All: ♫ HAP-PY BIRTH-DAY DEAR DAA-AAAASH... ♫ ♫ HAP-PY BIRTH-DAY TO YOUUUUU!! ♪
Gilda: OKAY. Gilda's in town because it's her friend's birthday. She walks up to Pinkie Pie and says, "Hey, pink pony. You're Dash's Bard, right?"
Pinkie Pie: "Not right now!" she replies. "I'm finishing up this sign!"
Gilda: What sign?
Pinkie Pie: The sign for Rainbow Dash's Ponyville Birthday Bash! Planned by none other than me, Ponyville's premiere party planner!
Rainbow Dash: Woah, really? You're doing all that for me?! That's awesome! I don't know what to say!
Applejack: Sounds like a hoot!
Gilda: ...Fine. I just wanted a minute of your time, but I guess you're SO busy you gotta give me the brush-off.
Pinkie Pie: Oh, whoops, sorry, you're right, that was so rude of me! Yeah, I'm totally the party Bard, too! What about it?
Gilda: Phew. Just a few basic questions...
We're getting into one of those arcs where Pinkie Pie just gets to be Pinkie Pie... It's not as crazy as when she was the DM, but there's still a bit of "Hey, wait, hold on...!"
One thing that makes downtime in my FOE game complicated (for me at least) is when the party splits up to do their own things. I may go in one direction to take care of something important, but elsewhere another PC is meeting an NPC that I really want to interact with too and I'm thinking 'Hmm, how could I get my character over there in a legit way?'
Perhaps it says something good that the GM makes a lot of interesting NPCs that I have to pick and choose who gets brushed off so I can interact with others. Our characters can only be in so many places at once (usually 1). ^^;
We had that come up by accident in the latest session of my Pokemon game. The party was split between two, and one player didn't notice that one conversation was in one place and another in another when his PC responded to both without explicitly moving between them. Fortunately they were a short distance apart (a hospital room and the lobby outside), said PC had roller skates (yes, in a hospital; circumstances, including that the group had just saved the city from a rampaging tank, meant he just got a stern glare from the nurses), and it had been well established that he was the type who'd be moving around (in this case, between the conversations) without consciously realizing it.
This one time, we were on this epic world-saving quest and we had to do two things at once. Fortunately we had just acquired a hoard of treasure, so we hired 5 random adventurers to go and do the other thing. We all created characters, and dubbed them the "B" team.
Of course, whenever we sent the "A" team somewhere, we wished for the special capabilities of the "B" team, and vice versa. It got so bad that we're considering swapping party members between teams.
At one point, we even had to contrive the "B" team being in a certain spot to rescue the "A" team members who were ambushed.
The good guys' plan was to foil the bad guys' plan. Once the latter has been foiled (and thus stopped), the former stops because it has succeeded - there's nothing more to do. :)
Or: the bad guys had a plan, singular, which has now been stopped - at the cost of but one of the good guys' plans. The good guys move on to another plan.
Or: okay, the bad guys' plan was so horrible the good guys didn't care for any plan other than stopping the bad guys. That has now been accomplished. Time for the good guys to make a new plan, to make the best of that happened. Maybe it can even be one the formerly bad guys would agree to, converting them into more good guys?
Perhaps it says something good that the GM makes a lot of interesting NPCs that I have to pick and choose who gets brushed off so I can interact with others. Our characters can only be in so many places at once (usually 1). ^^;
Of course, whenever we sent the "A" team somewhere, we wished for the special capabilities of the "B" team, and vice versa. It got so bad that we're considering swapping party members between teams.
At one point, we even had to contrive the "B" team being in a certain spot to rescue the "A" team members who were ambushed.
Good news, you stopped the bad guy's plan
Bad news, you helped the bad guy's plan, by stopping the good guy's plan.
Oops
I have done nothing wrong, I blame the leader and/or strategist.
(I wonder if the bad guy is looking to hire a changeling.)
Or: the bad guys had a plan, singular, which has now been stopped - at the cost of but one of the good guys' plans. The good guys move on to another plan.
Or: okay, the bad guys' plan was so horrible the good guys didn't care for any plan other than stopping the bad guys. That has now been accomplished. Time for the good guys to make a new plan, to make the best of that happened. Maybe it can even be one the formerly bad guys would agree to, converting them into more good guys?