I've run a homebrewed intrigue/mystery/horror game for the last year, and it's been an absolute blast! My players are engaged; many of them are new and I see how much they enjoy the game!
I've run into one consistent problem; the players all said they'd love to play a game with intrigue and mystery, but they don't play it that way. Don't get me wrong, my players are playing completely normally, but they don't engage in the social parts of such a plot, like sniffing up clues, prying information out of suspects, manipulate and persuade and stuff. Instead, they go the "checklist" route - "Okay, what do we know? There's something over there? Okay, let's go there.". Again, nothing wrong with that, but just to make it clear what kind of party they are.
Now, a few of my players have commented that they don't feel like the NPCs are anything but macguffins; they didn't know about the big bad, or the motivations of the local lord and so on - but from my perspective, they never engaged with those characters others than occasionally asking a "What do you know about X" and accepting the answer as gospel. My NPCs are not open books; I'd require some work to get to know and open up. So now I've sort of had to resort to make NPCs just tell the players things, and that doesn't make my players engage anymore, it just makes them think they have a new objective on their checklist.
Anyone else experienced this? I want to just say "Well, if you want to get to know the characters, engage with them yourself", but I feel like I, as the DM, should do better and somehow subtly make them engage with the NPCs. How would you do it?
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When you go into an interaction with them - are you giving them anything that would make them suspicious or ask follow-up questions? Do you use Passive Insight to let players know they get a bad feeling from the interviewee?
You might also just tell them out of character. Not tell them the plot, tell them that NPCs aren't always being truthful and forthcoming, and that the characters are missing things by not interacting with them more fully.
It might be they're more used to a video game style mystery, where you go to a place, get one clue, and that points you right at the second clue, and so on. It might not occur to them that there might actually be two clues in the first place they go, and one of them is false. If that's the case, you'll need to retrain them about how this kind of game differs.
Just what Xalthu said. I don't see any game breaking problem to flat out say before the session gets started exactly what methodologies would best serve the purpose. It gives straight up expectations on both ends to do things in a manner in which both GM and players are on the same page about how to progress productively in terms of whatever the intrigue or mystery mechanisms ought to be, at least for your specific table. Right now my impression is that your valid expectations don't match the players' own conceived best practices valid expectations of what to do so there's a need for proper alignment.
When you go into an interaction with them - are you giving them anything that would make them suspicious or ask follow-up questions? Do you use Passive Insight to let players know they get a bad feeling from the interviewee?
I... COMPLETELY forgot Passive Insight and Investigation was a thing! I'll make sure to use it more often from now on!
You might also just tell them out of character. Not tell them the plot, tell them that NPCs aren't always being truthful and forthcoming, and that the characters are missing things by not interacting with them more fully.
It might be they're more used to a video game style mystery, where you go to a place, get one clue, and that points you right at the second clue, and so on. It might not occur to them that there might actually be two clues in the first place they go, and one of them is false. If that's the case, you'll need to retrain them about how this kind of game differs.
I have told them multiple times that the characters won't always be forthcoming with their knowledge unless prodded, but it has not made them interact more with the characters. At most, they ask the questions about where they think they need to go to progress the plot and that's it. They never initiate Persuasion or Insight checks either.
It definitely seems like they play the game more like a video game than DnD at times; they do roleplay with each other, though that's mostly banter. When it comes to planning the party's path forward, its often two of the guys who play their characters very "tunnel-visiony"; one makes sense, as he's an ******* Lawful Evil elf with no interest in engaging with anyone beyond the merely professional, and the other is a sort-of brickheaded Grave Cleric who loves to beat things up... But even then, the player who commented that they missed engagement has been one of the more roleplaying players who, for some reason, only engages with the local Innkeep who knows jack shit about anything.
I feel like I've given them many opportunities to go into "mystery mode", but maybe I just give them too many clues out the gate? Maybe they should've been stumped in their investigation so they would have to work the pavement to go forward?
Another thing they've said is that the plot has had a bit of a "timer" to it for the most part, which is true. I should maybe have given them a more relaxed timeframe so they didn't feel like they needed to rush quite so much.
Passive Insight is a great suggestion. After that, you might want to check how you are roleplaying your NPCs, and how you drop hints that what they are saying might not be the entire truth, just by verbal communication, letting sentences hand in the air, etc.
Also, are your players and your NPCs talking in first or third person ?
We use first person, with the occasional extra detail described in third person.
I feel like I do my best to play the characters that "know stuff" like they're keeping things close to the chest, but the players doesn't seem to want to investigate, unless they think they can get a clue as to where the next dungeon or threat is.
