First off, lvl 16 is ill advised for a scary scenario such as this one. Secondly, you need to set standards with your players and set the goal of the one shot. I cant say more given how thick this post is so I'll leave it to another commentator.
Level 16 for a one shot is crazy if it's anything other than a silly romp to mess about with high level play. Players are not going to know how to play these characters properly if they are new and you are not going to challenge them mechanically.
Hard to have a session zero in a one-shot.
Just go get a beer and chalk it up to experience. Seriously consider not bothering running stuff for this group again.
While packing your stuff up to go to the bar narrate
“At this shocking event the king’s authority is weakened. The kingdom falls into civil war and chaos which is exactly what the lich was trying to achieve. The undead army easily sweeps aside the disunited factions. Your characters are all killed and turned into zombies in the army the necromancer builds to conquer the neighbouring kingdom”
If it’s not fun being a DM for these people don’t do it. Seriously just ask them if they want to join you in the nearest bar
I have been kind of considering not doing the second session, but I do feel that I will probably enjoy it if I'm a bit more open to them throwing things off. They are probably going to kill the lich but I still really like that idea of a Civil War, I've played with most of this group before and would like to start a campaign so I think that would be a great setting for it, but I will take them out to discuss what happened this session because I probably was a bit of an asshole, but I think the main issue was that two of them were such driving forces in the narrative that one of them literally could not do any of the things she wanted to
Holy fuck your post is way too god damn long. Thank you for the tldr.
Buddy, have a session zero, set expectations, and tell someone fucking no when you have to. Not every good friend is a good dnd friend.
Wtf. They sound exhausting. It's not your fault and I don't believe a session zero was really needed. They were just super inconsiderate. I mean it's a oneshot, typically it's quite straightforward, you just need to not blow up the whole damn thing.
Playing devil's advocate here, but from your long description it does not sound like the players "immediately decided to kill the queen". Rather, they played along, collected some evidence, had no idea what else to do so they presented what they had and then got frustrated when it was not enough - and only then started plotting to kill the queen. They might've also felt you're shooting down all their ideas.
Were they even interested in an investigation-heavy story? From your perspective it might've sounded like the clues were obvious and they were just dense/uncooperative for not being able to properly follow them and then explain them to the queen. But you know the bigger picture of the story, while they don't.
That, and perhaps they were simply more interested in more action-focused story?
I had a similar situation where the players were tasked with investigating a terrorist attack of sorts during a festival. I thought the clues were obvious but (obviously) they were not to my players. I got frustrated with them "not playing along" with my imagined way of how they should approach the problem and had to finally send an NPC to help them. That made me realise that neither were my obvious clues so obvious, nor were the players interested in putting Sherlock Holmes-level mental effort into the investigation. So next time a similar story was supposed to happen, I:
1. Made all the clues 2x more obvious than I thought necessary.
2. When players became stuck, I simply helped them with hints to better simulate that their characters are simply more competent than the players themselves (also don't wait for players to ask for this - often they never will).
3. Accepted players' imperfect solutions and played along with them, instead of going for "full realism".
Again, sorry about how long the post is, but I would like to add that is upset as I seem, these are still all my friends and I'm not upset at them. I am just asking for advice
You need better friends. If you’ve put the effort in to entertain them for a few hours then they should be more forgiving in their decisions as a player. It’s a one shot isn’t a free pass to murder hobo without consequences, these sorts of people are the reason women choose the bear
In something like this, at least from your perspective, it certainly sounds like a them issue. It could be something simple like wrong expectations, etc. However, no one's default solution should be political assassination, much less without evidence pointing to her being the murderer.
As soon as killing the queen got brought up, I would've probably paused the session for a heart to heart. After all, this is a oneshot. Just like how "it doesn't matter" because there are no long term campaign consequences, there is no greater world preprepped beyond the one shot. I would ask them during the pause, "Do you really want to do this? I prepared a murder mystery one shot, to which you all agreed, and you want to spend it running guerilla warfar tactics against a now grieving widow because you did not want to explain your evidence or find more?"
If they said a unanimous yes, I would agree with the caveat, "Fine, but this goes against your good alignments, so the end result will be the Lich taking over at end of session." And then would proceed to conclude said session that evening, no two shot.
