We Accidentally Blew up a Country and Doomed the World with Memes: Continued

This is also another point. When we were given the in-character choice in the beginning, at no point did the GM even hint that one led to "the fairy storyline" while the other was for "the eldritch/cosmic horror storyline."

If the group had unanimously decided on the former, then why did the GM even give that in-character choice?

Aaaand they were supposed to know that how?

Aaaaand you refused to run the game they requested after giving it as an option for what reason?

Aaaaand you rocks fell everyone dies instead of giving them a way to fix it or at least continue playing because?

I'm willing to bet good money that the answer to all of those is 'Because I, the GM, wrote my game out like a visual novel before we even started'.

I dunno dude, "disappearance" strikes me as code for "fey bullshit" (that's kind of the MO behind the fey splat) and sea monsters strike me as code for "eldritch cthulhu tentacle bullshit." Not there aren't tentacool disappearances and ocean fey, but...

OP is extremely autistic and seems to take pride in misinterpreting things as aggressively as possible (or merely emulating Adslahnit), so who knows what the truth is, but seems logical.

>refused to run the game they requested

Seems like it was presented in character.

We did not receive a chance to relay information by the time we psychically compelled that NPC who tried to incinerate a city.

The moment we succeeded at psychically compelling that NPC to share the information, that was apparently enough for the "blood gods" to reach critical mass, blow up a country, and doom the world.

It was a sudden and nonsensical leap from "pirates and sea monsters are growing stronger, not that we had any way of linking that to learning more about our enemies" to "a whole nation has been reduced to dust, and the world is doomed," with no warning signs in between.

Since the group had unanimously voted for the fey-themed storyline, we were under the impression that both initial plot hooks were fey-related.

We were given not even the slightest indication that the eldritch/cosmic horror storyline was still active and on the metaphorical table.

Okay but.

>Hey guys, do you want fey bullshit or cthulhu bullshit
>fey please
>okay btw the first option you take in the game has you deciding between fey bullshit and cthulhu bullshit
>yeah I know I already asked you
>but muh rails

There's not a lot to misinterpret here, unless OP is lying about literally everything that went down this game.

I dunno man, 3+ entire sessions of doing stuff you didn't want to do (that wasn't even of the offered storyline you didn't want) seems enough to infuriate people. Hell, many GMs will do a TPK after a single session where the players do stuff they don't like.

So, what would you have suggested the players do?

What system is this, anyway? I'm going to guess nMage.

Probably go do the thing? You gotta remember, this is 3+ whole sessions of Adslahnit and friends doing nothing but gathering information. If this is with nMage, probably with spells. While the GM wasn't really being nice, I can definitely imagine 3+ whole sessions of that shit being enough to make me terminate the campaign.

Which thing, though?

And why couldn't the GM just go 'okay you've learned all there is to know out there', especially if people are actively working to keep this information hidden? Or, you know, talk with his group and tell them that they're overpreparing? Or just not use the cthulhu stuff at all?

We were using Strike! with a series of house rules to make the (shoddy) noncombat rules concrete and consistent.

If the GM did not want us going on a wild goose chase for information, the GM should have planted information that led us to a direct confrontation with the pirates and sea monsters, like a docking location and a hidden material weakness.

Telling us, "These pirates and sea monsters are constantly regenerating," is an indicator that perhaps the enemies should not be confronted without more research.

If only the GM had some way to communicate with his players and tell them he would like to move ahead with the story...

>Which thing, though?

Fight the pirates, I'm assuming.

> Or, you know, talk with his group and tell them that they're overpreparing?

Adslahnit aggressively misunderstands *everything* and reinterprets it with maximum perversity, from social cues to rules. This makes his reviews and stress testing of RPGs incredibly entertaining, but there is genuinely no telling what happened.

Its also quite possible that the GM didn't realize how incredibly frustrating the system would be. Again, 3 sessions.

>Or just not use the cthulhu stuff at all

I can definitely imagine destroying my campaign through any means necessarily (probably just "this turned out to be surprisingly unfun, bye") after 3 sessions of 20 Questions spells cast over and over again. In omage and nmage 1e, you can generally cast info spells forever, unlike in say D&D.