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I have some semblance of an idea of what I'm doing!
Maybe you need to make the clues more obvious. It could be that what you think is a big flashing sign telling them something is still not something they notice. Or it could be that the players aren’t putting the clues together properly, and maybe their characters would. For example that cleric probably has a higher wisdom score than the player (I’m just assuming the cleric is at an 18 or 20, while the player is maybe more average human). If that’s the case, I guess we’re back to using those passive checks.
A few things caught my attention from the more recent post,
"At most, they ask the questions about where they think they need to go to progress the plot and that's it."
Could tell them, "What Plot? Why do you think in such one-dimensional terms? There's no one way of doing things, and the course of events will transpire behind the scenes based on what you all do or don't do." Or something. Anyway point is, it does sound like just as you mentioned they are approaching this from a video game perspective that you can only get to C if you unlocked parts A or B first. Which isn't true.
"Another thing they've said is that the plot has had a bit of a "timer" to it for the most part, which is true. I should maybe have given them a more relaxed timeframe so they didn't feel like they needed to rush quite so much"
As the GM, you do control the timer and the clock. What could take three sessions and 9 hours in the real world might only be a half hour in game time. If the party spreads out, for example, you can always do one of those "Meanwhile, back at the tavern" cutaways to the other party members without any in game time lost. Or, if they wanna spend 20 minutes discussing their next steps while chatting around the table, only a brief moment has elapsed in the game. Even if you flat out said "the mystery needs to be solved by sun up tomorrow or else the Evildoers gets away," the morning might not come for several sessions, there's always time for them to get done what they feel like they need to do within those constraints. It's not a race. The timer is just there for Tension and shouldn't be interpretted as a roadblock for good investigation.
"I... COMPLETELY forgot Passive Insight and Investigation was a thing!"
The passive checks can be a great way to point out the obvious while under the structure of the rule set so that everyone can feel like such "free info" is actually supported by mechanics, and feel free to tell them, 'Holmar the Bard's passive insight indicates to her that innkeeper doesn't know squat about the recent murder that took place in the tavern downstairs." Cool, very useful information gleaned supported by the rules, everyone is happy in my opinion.
"They never initiate Persuasion or Insight checks either."
Many GM's don't encourage a player to actively declare they want to make a specific rules mechanic check, and are instead in the mindset that a skillcheck is only called upon when a GM calls for one. There's also the GM-dependent perspective of how that should be accomplished. Some players want to say "I walk into the room, what do I see?" vs. a GM who wants to be stricter and only give info or ask for a skill check if the player is much more precise as in "I want to open up the drawers and rifle through the paperwork". I don't want to suggest that anything you or they are doing is wrong, but that again there needs to be a reorientation around the table on how to use the framework of the rules. How exactly, do you mean, they "never initiate" trying to persuade or trying to investigate? Maybe They think they are, but you don't?
I read something somewhere about how it's tough to run or play in murder/intrigue type games in ttrpgs, especially where (such as in D&D) the rules are a stricter pass/fail setup or otherwise not overly designed to support such a campaign. Some good advice I remember reading about is that it should never be hard for clues to be discoverable, and even that such clues could always be discoverable no matter what, and that it's more about piecing the clues together to figure out the bigger picture and filtering out the deadends.
It sounds like you have a situation that the players think they know what they want and are asking for but possibly don’t get the part they need to play to get that.
All roleplay games are a 2 way interactive experience, we all know that, however a lot of players struggle to remember it in the moment and expect the dm to either spoon feed them the information they want or just forget to engage and that’s ok, many players simply want to hit things in a dungeon crawl, or be fed monsters in a clear storyline or have the secrets be really obvious that is a perfectly fine way to play the game and I have run many campaigns like this for players who want this. When a DM tries to engage these types of players in a different way it can be frustrating.
Now you have a benefit in that your players have asked for a more mysterious narrative. My advice to you is to sit down with them and almost have a mid campaign session 0 to reset things a little bit, just before the next session. Use this time to explains the mechanics behind passive perception and insight checks, make it become as much a part of your players habit as searching for traps. But explain to them that the DC of this check will be dependent on how they approach the interaction. They don’t have to engage in first person, simply explaining to you how there character will talk and act, what they are trying to get out, how they want to shift the conversation is perfect to begin with. Slowly you can ask them to suggest lines they might be saying or explain actions in more detail.
