So I did a thing

They should have taken the hint at "nine Paladin orders, but there's 12 swords"
That and they fucked up by being greedy. I would have removed three, tops, snd only if it was 150% necessary

Sounds like you foreshadowed properly. Your players are just cunts. You've done nothing wrong, they are just unhappy their actions had consequences. That's something that society doesn't teach them anymore.

Your party is dumb as bricks, not just for being so totally careless when dealing with a known evil, but being upset with the prospect of a new quest and adventure to reveal or defeat the evil.

Yeah, that's a goof there but pic related cause this idea is 1000% gold. Pretty much do what
said and go with a guy who can make you think your comfortable bed is made of hot spikes and razors, mess with their perception of reality all the time and I think you'll have a number 1 jam in no time.

>PC's mess with the bindings on an ancient evil
>Get upset when this has negative consequences

Sure you should have given them a chance to pull an illusionary sword, but this is mostly on them.

>Players willingly help out the ancient evil.
They shouldn't have pulled out even one sword. I think they're just salty for this reason, they did something dumb and now it's coming back to hurt them. You a good GM, you dindu nuffin wrong.

But If all the swords were the magic seals, wouldn't "detect" ping on all of them either way.
Can the whole place be so magic, the detect spell goes static?

Detect magic would still ping on the illusions.

What about those times when the ancient sealed evil is a benevolent entity that just wants to chill out and be worshiped for being a bro by the tiny fertility cults from the local area it resides?

>lol we'll just pull out eleven swords then we can ask eleven questions for free, what a stupid bad guy
They deserve everything that's coming to them for thinking that you or the sealed evil would make the solution that easy.

Ya did good, OP. You have nothing to be ashamed of, and you absolutely are not "That" DM.

>Nine Paladin Orders
>Twelve swords

Your players might be fuckin' dumb, though.

The silliest thing in all of this is that they never considered that pulling swords, any swords at all mind you, would weaken the seal. I mean what if they had pulled half of them and it had weakened the seal enough for the evil to escape it? The idea that "lol we'll just pull most of them" is incredibly stupid. It's like saying "well this huge monster is being bound with 13 chains. I'm sure that even if we remove most of the chains, i'm sure that just one or two will be enough to keep this giant monstrosity bound." it's just daft. Your players are too stupid to survive in a fantasy setting.

Even if there weren't illusionary swords involved, if there is more than one X being used to seal the ancient evil, thinking that you can just remove any number of those without consequences is dumb enough they deserve this.
I realise this won't help you much in pacifying your angry players, but really, they fucked this one up the whole way.
It was a actually clever idea on your part that makes sense for someone with the ability to do this to do, you gave all the right foreshadowing for them to be able to guess it too.

But it should ping as a different aura to the swords sealing the thing. different types of magic, and what not.

And thats the kicker. they never bothered trying to find out anything, so they got bit in the ass for it.

OP

Why did they pull out NINE swords?

What questions could POSSIBLY have been so vital that they thought pulling out NINE of the things keeping an ancient evil bound were a good idea?

Fuck, I wouldn't have even pulled out one of the damn things. How would you even know the information it was feeding you was accurate in the first place?

I wouldn't have even gone near it the second I heard he could cast minor spells.

If you actually wanted players to pick up on the 9 orders thing, you would have needed to repeat it a lot. I once ran a horror campaign, where number 27 repeated. If they needed room number? 27. How many monsters? 27. Age of victim? 27. Which day of the month? 27th.

I must have repeated the number at least a hundred times, and the players never figured it out. They even figured out how time magic works, and that there were more than 24 hours in each day, and that the BBEG was hiding in one of them. They went to, in order, 25th, 66th, 666th, 100th, and finally 27th after I thwacked them on the side of the head with it.

i thought for a split second of maybe using an antimagic field, but immediately discounted the thought as that would automatically unseal the beast.

>. You've done nothing wrong, they are just unhappy their actions had consequences. That's something that society doesn't teach them anymore.
This.

You pulled this off pretty much perfect, your players are babies and dicks

It's possible that the BBEG in OP's story could have broken free after just 3 or 4 swords were removed, at the cost of a significant portion of his power that he'd have to work at recovering.