The way that PCs tend towards omniscience (short of a Seer casting "no you don't" 400x) in Mage strikes me as incredibly unfun and prone to making the ST feel like his hands are tied, and I think in retrospect I may have contributed to the death of a chronicle precisely through Time based 20 questions effects on everything.

Fair enough.

But yeah, I would guess the GM just decided he had no interest in the direction the PCs wanted to go.

System's Strike!, as seen above. Also, why the fuck would you think it's mage if it involves fighting pirates and sea monsters? What the fuck kind of Mage are you playing?

Also, what possible reason would you have to guess "nMage"?

Who the fuck is Adshlanit? Were you another player in the OP's group?

1) You ignored the point where I asked why the GM couldn't just go 'nope you don't learn anything else'.

2) You ignored the part were he gave the players a 50% chance of a game they did want to play and a 50% chance of a game they did not want to play, and apparently refused to communicate anything until rocks fell.

3) You seem to be projecting pretty hard from a past game there, senpai. Sorry OP brought up bad memories.

>Also, why the fuck would you think it's mage if it involves fighting pirates and sea monsters?

Mind compulsion spell. Also, its certainly no weirder than zeppelin battles upon the rings of Saturn (yes, different mage).

>Also, what possible reason would you have to guess "nMage"?

3 entire sessions of intel gathering sounds like the sort of dithering I expect of nMage, plus Adslahnit historically abuses WW/OP games a lot.

>the GM couldn't just go 'nope you don't learn anything else'.

GMs very often TPK/cancel when they run out of ideas, you will notice that DM/that player threads are 99% solvable by frank discussions with the players.

>You ignored the part

I did not. The point is that he could very well decide to destroy the campaign either way once losing interest. Probably found himself way, way over his head.

>projecting pretty hard

Don't have much information as to what was going on so have to speculate.

>Mind compulsion spell

Are you literally retarded? D&D has mind compulsion spells, and fits in much better with the idea of fighting pirates and sea monsters. Hell, you even admit that zeppelin battles on the rings of Saturn is a different mage all together. nMage is much more grounded.

It seems like you just made a wild assumption as to the identity of the poster (who, by the way, nobody else here knows who is), then projected your own experiences with ruining a mage game on him.

>GMs very often TPK/cancel when they run out of ideas, you will notice that DM/that player threads are 99% solvable by frank discussions with the players.

So, like I've been saying? And like clearly didn't happen?

>I did not. The point is that he could very well decide to destroy the campaign either way once losing interest. Probably found himself way, way over his head.

Also: GM CAN do whatever the fuck he wants with his game, sure, but that doesn't put his players at fault or make him a not shit GM.

Nobody even said 3 sessions.
Where are you getting the 3 session thing?

>Are you literally retarded?

It was just a guess based off OP, who I know best for, primarily, nmage.

>wild assumption as to the identity of the poster

The nmage part is a guess, the identity part not so much.

"Several" sessions.

So, yes.

You're literally retarded. Whoever this "Adslahnit" guy is (nobody else knows, in case you haven't noticed), you seem to have a personal grudge against him. But thus far, all you've done is make wild guesses, ignore everything said in the story, defend your baseless accusations fact, and die on the hill of defending obviously shitty GMing of all things.

Frankly, this Adslahnit guy sounds like much better company than you.

>but that doesn't put his players at fault or make him a not shit GM.

Of course not. I don't think it had much to do with attempting eldritch horror, though.

Also, the implication of fey storyline = disappearances did imply nwod, in the way that exsanguinated hooker corpses implies vampires.

Not fully clear on why you're mad.

>you seem to have a personal grudge against him

Not at all, I'm something of a fan.

>wild guesses

There is virtually nothing to discuss in this thread other than wildly guessing at what happened and what the GM was doing.

>defending

Autopsies aren't a "defense."

>fey storyline = disappearances

Alright. Let's ignore for a moment how snatching people up is kind of the Fae's MO in most stories about them. The Fae in Nwod have these tendencies to leave behind perfect copies of the person in question called "Fetches", and even then don't tend to take many people at once.

And a perfect copy of someone being left behind to live their life typically means you get no disappearance reports.