You can help in the way you describe your NPCs, “The Barman keeps polishing the same glass as you question him” “your contact shifts on his feet eyes darting around.” “The merchant holds his hand out to shake yours in agreement to the deal, but you notice his hand seems a bit clamy, or his grip is a bit weaker/firmer.” Some simple research online to look for common signs of deception, lies, hiding a secret, feeling scared or worried etc can give you a list of things you can feed into your descriptors for the scene.
But ultimately you can only do so much, your players need to meet you halfway hence I suggest a session 0 reset and then treat it as you do any introduction of a new mechanic. The first traps you gave your players where probably weak, simple affairs they could spot easily, over time you trained them to search every space. Social interactions are the same, work from making them easier to start with and then slowly more complicated as your players become more comfortable in engaging the scene more.
I think we got off on a bit of a detour here, mostly because I haven't given enough information (lol)
We're well past the investigation/mystery part of the adventure, the players are a few sessions from defeating the bad guy in his lair and things are coming to ahead very well. What the problem arose from was that one of my more roleplaying players called one of my key NPCs a "macguffin" that he didn't feel like he knew, and that was a "toy" for one of the other characters... But from my perspective, he, and most of the other characters, never talked to the NPC and treated him like a macguffin to drive their plot forward, and not a character to talk to or persuade.
It is, from my perspective, a recurring issue that the players don't see the NPCs as anything but an NPC from a game like Skyrim, where you just have to find the one thing you need from a character so you can get moving and kill more dragons. I feel like we had a misunderstanding between us because I assumed they would want to talk to the characters since they wanted an intrigue/mystery game, but they generally didn't seem to be that curious about them.
And that is totally fair.My players may just have realized they aren't into that kind of game and that's fair, but it confuses me when a player, who had multiple opportunities to talk to the NPCs just for fun, felt like the characters were macguffins. Like, he said that after a session where they took a short rest with that "'macguffin" NPC who they'd just saved, where he could easily have just talked a with him for a spell.
I hope this clarifies what my issue is here.
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I have some semblance of an idea of what I'm doing!
That does help to clarify my understanding, Jakebit, thank you for elaboration. All this advice does seem to be a bit hindsight in that regard. I'd wager that lessons can be learned on both ends of the table, concerning expectations, mechanics, procedure, that can be built upon the next time there's a mystery/intrigue in your campaign. I'll often premise the start of a session in a very direct manner, "This'll be a very roleplay heavy session, I encourage you to actually talk to and interact with the NPC'S and you'll pick up what I'm laying down." It can be tough though, what "roleplay" means to one player means something entirely different to another, or to the GM. Best wishes on your adventure.
That does help to clarify my understanding, Jakebit, thank you for elaboration. All this advice does seem to be a bit hindsight in that regard. I'd wager that lessons can be learned on both ends of the table, concerning expectations, mechanics, procedure, that can be built upon the next time there's a mystery/intrigue in your campaign. I'll often premise the start of a session in a very direct manner, "This'll be a very roleplay heavy session, I encourage you to actually talk to and interact with the NPC'S and you'll pick up what I'm laying down." It can be tough though, what "roleplay" means to one player means something entirely different to another, or to the GM. Best wishes on your adventure.
Just to follow up, as with all things it takes practice, some will get it quickly, others will take a while. There will be some who after trying it really dislike it and others who love it and ask for more roleplay then actual combat. I would suggest initially leading them by explaining each session, or nudging them in game, say, do you want to talk a bit more to this person or have those initial encounters have low passive perception DC's
Over time you will find your players need less and less prompting and just start doing things naturally. Don't feel disheartened or think you shouldn't try again in future equally dont try ramming it down the players throats, maybe create some interesting NPC's you and the players can practice with in the next town, maybe one knows a secret about the other 2 and they are employed to try and find it out and instructed to be subtle and not use violence or force.
