How do I fix this? (Newbie GM)

Anyone seeking GM advice to fix something without a retcon is free to post here.

I'm playing a Dresden Files campaign. There is a really cool NPC I thought up that I spent a good deal of time hyping up, to the point that he seems like a pretty scary guy. He is the local warden of the white council, who has a reputation of chopping off heads of anyone he thinks might have broken one of the laws of magic. Both of the PC's are minor talent para-net members at feet in the water power level.

Anyway, the PC's are reporting a magical murder to the warden at his home. I thought it would be a good time to compel a PC to lose control of one of his powers (destroys magical effects) to accidentally ruin a network of voodoo dolls the warden uses to suck up bad luck that is caused by his family curse. The player accepts the compel and destroys the wardens dolls.

At this point I was going to have the Warden lose his temper and attack them, then I realized I didn't really have a good handle on the evocation rules, the warden was super high powered, and it suddenly seemed like an overly punishing use of a compel to have the warden attack them. So instead (where I feel like I made my biggest mistake) the warden accuses the PC's of orchestrating the murder they are reporting, but forgets about that when the PC breaks his voodoo dolls. He just gets mad and kicks them out of his house.

I felt that I made an otherwise interesting NPC into a weird, slightly insane, and disappointing character. Is there any way I can salvage him?

edited 10th Feb '14 4:08:38 PM by k9ine

Perhaps use it as a step into a plotline where he's actually being influenced by someone breaking the Third Law of Magic? Could be a hint that he's not completely in charge and serve as a nice segue.

Do your players know what the dolls did? If not, retcon them as being mental defenses that actually helped keep him sane, or held his memories, or kept a demon from possessing him, etc.

The characters have to fix them or replace them before he goes off the deep end. ;)

Well, considering that your players just did something catastrophically stupid, and the Warden can't be everywhere at once, he may ask the players for help, if they "just keep that moron out of my sight".

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

Unfortunately the players already know what the dolls did because the same one that took the compel and broke them can instinctively see magic.

Having him being mentally controlled sounds like it could work, only problem being that the wardens home is a ward fortress beyond anything seen in the dresden files books. Still I might find a way around it. Thanks for the advice guys. If I have other GM blunders Ill post them here.

Even *resisting* subtle mind control can make you erratic in DF verse. Anything that screws with your mind is going to cause strain. And he leaves the house sometimes-there's always a time when you're vulnerable to ill effects. What I might do to save his dignity is have him get injured in the line of duty because of the tampering with the dolls. (Perhaps injured by the boss of the week, or taking down something that would otherwise be a threat to the players) then make a mini-quest of trying to find out a way to help him with the curse. Show that there's a very good reason for him to get angry about the dolls, and he was being extremely restrained by not kicking their asses for it.

Relatedly: think through your compels before you propose them in the future. Furthermore, don't go for compels that harsh; unless your Aspect is "idiot with a death wish," you wouldn't go through with something that monumentally stupid. A compel isn't going "oh, this would screw over the players, let's pretend to reward them for it," it's "this is an interesting, plot-driving action born of a character's established traits, let's do this and give the player the tools to mitigate it."

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

The player character took the compel, but the character did it unintentionally, the same way Harry Dresden sometimes messes up mechanical stuff.

Honestly, it sounds like one hell of a story hook - if the Warden is now subject to bad luck, it means the players are going to have to now go save his butt from something that should probably be out of their league. By saving his butt, they will have (at least) evened the scales, plus increased their reputation around town.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Actually, I gave it some further thought last night. There's a very good reason for the Warden not to go all head-choppy - his bad luck curse. No mind magic needed. See, had he decided to go homicidal, that's the perfect time for some wandering vanilla mortal to come wandering by in time to hear the screams and call the police - and the Warden knows this. So he kicks them out and tries to do damage control.

Then, you hit the players with the next story hook - poor Warden, thanks to his abysmal luck, just got incapacitated/killed by a (insert baddy-of-the-week here). If he's incapacitated, then they go in and save his ass from it, thus atoning for their mistake. If he's dead, then guess what, defending the city now falls squarely on them. Either way, there's no mind control needed (unless that's part of the Bot W).

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

That's really good insight, I never thought of it that way. I do have my doubts that the PC's will take as much risk as Harry did to protect people though, one of them might (but not strong enough), and the other is a very pragmatic sort so he doesn't care so much about other people.

The player character took the compel, but the character did it unintentionally, the same way Harry Dresden sometimes messes up mechanical stuff.

That... has no reflection whatsoever upon the statement I made. Kudos.

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-

I'm not familiar with the Fate system, so do players choose their compels or are they imposed by the GM? If the player chose to take that particular flaw, I can hardly fault the GM for using it against them.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Both. The player chooses aspects for themselves, then the GM can compel them. The player can resist the compel if they really want, but at the cost of a Fate Point.

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."

I was referring to Bad Ass Long Coat's comment.

They don't have to be strong, they have to be sneaky and underhanded, like Harry is more often in the earlier books. Make sure that there are at least two ways for them to defeat the baddy, preferably ones that don't rely on good dice rolls, and then see if they come up with anything better than your ideas. Well then. I would say that k9ine didn't have the best timing for using it, because like I said it seems custom-made as a next-adventure-hook, but if the player decided to make themselves Magical Murphy's Law, well, it kind of sucks to be them.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Well, I played the next session. The warden basically went mad, killing his apprentice that the players were friends with. He seems to think just about anyone he knows is a lawbreaker now. His apprentice head was put on a spike on the university the PC's attend. Behind him "Lawbreaker is written in his blood" This suggest the warden knows they are students at the college.

I also went a little deeper into the Wardens past, by giving one of the PC's the memories of the local Venitori leader (his father)which showed that the PC's father used a potion to ruin the warden's sanity so that he would be to busy killing possible lawbreakers than to discover the Venitori's habit of breaking the laws of magic.

The PC's also learned that his father was behind almost every problem in their city, and that if he doesn't finish his recently dead fathers (same guy that they reported the magical murder of) alchemical research on finding a cure for his illegitimate daughter (who the PC didn't even know about till recently) he will use a timed magical ritual to turn the whole city into vampires if he doesn't find the cure.

This PC inherited leadership of the Venitori (5 members now including the PC's).

Now they need to stop the ritual that his father put in place by finding the cure of vampire, or some other way.

Save a member of the paranet from the Fomor (unrelated).

Avoid the crazy warden who is hunting them.

I know there is more information I forgot, but that is the short version. I figured you guys might have wanted to know how it went, thanks for everybody's advice.

edited 13th Feb '14 3:00:17 PM by k9ine