Obviously it was just a guess.

All of your "guesses" can be sniffed at as being dumb or wildly assumptive with two seconds of thought and logic.

At that point, they're not guesses. They're just you being a jackass and treating it like being Sherlock Holmes.

>Not at all, I'm something of a fan.
You mean a stalker.

Sounds like he was trying to do a dark fantasy game with some large, complicated ideas and it fell flat. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and let it go. Not every GM hits it out of the park every time.

He really shouldn't have. He should have gone for the story he wanted to tell and not offered something else. I can understand how it happens, games often get away from me, but it's a teachable moment.

Before the game started, I told my GM that I preferred "heroic, high-spirited, light-hearted, optimistic, hopeful fantasy that can still get serious on occasion."

I received no indication from the GM that the game would be quite a departure from that.

Sorry to hear that.

It's hard to say how badly the GM fucked up (maybe you guys fucked up a lot too), though I can pinpoint:
>Asking the players "hey do you want to do the fey thing or the eldritch thing", and ignoring their answer, still making it a necessity they had to blunder into, and not saying anything when they prolonged it
>Failing to hint at the consequences of the party's actions properly
>Setting up the pirates and sea monsters as threats, then making it so learning the reasons behind them causes the "bad end" (how is the party supposed to fight them? learning early?)
>Giving the player answers late, instead of early, as outlined above, and making it so this means they've lost
>Failing to hint at the consequences of people's knowledge of the blood gods (seems like the "now the sea monsters are four times stronger" was not "sudden" enough)
>The party learning about the blood gods and how they work being the tipping point for dooming the world, because seriously, this is a highly contrived coincidence, and kinda fucking stupid (five individuals or so adding to global awareness means they can't be stopped... really?)

I hope you get to have the fey adventure you were excited about. And I suggest you get a better GM to run it...

>Not bad, actually. You made the decision to stand around jerking off with investigation prior to fighting the enemies.
>Because holy fucking shit: How fucking annoying is that?
Investigating what you're against is smart as fuck and you should reward players for trying to learn more about the world, instead of treating it like a cardboard backdrop. And depending on the DM and setting, failing to do research can mean setting yourself up for horrifying death. (See: Shadowrun)

i think your gm saw your campaign as a video game

that would explain a LOT

No, the GM saw this.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bye_Bye_Man

This is a damn fine question. Who is adlalala?

Sounds like the DM really screwed up at the point when you were compelling that pyromaniac to tell you everything.

If he had given more time for the critical mass to build because you informed your allies and the info you gave to them was leaked out to the general public then it might have made more sense for you to accidentally a country.

Hey there 2hu/Adslahnit.

Here you are shit-talking a literal saint who was patient enough to run a game for you. I'm 99.9% certain you are misrepresenting what actually happened because you want the validation of Veeky Forums. Great job, pat yourself on the back.

Shame on you.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

How do you think he's misinterpreting it? I mean, there's nothing there to misinterpret.

Just host a game for 2hu and find out for yourselves. I fucking dare you. Anyone defending OP should put their money where their mouth is and try GMing for 2hu. You'll see what I mean.

You're dodging the question.

LITERALLY WHO
EXPLAIN WHO THE FAGGOT IS AND YOULL LOOK LESS RETARDED
ITS NOT HARD

I'll answer since you're obviously so uninformed.

2hu is autistic and misinterprets everything. He misses the most obvious clues and takes actions that are wildly inappropriate. Then, he gets frustrated, throws a tantrum, and starts blaming others because he does not understand what he has done.

If you don't believe me, take up my challenge.

Okay but

What in what OP's post could he have misinterpreted?

Unless he's not mistaken and is actually lying, there's not a lot to misinterpret about
>GM asked us if we wanted to play a fey game or a lovecraft game
>we said fey
>he ran lovecraft
>he did not inform us he was running lovecraft until it was rocks fall everyone dies

...

I look forward to seeing the next thread about you and your game.

I'm certain he misinterpreted tons of social cues from NPCs and the GM that are entirely absent from his posts. He's misrepresenting all of this information by presenting it entirely from his own narrow point of view and intentionally placing all the blame on the GM. Then he's going to use the replies to this thread as ammunition to tell the GM why he's badwrong and he needs to do it 2hu's way. At no point did he ever consider the possibility that he missed something or made a mistake.

