Not everything a DM tries works out as intended. Sometimes a story arc falls flat, or a little extra description causes the party to halt for a few hours to fiddle with a rock…. it happens.
I was in a Lovecraftian GURPS campaign set in UK in the 1980s that ground to a halt for a solid hour because one of the players was adamant that we calculate the exact cost of plane tickets for our team.
Truly, rules lawyers are an eldritch abomination.
lifehack if the players are obsessed with something give it to them. Often a small interesting answer will make them stop faster than a hundred boring ones.
once my players rifled through some dead goblins’ clothes and i didnt expect that (dumb, i know) so i put a “very smooth pebble” in a pocket and the players were so interested in it they almost started a fight over it
i was one of the players and we were valid
very early in my campaign - like, 2 or 3 sessions in - the party went to explore a shipwreck. among the loot in the wreck was a black marble statue of a goddess called Blibdoolpoolp. I found her name in a list of d&d deities and thought she sounded cool. her domain is crustaceans and madness, which fit with the overall tone of my bullshit campaign, so I threw her in for a bit of ~flavor~
the party got… attached.
they lugged that statue back with them when they left the shipwreck, even though they were being chased by a sea serpent. they brought it back to the inn where they were staying. in-character, they started seeking out all the information they could about this silly throwaway goddess.
out of character, they started flooding the group chat with lobster memes.
eventually - and I mean, like, several months later - I just gave in and let them have a whole adventure fighting a cult that worked for Blibdoolpoolp, defeating the cult, and letting them take over as Blibdoolpoolp’s primary worshippers. she’s their patron deity now and showers them with crustacean-themed blessings.
reblog to be showered by crustacean-themed blessings
“crustaceans” is an INCREDIBLE domain, what powers do you get as a cleric if you take the crustaceans domain
crab hands
just crab hands but they’re real good at pinching
I had this moment where a player of mine was standing on a beach and I described a crab scuttling by. She fed it bread. So I desrcibed two more crabs coming back, which she also promptly fed. Then four, then eight, then 16, so on and so forth, increasing at exponential levels until she was out of bread. It was truly a ridiculous mount of crabs.
I was trying to teach her not to feed the crabs. But thereafter for the rest of their stay in this beach city, she would bring food to the crabs and feed them. She fucking INSISTED on feeding the crabs every morning from their beach villa and always made me go through this exponential bullshit I had created.
Cut to them being tested by a religious order as worthy emissaries of the sea goddess. They have to fight some giant monster crabs on a platform surrounded by water. The paladin can’t swim and they’re getting all sorts of checks for wet surfaces.
The paladin falls but manages to grab the edge of the platform. She starts to haul herself up but needs help. The other two party members are squishy and getting fucked up by the crabs.
And so she rolled a d20 to see if she could call on her goddess to help her. Fucking nat. 20. Natural 20.
I panic. What do I do?
Then brilliance! I had all the crabs she had helped burst into the arena and pull her to safety while also helping to keep the giant crabs from hurting the others. Just imagine a tide of tiny, bread and fruit fed crabs over running an arena, Christmas Island style. Crabs everywhere saving the day, a blessing from her goddess!
They of course won and after that, have gone out of their way to be kind to crabs. The paladin has even adopted a pet one named Clamps that she takes with her where ever she goes.
In TTRPGs, its always about the small things. And the crabs. Always the crabs.
