So...anyone have any stories of grand DM plots, traps, riddles or encounters that were thwarted, or completely bypassed by the players? Taking a third option they didn't think of, using their skills/feats in a creative(or cheap) way, etc etc? Stories from both DMs or players are welcome here.
Also...what did the DM do after? I know the few games I've run, where a player managed to do it, it was almost dismaying at the moment, but looking back it's hilarious.
Anyway, yeah. Go ahead.
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I had one. There was a palace on top of a high cliff that overlooked the sea. It had three watchtowers you had to pass through to get to the main gate.
The PCs were tasked to steal an important heirloom from the duke who resided in the castle (it wasn't his, he claimed it during war). So i thought up NPCs for each watchtower and the main gate, drew intricate maps for every encounter blah blah at least two 6 hour shifts of prep time went into this.
Of course they decided to scale a 1000 foot cliff and a 50 foot wall on top of it to get almost next to the room where the duke slept. Of course they all bought feathers of feather fall (a one use item). Of course all that prep work went to the trash. Of course they succeeded because they were very careful in prepping for the mission. They bought all the right stuff and with a few lucky rolls, succeeded in climbing up the cliff.
I applauded their resourcefulness while at the same time i cried on the inside.
One way that I've learned to avoid having all my hard work and careful planning destroyed by creative players is to avoid working hard and plan only vaguely in advance.
Oh, plus I make up a lot of stuff on the fly as we go.
One way that I've learned to avoid having all my hard work and careful planning destroyed by creative players is to avoid working hard and plan only vaguely in advance.
Oh, plus I make up a lot of stuff on the fly as we go.
^ This. At least as far as hard work into planning.
I've got a lot of work into the world, the NPCs, and what they're doing offscreen, but when they meet the PCs, what happens is entirely dependent on how they approach the situation.
Yeah, i learned that the hard way. But sometimes, i just railroad, when i know that if i don't they'll be beating around the bush for hours and get bored.
I think there's a difference between getting people back to playing the game (vs discussing it) and getting them back on the rails. From your post, I'm guessing your lean towards the former.
I was sort of joking but more serious than some might think.
I do a lot of work actually, but most of my prep work is in creating NPCs and making terrain elements. I do very little work in creating the details of encounters. I have the elements I need and I put them together as I need them.
For example, I might have a BBEG complex at the top of a cliff, and that complex might include a tower, a storage room, a hill, some trees, a cave, etc. But I generally don't know any more than that when we start the game.
As the game progresses I'll figure out where to put the tower, where to put the NPCs and what to put inside the different elements of the encounter. So if they climbed a cliff and I wanted them to have to work to get to the tower, I'd place the tower at a location that they would have to work to reach.
I'm generally trying to create a challenging and fun experience for the players, not stage a play or write a novel. I don't need to know where everything is two days in advance, or even two minutes in advance for the game to be fun, and I've learned over the years that being too prepared is sometimes worse than not being prepared at all.
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And, no thread about plot derailment could be complete without this:
The one story I do have is the one that trained me to design my campaigns differently and I've done it that way pretty much ever since.
My very first session as a GM I had spent a week solid working on a ruined castle with traps, rubble, secret passages, obstructions, etc. I had carefully populated the castle ruins with a collection of critters designed to offer an ever-escalating challenge to the PCs and had placed particular magic items in specific locations so that they would be found precisely when they would be valuable to the party. I was almost bouncing up and down in anticipation of welcoming the PC party into the inviting partly open front door...
Then the party leader cut down some trees and built a ladder to climb on top of the castle ruins.
Top? I hadn't even DESIGNED the ROOF.
So I was thrown immediately into "wing it" mode, and I've been winging it ever since.
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And, no thread about plot derailment could be complete without this:
Ah, the ol' chestnut.
we went down the well
we went down the well
That's funny, my castle had a well. The entrance to the next campaign chapter was down the well. It took forever for the party to find it...