If the GM hasn't already disappeared because he can't take any more of this, I have half a mind to send this thread to the GM himself so he can save himself from a lot of drama.

You shouldn't believe everything you see on Veeky Forums and that includes what I am saying. Find out for yourself and try GMing for 2hu yourself.

Okay, but how the fuck did he misinterpret WE ASKED TO PLAY FEY AND HE RAN LOVECRAFT AND ONLY TOLD US AFTER THE FACT?

Holy fuck you are ignoring the point entirely.

This isn't Lovecraft. This is a butchering of "memetics."

Feel free to join. 2hu is already there.

discord.gg/df5eF

>We Accidentally Blew up a Country and Doomed the World with Memes

/pol/---->

>Before the campaign started, the GM offered us two choices of storylines. The first was a fey-themed adventure, and the second was an eldritch/cosmic horror adventure. The group unanimously settled on the fey plot.

I'm sorry I'm using Lovecraft as a shorthand, user.

Anyway this is going nowhere fast so:

Unless we assume that OP is lying, which is possible but not what anyone actually seems to be arguing, we know for certain that the GM asked the players if they wanted game X or game Y. They said they wanted game Y unanimously, and the GM ran game X.

There is nothing ambiguous or open to interpretation about that. It is also kind of a shit GM thing to do.

I can't speak for the rest of the game or OP's behavior because I wasn't there, but lying to your players about something so fundamentally large is what a shit GM does.

Plot twist: 2hu is actually just this random faggot who is completely unrelated to OP in any way and wants someone to run a game for him

m night shamalamadingdong.gif

To me it seems like the DM told you that you would have the choice of two storylines they meant in-game but your group thought it meant that you would tell the DM which you wanted to play. Then in character you chose the obviously not fey storyline rather than the obviously fey choice of a missing person. The along the elderitch storyline your group fucks up in the worst way possible, doing the exact wrong thing to do. Your DM reacted to the decisions your group made in character and you got mad about them.

>your group fucks up in the worst way possible
>investigating is fucking up
??????????

In the context of the adventure trying to get as much information about elderitch horrors is the worst thing to do. Thus fucking up.

They didn't know they were on that adventure.

They didn't know that doing so would be the worst thing to do.

They didn't even know what adventure they were on.

They should have thought about the options and thought hmm ... investigating missing people -fey, and/or sea monsters-elderitch and chosen accordingly.

Why would they assume that one or the other led to eldritch horrors when the GM asked their input on what game they wanted him to run and no one said eldritch horrors?

If it was 2hu, then why did the whole group get bamboozled by the GM too?

I think that there was a critical miss communication between the DM and the players where the DM said something that could be interperated in multiple ways, something along the lines of "You will chose what you want to play in the adventure.". When the players in character choose the elderitch storyline he decided that he would run that. In short I think that it was a misunderstanding and nobodies fault really.

Even if that happened, the fact that the players unanimously said that they wanted to play the fey adventure means that the eldritch adventure should have been off the table, full stop.

Why is this so hard for you to understand?

I get the feeling that most of the arguing against OP is coming from his GM...

>Or, you know, talk with his group
When has that ever happened in the history of complaining about your GM on Veeky Forums, besides threads like this where the GM and player both passive-aggressively flirt with each other while we get to watch?

Touhoufag.

>Eldritch Horror
>combat heavy
why

why would you do this

This is a bad idea made worse by a lousy execution.

The architecture of the idea obviously precludes anyone from directly informing the players about the "their power increases as you learn more about them" phenomenon, although really that's the only sensible thing to learn about them, so if you WERE going to say something, that would be it. So the essential nature of the campaign involves hoping that the players catch on, and do so quickly, because otherwise the world is doomed.

