this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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"you feel the spell take hold, but for some reason the crown remains rusty"
Then you pivot that the rust is a powerful illusion or some kind of curse cast on the crown by someone related to that backstory to keep it hidden. Then while your players try to figure out why simply cleaning the rust didn't work, you try to figure out how to weave in that backstory sooner than later.
If you're really not ready for it to happen, make sure they have some other quest to do that has a pressing time limit.
you're definitely right about the time limit. at that point you are about 5 minutes away from every spell in the party's arsenal being cast on that crown, followed by the main quest getting derailed by the mystery of the plot armored artifact.
I'm extremely naive when it comes to tabletop RPGs
Is there any kind of "plot says no" response to magic? Something like the doors in oblivion where you need a key to unlock
Really, what the DM says goes. So if you want to be boring you can just say it doesn't work for some reason. The answer above re: pivoting to it being a powerful illusion spell or something so there is a reason the spell didn't work is a lot more compelling and interesting imo
That makes sense! I've always wanted to run a campaign (even though I've never really played) so I try to take guidance from stories like these
Thank you!
You could also just have it work and go with whatever follows from it though.
I believe you should have a plot prepared but you also shouldn't be afraid to adapt it if the players do something unexpected. It's more work, but in my experience players can usually smell when you're just trying to block them. And they will derive fun from having found out your plans early (which is totally ok to tell them).
Ime, players are entirely willing to accept an extremely short session just so I can prep and set back up after they throw me a massive curveball. If you're capable of doing it on the fly, that's great, but I'm not and my players usually understand.
Had a twelve minute session once because I forgot I gave the party a foldable boat like three months ago on a whim, and they used it to skip the next ~3 sessions of content. I had an entire thing setup where they'd help a dwarfhold hunt a dragon, and had started on some city-based intrigue in the next area.
I just leveled with them that I had not even slightly expected this session to go this way and had nothing prepped so we'd stop early and pick it up next time.
Retconing things to protect muh precious twists is not compelling, though, it's just base metagaming. The unwavering plot is the GM equivalent of the 8 page main character syndrome PC backstory. If I found out my GM was doing that, they wouldn't be my GM anymore.