I am playing in 2 games right now and GMing one and that is about it as far as my playing of tabletop games so if this is the norm just let me know.
This is a continuation of the game that I am running and I am at a bit of a loss. This is the previous discussion of the prison in question
Flash forward to tonight when I ran the game. I introduced them to the prison and all seemed to be going OK. Long story short, when talking with one of Davok's(head of one faction) henchmen (the first day) they conveyed a lot of the same ideals and thoughts that Davok and Teran (head of another faction) had. They were introduced to Harsk (Davok's #2) who eventually introduced the mobster (who was imprisoned by one of the PCs) and he (the pc) avoided the confrontation completely (with a successful bluff check he convinced Harsk that he should leave because he was tired before he got to the area with the mobster). They spent the rest of the time trying to dig to the surface and killing the worms which lead them to the rather obvious wall of force that was around the prison. (Though no one in the prison knew about the wall because they hadn't been able to dig that far)
They literally did not go into one building and didn't explore the area at all, just made a B line for the exit.
Now let me explain the worms to you. They were alot like these:
This insectoid creature might be mistaken for a simple giant centipede, were it not for the circular, moray-like maw, the hard reflective chitin that clicks as it moves, and its complete lack of eyes. A thin trickle of something green and foul-smelling trickles from its mouth.
Scavenger Worm
CR 4
XP 1,200
N Large aberration
Init +7; Senses blindsight 60 ft. scent; Perception +6
DEFENSE
AC 16, touch 12, flat-footed 13 (+3 Dex, +4 natural, -1 size)
hp 22 (3d8+9)
Fort +4, Ref +4, Will +5
OFFENSE
Speed 30 ft., climb 20 ft.
Melee bite +4 (1d8+3)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Special Attacks tranquilizing spray
Tactics Although technically sightless, scavenger worms are capable of detecting and tracking prey as well as any sighted creature. When they come across living beings, they initiate combat with their tranquilizing spray, and then make every effort to grab at least one debilitated creature and drag it off to be consumed. If it senses no easy escape, however, it fights until all its prey is dead, or it believes itself to be overmatched.
STATISTICS
Str 14, Dex 16, Con 16, Int 1, Wis 14, Cha 6
Base Atk +2; CMB +5; CMD 18 (can't be tripped)
Feats Improved Initiative, Run
Skills Climb +14, Perception +6, Stealth +7
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Tranquilizing Spray (Ex)
The scavenger worm can spit a viscous liquid in a 20-ft. cone. All living creatures in the area must succeed on a DC 14 Fortitude save or fall asleep for 1d8+1 rounds. Victims can be awakened early with a DC 15 Heal check, as a full-round action, or with any variant of restoration or neutralize poison. Once it attacks with its spray, the scavenger worm cannot do so again for 1d4 rounds. The save DC is Constitution-based.
The main difference being that they came in different sizes and when killed they let out a loud screech that alerted other worms in the area. When the worms passed by an area where there was a tunnel they caused a cave in. They could also grab and the swallow whole asleep prey.
The party fought one worm and do to a successful knowledge they found out about the screech and that it didn't have DR. During the fight they found out that it has low health and when it died and screeched they ran away for the day.
During that one fight, 4 of the party members got put to sleep and they were only saved because some npc's that were helping them dig (that didn't fail the save) woke them up instead of running away (which logically they would have run away when their protectors fell asleep). They tried again a few days later and ran into four of these worms at once (due to bad luck). I only had one of the worms use the sleep cone of death and had all of the worms breach near the front of the party to avoid a TPK and after the fight they say "Yeah these are weak, lets just kill them all!"
Somehow they never noticed that with 4 out of 5 people asleep, yeah you are pretty much done.
With 4 worms that have a 20 ft cone sleep attack I could have had one breach in the back (collapsing the way out) one in the front, and one on either side. Everyone would have failed (statistically) 1 of the 4 cones and everyone would have gotten eaten. Even if they didn't the worms could have caused the tunnel to collapse on them and buried them alive.
SO now I'm thinking that this was all just a large waste of time creating this prison town which they didn't bother exploring at all because i assume they just aren't interested. I guess I will just let them out next session and get back to the main story which leads to problems in and of itself.
The problem is, the threat that they are going to be up against is massive and they will need some allies and the prison was a good way for them to rally and/or create their own army (or at least a large number of people who owe them a debt). At this rate they will be owed one favor from one person and only met 2 people of any real import (one being the one who will owe them a favor). All they have made elsewhere are enemies and breaking out of prison isn't going to gain them any friends. Being an evil party I don't see alot of options for gathering people to their cause. I also gave them an "IN" to the assassin's guild which they have been running from since. I guess I should just introduce the real threat and let them TPK and end it with a "you fail, thank you for playing"
I guess my question is, is this common?
They didn't look into any goals or backgrounds of anybody and only asked 1 person why they were there. They know that people have been thrown in here for years and that most of those items in up in this store but they didn't even step in to see what kind of random and potentially rare items were in there. They didn't want to try the drugs to see what kind of effect they would have (or force them on anyone else even). They left one third of the area COMPLETELY unexplored. I mean, I wasted a huge amount of time creating this place, the people, their personalities, buildings and traps, and all of that only works here and is basically wasted. This makes me want to just NOT do any prep anymore and fly by the seat of my pants with a random name generator, a chart with races and genders (to roll so that there is no thought required), and the npc codex for builds.
