A bit of humor.
Any anons have stories from the tabletop where the adventure didn't pay out like you expected?

There was a long-running AD&D/Hackmaster campaign that I joined where party was gifted by an old drunken paladin the deed to his family's ancestral castle. The only condition that the party had to clear out all the monsters, ghosts, and creepy crawlies that had infested the castle. So we got the reward first, just had to get rid of the squatters.
Sahuagin, werewolves, ghosts, spryders, hellhands, etc...
We ended up running into a number of npcs with class levels or monsters that were much stronger than the party and having to negotiate and make truces with these characters in order to continue adventuring in the castle unharmed. The old Wizard that was squatting in the castle was not to be trifled with.

We never did end up clearing the whole castle, but we made pretty good progress going room by room like it was Fallujah, kicking down doors and smiting anything that moved. And when we ran low on supplies, resources, and health, we would head back into town to plan the next assault on the castle. During these trips into town, the monsters would rally and retake parts of the castle we had previously cleared.
It was a lot of fun.