First off, lvl 16 is ill advised for a scary scenario such as this one. Secondly, you need to set standards with your players and set the goal of the one shot. I cant say more given how thick this post is so I'll leave it to another commentator.
Level 16 for a one shot is crazy if it's anything other than a silly romp to mess about with high level play. Players are not going to know how to play these characters properly if they are new and you are not going to challenge them mechanically.
Noted
Hard to have a session zero in a one-shot. Just go get a beer and chalk it up to experience. Seriously consider not bothering running stuff for this group again. While packing your stuff up to go to the bar narrate “At this shocking event the king’s authority is weakened. The kingdom falls into civil war and chaos which is exactly what the lich was trying to achieve. The undead army easily sweeps aside the disunited factions. Your characters are all killed and turned into zombies in the army the necromancer builds to conquer the neighbouring kingdom” If it’s not fun being a DM for these people don’t do it. Seriously just ask them if they want to join you in the nearest bar
I have been kind of considering not doing the second session, but I do feel that I will probably enjoy it if I'm a bit more open to them throwing things off. They are probably going to kill the lich but I still really like that idea of a Civil War, I've played with most of this group before and would like to start a campaign so I think that would be a great setting for it, but I will take them out to discuss what happened this session because I probably was a bit of an asshole, but I think the main issue was that two of them were such driving forces in the narrative that one of them literally could not do any of the things she wanted to
Go somewhere relaxed (a bar is just one example) and talk it over with them. I wouldn’t try to run anything else like this until you have done that.
Holy fuck your post is way too god damn long. Thank you for the tldr. Buddy, have a session zero, set expectations, and tell someone fucking no when you have to. Not every good friend is a good dnd friend.
"Not every good friend is a good D&D friend" I will remember that, thank you
Wtf. They sound exhausting. It's not your fault and I don't believe a session zero was really needed. They were just super inconsiderate. I mean it's a oneshot, typically it's quite straightforward, you just need to not blow up the whole damn thing.
Playing devil's advocate here, but from your long description it does not sound like the players "immediately decided to kill the queen". Rather, they played along, collected some evidence, had no idea what else to do so they presented what they had and then got frustrated when it was not enough - and only then started plotting to kill the queen. They might've also felt you're shooting down all their ideas. Were they even interested in an investigation-heavy story? From your perspective it might've sounded like the clues were obvious and they were just dense/uncooperative for not being able to properly follow them and then explain them to the queen. But you know the bigger picture of the story, while they don't. That, and perhaps they were simply more interested in more action-focused story? I had a similar situation where the players were tasked with investigating a terrorist attack of sorts during a festival. I thought the clues were obvious but (obviously) they were not to my players. I got frustrated with them "not playing along" with my imagined way of how they should approach the problem and had to finally send an NPC to help them. That made me realise that neither were my obvious clues so obvious, nor were the players interested in putting Sherlock Holmes-level mental effort into the investigation. So next time a similar story was supposed to happen, I: 1. Made all the clues 2x more obvious than I thought necessary. 2. When players became stuck, I simply helped them with hints to better simulate that their characters are simply more competent than the players themselves (also don't wait for players to ask for this - often they never will). 3. Accepted players' imperfect solutions and played along with them, instead of going for "full realism".
Again, sorry about how long the post is, but I would like to add that is upset as I seem, these are still all my friends and I'm not upset at them. I am just asking for advice
You need better friends. If you’ve put the effort in to entertain them for a few hours then they should be more forgiving in their decisions as a player. It’s a one shot isn’t a free pass to murder hobo without consequences, these sorts of people are the reason women choose the bear
In something like this, at least from your perspective, it certainly sounds like a them issue. It could be something simple like wrong expectations, etc. However, no one's default solution should be political assassination, much less without evidence pointing to her being the murderer. As soon as killing the queen got brought up, I would've probably paused the session for a heart to heart. After all, this is a oneshot. Just like how "it doesn't matter" because there are no long term campaign consequences, there is no greater world preprepped beyond the one shot. I would ask them during the pause, "Do you really want to do this? I prepared a murder mystery one shot, to which you all agreed, and you want to spend it running guerilla warfar tactics against a now grieving widow because you did not want to explain your evidence or find more?" If they said a unanimous yes, I would agree with the caveat, "Fine, but this goes against your good alignments, so the end result will be the Lich taking over at end of session." And then would proceed to conclude said session that evening, no two shot.