I guess my question is, is this common?
Yes. Some players need to be dragged by their lapels into the setting and given reasons - clear and direct reasons - to interact with anything at all (other than kill, snog or avoid).
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Try not to view time spent world-building as wasted, even if this set of players don't fully realise everything you've created. You are making something that can last beyond this current game, that can be reused and that contributes to the richness and verisimilitude of your setting. When I am world-building I don't expect my players to uncover all of my secrets, and I like it that way. YMMV.
I've started adding an extra page to the character sheet in my games.
basicly I've stolen the drive/goal - system from nWOD - GMC. And also added a system for contacts, family and allies.
so in practice, noone gets to touch a dice before they've clarified to the whole group and themselves: who are you? Why are you here? What do you want? Why is it that you will never betray the other characters? Who do you know? (Minimum one npc)
So far it has worked brilliantly.
edit: agreeing with supervillan, I've learned to build all my plots, npcs and areas as modular as possible. That way, if the players miss something, i can reuse it later with some changes in presentation and description.
I've started adding an extra page to the character sheet in my games.
basicly I've stolen the drive/goal - system from nWOD - GMC. And also added a system for contacts, family and allies.so in practice, noone gets to touch a dice before they've clarified to the whole group and themselves: who are you? Why are you here? What do you want? Why is it that you will never betray the other characters? Who do you know? (Minimum one npc)
So far it has worked brilliantly.
edit: agreeing with supervillan, I've learned to build all my plots, npcs and areas as modular as possible. That way, if the players miss something, i can reuse it later with some changes in presentation and description.
Why don't you post your drive/goal/contacts/family/allies system? I'm curious :P
One of the first rules of GM'ing is that no plan ever survives first contact with the PCs.
In other words, when we are drawing up an adventure or campaign, it may seem obvious to us what direction the party should follow. However, since RPGs tend to be the epitome of "open world" (at least compared to video games) the players often have different ideas. Or they miss a clue. Or they simply have different motivations. Or . . . "Squirrel!"
More than anything, in a P&P RPG, players hate to be railroaded. As such, while they may very well look for plot hooks, they'll absolutely look to follow said hooks in their own way. So, going with the OP's scenario, being imprisoned is an obvious plot hook -- Find a way out of prison! Now obviously, it seems that the OP put in a great deal of work to provide all manner of means of trying to allow the party to RP their way out of prison by forming alliances and what not. However, another classic hook is simply, the Breakout. This is the route that this particular party obviously took. Or in other words "There isn't a prison that I can't break out of."
Part of this mentality comes from the implied social contract at the table -- that being that while the GM will strive to produce challenging scenarios, including scenarios that may very well result in a tpk, no outcome will be a forgone conclusion (i.e. there is always a reasonable chance that the party can succeed). So here, the OP tried to set it up to make it seem that a straight up Breakout was not going to happen. But this ran a bit afoul of the implied social contract. Sure, the worms might be formidable, but the GM won't put in something that cannot be defeated (admittedly this is not exactly what the social contract entails, but is often how it is interpreted). So from the player perspective, the straight up fight your way out, does seem like it should, at least in theory, work. Making it so the only way out was through roleplay and alliance building would still be railroading (albeit a better form of railroading imho than requiring them to bash their way out).
So yeah, I definitely think its common for groups to take the approach that the OP's group did. However, this doesn't mean that the group doesn't respect the GM, or doesn't appreciate the work the GM put in, just that they are not simply going to ask the GM for the script so to speak.
As for the "wasted effort", I wholeheartedly agree with the above posters that its rare that any amount of world building is truly wasted. Sure, there were rooms/areas of the prison that were not explored, but that's pretty typical of a large dungeon or setting in my opinion. Particularly when you are talking about a scenario where the PCs are trying to escape. When trying to escape, its usually best not to stop and smell the roses. But also keep in mind that you can still use those NPCs that the party didn't interact with. Perhaps those NPCs are now miffed that the party didn't seek them out. Maybe they even hold a grudge -- particularly when the prison wardens come down hard on those NPCs that are still imprisoned (after all, the escapees must have had help from their fellow prisoners). So now they've created enemies that they never even knew about (think Mara Jade from Shadows of the Empire).
My advice, don't sweat it and take notes about everything the PCs did and did not do. It's always fun to confront the PCs with their omissions later in the campaign.
Pandamonium1987: I'll see what I can do after work. but It's not really that fancy :)
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ok, Pandamonium1987, see if this works:
ok, Pandamonium1987, see if this works:
I love the idea of getting players to write out that relationships/contacts sheet first. The way you re-arranged the skills section is pretty nice, too! :)
I think I stole that setup from a gumshoe/pathfinder-sheet I found somwhere on the internet. So it's not something I can take full credit for.
It doesn't have markers for "trained only" though, something I'm starting to miss in our game.
In game, whenever I feel that the group or one of the players have made a deep connection with a npc I point at one of the players (either the one with the deepest investment or, if nobody has, the one with the least contacts) and I say "you can add him as a coontact now".
The "drive"- line is simply: "make a goal for your character, if you fulfill it there will be extra xp for roleplaying,
(No! Eating A Pie Is Not A Valid Goal Simon! G~*&#~nit Man!)
then make a new Drive.
I also use it as a cheat sheet to check what my players might want to experience during game.