teverin's page

So here I am, running a campaign and I have a couple PCs who are kinda giving me a hard time story wise. I realize that the game is open ended, the PCs are supposed to make their own story but I have a few general goals I want them to accomplish.

For example, I started out similar to one of the adventure paths, where the PCs are in Sandpoint and an attractive bounty is put out on goblin ears. I made a point to say the town that they have lived in for a long time is in danger and that the sheriff himself put up the bounty notice.

But a couple of the PCs can see this is the direction I would like them to go so they say "I don't think that appeals to my character, what else is going on in town?"

Now I know I should have some backups, but how many? What if they don't want to do those things either. And it really seems that they are doing this to spite me.

They finally all agreed to go get the goblins and while investigating their hideout, they find that the goblins were attacked by undead. A surviving goblin, who was imprisoned by the other goblins for being "good", tells them they were attacked by a group of undead and a golden box (which they stole from a shipwreck) was taken. I made sure to let them know that the box seemed very important to this group of undead and they left as soon as they found it.

But when given the direction to where the undead went, the one PC looked right at me and said "I don't think this box is very important. Lets just leave."

Is it me? Am I not doing a good enough job? Please give me some tips so I can make this a better experience for my players.

I just recently started playing a new campaign and the question of tiles/grids came into question.

I know that one of the players dislikes them, saying that too much time is spent on who is moving where and if someone can hit something will a spell or not. He just wants me, the DM to tell them that rather than them looking at a grid and figuring it out.

I'm fine with that. I would love to only use grids during major dungeons and maybe "boss" fights where I have a lot of different levels to the place or interesting mechanics like, pits, cover, or other things. But the problem I run into is that the other players want to know exacts of distance.

Is this something that I should be keep track of on some grid paper I have that they don't see? I'm getting things like "Well four turns ago I was X feet away, then I moved X, X, X so now I should be able to blast all three and not hit my buddy, right? So when I am keeping track I have to tell him, no, and then show them a grid anyways.

It might be my fault that I am not describing position and surroundings as well as I could be, so what do you guys do to keep track of such things? Do you only do grids for big fights or dungeons?
Thanks in advance