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If we can set aside the exact situation for a second, it may help to understand there are multiple 'flavors' of conducting a game. Understand and communicating this *may* solve your problem all by itself.
Starting, if you will, on the left of the spectrum, some GMs are 'clockwork gods', particularly in the old school style. This method involves setting the barest possible world in front of the players and having them interact with it. Each action the players makes has a consequence - sometimes major sometimes minor. This is the maximum 'player agency' style, where the world is genuinely an open book for them to write their story.
On the other end of the spectrum are railroaders. These GMs organize detailed and intricate plots for the players to discover, witness, and participate in, but not so much influence or change.
Now, since you're running an AP, you're likely a lot closer to the right hand of that spectrum than the left. Could be your player is not.
So, in that light I have three suggestions -
1) Ask the player to get on the railroad. It can be as easy as "Hey, Jim, I know you have cool ideas and stuff on how to make this unique, but RoTL is a MONSTER AP. If we are going to finish it this year, we need to stay focused and try to keep the plot moving forward, together."
2) Deploy illusionism. (This has already been suggested above.) If the encounter is supposed to take place at X, reskin it to Y. Player goes off in random direction, they just so happen to meet up with the NPC you wanted them to go see. Or find a clue, etc. They're still on the railroad even when they think they're derailing it.
3) Make them special. Write them into the middle of the story and keep them there.
This could be as easy as making them the target of the affection.
I'm confused why this would take you by surprise, Mulet.
You set up these hubs, of sorts, and encourage a very open style of play. Then you complain
My Snow-flake player, is heading into areas that are of no value to the story.
and they're supposed to know this how? Do you expect players to ONLY ask questions and interact with what you explicitly set before them in a sandbox-like setting? That makes no sense.
If you set an open arena you really should expect your players to go anywhere. He's not a snowflake. He's acting like a curious creature with an independent mind. Your other players who seemingly fall in line perfectly are the aberrations in your formula. Sandbox play is meant to be a free-for-all, "let's see what's here" style of play. Sticking to a script is not the norm in those conditions.
I may be mistaken, but the issue might not be so much the sandbox, as much as one player saying, "I want to explore someplace that none of the other PCs are exploring." The important thing to do is to learn why the player wants to do this.
With Mulet saying that the players are free to choose how to complete their quests and that they love that, I'm thinking their GM-ing duo has done some advertising of this or encouraged that kind of play. It seems like a conscious, clear decision they made about how to run the campaign. Even if they didn't intend for it to be a complete sandbox, that kind of encouragement can easily come across as such.
I agree the important thing is to understand why, but throwing around words like "special snowflake" about the player are derisive while what I'm seeing Mulet say can easily encourage that style of player. It's b$$+~$*! and they have some answering to do while others seemingly enjoy running over and backing up over a person they don't know in a situation they don't understand.
Yeah, I'd better return to my original position. We don't know why the player is a problem. Understanding why is most important. If no attempt to understand why is undertaken, then there is no actual interest in solving the problem.
Motivation, motivation, motivation.
Motivation.
It IS the GM's story huh?
I'll have to remember to ask prospective GMs about that in the future, to be sure I don't get stuck with one with that philosophy.
In your mind, what is the difference between someone saying that it is the GM's story versus it is the PC's story? Unless you're looking for "collaborative story," which I agree it is, but clearly the GM is the major contributor and the players are lesser contributors.
Assuming a non-AP campaign, the GM often creates the world, all continents, countries, cities, societies, beings, living, dead, or undead, landmarks, historical events, etc, etc, etc.
The GM creates the purpose of the campaign (or the general focus of the campaign, BBEG, etc.), the various quests or adventure spots that the players will be able to adventure to, etc.
The players then create characters based on the parameters provided by the GM and adventure in that GM-created world and interact with the GM-created and GM-run NPCs.
If the GM doesn't allow the PCs to have any affect on the world at all, then yes, that is railroading and poor GMing. But even if the GM allows the PCs to have a tremendous amount of ability to shift the story in different and unexpected ways, its still the GM determining the reactions/effects of the PC's actions.
So, what are your expectations on a campaign that, if applied, you would no longer consider it to be the GM's story?
I don't know if this is what it is, but it sounds like it might be.
I have had players bring characters that (while staying entirely in character) are very difficult to get 'into' the group.
Example Once a player brought a lizard folk druid that was CN, anarchist, hermit, that cared for nothing except his swamp and its denizens. He played it wonderfully in character. Problem being that no matter what plot hook I offered it was refused, "Shrush not care about farmers... Shrush hope Mayor does look bad... Shrush no like mountains... Shrush think it good that boats sinking... Undead no come to swamp, why Shrush care?... " Yes, it was all in character. But it doesn't work well as a part of a group of adventurers.
