If your players do something to derail the campaign too much, pile all of your rpg books into a big fort and refuse to come out until they start following your story properly.
You enter the trap-and-monsters-filled dungeon. It’s perfectly safe. All the monsters have already set off the traps and died. The only inhabitant is a single very sheepish dungeon designer who will give you treasure if you promise not to tell anyone about this.
honestly monty python and the holy grail is just a dnd session w/ really uncooperative players and a dm who worked really hard on a campaign but gave up halfway through
FINE the POLICE arrive and ARREST EVERYBODY go home.
No no no. It’s the exact opposite. All the players, the Knights of the Round Table, especially Arthur, they all want to complete their quest and are serious about it. The uncooperative ones are the NPCs, the DM controlled characters. John Clease alone berates and belittles characters who just want to pass through. Or what about the Knights who say Ni? The Black Knight? Help help I’m being oppressed guy? They’re all DM controlled.
This is actually the story of DM getting revenge on a group of players who are probably a bunch of murder hobos normally and let them have a taste of what it’s like to be in a game that’s nonsense.
“Okay. So we finally get to fight someone?”
“No. The police arrive and arrest you all. End of campaign.”
The Setup for my Home D&D game, table was built on New Year’s Eve 2016, with two of my players and myself, the TV is a 40" Samsung smart tv connect to a dell precision 5720 27" 4K workstation running Fantasy Grounds to manage campaign details, display maps and use tokens onscreen to represent characters.