>Yes, fourth is free.
>I can break out now if I want
>Might have to spend a century gathering power again to get back into shape
>Whatever, I'm a cool guy and immortal, I can do it -
>Wait
>They're asking another question.
>"Uh, seventeen."
>They took out another sword
>Oh my God these guys are idiots.
>This is fantastic.

wait, the fuck did they think was going to happen?
"hurr, we'll get it to answer questions, stop after 11, and that last sword will keep it sealed, so we got something for nothing and the world is fine."
It's a magical seal. They're lucky they actually got answers to their questions, rather than simply releasing the monster after breaking the first seal.

>>Yes, fourth is free.
>>I can break out now if I want
>>Might have to spend a century gathering power again to get back into shape
>>Whatever, I'm a cool guy and immortal, I can do it -
>>Wait
>>They're asking another question.
>>"Uh, seventeen."
>>They took out another sword
>>Oh my God these guys are idiots.
>>This is fantastic.

You'd think a major seal that could keep an ancient evil bound would be something that could resist a basic antimagic field.
Like it would have some properties in common between the two things.

>I NEED CWUUUUUUS
Fucking casual.

Show em the thread op. Or wait for the but hurt to calm a bit then explain it to them.

Well, I mean, but OP DID give his players two of those three clues. And the third one isn't even that big a deal when we're dealing with an illusionist.

I really like this OP, fuck your players if they don't. They were dumb and for a lot of us it's fun to be told how dumb we are by the GM. They didn't take this gratefully at all.

1. NEVER fuck with an ancient evil, that's day one shit at adventurer school.

2. The ancient evil can use minor spells while sealed. That's a big reasons to stay the fuck away from it.

3. Let's think about this, if it can use minor spells while sealed with 9 swords, than wouldn't it be able to use better and better spells as swords are removed? Your players are lucky he didn't roast them after they pulled out one sword and then removed the rest by mind controlling one of them.

4. 9 orders, 9 paladins, 12 swords? Did your players ask about this at all? Maybe if the entity lied to them or something and said that some of the paladins used extra swords, but otherwise I think they were dumb.

5. How many questions did they possibly have to get answered by this thing? Also did he respond truthfully to the questions they asked? I'd be fine with him either telling the truth or lying as it would make it more interesting. If it's not the type of evil that lies, it could just say "I never said I was sealed with 12 swords."

6. How fucked are your players now that this thing is out?

Honestly I'm really impressed and I really like what you made OP. Can you give us any more details?

you'd think it would resist idiots pulling out the swords too, but we already failed on that one.

You did good, and were much more forgiving than I would have been. I would have had the evil escape even if they stopped at 8, it would just take a bit longer. Hell, I'd probably make it eventually get out if they pulled as few a three. Why the fuck would you think weakening the seal on an ancient evil isn't going to have consequences? If they only needed one sword to keep it in place they wouldn't have needed so many orders to seal it, they would have just used the one.

To be fair it could have theoretically just needed one but the rest were just backup/precautionary measures.

Either that or all the orders wanted to have a hand in it for symbolic reasons.

Still no matter the reason its not something you wanted to have fucked with, still waiting on the OP to tell us what sort of questions they asked it.

You might want to show your players this sign.

Fuck it, print out that sign and tape it to the front of your DM screen, OP.

>the evil proposes that for every question asked, the PCs have to pull out one sword

1. What kind of fucking idiot makes a deal with an ancient evil that's sealed away?
2. What information could POSSIBLY be so valuable that anyone would even consider loosing the bonds on an ancient evil?
3. How do the players know it wasn't outright LYING to them?
4. Did the players consider that removing even ONE might put them into terrible peril?

They got their info from a wannabe-paladin vampire knight who was around the times the sealings happened. There was a short exposition part but I let them ask questions about the event.
They knew It MIGHT use SOME minor spells but I never really specified anything around that.
Upon seeing the 12 swords they asked nothing. I guess they went "welp, 12 IS a popular magic number" and just went with It. I mean, they didn't know what the seal looks like, the vampire never told them as he wasn't at the exact scene and had no idea himself.

The evil guy was 100% thruthful, however I made sure to speak in a way that every answer would introduce two more problems and questions

I let them get the fuck out of there. The thing wasn't that interested in killing some random shmucks, but now that the Big Bad is back, the whatever has left out of the ancient orders would surely want to beat the shit out of anyone responsible.

>they didn't know what the seal looks like
They knew there was a seal. There was swords sticking in the dude.
I feel like basic addition should be something you don't need to spoonfeed people.

