Do people ever replay a scenario when it has been spoiled? [closed]

Question

I have rarely played any kind of RPG but I read the posts here out of curiosity.

Background

A GM has spent weeks or months designing a game world. Well into the game a character invents a nuclear bomb and kills everyone. Of course this is an exaggeration but I think you know what I mean. Basically it spoils the fun and wastes a lot of work by the GM

Question

How commonly does someone spoil a game like this and what is the usual response?

Examples

1. Give up in despair
2. Sack the player
3. Start up again just before the disaster
4. Both of 2 and 3
5. Something else
6. Persuade the other players/characters to gang up on the miscreant and slay them in game before they can carry out their dastardly plan.

Answer 1

Yes

The answer to the question in your title "Do people ever replay a scenario when it has been spoiled?" is yes - I've done it, but I don't know how common that is. It's a difficult one to draw a line in. In my case it was a player who wanted to exit the campaign anyway, the group hadn't made a concession in terms of scheduling (that would have put everyone out for a minor convenience to the problem player) and so that player decided they would go out with a bang. After they'd shown themselves out, the party decided to just retcon the session and continue as normal.

However, if the whole party was taking a chaotic route and enjoying it I'd just go with it, it's a collaborative story, and I've built the world, but they're playing in it. As long as everyone has fun, that's all that matters. Just give them consequences of their actions.

I once had my players decide they wanted to kidnap a prince. The prince was due to get married in the morning for political reasons, to whichever of two kingdoms arrived first (some lore on speed of arriving armies to aid them). He wanted to marry the princess of kingdom A, but not kingdom B, and was obligated to marry whoever turned up first. There were consequences of A and B on the larger world stage, I'd got that planned out. Instead, the party decide they don't know how to slow down Princess B from arriving, so just kidnap the prince and run off with him. Cue three kingdoms hunting the party and the prince not really being all that in on it either, some player death and really hampering the party in solving the issue in the main plot (this was supposed to be a side plot). As GM, I had a plan and the party threw that to the wind, they set off a political nuke that changed the world...but they had fun doing it, and it is one of the more memorable sessions. Personally, I let chaos like that fly, don't turn them back because it doesn't fit your session plan.

Answer 2

"Oh, apparently we're going post-apocalyptic."

Different GMs will handle this sort of scenario differently. Some may despair, some may fault the player, some may retcon away the issue, which I sometimes do myself.

However, I do prefer rolling with the punches. Either by being aware of what's going on (or faking it by having an NPC i.e. holding the detonator on the other side of the room), or by accepting the event and letting the player(s) deal with the (potentially catastrophic) consequences.

For instance, back when I played Vampire the Masquerade, one scene had the (vampire) player characters encountering a very powerful vampire in torpor, a sort of hibernation/coma. Weaker vampires, in that game, can cannibalize stronger vampires for power. This is very much considered murder and in this case, the sleeping vampire was "on their team".

Of course, one of my players decided to "go for it". So he did, and the rest of the campaign was the group running from other vampires and their catspaws. Where that vampire "team" or their mortal servants couldn't get to the characters, they gave the characters' location to Vampire Hunters or Werewolves.

And as the finale, the vampire "father" of the sleeping vampire finally cornered them, promised them he wouldn't kill them if they surrendered, then forced them into hibernation and buried them, alive, at the deepest level of Yucca Mountain.

"I am a man of my word; you will not die now, nor for a long, long time to come. Perhaps, in that time, you may spend some of it thinking of what might have been."