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Yeah, i learned that the hard way. But sometimes, i just railroad, when i know that if i don't they'll be beating around the bush for hours and get bored.I think there's a difference between getting people back to playing the game (vs discussing it) and getting them back on the rails. From your post, I'm guessing your lean towards the former.
I actually don't like railroading. It feels cheap. But sometimes, pulling cheap tricks is a necessity when you play with a bunch of man-children who are easily distracted by shiny objects (i love those guys to the death)
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Every single game since 1985.
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And, no thread about plot derailment could be complete without this:
Oh Old Man Henderson, his stories always brighten up my day.
My Shattered Star group had an event that almost hit 1.5 on the Henderson Plot Derailment Scale. Only reason it wasn't a TPK was the quick use of a plot twist card and the absence of one player (hard to kill a character when they're not there).
The PCs were all entagled in webs, and for some reason were attempting to free themselves continually instead of trying to fight at a bit of a disadvantage (the fighter and ranger could have easily kept the spiders busy while the others freed themselves). Finally, in desperation, the wizard just decided to use his one spontaneous spell per day to cast burning hands... despite knowing it was going to hit all of the other PCs, who were at a substantial negative to their reflex saves due to entanglement... he outright killed one of them, and knocked the other two into dying status. At which point the rest of the spiders proceeded to continue biting him. I'd actually been planning on giving them a way out, as I felt it was too early to start mass killing characters, but when he went ahead and caused it on his own I felt I had to let it stand.
The one surviving character from that group was dragged away by a NPC friend of theirs who had decided to come and make sure they weren't getting in too much trouble (thankfully her ability to save him was plausible given the fact that she's a 7th or 8th level NPC who just happens to get introduced early in the AP).
Even after 2 1/2 years, I haven't forgotten Jandrem's story in this thread. (You may know Jandrem as "Josh M.") Here's an excerpt.
The worst offense of this is a Star Wars Old Republic campaign I ran, where the PC's where harboring a npc Noble who had information invaluable to the Republic, but there were too many spies in the Republic for the PC's to immediately trust, so much of the campaign was supposed to be about the PC's exploring the galaxy, gathering allies, encountering the Sith, bounty hunters, Mandalorions, etc. But instead, the PC's misunderstood the urgency of the situation and did everything in their power to ignore every possible adventure hook, and just "skip to the end." I even had discussions with the group and even gave away some details, explaining to them that a major part of the campaign(like, 80% of it) was going to be about exploring planets and just generally playing off of what they wanted to do, but all I got in response was "Nope, Nope, the Sith are chasing us, we need to get to Telos and stop them." Most of the plot hooks I with practically throw at them, they flat out refused because "we're being chased, we don't have time to investigate that ship/base/casino/armory/etc". So, I did as they wished. We skipped to the end. The players were about 6 levels lower than I had intended them to be, which meant I had to go through and re-stat all the baddies I had prepared for that day. I blame myself for that.
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I've DM'd a D&D 3.5 campaign which permanent state was around .60 and .75 Hendersons.
The reason?
The players acted like they got a weird roulette in their heads, and they roll it every round.
-DM (me): "Okay, so it's your turn. Do you see that the fighter has fallen and the ranger is surrounded. What do you do?"
-Player (sorcerer/rogue): "Mmm... *thinks for a time* OK, I know what to do. I dance. *mimic some weird trance-like step*"
-DM (me): "What? O... okay. And... what else are you gonna do?"
-Player (sorcerer/rogue): "Nothing more. I end my turn."
And in a brief oWoD campaign I tried to run, my players reached the 1.7 in the Henderson Scale of Plot Derailment, with a major breach in the Masquerade and some collateral damage. It was so strange, because it was a PvP that ended in TPK... without me moving a single finger. :S
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And, no thread about plot derailment could be complete without this:
My god. I had not seen the Director's Cut before, just the WHM stories. My GOD.