As a player, feeling like we are on a time table yet at the same time trying to figure out what riddles one of our DMs has for us is always stressful. Cause we've been there when we didn't make the timer thing and he was upset and things just fell apart after that. As a DM, I understand trying to motivate players to stay focus on the task. So there is a dichotomy in me when it comes to timers, but in general... especially with one DM, I hate them... and boy does he like to use them. Inside I'm like, "Ok, so you have these grand plans of things we're supposed to find out... we start asking some questions and get some bad rolls and don't get information... so we try to follow the clues we can, but now we feel behind... and we know that clock is ticking... so we try to rush the next conversation and rolls happened again and we've only got one guy with good Investigation because we never have a session 0 and we never know what everyone else is doing... and that one guy never asks good questions... but we'll slog on and go to the third point where we had a lead and hope that we'll get a good roll!" Now, that doesn't mean that is how you are playing this. That is just my experience as a player with one of our DMs. I'm on campaign 3 with him and they all have this element at some point. As I usually am the face of the party, I deliberately stat and skill wise made it so that I couldn't take on that role (and notified the other players in our secret discord... yes, we only have a secret discord for that one DM... and he knows about it... but some weeks it's the only way we fell we can discuss planning and hope to survive)... and boy has that turned into a failure. So, at some point in the near future I expect we're going to fail the timer again... but this time I don't care about it as much as the first time and we'll go on and do whatever happens in the aftermath. I still like the DM... and there is a lot of fun in the campaigns.. but they are more stressful than most other ones. And half the time the clues are very difficult to find or interpret. So... if we get some... great! If we don't... oh well... we'll either figure it out or we won't. We've realized by now that we're not going to change him and that sometimes we're going to go out in our Diablo Hack-n-slash way in the dark mist filled streets of London and walk by Watson ten or twelve times before the campaign is over.
On the other side of the fence, I'll try to get information to them in more than one way. Sure, conversations are great... but I'll also have my NPCs send characters notes. I'll use dream sequences. Actually allowing Divination to have some meaning in games... sure, I try to couch most of it with tarot-esque kind of language to obfuscate, but I want them to have a general sense of what is going on, even if they mess up some rolls. And a written letter from an NPC is a great way to have a second conversation. A dream sequence involving someone's property can have them second guessing something. I do throw in some red herrings every now and then and I don't try for full on "Intrigue"... because that is not our table. And we've all been bitten by intrigue in the past... so I don't want to invoke those feelings. And if they fail with one NPC at some point... I will sometimes let one of them have a run in with a family member of close friend that might know a different set of information on the same thing. I very specifically try to have three places they can find the same key information and hope to not need them. Which is also another reason I don't run a lot of intrigue (and timers)... it takes a lot of extra work that you don't have to plan for when building combat encounters. And let's face it... two of our five guys are never going to enjoy Intrigue. They are there for combat and loot and have been fairly effective at communicating that for a long time. So building out intrigue needs to tickle their fancy somehow so they don't feel left out (and it can be done if you don't go into weeks of social dialogue). Or have a good plot twist if they left me any dangling loose ends in their backstory that I can surprise them with (you can't have a long lost lover in every campaign, but you can do it once... and the same for the brother that turns against the family and reveals he has joined the enemy). I try to spend more time on creating the air of mystery and suspense than I do on an intricate social game. And some checks they are meant to fail... because things go bump in the night. As long as I can get them headed in the right direction and have them spooked and curious... then I have done what I set out to do. Hopefully I got to get in some good conversations with NPCs along the way...
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I've run a homebrewed intrigue/mystery/horror game for the last year, and it's been an absolute blast! My players are engaged; many of them are new and I see how much they enjoy the game!
I've run into one consistent problem; the players all said they'd love to play a game with intrigue and mystery, but they don't play it that way. Don't get me wrong, my players are playing completely normally, but they don't engage in the social parts of such a plot, like sniffing up clues, prying information out of suspects, manipulate and persuade and stuff. Instead, they go the "checklist" route - "Okay, what do we know? There's something over there? Okay, let's go there.". Again, nothing wrong with that, but just to make it clear what kind of party they are.
Now, a few of my players have commented that they don't feel like the NPCs are anything but macguffins; they didn't know about the big bad, or the motivations of the local lord and so on - but from my perspective, they never engaged with those characters others than occasionally asking a "What do you know about X" and accepting the answer as gospel. My NPCs are not open books; I'd require some work to get to know and open up. So now I've sort of had to resort to make NPCs just tell the players things, and that doesn't make my players engage anymore, it just makes them think they have a new objective on their checklist.
Anyone else experienced this? I want to just say "Well, if you want to get to know the characters, engage with them yourself", but I feel like I, as the DM, should do better and somehow subtly make them engage with the NPCs. How would you do it?
I have some semblance of an idea of what I'm doing!
When you go into an interaction with them - are you giving them anything that would make them suspicious or ask follow-up questions? Do you use Passive Insight to let players know they get a bad feeling from the interviewee?
You might also just tell them out of character. Not tell them the plot, tell them that NPCs aren't always being truthful and forthcoming, and that the characters are missing things by not interacting with them more fully.
It might be they're more used to a video game style mystery, where you go to a place, get one clue, and that points you right at the second clue, and so on. It might not occur to them that there might actually be two clues in the first place they go, and one of them is false. If that's the case, you'll need to retrain them about how this kind of game differs.
