this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2025
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I feel like you gotta know the party a little bit... If they aren't the type to talk their way out of a problem, then the monologue has to happen from some relative safety instead of within arms reach of the not-paralyzed barbarian. Hold person exists. Magic Mouth. Message. Hell, a big ol' balcony above the party.
Else you gotta have a back-up plan like fallout where the players get the information from a journal or something - maybe it isn't as clearly laid out and it's harder to follow the breadcrumbs but the party isn't just lost in the wind looking for the next guy to punch.
In a campaign I ran, I had the party wake up in the bilge of a ship, tied up after being drugged. They all had a fresh, moonshaped tattoo in their neck.
I planned to have some guards talk with eachother nearby, giving them some exposition how they got there, and then the ship would bring them to a harbour where they'd be unloaded and brought into a colosseum where they would become gladiators and the rest of the story would happen there.
Instead they used magic and lockpicking to get rid of their chains and killed the guards before they could say anything. The orc of the group then proceded to punch a hole into the outside wall of the ship, causing all the remaining guards to abandon the ship on the lifeboats. They then managed to beach the ship on the nearby shore.
As a "punishment" I kept dangling the importance of these tattoos over them all the time, without ever telling them what they mean.