Eventually, the other players and I got tired of continually trying to cajole, convince, bribe, and pamper Shrush for every single thing.
They started saying, "We're going to do this, feel free to sit in your puddle."
Then the player would say, "I'm just playing in character. Shrush wouldn't want to do that."
The others would say, "And we're just playing in character. JJ wouldn't keep trying to talk you into doing things you clearly don't want to do, to help people you clearly don't care about, for rewards you clearly don't want."
"The GM just sucks because he couldn't motivate Shrush"Uhmm... No. I made a huge effort, but nothing worked. An antisocial hermit works well in a novel because the author can make sure he decides to go along with the story anyway. In an RPG it tends to fall flat.
I now tell the players before a game. I will throw a reasonable number of hooks. But I am not responsible for your motivations. You need to find a way or bring a character that can be a part of the team.
The answer to this scenario is "the BBEG nukes your swamp and all its denizens". Now Shrush has motivation. : D
@Sub-Zero: Aye, I get that. I was merely addressing the discussion of whether a game is the "player's story" or the "GM's story", not, specifically the issue with regard to the OP. My apologies for a bit of a derail.
As to the bard in question: I do agree that it seems highly likely that the bard is being overly difficult. However, I also find it unfortunate that the OP doesn't seem interested in finding out why the bard is ignoring the hooks, preferring to reply along the lines of "Why doesn't anyone do it? Because he wants to!"
Until they know why the bard is doing it, nothing can be solved. Merely saying "he wants his own special story" without more detail doesn't help. Maybe he does simply want to be the star and refuses to do anything he doesn't suggest because he won't lower himself to the level of an ordinary PC who just goes along with the party. Or maybe there is something else there too. In my experience, its all too likely that its a bit of both. Yes, the player is probably being unnecessarily difficult. But its also probably true that the OP is simply ignoring the character's motivations and the player feels as though the OP just doesn't care about anything that isn't in line with his script. In my experience, its almost never one extreme or the other. There's usually fault on both sides.
Some GMs are more suited to making it up as they go than others are. Some haven't been GMing long enough to learn how to do that kind of thing. Some designed a specific adventure, and some bought an AP and want to run that rather than having to make up a brand new adventure on the fly.
Sometimes it's a matter of giving players the illusion of freedom. The road forks east and west, they have no idea of knowing what awaits them down each route, so your preplanned bandit attack can happen no matter which one they took (or with a little modification, it can still take place even if they decided to cut their way through the northern forest instead.)
With prewritten adventures, it's important to read it thoroughly cover to cover, make sure you understand it, and then read it again to be sure. Learn all the different parts of it and have them in your head so you can juggle them around and still make the overall thing work even if you have to change parts here and there to fit the player decisions. Know where the essential plot points are, and what's probably going to happen if things at point A don't occur the way they're expected to.
Example:
In chapter one of Generic Adventure Quest #56, bandits are attacking the village. The book gives you lots of NPC speeches to give asking the adventurers for their help once they arrive in the inn, tells you how much the mayor is willing to pay, and stats out the bandits and their lair.
Chapter two goes on to have the Mayor thank the adventurers after their expected success, and send them to the King with a letter of recommendation that gets them into his service just in time to have them prevent a plot against his life.
Chapter three finally has the King knight the adventurers in return for saving him, and begs them to rescue his daughter from the dragon.
So, your players arrive to play, and decide they couldn't give a damn about the village, and head off to find some goblins to kill.
Well. Bugger. That's gone and ruined it, hasn't it?
Something you could do here is do some quick jiggery-pokery, and turn the bandits into goblins. After all, you've got a lair mapped out and stats for a leader and a bunch of grunts. Just paint your bandits green and pretend they're all goblins, then leave a valuable-looking ring with the coat-of-arms they noticed on the mayor's house in the Goblin's treasure, and they can go back to hand it in, be told the guards killed all the bandits while they were gone, and be given their letter for returning the ring. Problem solved!
Except now the players decide to keep the ring for themselves and head down the road to the east. Well. Crap.
Not a problem. You can put the King's castle at the end of that road, and have the adventurer's arrive just in time to see him under attack from an assassin that's dealt with his entire royal guard, and save him.
The players decide to let the assassin kill the King. Dammit.
Well, okay, you've still managed to fill a couple of sessions getting this far, and you haven't had to really invent anything new. Things are still good. Now, how about that dragon? Well, we can have it attack the city they're in, and in all the chaos after the King's death, (and now you know your players are mercenary gits) the Prince offers a huge reward to anyone that deals with it and returns his sister.
They set off, find the Dragon's lair, and decide to do a deal with it instead of killing it. Wow, what horrible players.
