So When Do You Call it?

Yesterday was a complete shit-show, as-in pretty much everything I tried to do on my Saturday went to shit. My day started waaaaay too early when I thought some idiot was trying to break into my home at 1 AM. No, I was the idiot, a fact I learned quickly...and painfully as I discovered the source of the broken glass that had woken me up......with my foot. It wasn't the window but a liter beer stein that fell down from a high shelf (still don't know how).

Fortunately that was the only bleeding I did yesterday and since I was working with power tools I consider myself rather fortunate. Instead of cutting off a few fingers I only managed to ruin $50+ of wood, make a mess of my garage, and put a few holes in my wall......

Honestly, I would have been so much better off lighting a Benjamin on fire and going to bed early, like 10 AM.

Even though the weather was cooperating, I finally decided to pack it in early and nope out of my projects. Patching the holes in the wall, cleaning my mess up, and tossing my project in the scrap heap can wait. Looking back I really wish I could've quit much earlier......

......I really wish I could've quit much earlier.

When I "called it" that actual thought was going through my mind, and as I did the patching, and the sweeping, and bought replacement wood, this mantra (for lack of a better word) kept running through my mind.

I think most of us have issues recognizing when things have gone too far and we should just pack it in. Obviously I'm giving a real-world example, but I've seen this a lot of times at the game table. I've seen it as a player, and definitely as a GM. 

Go ahead, reach in...

On the player side of things I've partaken in going down the rabbit hole of the GM tempting the party with an obscure "something" just out of easy reach. "You think you could reach it if you stuck your whole arm in...." I seem to recall a time my GM got one of us to dive under some water and into an empty cavern beyond the wall just because someone saw "a box" through a hole in the wall into said cavern. IIRC that water made the PC turn into some type of snake-man abomination....

Now as a GM, I've also teased players in a similar fashion: I had a spellbook "hidden" underneath a stove that was in danger of being consumed by some green slime, only being held back by a weak protective shield. Personally I had plenty of ideas on how the party's spellcaster could get access to that book, but evidently the player couldn't come up with two, and went with the only one that occurred to him, which was just reaching in and grabbing it*. End result was one spellcaster missing a hand because the ranger had to do a field-expedient amputation lest the green slime take over completely. Now that was a fun night.

Fun for me, but I'm certain that David wished he'd made better choices leading up to the ...well "incident".

I tend to see players take too long to nope out at conventions, mostly because they are playing for a set time period and have no real investment into their characters. Most of the TPKs I've seen (both sides of the screen) have been at convention games/tournaments. Since they have the time, or are trying to "win", they'll push one room too many, or opt to stay in the fight for "one more attack roll", thinking the tide of bad luck coming their way will subside in time. Head's up....it rarely does.

While defeat is par for the course, those times when you do manage to pull a W out of thin air are pretty sweet. I can think of a few examples and I'll spare you from a slew of tangent character stories, but I'm sure you probably have a few of your own.

*I've not been shy about just how much I loath Green Slime as a monster and I use it sparingly, with plenty of foreshadowing/forewarning. If your PC gets hit by green slime at my table it's very much your own damned fault.