Yeah. The only way more than 9 swords shouldn't raise an alarm is if one of the Paladin orders was known for dual wielding.

Not knowing anything about the seal made this whole affair all the more dangerous, honestly. You don't know how much abuse this thing can take. You don't know if removing even one sword will break it. You know nothing of this fucking thing. Why would you tamper with it at the behest of the imprisoned?

Hey Mantorock.

Did they have good reason to believe it would be truthful, or did they just blindly trust the ancient evil and get lucky?

Assuming it was D&D, the logical conclusion would be that it can only cast cantrips, and each sword was sealing a level of spell. Removing more than one basically garuntees its freedom, since then it'll have enough spells so when the next group comes down he can illusion himself as an angel trapped by demonic swords, or just charm then into removing more. Any more than that and he's free even faster.

Most paladins actually use hammers, maces, and polearms.

Only one sword was real.

wrong thread, please ignore

I gave them the info they wanted. The whole thing went so smooth for me (or the A.Evil, idk) It would feel unfair to lie to them.
I mean, they had this whole rather dangerous trip to the frozen north and stuff and besides, the big bad had no reason to fed them bullshit.

Which makes me remember.
They did this as a big quest for our Warlock's sub-quest. The story goes that some third entity got into the warlock''s soul for unknown reasons and the PC gets his spells from him who in turn gets his powers from the actual Old One. They wanted to know what and how and why and figured out that only someone really powerful and evil would know the specifics.
So I gave them this scenario.
When the question "how do I get rid of It" turned up, the Big Bad rather seriously asked If he tried to see any competent priest already.

This question created several seconds of silent "...fuck". I thought they would bail out right there but several swords in, nothing really happened so they kept going

>hiding in the 27th hour of the day

That is some witching hour shit right there. Could normal people experience the "extra" hours, or did they just freeze until the new day began? This actually sounds pretty cool.

>the Big Bad rather seriously asked If he tried to see any competent priest already.

So...in fact, what I posted here, , is in fact more or less how it all went down.

You need to seriously play up this guy's snark. make him David Spade as an ancient evil.

lol, did they at least roll sense motive or whatever? "Nothing's gone wrong so far, so we might as well ask more questions."

I'm still confused why they needed 9 questions, and if they as a group have the collective IQ of room temperature.

OP your group is dumb as bricks and I love what you did. I am especially stoked because I have a much lower stake situation that I will totally be stealing this for.

There should be more DMs like you

Good work OP. I appreciate these kinds of problems as a player.

>the Big Bad rather seriously asked If he tried to see any competent priest already.

Kek. I like the big bad a lot more than your players.

The first thing that came to mind was "9 orders, but 12 swords? Why?" so I give you props on that much. Seems hard to ignore to me.

Not rolling a d12 or scripting out "sword 7" or whatever was an illusion was a bit of mistake though.

>the evil proposes that for every question asked, the PCs have to pull out one sword

I'd expect shit to hit the fan with a vengeance at sword one.

Everyone thinks that until their friend burns to death because they tjought they were on fire.

Well, there was some other extra suff worth asking.
And truthfully, I might have been a little dickish with how I phrased the answers
>what's wrong with me
>>you got your spells though an agent. A third entity that resides in your soul
>what for
>>he uses you as an anchor to this world, a beacon that maintains his avatar
>does this mean [partly irrelevant]
>>yes, but there's [a factor]
>what factor
and so on

also, the very first question that was asked was
are you the [big bad] himself?

I still feel a bit guilty. They are still pretty new to this whole DnD thing, but several long sessions in, I thought they would handle something like that. I still feel kind of guilty

Did they at least get to keep the swords they pulled out? what are their stats?

You can't make this shit up

>are you a bad guy?

>My lawyers have advised me not to answer that question.

>but several swords in, nothing really happened so they kept going

Hey, we're fifty yards past the sign and nothing has happened. This doesn't seem so dangerous after all.

Having read that, it seems like you don't even need the 3 illusory swords because your players are so easy to manipulate.

If you want to retcon it to there actually being 12 orders and 12 paladins, and 12 swords, and they just leave after removing 9, the big bad still gets free because some other schmuck comes in and gets charmed into removing the last swords because its power has grown significantly due to your players' actions.

Alternatively, it doesn't break free immediately and in front of them, and instead waits for them to leave. Leave it ambiguous on whether they freed it just enough so it could free itself completely, or if it tricked them and was free from the moment they removed one sword.

