I have had an opportunity to run a casual game of Pathfinder, in which we start at 7:30pm and end at 10:30pm, giving me around three hours to run an adventure for five players, 3 male, 2 female, one of said female has never played pathfinder before. I should be pretty excited, as I have run City of The Spider Queen, and a home brewed game, where I got a drow party up to APL of 20 back in 3.0 and 3.5 respectively, with several other games, and I was a GM back at any games days and RPGA events; then this group happened.
Both female players, one being my finance, who has yet to get any special treatment over the other players, have been wanting to actually play the game, roll dice, adventure and go out there and do, well, anything. From the get go, the other members of the game have all but ground the last three game sessions to a halt, even going as far as re-rolling characters, only to complain on how they only get 6,000 gold to spend, and can only spend certain percentages of that gold on items, with a limited quantity (as per page 400 or the Core Rule Book). Two of said male players tend to show up late, almost up till 8pm, at which point, granted, the before game chit chatting happens, so it can be up till 8:15ish, before we even start the game.
So, the game starts, alcohol starts being consumed forthwith, and one drinks enough to drown an Irish pub, it feels. Now, lets go back up to the start of this campaign. I asked them to be heroic characters, or non-evil alignment, and to be a force of good in the world, and that it'd be a King Maker campaign. Alignments are NG Female Paladin (home rule for paladins, is that they can be any good alignment), CG Female Barbarian, NG Male Cleric, CN Male Sorcerer, and LN Male Zen Archer. So far, the cleric has been anything but NG, only looking out for his party, the Zen Archer threatening the helping npc in their party, and those are my two BIG troublemakers, and drinkers of booze. All in all, they're treasure hunters, in a broken, and battle torn land, that for a thousand years saw the worst of a war, leaving being tombs, treasure, and ancient knowledge.
I have done a lot to try to guide this party, via dropping hints at areas of intrigue, name dropping, letting them know that there are two large political and military juggernauts that no one wishes to be on bad terms with. Every encounter, every plot device, and every hint at anything for them to head towards any of the point of interests, skillfully avoided, negated, or ran away from. The idea of running a kingdom, thrown right back into my face, because they don't want to. After they've sold what they've found, via the unavoidable encounters and exploration, they learn that the area they've been traveling in has had several areas that overlap with the plane of shadow, making travel both quicker, but navigating harder. To which the response was to avoid that area at all cost, and travel south instead, for any other ruins. Their helping npc, a cartographer, made it known that if they could find a way to stop the planar bleeding, they could effectively map the region. The response was simple, “We are not heroes, or adventurers, we are mercenaries and entrepreneurs.”
With that said, the helping, npc checks his maps and says there are lands to the south that have been lost, but they'd need traveling papers in order to cross the borders that lead there. It would cost a few gold for normal traveling papers, and a lot more for border traveling papers that are carte-blank, a head. Which, they had used their gold from re-rolling, to buy a year contract with 33 npcs that follow them around, so the cost was fairly high, having just sold their treasure for a whopping 38,000g, however, that shouldn't have been an issue. But, apparently, the cartographer was incompetent for this suggestion, and when the cartographer took offense, the LN Zen Archer threatened the man, that he'd kill him.
So, to sum up everything, without going into too much, further detail, what do I do with this group, that is doing their best to avoid anything that would anchor down a plot, make them heroes, like they agreed to play at the start of the game. Said be said, one player says I'm too limiting (because of the gold per level as per Core Rule Book) and because they are too low level (the're sixth level now), and isn't happy that there are NPCs of note that are more powerful than them.
I know they wanted to kill the NPC that held the title of arch-mage, and that is what made one of the players mad the most when he found out the arch-mage could cast higher level spells than their party members. While the girl who isn't my finance is absolutely pissed, because she saw my plot drops, my trying to get the party to do something, go on an adventure, and wants her CG Barbarian to do some smashy smashy and not role play out the next 14 levels. She's thinking of leaving now, because she's tired of the +15 avoid all the GM's plans rolls the players do.
So far, from friends that no longer live near me, have suggested one thing. “Get a new group.” “Kill them all, and make them re-roll characters that work with the game master.” However, pickers can't be choosers, and as difficult as they're being, this is the only group I know, and short of killing them, thats all kinds of heavy handed, especially to the new girl.
To say the least, I'm not having fun either, with the amount of hours I've spent plotting out encounters, making NPCs, and trying to run the game. If you want me to type out a full story of exactly everything that happened last session, I will. So, I ask, with a general question; What should I do? I need the advice.
Sorry for a rant