My god. I had not seen the Director's Cut before, just the WHM stories. My GOD.And, no thread about plot derailment could be complete without this:
I'm glad that you've enjoyed it. :)
Oh god, I'm the worst about derailing my GM's plots. I don't mean to, but I just can't seem to play my characters as anything other than competent (I never dump INT or WIS because it's hard for me to stop myself from pointing out inconsistencies).
First game my current GM ran, she had 3 statues, she'd intended to give us a GMPC as a way of giving us information we needed, and they were supposed to have been turned into statues hundreds of years ago. But what we found was a pedestal with 3 statues and a stone that fit the bases they were on with the words 'CHOOSE ONE' on it. My character looked at that, looked at the statues, and convinced everyone that they didn't want to take a chance on these things being some long dead evil gods wanting to be resurrected. We ended up just sealing the statues in and throwing the activation stone down a ravine.
This weekend, I did it to her again. Her world has inter-planetary travel on ships (they use a different plane to travel, kind of like the shadow plane). So it's not real space travel, but it's close. Anyway, there are also magical gates connecting the worlds. So our client asked us to escort the daughter and her belongings to another planet for a wedding. We talked them into sending the daughter via gate (which ruined her plot), but I salvaged it by offering to also escort the belongings as part of the contract (we escort the belongings, gate back, then escort her through the gate).
A pirate attacked us of course. The pirate ship docked with our ship at the engineering connections, which meant the two ships were basically back to back (engineering connected to engineering). The pirate got in, got caught by my character (a scythe wielding monk/cleric/druid to a death goddess) and she popped off a deeper darkness spell (which she could see through I think via a one-use true seeing disposable item). Since I couldn't see through the darkness, my character stumbled to the engine room in the dark, and chased the rest of her crew into their engine room. Their crew locked and sealed the doors to their own engine room, and then started pulling away from our ship. The poor GM told me I had to jump now if I wanted to get back on my ship. My character instead started flurrying the engines in an attempt to scare the pirates into opening the door. They didn't, and I ended up hitting something vital and blowing the engines apart (made my reflex save and evasion kept me from getting hurt).
So my character, to the pirates, sliced apart their engine with a scythe, and then walked through the resulting magical explosion that melted the entire engine compartment without a scratch on me. They surrendered (note the ship was disabled now, so if we'd left them, they'd have died without any way to get out of the dimension).
End result? We lost 200K of cargo (box of gems) that insurance only paid half of, and captured 330K worth of valuables (plus some bounties for recovering stolen cargo and capturing known pirates) that won't hit for a few months. Final total was, after paying taxes, 165K gold (which the GM didn't expect), and after splitting it equally with the ship's crew, everyone got just short of 27K each. Given we were below WBL by about 2 levels, it was quite a jolt to go up to 2 levels Above WBL (roughly). Plus we all leveled to 6th because of the ship capture. And my character went down as the only person in known history to have captured a pirate ship single handedly with a scythe. :)
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One way that I've learned to avoid having all my hard work and careful planning destroyed by creative players is to avoid working hard and plan only vaguely in advance.
Oh, plus I make up a lot of stuff on the fly as we go.
The dirty little secret all good GM's know is that the players don't know what was supposed to happen, they only know what actually happened :)
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The worst derail we had wasn't actually in game, but out of game. The GM was telling the background and it involved someone named "Thistle" and his "Magic Missile". The GM kept saying "Thistle's Magic Missile" with an accidental lisp that made it sound like "Thistle Magic Mithle" and we all got the giggles for the entire session.
He almost TPKed up, I think out of spite :)
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In one of the campaigns I play in, I play a dwarven fighter named Thorngar. The group doesn't let him make important decisions anymore, much to the relief of the DM.
The campaign is set in a ruined city, destroyed by a great fire thousands of years ago. Our intrepid band all live in the small village on a cliff overlooking the ruins, and the campaign started with us joining a guild that regularly sends expeditions down to the city for exploration. On a previous mission, we had discovered some secret tunnels underneath the city after the floor collapsed under us in a building that seemed like a theater. On this mission we also discovered some magical maps that enabled travel through the city via teleportation. One destination, known as the "Waterfall" led to a small cave right next to the village.