So, the dragon gets to keep the princess and burn the city to a crisp while the party gets a few hundred gold for looking the other way...
Ah well. Nothing went according to plan, but hey, there wasn't any real making up of encounters on the spot, just a lot of repurposing. Hopefully the GM had fun because he didn't have to panic and prepare too much on the fly, and hopefully the players had fun because they got to do what they wanted and not feel they were being railroaded into a prewritten story.
Keeping a script is a sure-fire way to see your players deviate from it. Personal experience on that one heh.
Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
Follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
Follow the Yellow Brick, Follow the Yellow Brick,
Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
Not my kind of game either.
Good Stuff...
Matt, I can and have done things very similar to what you wrote. I would even say I did it fairly well. However, I can't do it on the fly.
When players tell me they are going to save Margaritaville from the zombie apocalypse, I prep for a zombie apocalypse heading toward Margaritaville.
Then next week during the session intro/recap when they suddenly decide to go haring off the other direction to eliminate slavery from Vodkastan, I tend to be kinda brick-walled.
{... imagine sound of truck with brakes locked screeching to a halt...}
Me, "Umm... You said you wanted to do the zombie thing. Ok, I will have something prepped for that next week."
Them, "What? You don't need to go all sulky on us."
Me, "Not going sulky. I just don't have anything prepped for that. No one including you has like anything when I just wing it off the cuff. So I will have something ready next week.
Them, "Aww man..."
I want to point out we have two different issues here:
Hewing to a script aka railroading = Bad idea.
One player wanting to go off on his own: another bad idea.
So, we have a Bad idea by BOTH the Player and the DM here.
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Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
Follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
Follow the Yellow Brick, Follow the Yellow Brick,
Follow the Yellow Brick Road.Not my kind of game either.
If you agree to play in an AP, then you have agreed not to stray TOO far from the path. If that's not your kind of game, playing an AP probable isn't the best choice for you.
Good Stuff...
Thank you! :)
Matt, I can and have done things very similar to what you wrote. I would even say I did it fairly well. However, I can't do it on the fly.When players tell me they are going to save Margaritaville from the zombie apocalypse, I prep for a zombie apocalypse heading toward Margaritaville.
Then next week during the session intro/recap when they suddenly decide to go haring off the other direction to eliminate slavery from Vodkastan, I tend to be kinda brick-walled.
{... imagine sound of truck with brakes locked screeching to a halt...}
Me, "Umm... You said you wanted to do the zombie thing. Ok, I will have something prepped for that next week."
Them, "What? You don't need to go all sulky on us."
Me, "Not going sulky. I just don't have anything prepped for that. No one including you has like anything when I just wing it off the cuff. So I will have something ready next week.
Them, "Aww man..."
Yeah, my main group has an unwritten rule (wait, I thought I insisted on everything being written? I must have missed this one!) that's evolved over time, any major deviation from the plot is fine, but should be left until near the end of the session to give the GM time to prep before next week ;)
It's more of a courtesy thing than anything else with us. At the very least, whoever happens to be GMing expects the group to be consistent with the world destination they set out for the week before and not arrive at the table announcing a totally new course. It's almost second nature to us now to work improv-style around that premise, that once the general idea for the session has been set (which tends to be by the players, unless we're playing an AP) the group will work with it rather than against it.
If you agree to play in an AP, then you have agreed not to stray TOO far from the path. If that's not your kind of game, playing an AP probable isn't the best choice for you.Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
Follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
Follow the Yellow Brick, Follow the Yellow Brick,
Follow the Yellow Brick Road.Not my kind of game either.
Sure. But note that "TOO far from the path"- there has to be some reasonable room for side treks, etc.
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Sure. But note that "TOO far from the path"- there has to be some reasonable room for side treks, etc.If you agree to play in an AP, then you have agreed not to stray TOO far from the path. If that's not your kind of game, playing an AP probable isn't the best choice for you.Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
Follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
Follow the Yellow Brick, Follow the Yellow Brick,
Follow the Yellow Brick Road.Not my kind of game either.
Agreed. Deciding to open a shipping business in Absalom is definitely too far from the path for Rise of the Runelords.
Preferring a leisurely day in Sandpoint rather than going boar hunting is still on the path, if near the edge. After all, the PCs are supposed to bond with Sandpoint.
Preferring to stay at the brothel instead of the inn, standing next to the path. It should not be too disruptive unless the GM is being especially rigid in their railroading.
Still, the way to solve this is for the GM and player to talk and discuss why the player is going off the rails. Does the player find the hooks unsatisfactory? Does the player chafe at the railroading? Is the player intentionally sidelining himself because he wants to avoid metagaming (I believe the OP said they had played the first 2 modules)? Or is the player just being disruptive? Until you figure out the why, you won't be able to fix it.