Having created a campaign which absolutely hinges on the players making a particular inference about something that can't be stated directly, the GM then actively misinforms the players about the genre of the game they're playing. This was stupid. But it could have been salvaged if the antagonists made some thematic sense; if, for example, people who learned too much about them became cultists, or lost their sanity, or something else. However, the GM decided to have his "blood gods" represented by pirates and sea monsters, who simply get stronger as the players uncover more about the beings controlling them. Presumably hinting that the "blood gods" were connected to communication or ideas in some way might have put the players on the right track, but, again, the concept itself gets in the way— apparently the game ends if the players learn that they're not supposed to learn about the "blood gods"!

Additionally, it's hard to imagine how this concept could possibly have been satisfying even if it went the way the GM thought it would: "What's that thing?" "I dunno. Let's kill it!" "Yay! It is dead." "And then nobody ever learned anything about the newly-dead thing ever again. The End." I don't even know why the "cosmic horror" subplot was there in the first place; if the GM wanted to hurry up and get it over with, and the players didn't vote for it, why include it at all?

(Continued)

Then there's the aforementioned issue with running a combat-heavy horror game. "Horror" generally implies that combat is going to be very dangerous or outright suicidal. If you have powerful players doing whatever they want, it's not horror. "The hubris of the PCs unleashes a terrible evil upon the world" is not a bad concept, but a direct, mystical connection between the amount of stuff the players know and the strength of their antagonists is just about the dumbest possible way to do it.

Investigation, on the other hand, is usually one of the smartest things you can do if you're trying to stop some kind of terrible monstrosity you can't destroy with force alone. It's something that can be done effectively by a few talented people— whereas you really want a navy if you're going to fight sea monsters and pirates.

In effect, the GM created a scenario where the most sensible thing to do was the thing that ended the world, and then defended it with

>I don't push my players towards the "right" answer

OP, if this is true:
Stop playing with this DM.
He doesn't sound reliable on the factor on trying to keep in mind what the party wants -or- being able to do an horror plot decently (pulling out a memetic-spreading elder power around to a party that didn't agree to do lovecraftian bullshit? Twat move).
By what you said, he'll attempt to do the same next game. You can probably get to a better game that doesn't punish players for acting more than murderhobos. Or, if you went passive-aggressive on him, just act like a muderhobo on everything like that plot required.
Still, better do the wiser thing, and just talk with him. Tell him that this shit won't fly, and you're not interested in further BS like this one.
He's the DM, and he makes the rules and choices. But just as a DM makes the rules, a player can decide to walk off.

Just to make something clear, I am a second player from that game and OP's is right, this is how this happened. I think it is a result of our GM having lots of loose threads after two other players left the game. The "blood gods" storyline was supposed to be their part but we were given a choice of taking it. I still have no idea why there even was a choice if we just said that we prefer Fey storyline.

What happened to make the other players leave?

Did it seem like they enjoyed getting fucked over at random for no good reason?
And/or were fond of murderhoboing?

>tfw Touhoufag's shitty reputation is working and he only gets games with increasingly shitty GMs

It is a good day. How long until you start paying someone to GM for you, 2hu?How desperate will you get?

oh, he already did that, I'm pretty sure

Isn't he rich as fuck or something and thus doing so isn't a problem anyways?
Or was that a different person?

>how this concept could possibly have been satisfying even if it went the way the GM thought it would: "What's that thing?" "I dunno. Let's kill it!" "Yay! It is dead." "And then nobody ever learned anything about the newly-dead thing ever again. The End."

Postmodern storytelling.

>MFW every random encounter is actually composed of OP's GM's shitty memetic monster troops.

To add onto this chain of discussions, something that immediately seems contradictory about the whole thing is the amount of devotion placed into the wrong parts of the game.

>"We want the fey game of course!"
>"A choice about pirates, fuck yeah!"
>Instead of directly tackling the pirates, do the cosmic horror option of hitting up the library and investigating
>Take the cosmic horror option of investigating cults involving massive blood gods
>Take the cosmic horror option of using relatively evil magic to force an otherwise good person to give them information.
>This covers SEVERAL sessions spend several sessions (aka the average of 12-16 hours spread out over the course of a month assuming 3-4 sessions)
>DM: "Well, gee, since you guys have spent a month of your time into this, why don't we just play cosmic horror instead?"
>OP: "FUCK YOU DM THIS IS THE WORST SHIT EVER YOU BETTER BELIEVE THIS IS GOING ONTO Veeky Forums!