So we go down into the city, and start exploring the tunnels. After a while, we make our way into a building that seemed to be a spa, and there ran into 3 folks we were able to identify as citizens of the original city, who were very confused as the last they remembered, they were fleeing a fire. With these people in tow, we started teleporting around the city. Eventually, we somehow got sent back in time.
Now, what does a group of adventurers do when they suddenly find a ruined city actually in decent shape? Go back to home? Nah, that would be the logical thing, and what the DM would have prepared for. Thorngar had the brilliant idea of "let's go to the theater!". Why? Well, to see what is there! So we arrive at the theater to find a bunch of people, and immediately set about trying to convince everyone there that full-plate was in fashion, and they should start wearing it. That way, future us would get better gear when we looted the theater. After some schmoozing, Thorngar decided it was time to get drunk, so we went to a bar. Shortly after arriving at the bar, the cleric found out about a temple to her goddess and immediately rushed off to the temple and gave an impromptu, and remarkably well received, sermon.
Our poor DM, who had prepared for a bunch of encounters at the "Waterfall", and the site where the modern village would be, was left to wing it the entire session. Worse, Thorngar de-railed her scheme to get us back on track.
We were staying the night at the temple of the cleric's goddess, when the DM decided a night-time kidnapping would get us back on track. As such, we were visited in the night by 2 ancient dwarves, and 2 guys from the ancient race. Since we were sleeping in separate rooms, each of us got 1 opponent. Unfortunately, the DM forgot that dwarves had darkvision, and the members of the ancient race don't, so when Thorngar got ambushed in the night by a strange blue man swinging wildly at his bed, bad times ensued. Also unfortunately for the DM, Thorngar is a paranoid vagrant (and was established as such prior to the ambush). So while the blue man was stabbing at his bed, Thorngar was woken from his spot on the floor (feels more like a ditch, it's what he is used to), and was quite ready as he always goes to sleep cuddling his axe and shield. Thorngar managed to take out his attacker, and 1-2 others, almost took out the "boss" guy, and held off the press long enough for the sorcerer to run away. Thus not only de-railing the attempt to get us back on track, but also splitting the party.
One way that I've learned to avoid having all my hard work and careful planning destroyed by creative players is to avoid working hard and plan only vaguely in advance.
Oh, plus I make up a lot of stuff on the fly as we go.
Same here. Which sucks sometimes, because I'm an OCD detail-freak; if I thought someone was interested, I'd detail the of color of the grass they were walking on.
I used to prepare these big, intricate plot designs, crazy NPC's, elaborate backstories, but I had too many players who were just not interested, and only out to make their own sandbox game. Whether I was running a sandbox or not, was of no concern to them.
I learned to adapt, by simply being in permanent "wing-it" mode; I write no more than a basic plot summary, maybe one or two sentences. I keep plenty of materials for encounters on hand at all times(lots of minis, tiles, maps, and monster/npc books), and just go where the story takes us. I've discovered I can apply my detail-freakhood really well on the fly.
One way that I've learned to avoid having all my hard work and careful planning destroyed by creative players is to avoid working hard and plan only vaguely in advance.
Oh, plus I make up a lot of stuff on the fly as we go.
Same here. Which sucks sometimes, because I'm an OCD detail-freak; if I thought someone was interested, I'd detail the of color of the grass they were walking on.
I used to be like you Josh, I found a happy median between you and AD.
I write up detailed plot lines, at the outline level. So, for example, I have 9 pages of plot for the d20 Star Wars game I just started. But that plot is 'The PC's go here, find this, this, and that. Then they can go to A or B or C. If they go to A, this happens, if B, this happens, if C, this happens'. I don't go into major details, only a paragraph outline structure. NPCs are the same way, I don't create detailed background or sheets until I need them, I get a paragraph description of NPCs and that's it.
I also keep track of NPCs they meet in character in game that I didn't plan on, and I write up a paragraph about them. Then I watch for things the players seem interested in, and develop those into subplots. And things they don't, I don't.