Good Stuff...Matt, I can and have done things very similar to what you wrote. I would even say I did it fairly well. However, I can't do it on the fly.
When players tell me they are going to save Margaritaville from the zombie apocalypse, I prep for a zombie apocalypse heading toward Margaritaville.
Then next week during the session intro/recap when they suddenly decide to go haring off the other direction to eliminate slavery from Vodkastan, I tend to be kinda brick-walled.
{... imagine sound of truck with brakes locked screeching to a halt...}
Me, "Umm... You said you wanted to do the zombie thing. Ok, I will have something prepped for that next week."
Them, "What? You don't need to go all sulky on us."
Me, "Not going sulky. I just don't have anything prepped for that. No one including you has like anything when I just wing it off the cuff. So I will have something ready next week.
Them, "Aww man..."
There are a few things you can do here -- one that I often like is to whip out a generic(tm) encounter to fill time. It could be a bounty hunter trying to claim the reward someone set on your party, it could be agents of a past BBEG, it could be harbingers of something to come -- but no matter what, it's a nice speed bump on the way to Vodkastan that'll slow 'em down -- possibly by having them run down the sidequest, possibly not -- but at least enough to give you *some* chance to reclaim your footing and plan ahead....
And who knows? When the fight's over, maybe it turns out that the what you'd first drawn up as a group of bounty hunters or mercs were, in fact, actually slavers coming over the border to jump a homestead and get themselves a new supply of "product" -- leaving some hints of where they can strike into Vodkastan -- or that they're operating under a charter from the Baron of Bourbon...
...or maybe not -- after all, the whole world doesn't change just because the party's shifted its goals. Random stuff still happens, and those zombies *do* keep creeping toward Margaritaville.... (Looking, no doubt, for the sacred or unholy Shaker of Salt)
Either way -- you get the time you need to think, the party doesn't feel like you're railroading them back to the zombies, and everyone wins. Except, one hopes, the generic(tm) bad guys...
[edit: Sorry, realized this is a bit of a thread hijack.]
If he's interested in extra story depth plus xp, consider giving xp bonuses for writing between sessions. Our Kingmaker campaign has only benefitted from players filling in with downtime stories, flashbacks, journal entries, etc. An entry garners the player a 10% xp bonus next session. It's a fun system, encourages character development, and doesn't need to break anything. Based on what you've said about this guy, you may need to make it very clear that these entries are not intended to rewrite or otherwise take over the AP.
Hey, there. I just wanted to pop in and say--wow, 5 weeks of prep, and two DMs? That is an awesome amount of story in there. :)
Both us DM's re-process the atrociously laid out contents. (Seriously, the dudes that write up campaign stuff need to be slapped.) We break each important event (Foxglove's hunt, the Goblin attack etc...) into separate files with information on XP, treasure, NPC information dumps, values etc. We also have session files, where we keep historic records of what happened, what was awarded and all the possible events this session can link to.
Each preparation week, we process more of the adventure path in this manner. The NPC master file gets longer, with more info on location, accent, disposition added as cards, alphabetically. More event files are added, and when players edit the world, we back-edit relevant files. It is fast to search, and counters the chaotic choices the players always seem to make.
BEFORE they reached the Glassworks, they lost a Goblin they captured. It ran north back to thistletop. The Druid sent his bird to follow, to see where it went. At week 4, he was able to glimpse a pre-prepared map, complete with the Bug-Bear, Goblin refugees, and units he is currently not expected to actually encounter until week 11. He then fed the starving Goblins with a fish he caught out of the water. This has already been tied into the story, to have an impact.
In this manner, players have a rich and detailed world to explore, and it removes the linearity of the RoTRL campaign, I would have to impose if we did not do it in this manner.
So you go out of your way to remove the Linearity of an Adventure Path, and are surprised when your players go off the rails?
My first advice would probably be "Stop using APs". They obviously don't suit your group's style. At the very least, maybe you should do a more Sandboxy one like Kingmaker or Skull & Shackles. RotRL is very much a classic-style adventure.
My second advice is: Since you like preparing so much, instead of just doing pages and pages of stats that may or may not be used, instead start building a web of plot points, both canon and modified, that can be used to guide the players to each of the more important parts of the story. If they don't want the to stay in a certain inn, then move the action to wherever they are. As the saying goes, all roads lead to Rome.
And this was brought up in a previous thread of yours, but: Stop artificially punishing players. You didn't have to burn down that brothel, just have the madam kick him out when his business was done. Ask him where he was gonna sleep then. If he tries to stay up all night, move on without him with the rest of the party, then have whatever happened at the inn spill out onto him as he's walking past it (and if it was a fight, he's now Fatigued because his ass has been up all night. This is a natural punishment).