Side Point of Stupidity: What, OP, you spent all that time doing research on unrelated blood gods, but it never occurred to you to maybe investigate why the pirates got stronger EVERY time you sent a letter to informants? Seriously?

That may well be why they kept investigating. Shit doesn't just suddenly get stronger, after all, not without some outside influence. Like, say, some fey shithead having some fun fucking around with everything because they can.

I know I definitely wouldn't have pegged it as being due to spreading information.

But it doesn't seem like any of their activities were related to the underlying "why", but rather the information about the cult at general, which is a different mindset altogether.

There's a difference between
"Oh shit, the cult got more powerful!...why? That's odd. We better either deal with them now before they get MORE powerful, or find out more about the source of their direct power and see if we can cut it off."
vs
"Oh they got more powerful? Well, that can wait until we hit up this library instead. Maybe talk to a few peeps in some crazy houses"

I mean, some other user above said something along the lines of "How is investigation the wrong move???", but isn't the act of investigating in and of itself the wrong move to make considering the players who choose the genre?

>Hey, I want a lighthearted fairy themed adventure
>I also want it to be filled with swash buckling pirates!
>Gee, thanks GM for setting up an entire session about the pirates for us.
>Oh, but we're not going to fight them. Instead, we're going to run into the local town and start an intensive, 12+ hour real time investigation into these guys.

Their actions are making a fat statement, and those are actions of cosmic-horror investigators, not those of people who want fey-themed swashbuckling adventure, are they not? It's not hard to imagine that the DM just slowly started working in the cosmic horror plot into the main game after the first 2 weeks went by with no pirate fighting.

The meme thing would have been hard to predict, but they shouldn't have been doing that much heavy research into it. It wasn't even like Shadowrun style research where they find blueprints of the ships and figure out that the captain is weak for women and ale.

Nothing adds up about the player actions that we know vs what OP is saying and how the DM "unfairly" treated them.

>avatar fagging fucking retarded piece of shit pork eye loser

Wow you really are a heap of human garbage, great thread loser

>Instead of directly tackling the pirates, do the cosmic horror option of hitting up the library and investigating
We initially gathered information on the pirates and the sea monsters directly. From that, we discovered that the pirates and sea monsters were growing stronger and constantly regenerating, as established the opening post.

>Take the cosmic horror option of investigating cults involving massive blood gods
We were under the impression that we were under the fey storyline. "Blood god" seems like generic fantasy, not mythos.

>DM: "Well, gee, since you guys have spent a month of your time into this, why don't we just play cosmic horror instead?"
The GM had informed us that we were actually on the eldritch storyline only after we had doomed the world.

>it never occurred to you to maybe investigate why the pirates got stronger EVERY time you sent a letter to informants? Seriously?
There was absolutely nothing to suggest that corresponding with informants and the pirates and sea monsters growing stronger were linked.

>"Oh shit, the cult got more powerful!...why? That's odd. We better either deal with them now before they get MORE powerful, or find out more about the source of their direct power and see if we can cut it off."
This is what we were doing.

>isn't the act of investigating in and of itself the wrong move to make considering the players who choose the genre?
No, because "fey storyline" hardly means "no investigation," and if anything, actually suggests just as much investigation.

>Their actions are making a fat statement, and those are actions of cosmic-horror investigators, not those of people who want fey-themed swashbuckling adventure, are they not?
It is spurious to claim that only cosmic horror investigators would actually do research on their enemies and try to piece together what is actually going on.

Why even discourage us by telling us that they had seemingly insurmountable mystical powers?

>In an earlier thread ( → #), I recounted an experience wherein our party was performing splendidly throughout several sessions, only to abruptly blow up a country and doom the whole world, all without warning

So you're /pol/

Eh, I got half way through your post and realized how autistic you are. I don't feel like staying up til 3am to teach you how your actions make the game as opposed to your intentions or what you say. Do whatever you like.

>only Cthulhu investigators investigate enemies

kys

Dude, just because you were point-by-point refuted doesn't mean you have to be a little bitch about it.

This.

>Over explaining why they did what they did and using a lot of words
>"refutation"