>Remove all swords
>It just sits there
>"Well are you going to leave or something? Didn't we just free you?"
>"Yeah, you freed me with the first one, I've just been getting stronger."
>What
>"I appreciate the help, you can take your leave now. Got a lot of work to do. Probably don't tell the paladins because they're going to tear your heads off. Maybe I can interest you in a job?"

I like both these ideas. Y'all are cool GMs with stupid players.

People froze but were aware, then forgot about it. Sometimes they kept a glimpse. Farther from the 24th the hours became more alien, and the likelihood of remembering anything from 30th hour onwards was pretty much zero for normals, even if they hadn't slept for a week.

27th was close enough that the BBEG could still affect people it wanted to and be "remembered". The players did reason eventually that the hour they were looking for had to be below 50 for that reason. Suppose their sense of logic was better than perception/memory/attention span.

It was fun, though I did not do that great of a job at creating the atmosphere. It ran a bit more like a horror-mystery-detective than just horror. I suppose I gave players too much knowledge of some things, because I had trouble coming up with interesting challenges otherwise.

Horror is hard.

>Horror is hard.
You gotta step up the meta fuckery. Describe something, then deny ever describing it.

"You enter the shop. The shopkeeper gives you a smile with his two mouths."
"What?"
"The shopkeeper smiles at you."
"Two mouths?"
"No, she's just got one."

If the players feel in control, they won't feel horror. Horror is absence of control. Things just happen and they have no idea why, for what reason, or what they can do to make it stop.

you are an absolute madman.

I love this idea.

>are you the [big bad] himself?
>Jesus H Ramirez these guys

Homer: Are you really the head of the Kwik-E-Mart?
Guru: Yes.
Homer: Really?
Guru: Yes.
Homer: You?
Guru: Yes. I hope this has been enlightening.
Apu: Bu—
Guru: Thank you. Come again.

I am totally stealing this, with a twist.

I want a magical artifact coin for reasons. While attuned to the coin the wearer has a 50/50 chance of experiencing an "extra hour" after midnight. So, midnight comes around, the coin flips of its own accord, if heads the world freezes and you can move around, if tails nothing happens. At the end of the extra hour, the coin flips again, offering another shot, and so on until tails.

The current bearer has figured out how to "bank" the extra hours, and trigger them at a midnight of his or her choosing.

So, the coin is what triggers the extra hours, but there may be ways to experience them without holding the coin.

Do it a few times and they'll get paranoid as fuck. If they don't question the discrepancies, step it up until they're walking through an ever-changing horror-town.

I've personally found that descriptions of body horror (like horrible monsters and such) only go so far, and eventually the players themselves just get desensitized to it. If you want to go even further, try to find out the things that make the players themselves (not their characters) uncomfortable and include those things in the game. Rotten teeth, eye trauma, burning flesh, various bugs or snakes, wading through sewage, that sort of thing.

You could also do deja-vu sequences where the same things keeps happening and it always turns out the same no matter what they do, but it's harmless (until the moment it's real). Usually works best if you set it up in advance, with similar descriptions every time, and then you put it in for real, and the players realize it's real, and that's when it becomes truly terrifying because their nightmare is alive.

Are you sure you're not GMing for a group of jRPG protagonists?

How much did you stress the number 9? I feel like if I were a player in that game I'd be pretty upset with you but realize pretty quickly that that was a pretty important detail that the party had overlooked. Overall it definitely seems like the sort of detail that _is_ easy to overlook but in hindsight someone should have seen it coming. They might also be upset with themselves for overlooking something that while easy to miss at the time seems obvious in hindsight. See if they're still super upset after a couple other sessions maybe?

Even Jrpg protagonists don't tend to get away with that level of stupid.

how many times in JRPG's have the players unwittingly unsealed a great evil? And in how many of those is it simply because they had no way of knowing this would happen?

The party knew, continue'd, and fucked up. They are officially more inept than a JRPG protag group, and that is sad.

You would have no right to be upset even if the number 9 was never mentioned. You are literally pulling swords out of an ancient evil that was told to have been sealed away, what the fuck is wrong with you? Do you not see how fucking stupid of a choice that is?

I literally laughed out loud. Imagine how pumped the monster was when they asked question number 9.

Given these guys...

