We've all been there: The dice are rolling terribly, you rule unfairly, you gget your facts mixed up, or the plot just goes
wrong.
Sometimes, DMing is not rewarding, and sometimes you walk away wondering if anyone actually had fun in that last session. It's unfortunately bound to happen: Even masters roll a natural 1, 5% of the time.
So my question is this: have you ever had to retcon a campaign?
By retcon I mean saying flat-out to your players, "That didn't happen;
this is what happened."
He died? No he didn't
They got lost in the useless, unfun subplot? Not actually.
They sundered the rod and TPK'd? No, turns out its hardness was higher than expected.
Something too uncomfortable happen to a character? No, it didn't.
What exactly did you retcon? Why? How did your players react?
Example:
[spoiler]
I am forced to recall the first session of one campaign where I needed to railroad the characters into dying so they could come back to life with the ability to overcome some homebrewed demon immunities. Unfortunately, the cool ooportunity to kill the PCs came and went with the big boss demon marching through a battlefield and not killing the PCs. After 2 hours of doing their best to survive, I finally killed them in a hopeless battle with a nameless demon 8 CR above them.
The players came to me and said that they were intrigued by the campaign's premise, but that that first game got sour really fast when it was apparent they were dead 2 hours before it happened.
So, in the next session, I said, "Alright, what actually happened was the big boss demon waded through the battlefield and slew each of you with one casting of her death sphere spell-like ability. All of you died instantly. I want you to forget about everything that happened after that point."
That game is still going 1 year later, and all of my players love it.
[/spoiler]
So, what do you think of retconning? Should a DM be allowed to do it? Have you ever seen it abused? Have you ever seen it used to the benefit of the campaign? Tell me what happened, and what your thoughts were!