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One way that I've learned to avoid having all my hard work and careful planning destroyed by creative players is to avoid working hard and plan only vaguely in advance.
Oh, plus I make up a lot of stuff on the fly as we go.
Same here. Which sucks sometimes, because I'm an OCD detail-freak; if I thought someone was interested, I'd detail the of color of the grass they were walking on.
I used to prepare these big, intricate plot designs, crazy NPC's, elaborate backstories, but I had too many players who were just not interested, and only out to make their own sandbox game. Whether I was running a sandbox or not, was of no concern to them.
I learned to adapt, by simply being in permanent "wing-it" mode; I write no more than a basic plot summary, maybe one or two sentences. I keep plenty of materials for encounters on hand at all times(lots of minis, tiles, maps, and monster/npc books), and just go where the story takes us. I've discovered I can apply my detail-freakhood really well on the fly.
I found creating a campaign wiki is very helpful. There are a ton of places you can make one for free and it helps to keep track of what you did in game and how it links to other things.
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I actually take the old cliche that an RPG game is a "collaborative story telling experience" pretty literally. I make every effort to let the players' actions define the story and as a result I've had some truly amazing discoveries about my own campaigns.
I enjoy getting surprised by how the story develops.
That's not to say that I don't have any plans. What I have are the NPC's plans, and NPCs who do all they can to further those plans. It's just that sometimes those meddling PCs manage to screw those plans all up, and the NPCs have to re-plan on the fly.
It seems to work.
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The dirty little secret all good GM's know is that the players don't know what was supposed to happen, they only know what actually happened :)One way that I've learned to avoid having all my hard work and careful planning destroyed by creative players is to avoid working hard and plan only vaguely in advance.
Oh, plus I make up a lot of stuff on the fly as we go.
It doesn't matter where the players try to go, if the GM wants them at Location X badly enough, it's always at the end of the road they are traveling.
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It doesn't matter where the players try to go, if the GM wants them at Location X badly enough, it's always at the end of the road they are traveling.The dirty little secret all good GM's know is that the players don't know what was supposed to happen, they only know what actually happened :)One way that I've learned to avoid having all my hard work and careful planning destroyed by creative players is to avoid working hard and plan only vaguely in advance.
Oh, plus I make up a lot of stuff on the fly as we go.
The art is often in how good you are at creating the illusion of choice :)
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I take a different approach from what’s been posted so far..I mean, I do write up encounter sites, locations,...dungeons, etc. But my games internal movement is set up by the NPCs and their actions on the NPCs clock and timetable.
In other words, if I have a hook out there in the campaign world where Threat A is impacting the local area (assuming they are low to mid level) and they don't bite, we just play on. But Threat A still progresses like a cancer - until it impacts all life in that area. The party can continue to ignore it (and suffer the results) or they leave. If they leave they are in a new area/new NPCs with agendas. They can react or they can keep moving on. Because they don't own the world - they just live in it.
On top of all of that Threat A has an if/then contingency written into it – if the city sends a force to come after it, how to retaliate, what happens after X amount of time passes, etc. Their focus of existence in the campaign is not there to be wiped out by the PCs in an exciting battle, their focus to get their objective done. The PCs are the ones who come in and try to stop it..via and exciting battle, or great plan, or...whatever they can come up with.
So in a sandbox campaign, I figure out their reach and then Threat A (and reach/sphere), Threat B (reach/sphere), Ally A, etc, all get a write up. Also nothing is static. If Threat A is allowed to continue to a certain point Ally A may get wiped out, and so on. They way I look at it, the party is going to want to find an deal with the threat or the party is not going to want to stick around. I don’t have to railroad them to deal with the threat, they will want to (for various reason) go after the threat by their own conclusion.