"Right, so I think that's everything. Is that everything?"

You need to make Mr. Evil a recurring NPC who follows around the party to take advantage of their obvious incompetence without ever hurting them.

Thread consensus is your players are retarded children who are mad cause you didn't spoon feed them "Babby's first deal with the devil".

Show them this thread and tell them to shut the fuck up and think more critically in the future.

Time freezing for everyone else and then starting up again normally fails to exploit what is good about the idea. There are infinite hours in each day but also you wake up in the morning after the infinite hours of the previous day. Is there an emergent feature of the increasing instability of each hour that causes time to reset/the timeline to be deleted/the universe to break? Is there an entity/rule that goes "That's enough of Time World, morning now?" You can keep poking it, but since your brain gets soft countered into defacto nonfunctionality after a certain point you can only sit on the surface of the gigantic weird thing and try to mine +2 swords out of it to deal with your tiny surface problems.

Honestly? You did give them enough clues and you gave them chances to figure it out. They decided fucking around and playing fire with a powerful bad guy was a good idea.

They were flirting with disaster and they should have known it. Nicely done. Just remember, fail forward

>Literally making a deal with the devil because you think you can outsmart it
>90% of human cultural output for the past 8 millennia says this is a bad move that always ends in your soul/face being consumed by a terrifying abomination you underestimated.

Nope, fucking deserved it. I hope the ancient evil TPKs them.

nah, it wouldn't make sense for it to always end with soul consuming
the devil wants the occasional mortal to win, I mean if there's 100% chance of loss folks might not be to eager about the whole practice, but 99.99%, and the illusion of it being skill based? Now that's something people are willing to try.

So the devil lets the occasional slightly more clever than usual guy get the better of him, swears his bloody vengeance (which never happens) and ensures he gets back to town to brag about it, then collects the souls of the 100 idiots who think they're going to be him.

Ya, but I am not running a horror game.

I like the idea that the extra hours are like folds in time, we usually just "step" over them and continue on. Things can totally get weirder the more you delve. Maybe The Coin is just one manner of delving.

I think I'll run it that things get weirder the further you delve into the extra hours; you need access to some kind of magic to not just skip over the extra time; but ditch the mental blocks. So, you need magic to open the extra time and it gets tougher to continue the further into Deep Time you go.

Well. thanks to one of PC being the greedy idiot, the party now proceeds to the city full of paladins.
I was thinking that they might force the party to help them deal with this mess, only to see the party being warmly welcomed by the Bad.

But getting arrested and sentenced for being a bunch of fuck-ups and getting bailed by the Bad is also a tempting idea.
Something like
>Hey kids, to get outta this Paladin Prison, ya have to break several walls to the north-east
>Why? We will work as a distraction for each other, dividiing their forces. Have those magic scrolls and be thankful I'm not killing you.
Several scrolls related to Illusions. Invisibility. One of these is disguised to be some aoe spell. Maybe Gate.
Also, north-west is the order's main altar.

Would that work?

youtube.com/watch?v=X9uk9IcoQ0w

God yes. Make the pcs help the ancient evil further his plan.

At this point they deserve a bad end for being whiny bitches.

>The Devil didn't get Johnny's soul on account of Pride

Hmmmm. What's the party? And whats the old evils schtic?

You deserve those fuckin' dubs

That's wonderful, OP. I'm actually jealous. The clues and warnings were there, beyond the usual "dealing with evil" dangers. Your players should stop being whiny bitches and accept the fact that good adventurers (the ones that live) pay more attention to details.

Plus, any adventurers dumb or greedy enough to weaken a seal on an evil being in exchange for information, which could easily be silken lies on account of it's ancient evilness, deserves to get fucked.

Alternatively rather than just imprisoning the pcs the pallys swear them to a redemption crusade and stick them with a watcher or a binding magical contract. You let it out you gotta help deal with it kinda deal, if you want them to be slightly more on the mercy side of things.

It sounds like getting stuck between prison and helping an ancient evil will definitely rub them the wrong way. While this may be the fate they deserve, it isn't the fate that will make them or you happy, as they will complain and you will likely feel bad. Though, I could be wrong. It might just be feeling like they were tricked.

I'd enjoy it, but they sound like they want to be the Big Damn Heroes, so you might want to go with making them help the paladins recapture it for the sake of peace at the table.

Imagine trying to explain the situation to the Paladins...