How I Lost Control of My Campaign

I made a terrible mistake.

When beginning a side campaign, I said, “It’s supposed to be fun, so if there’s a ridiculous idea you want to try out just go for it.”

I expected my friend’s mermaid cavalier character and my husband’s rotund halfling who happens to be a master chef. What I got, instead, was an entire flock of dopey Kenku led by a disgraced Beholder…

And before you go off criticizing the Beholder boss, know that it wasn’t my choice. The Boys (my husband and our three friends), picked the miniature from the cupboard at random and we just decided to roll with it. I even had an endgame all decided where they would battle him if they could figure out that he was evil!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning!

In all honesty, I should have journaled this while it was happening. There’s a lot I can’t quite remember, but I intend to do my best here.

We started the campaign with a simple backstory. Something quick and silly. “You all have your own unique origin but found one another when you decided to stay in a particular village. Unfortunately, that village was decimated by something or someone you still are unable to identify.” I was hoping to lead them toward finding who destroyed their village. What they decided was that they needed a flock leader and created the rest of the backstory themselves. They pulled the Beholder from the cupboard, slapped him on the board, and started calling him “Splinter” and deciding on their Teenage Mutant Ninja Kenku colors.

It had already gone horribly wrong.

Eventually, the Beholder evolved into being called “Sliver” and then “Father/Mother” or “Father” for short. I allowed them the communicate freely amongst themselves, saying Sliver had facilitated a telepathic link between them.

And with that, *Fap*, Nevermore, Sly, and Boc-Boc were off on their adventure, equipped with a few phrases from each of their backgrounds.

The first session sent the players on a mission to retrieve a meteorite fragment, or a “celestial object” as “Father” put it. Simple enough. I thought maybe the Beholder would use it for some sort of power-enhancing ritual after a few sessions. I prepared maybe two or three encounters, knowing that there would be a ton of roleplay between The Boys.

Very quickly, things devolved into them trying to find their way to the town closest to the flooded ruins they’d taken up residence in. When they finally did find their way, they stood about harassing the guards! It literally turned into the town guards standing around completely baffled before they let them in with a “Don’t cause any trouble, now!”

Then they ran into an old man named El Nettle, where they picked up such phrases as “I’m El Nettle,” and, “Go get your own,” and something along the lines of “It’s here on my map!” I should also take this opportunity to say that since Beholders speak in Deep Speech, anything they repeated from “Father” came out as gurgles and trilling among other things. So any time they tried to convey “celestial object” to the townsfolk it came across as something entirely disturbing.

Now imagine having four grown men around the table, all trilling and gurgling and repeating everything this borderline-senile old man says.

There are no words for the magnitude of the mistake I made.

So, long story short, my four bird brains end up finding the meteor and its fragments being worshipped by a goblin tribe. This was my boss fight for the evening. I was ready.

Except…I wasn’t.

The bard of the group ends up communicating with these creatures through music, and the entire group has a dance off that ends in a dance party! They’re given a fragment of the meteor as a token of friendship, and the LITERAL BAND of Kenku return home to Father/Mother, successful in their mission.

Since then, the campaign has snowballed. I’ve learned that Beholders are paranoid hoarders, so we waged war on the local stray cat population. Sly has acquired an Elk named *Screech*.

THEN! I attempted to lead them on a quest for clean water during a period of drought and disease, but the fools ended up killing the entire town thinking it would be a lovely new home for Father/Mother! I had to ret-con the entire thing by claiming it was a fever dream—a warning from Father/Mother that no one can know of his existence! I even found a homebrew enemy based on One Punch Man specifically for this fever dream!

In coming sessions, I intend to make One Punch Man a real person, dreamed into existence by Father/Mother.

We’ll see how that goes…

Wish me luck.