For more passive write-ups (The Tomb of Such-and-Such), the hook is a little harder, but rumors can drive a party there – if they think they are going to get something good out of it. But trying to rail a party into a passive dungeon short of "you fall into a pit that you can't climb out of" or poison gas - think original Ravenloft or Lost Tomb of Tamoachan (which combines a pit and a dungeon with poison gas) is not going to work unless the party wants to be there, or they really need to be there.
I have had players undertake missions just for the cash, because they were strapped, owed money and didn’t want to end up on a hit list. So they did the run to save their own hides. In those cases the run/module which is normally passive/could be ignored now is something they have to overcome instead of bypass.
Some of the listed examples (and subsequent derails) are because the DM :
A) Put the campaign on heavy rails to begin with,
B) Didn't think out the challenge/consequences well enough to consider that players will *&^*-up anything you throw at them.
To explain the heavy rails point - no DM is chained to his devices that he made.
Those rails laid down for PCs are as much a trap for the DM as they are for the players. If you are going to make a mega dungeon, make it relevant to the campaign, if not the players. Or find a way to make it relevant, vs. just assuming that by being there, the party is going to go there.
Also on recycling:
- Duke is a real evil guy and needs to be taken out, his master of arms and lead muscle runs the towers.
- Towers are taken over and infiltrated by a mercenary group. Now the duke they stole from earlier on is a thieving jerk but not evil and at least he wasn't a cold blodded villan. These murderous guys have him, a few other NPC allies of the party, and are using this base to begin a campaign against the local populace. NPC stats get a face lift and are now part of the mercenary army. They have already launched an attack on town, gutting the defenses - in a few days they will be reinforced to full staff. The forces of good are also being deployed to the region, but won't make it there before the enemy gets its full compliment and digs into those towers.
I have ran time travel scenarios before – in a Gamma World campaign, when the characters used a malfunctioning planar device and ended up in an archiving facility right as the Apocalypse was going to hit the world (before the bombs fell). There was chaos as they scrambled to snatch up data/info from a facility they knew was going to be destroyed. They went through a series of dimensions/time jumps before they finally made it back home, all the while rushing because they felt if they stayed in one spot too long that they would be dead or stuck due to the crumbling world around them. The point being – it was a railroad/rollercoaster, with no visible tracks. They didn't see the tracks; since they didn't really control the method of time travel they weren't exactly sure where they were supposed to be going besides forward - or, to keep moving. Some scenes from the original Time Machine were drawn on for inspiration as sense of urgency infected the whole thing from scene/time/planar jump to another -plus their paranoia. I think they were under the impression that if any of their characters broke off from the group and were left behind that their chance for continued campaign play time in an alternate reality would be zero (I had two groups of around 13 people at the time).
I could have run a different Time Travel scenario, one where the PC are chased after law enforcement type figures in an attempt to capture and examine the mutants or alien characters with their futuristic technology. Even one less urgent than that - but if I did , I would need all the details, ramifications and specifics worked out – and to expect my players to make the most of the situation – explore, exploit, lag around and mess around, etc. If you don't plan on that and adjust for it then you are setting yourself up for a long painful session(s)
TL;DR - Time travel can be fun if it's managed by the DM. Open ended time travel is risky and needs to be managed by a DM who is very good on the fly, or who has looked at all the angles the PCs would approach the situation.
I don't run rail modules - there are hooks, but I have to expect that the party won't bite. Some free advice (if anyone cares)...if you are a DM, and you are thrown a major loop - take a time out to re-evaluate what would happen next.
If you were not planning on something, and the players hit a blind spot, great for them - but don't be too quick in giving them access to that easy button because you missed something. Not saying to cheat, but I have 3-4 guys every week trying to find holes in their problems (the ones I made). The evil madman creating those problems might find a counter to their counter, vs. the DM who is running the evil madman and just throws his hands up when they hit him from left field.
Take a break or a breather, if it's a contigency that cannot be responded to or logically reacted to (if not then, but down the line - like the duke going after the PCs) then slow clap your hands and give it to the players. Otherwise, give your badguys some credit, give it some time for your brain to work on the problem and let them respond.
