, I then had to set up an encounter that would kill off most of her goons so I don't have to manage 8 npcs at once. So the goons went through threatening level to Red Shirt incompetence and were promptly murdered by hobgoblins, so I have half as many NPCs to deal with now.

Even though the game went a direction I wasn't expected, the spontaneous creation of the Rebellion will lead to a deeper story than what I had intentionally envisioned. So if the players in your game start running in a direction that you're not sure of, just go with it. 9 out of 10 times anything you say during one session won't be fully resolved until later sessions so you have plenty of time to alter the story to fit what has been said and done.