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Many moons and one email account ago, I submitted a moment which was deeply frustrating to me as a player. The following is a true, recent account where the players made things frustrating for me as the GM. At this point our gaming group had begun tape recording our sessions (something we picked up from the GM's Guide), and some of the background discussions the tape picked up bear uot how frustrated the players became. I think my rage stayed fairly masked. But you be the judge...
The gaming group consisted of myself, who had a mixed mariner man rogue acting as my avatar (he was still a legal PC), a beserker who was my character's brother (run by an old hand at the game), an urbanwoman paladin* (also an old salt), a magician who specialized in dirtected spells (run by an intermediate player who is the "dragon" type-see GM's guide or use your imagination), and, finally a grey elven ranger (run by a novice who had played a few d20 game sessions-one could call him a sponge or cow).
Now, this was an eclectic group of troublemakers, and I faced the same old problem of uniting them under one banner. What better way, I thought, than to raise the scope of the game to a level of Kingdom-wide disaster. First things first, I mysteriously killed the king. Then the beserker, Altur Pillar by name, was deputized by a magistrate fleeing the palace (he didn't care for the responsibility of solving this crime). Altur, being an upstanding fellow, was willing to take on this commission. He went to a nearby inn to obtain some more "deputies" (the kind that work for the highest bidder). There he found the mage, Spitfire, and the elf, Alhazzabon, who were traveling together, since both found the other useful. And both were equally for sale. They signed on for a modest fee and a share of the culprit's riches.
Now Altur set out to find his brother Volkvoi (call so because of the wolf fur he wore across his shoulders). Volk was the worst sort of man who stole from innocents and fought with dirty tactics (and two enchanted blood-drinking broadswords, no less.) Now, if he were an actual player, Volk would have been what I call terminally interesting. However, he was very necessary to the plot. Once found (while mugging an old lady), he agreed to help his brother-for no fee (red flag right here, folks).
Now, I didn't want the players to be too befuddled since two were inexperienced, so I made finding out the identitiy of the assasin easy (later on thing were supposed to get complicated). All they had to do was get around to seeing the King's body before the funeral pyre, and they would find a Goblin-made dagger sticking in his throat. Now, it was pretty common knowledge that there was a cave with some kind of golbinoid race in it three day's travel the the northeast.
After a few incidents of ambush by orcs (yes, orcs, not goblins), they arrive at the cave, somewhat confused. Sneaking in was not a great difficulty (everyone wa prudent enough to have some stealth skills), they proceeded on what was basically and intense dungeon crawl, made especially dangerous by the absence of a healer in the party. Apparently the newer players weren't willing to just wait for some more storyline to head their way. they started chatting incessantly (ex: "Did I say what my guy looks like? Well he looks just like IG-88 but he's 80 ft tall!). Normally, I'm more than okay with humor. But I was trying to paint a desperate and bleak picture here! At least my two other players were riveted (the paladin especially was mourning not investing more in the healing arts).
When I revealed that all these orcs were led by a Goblin King, the younger players didn't bat an eyelash.
I wasn't pleased.
I ended the session there with a resigned sigh.
Eventually the two offending players became truants, and there's no faster way to ruin a campaign. Yet I didn't want my faithful players to suffer, so eventually I transplanted them into another campaign, where they had many other, more successful adventures.
* I would have mentioned this at the appropriate time, but it's so juicey I had to leave it for last. The paladin followed Altur everywhere because she thought he was her god in mortal form, and she thought it was her commision to bear his child-Altur was oblivious to the facts. All that time, and he thought he was just charming!
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