My biggest mistake is giving in to my players too quickly when they come up with a brilliant solution to a problem. Bravo for them, but bad guys - if they still have some of their resources - shouldn't have their plans fold like a cheap card table when hit with an outside that wasn't planned for. They react, that means taking a half our break or ending the session early if need be (I would prefer not to unless its a major campaign point).
Anyway.
It seems like players make the assumption the game is "railroaded" a certain way just to f&+~ with them and control them and their characters. No...its because the DM has certain things written on his notes and if you do something 180 degrees different it means he has nothing to use for the next 3 hours. DMs have to be creative and flexible, but if there is a whole plot going on where you're at in NYC you can't say "well my character takes a vacation to Mexico" and expect this session to be able to continue.
I agree. Nothing I hate more than having this intricate adventure written up, and the players run screaming the opposite direction(adventure in NYC? Let's go to Mexico!).
In one of my groups, I was able to narrow it down to one player in particular. It got so bad, other players started ridiculing him for constantly going out of his way to avoid adventures and encounters. In one campaign, it was week after week. Adventure after adventure, completely avoided, all so he could RP his Profession skill, and avoid any actual "adventuring" as much as possible. As the DM, I was pretty baffled. I didn't know what I was supposed to actual be running for the guy.
It all really depends on the kind of players you have. If you have players who have their own story in the heads, and are just using your game as a backdrop, then any "plot" you put in front of them is a distraction, and gets treated as such. I have a couple of sandbox players like this who want the DM to be nothing more than an encounter-spewing vending machine. They're going to write their own legacy, and all the DM can do is react and toss out fodder for them to kill/enslave/enlist.
The other kind of player I've come across, which most of my fellow gamers are coming around to being, are the kind who are here for a good time, and ready for whatever you throw at them. You don't have to lean on them so hard to get them to follow obvious plot hooks. But, you have to know when to back off for a moment and let them do some exploring on their own, too.
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It all really depends on the kind of players you have. If you have players who have their own story in the heads, and are just using your game as a backdrop, then any "plot" you put in front of them is a distraction, and gets treated as such. I have a couple of sandbox players like this who want the DM to be nothing more than an encounter-spewing vending machine. They're going to write their own legacy, and all the DM can do is react and toss out fodder for them to kill/enslave/enlist.
The other kind of player I've come across, which most of my fellow gamers are coming around to being, are the kind who are here for a good time, and ready for whatever you throw at them. You don't have to lean on them so hard to get them to follow obvious plot hooks. But, you have to know when to back off for a moment and let them do...
Some good points - it also comes down to the kind of game you are going to run. If you present it as a sandbox or open campaign, players are going to try to create their own story within those confines, so any hooks really have to revolve around the mentality of "how does this benefit me" sort of mindset.
Thinking back now, I did have a few jerky players who would give me some problems (back in the day mind you, some time in the mid 80's) - this was usually the bi-product of running a pre-made module. If the writen hook wasn't strong enough and wasn't flexible to adapt to your the group then they would dally and meander for some time before getting on with the module. As Josh pointed out though - it really does go to the kind of player you have - people who want to play the module will jump on anything, even red herrings - just to get the ball going, while jerky types will screw with even a strong hook (and the other players who are going along with it).
Some good points - it also comes down to the kind of game you are going to run. If you present it as a sandbox or open campaign, players are going to try to create their own story within those confines, so any hooks really have to revolve around the mentality of "how does this benefit me" sort of mindset.
I definitely agree. That's what was so doubly-frustrating about it; I always spell out, up front, what kind of game I'll be running. If it's a free-form, sandbox-type game, I say so. If its' a story heavy, some railroads included, combat-light game, I make it very clear.
But, some players just tune that out, and are just hellbent on playing exactly the same, regardless of what kind of game the DM is actually looking to run. It's as if all they hear is "blah blah blah let's play."
When I first saw this thread title, I thought it was going to be an idea for Paizo's next book, full of advice on what to do when your player decide the circumstances of
is more worth pursuing than