When the Players Forget
Last night the players presented me with an interesting dilemma. They wanted to look throughout town for a item they already possessed. The bad guys who are trying to free the shadow from its prison are searching town for the key. The players would like to find it first, only problem is, they already have it but don't know that.
I can't fault them for forgetting. Sometimes I hit them over the head with information and other times it's a bit more subtle. In this case, a group of dwarfs the PCs had saved from a watery grave presented them with the only item they had, an artifact that the ship captain had tried to smuggle out of Andernach and one of the dwarfs had snatched before walking the plank.
But they forgot about the gift last night and they determined that their next move would be to find the key in town. I know that I could have reminded them but I remembered they weren't overly interested in the key when they received it either. Besides, having them look could be fun as long as it didn't take too long.
So when they went to the one person in town they trusted and confided in him the state of affairs, I quickly formulated a plan in my head. One of my players already had taken out a book to start looking through the rituals. I decided that I didn't want to make them spend any money on this and thought something custom might be better. I remembered that the PCs in The Slaying Stone are given scrolls that will help them locate the stone in the town and decided to do something similar here.
Their contact is Sunspeaker Deldaran, a devotee of Pelor (I'm using Hammerfast for Andernach). After hearing their story, he finds one of his colleagues, a rather tall, scrawny man in long, brown robes with mussed red hair and rather large glasses. Called Boniface, he is the bookish sort.
The two of them clean off a table and place down a map of Andernach. Boniface pulled out a long string with a heavy metal object at the end and explained that he will need their assistance to perform the scrying ritual since they are searching such large an area for so small an object.
The first round goes pretty well. Working together, they try to both guide the pointer and remember information about the section of town the device pointed to. Mechanically, I made them all roll their skills checks at the beginning of the round, and then we pieced together a story of what was happening. At the end, they knew that it pointed to the lore ward of Andernach, that quite a few likely targets existed there and one of them was able to assist in the arcana check the next round (with a +4).
With the general area narrowed down a bit, Boniface moved the device so it was centered over the lore ward and they tried again. Again, I had them make the checks at the beginning of the round. I attempted to resolve the non-arcana checks first and then I had to ask the group an important question. I reminded them of the time they saved the petrified dwarfs from beneath the lake of lost memories and that the dwarfs had given them a gift. At this point, one of the players remembered the key but I asked him to hold off on telling everyone else for a moment. Eventually, it was decided who had the item and I finished describing the ritual. They did really well on their arcana check so the device pointed horizontally, right at the PC with the key.
Overall, it was a great moment and while it took a little time to play out, it didn't take so long that the players thought I was wasting their time. While not every seemingly insignificant item will turn out to be quite this significant, sometimes it's fun to have one or two items that are.
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I think you handled that well. In some sense they got to eat their cake and have it; they had their search and with a twist in the tail for the reveal!
Back when I had time to GM I'd struggle when players would forget things like local customs and etiquette.
I started off with something like a "saving throw for memory" for those characters with a high enough intelligence that it would seem out of character for them to forget but that started to run into trouble. It was hard to tell whether players had forgot the local etiquette or were simply bullishly testing the water to see whether a rude approach would work or whether being polite would have been better. It also seemly started to feel tired after a while.
I guess now, though, we're steering back onto the awkward subject of players with characters who are smarter than they are and how to roleplay that!
I also think you handled that really well! I'll have to remember that in the future.
In our defense, it's been a long time IRL since we got that key, and unlike you, we didn't know what it was for. That said, I thought the scenario was a lot of fun. Forgetting you have something on you happens all the time to regular people, and it was good to bring that to our heroes. Also the skill challenge/ritual was a nice bit of role-play that was able to engage all the players. And it certainly was a long way from being a time-waster. It'll be one of the more memorable moments of the campaign, and we're likely to pay more attention to relics given to us for safe-keeping.
Yeah, sorry I didn't make that part clearer. To be honest, it's the reason I felt a little bad about not just telling you guys. But I agree, it came out really well in the end. And I love that you guys put it on the necklace of keys, another magical item :)
I tend to have a list of items in my bag of holding, its full of junk i may or may not need, m rogue is the parties packrat, throw nothing away, ever. Things i deem important are labeled with notes. In my group we have a mapmaker, a packrat, a lore keeper. These secondary roles help immensely out of combat.
Our group plays few and far between and it's difficult to keep the information fresh in the player's minds. So I designated one player (a volunteer)as Chronicler for the group. She writes down every place they go, person they meet, what they do and encounter they fight. We start every game with a recap from the last session. It has proven to be invaluable nearly every game. Just a helpful tip.
I attempted to do this same thing once, a long time ago. Unfortunately, even I forgot the item was in the PCs possession after a time and forgot to mention it when they bulk-sold a great many items they thought were relatively worthless. Though the same "gotcha" moment was salvaged when the PCs realized that not only had they been in possession of an extra-dimensional portal key (at 5th level), but they had sold it to a kobold merchant they now had to chase down and find.
I really liked the map/directional pointer ... that was brilliant... and I think that as long as the game is moving forward and "forgetting about that" doesn't grind the game to a standstill, it is appropriate to make the players work for what they forgot, or if you are pressed for time (and not as creative as Miss Darkmagic here) then giving the players the "you happen to remember speech" is fine... In our current game, our DM pretty much admits to forgetting to give out stuff, or forgetting that he gave out stuff, all the time, so we have to kinda keep on our toes and keep good records... but since at least 2 of us at the table are trying to keep good records, it is rare all 3 of us misplace important info ... but it does happen. Also, although not all of us are as organized, having some web-blog-yahoo.group type site for the party is very helpful so the whole party can be involved in trackign the progress and items found/lost and borrowed. Josh
Eek...I'm bad about forgetting. But in my defense, the DM is my fiancé, so he KNOWS about my horrible memory. He had been forewarned that no matter how many notes I take--and I take a LOT--and no matter how much I try to re-read my notes before our games, I will forget something.
I like the memory check idea that someone mentioned. Because I think it's sad that my poor druid sometimes gets penalized for The Dark Pit that is my memory, lol.
But I also liked the way you handled it. Very creative!
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