A Game of Ice and Fire, Part 4: Adaptability

Players will always derail...always

One thing I have learned in the few years I've been a GM, is that players will always find someway to deviate from the expected.  It could be they ignore an important clue or an NPC that sets up the session that is key to the entire campaign that you have devised for months.  Sometimes it's unintentional.  Maybe the clue was just a little too subtle at the time and you have to work to reinforce the idea that "by the way, that medallion you found on the bandit...it's really important!"  Sometimes it's tied to how they roleplay.  Maybe the players skip over the NPC entirely because their characters "have no reason to interact with them."  This is not a bad thing in anyway and should never be discouraged.  Now you've learned that the band of adventurers really don't like nuns, hate religion and would never step foot inside a church.  Take that important information the NPC had and put it on someone who they would interact with; a tavern keep perhaps, or a guy looking to hire some mercenaries.  They key thing to take away from this is that you have to be flexible.  You have to adapt.  I think we mentioned it a couple times on the podcast, but roleplaying and, more importantly, GM'ing is almost like doing improv.

This past week, I started in on the premade adventure in the back of the A Song of Ice and Fire book.  I've ran very few premade adventures in the past because, I feel, that you have to be ready to react more in those situations when players deviate from the path laid out.  If it is a session or campaign I am running myself, I rarely have concrete paths laid out overall, so I can react a bit better to something of my own creation.  Plus, it might have something to do with the people I game with.

Early in the adventure, on the way to King's Landing, the group found some bodies, presumably killed by bandits.  This set them on alert some, as it should.  After all, one of them is heir to a noble house, and the others are body guards of a sort.  When they go to the inn for the night, they pretty quickly noticed "guy huddled alone, by the fire, sniffing and coughing like he's sick."  So when people turned in for the night, a watch was set and it was Elan, the bow wielding scout, who was awake and noticed the guy sneaking out.  He wasted no time in shooting an arrow right into the guy's leg, crippling him.

Here's where I had to alter a little.  I expected him to follow him silently to see where he was going, maybe confront him about being up so late...not shoot him in the leg, 5 yards from the inn.  I am used to this though, so I used it as the perfect opportunity to slow the game down and make the players have to deal with potential repercussions.  (The other thing I could have done was just scrap the entire bandit angle and make him truly just a random guy, but I didn't want to be that mean.  I may in the future though...)

The guy screamed out, waking the entire inn.

The inn keep was kind of an old lady, and not unkind.  She didn't have much care for lords and nobility, they have to pay like everyone else.  So when she sees one of her patron's bleeding with an arrow through the leg, of course she's upset.  What arose was probably one of the most belligerent common folk in the entire land of Westeros.  I probably played her a little too obstinately, but that made it more interesting.  She wanted them out, they wanted to stay the rest of the night.  They tried to pay her off, she wanted more than they offered.  She wasn't going to back down just because this guy was a lord.  So, while The Fort and Terrance stayed around to intimidate and threaten the innkeep (which was quite easy once they stopped playing nice), Elan went off with one of the household guards they brought along to find the bandit camp the wounded man was running off to.

The bandit encounter, as was printed in the book, was designed to be either an ambush set by the bandits or the players.  Should have been during the day, and at least everyone would be awake.  Here is another place I had to alter.  I don't want to say I "accommodated" the players, but I definitely alter encounters a little when I see the players using their skills appropriately or trying to play the game in a logical fashion.  Instead of the bandits being awake, waiting for their guy to tell them of travelers coming, they were asleep because of the delay caused by the arrow and the commotion at the inn.  It's obviously possible to travel there in a relatively short period of time, that guy was gonna do it.  Elan is a good tracker, and with his high skill, he was able to find them, all asleep.  I could have just said, "no, it's too dark, you can't find them" or "the sun is starting to rise, and the bandit camp is stirring" and kept the book encounter, but that is a cheat I feel.

What followed was a series of stealth rolls where he and the guard went from tent to tent, slitting the throats of the bandits.  Encounter over and Elan was vindicated for his quick, reckless action.