Set up a situation where the main villain has rigged a bomb to go off when his heart stops

>set up a situation where the main villain has rigged a bomb to go off when his heart stops
>plans on blackmailing the PCs
>the PCs find him
>he begins to talk to them
>halfway through his first sentence one of my players says "I cast silence"
>I don't want to railroad so I tell him sure
>he charges as the villain finishes his first sentence
>fighting ensues
>the villain tries to tell them what is happening, but the fight ends in around 30 seconds
>the city explodes and the PCs except one die
>they get pissed
>tell them I didn't want to railroad them and the guy tried to tell them

I don't even feel bad. Maybe listen for more than 10 seconds next time.

I mean, if you really expect your players to want to listen to the villain talk, that's pretty naive. And to then punish them for not listening is vindictive. It would make sense to punish them a little, to make the point, but to end the whole game over it isn't really teaching them anything, it's more of a petty response.

I've also wiped parties for making stupid mistakes or forgetting important things, but it was things they knew about, mistakes they understood they were making. If they have no way of knowing that what they are doing is the wrong thing, and really, you can't claim that killing the bad guy appears to be the wrong thing unless you have established that it is, and you then punish them, it serves no purpose. It doesn't further the story, it doesn't make the experience more fun for anyone, and it doesn't teach them to be better players. It is purely an ego trip on your part, where you are punishing them for not doing what you wanted, which is questionable to begin with, but when you never even told them you wanted it, then you're just doing your job poorly.

They've got no-one to blame but themselves.

You'll get a lot of "hurr durr u should give ur players everything on a plate so they don't cry when they lose" in response to your post, OP, but ignore them. The culture of treating Little Timmy like he's a spoiled child monarch is a cancer that needs to be cut out of Veeky Forums.

Nigga you're an actual retard. The players forcibly made it so they couldn't be told.

I'm okay with this. Most of my local games try to keep things as "real" as possible, and in the real world acting without all the information possible can backfire.

If you want the players to listen to the villain talk, have him do all the talking before they get in the same room as him.

>>set up a situation where the main villain has rigged a bomb to go off when his heart stops
How were you planning the encounter to end ?

>And now I'm going to monologue about...
I think fucking not. I cast fist.

This kind of attitude of wanting to be handheld through a story, given it on a platter yet able to do as they wish while having both cake and eating it is what bothers me from modern players and demotivates me from being a GM.

>set up a situation where the main villain has rigged a bomb to go off when his heart stops
>fails to work out a method of telling the heroes this beforehand

Wow, you really wrote this villain to be stupid, didn't you?

What if the heroes burst in shooting, or just sniped him?

Bombs are no deterrent if you don't tell someone that you set them up before the first weapon gets into play.

No-one's going to stand there being shot if you suddenly shout "Wait, if you kill me, the whole city will explode!" They'll just think you're bluffing and shoot you.

If you wrote your villain stupid enough to fail to convince trigger happy morons, then you've fucked up your game. The players are going to just stop caring and start kneecapping all enemies and cutting off their limbs because any enemy may spawn explosions on death.

It happens.
Attacking during monologue is what people do because if they don't the villain casts a spell or lets his minions into the room.

Best way of dealing with in is putting them in a location where they just cant attack.
>Via t.v, magical ball, projection ect
>Tons of minions around
>Even on a balcony where they have cover and can run away if they need too.

The use of position is a powerful thing bro. If the guy is looking down over the party then he seems stronger.

Well when the villain wasn't fighting back, and was trying to tell them something during their fight - maybe you should listen.

or get cast spells on

Give this villain a fucking Darwin Award.

>attitude of wanting to be handheld through a story
The thing is though, you have to do that to actually tell a story. If you think about almost any story, there are numerous times in it where characters have to make certain decisions or they fail prematurely and the story just stops. When you're telling a story, it may be realistic to say, "well, then the guy just never solves the mystery, the end", but that isn't a satisfying conclusion.

If you want to actually tell a story within a game, you have to give your players the context clues they need to make the decisions they should to be able to get to the next part. Otherwise, it's like watching a TV show and after every episode you roll a d20, and if it comes up 1, you never watch the show again, and just assume the story wasn't completed.

There is a huge difference between warning the players that if they do something, it will be bad, and then punishing them if they do, and punishing them for something they had no way of knowing was the wrong choice. Even if you had planned it in advance, from their perspective, it was a random failure, because they didn't understand it was coming.

And to answer this inevitable response. That is not a reasonable warning that the players should have somehow interpreted as meaning they couldn't kill the villain yet. Even if they noticed he wasn't fighting back, it's no reason to assume he is a living bomb. And every villain ever tries to talk to you. Usually just to bide time for an escape. Your players can't read your mind. You have to give them a clue.

If you want to actually tell a story in your games, you either have to run a total railroad where players have no ability to make choices whatsoever, or you have to be willing to occasionally change what was going to happen to adapt to the choices they make. I don't get how you guys wouldn't understand this, it's one of the most basic parts of game mastering.

...

>Maybe listen for more than 10 seconds next time.
Bullshit.
You see, silencing the villain to spare yourself the theatrics was no mistake.
Charging the villain head on was no mistake either.
The only mistake was actually killing him right away.
Next time the villain should be crippled / maimed / knocked unconscious, brought in for interrogation, properly debriefed and then terminated.

You got me. Since it would have been impossible for the GM to tell the players in advance of the fight that the villain had a bomb attached to him, and there was no way the GM, having control over the entire universe, could have fudged a roll or negated an ability or made up a spell or teleported in a minion or had a recording play to warn them in the moment, and of course, the GM has no control over his game, and so can't just pretend that the bomb that no one else knows exists wasn't actually there, so I guess I must be retarded.

Half of Veeky Forums hates contrivance. The other half doesn't play games and doesn't know what it's like to run that type of situation.

This entire situation could have been avoided with proper setup. Just let the players know in advance that the villain set up the bomb, and also show something to prove it. Don't have the villain go out to them and tell them in person and hope they believe you.

A lot of stuff has been already said, but I'm just going to question this
>I cast silence
Implies DnD, or at least some fantasy deriative
>Bomb that's tracking heartbeat
Implies incredibly high level of technology.

Which game exactly were you playing? Also, why the fuck would you cast silence on monologuing villain? Just to shut him up? Why not Fireball? Or shoot him with a gun? Is that so you can come up with some contrived bullshit that never happened and post it on Veeky Forums?

>why the fuck would you cast silence on monologuing villain
Why the fuck would you cast silence on anyone? To stop them from casting spells.

Shadowrun?
If I where to guess.

But he wasn't casting spells. He was monologuing.

And that means he was unable to suddenly start casting spells instead?

see