Just what Xalthu said. I don't see any game breaking problem to flat out say before the session gets started exactly what methodologies would best serve the purpose. It gives straight up expectations on both ends to do things in a manner in which both GM and players are on the same page about how to progress productively in terms of whatever the intrigue or mystery mechanisms ought to be, at least for your specific table. Right now my impression is that your valid expectations don't match the players' own conceived best practices valid expectations of what to do so there's a need for proper alignment.
Boldly go
I... COMPLETELY forgot Passive Insight and Investigation was a thing! I'll make sure to use it more often from now on!
I have told them multiple times that the characters won't always be forthcoming with their knowledge unless prodded, but it has not made them interact more with the characters. At most, they ask the questions about where they think they need to go to progress the plot and that's it. They never initiate Persuasion or Insight checks either.
It definitely seems like they play the game more like a video game than DnD at times; they do roleplay with each other, though that's mostly banter. When it comes to planning the party's path forward, its often two of the guys who play their characters very "tunnel-visiony"; one makes sense, as he's an ******* Lawful Evil elf with no interest in engaging with anyone beyond the merely professional, and the other is a sort-of brickheaded Grave Cleric who loves to beat things up... But even then, the player who commented that they missed engagement has been one of the more roleplaying players who, for some reason, only engages with the local Innkeep who knows jack shit about anything.
I feel like I've given them many opportunities to go into "mystery mode", but maybe I just give them too many clues out the gate? Maybe they should've been stumped in their investigation so they would have to work the pavement to go forward?
Another thing they've said is that the plot has had a bit of a "timer" to it for the most part, which is true. I should maybe have given them a more relaxed timeframe so they didn't feel like they needed to rush quite so much.
We use first person, with the occasional extra detail described in third person.
I feel like I do my best to play the characters that "know stuff" like they're keeping things close to the chest, but the players doesn't seem to want to investigate, unless they think they can get a clue as to where the next dungeon or threat is.
I have some semblance of an idea of what I'm doing!
Maybe you need to make the clues more obvious. It could be that what you think is a big flashing sign telling them something is still not something they notice.
Or it could be that the players aren’t putting the clues together properly, and maybe their characters would. For example that cleric probably has a higher wisdom score than the player (I’m just assuming the cleric is at an 18 or 20, while the player is maybe more average human). If that’s the case, I guess we’re back to using those passive checks.
A few things caught my attention from the more recent post,
"At most, they ask the questions about where they think they need to go to progress the plot and that's it."
Could tell them, "What Plot? Why do you think in such one-dimensional terms? There's no one way of doing things, and the course of events will transpire behind the scenes based on what you all do or don't do." Or something. Anyway point is, it does sound like just as you mentioned they are approaching this from a video game perspective that you can only get to C if you unlocked parts A or B first. Which isn't true.
"Another thing they've said is that the plot has had a bit of a "timer" to it for the most part, which is true. I should maybe have given them a more relaxed timeframe so they didn't feel like they needed to rush quite so much"
As the GM, you do control the timer and the clock. What could take three sessions and 9 hours in the real world might only be a half hour in game time. If the party spreads out, for example, you can always do one of those "Meanwhile, back at the tavern" cutaways to the other party members without any in game time lost. Or, if they wanna spend 20 minutes discussing their next steps while chatting around the table, only a brief moment has elapsed in the game. Even if you flat out said "the mystery needs to be solved by sun up tomorrow or else the Evildoers gets away," the morning might not come for several sessions, there's always time for them to get done what they feel like they need to do within those constraints. It's not a race. The timer is just there for Tension and shouldn't be interpretted as a roadblock for good investigation.
"I... COMPLETELY forgot Passive Insight and Investigation was a thing!"
The passive checks can be a great way to point out the obvious while under the structure of the rule set so that everyone can feel like such "free info" is actually supported by mechanics, and feel free to tell them, 'Holmar the Bard's passive insight indicates to her that innkeeper doesn't know squat about the recent murder that took place in the tavern downstairs." Cool, very useful information gleaned supported by the rules, everyone is happy in my opinion.
"They never initiate Persuasion or Insight checks either."
Many GM's don't encourage a player to actively declare they want to make a specific rules mechanic check, and are instead in the mindset that a skillcheck is only called upon when a GM calls for one. There's also the GM-dependent perspective of how that should be accomplished. Some players want to say "I walk into the room, what do I see?" vs. a GM who wants to be stricter and only give info or ask for a skill check if the player is much more precise as in "I want to open up the drawers and rifle through the paperwork". I don't want to suggest that anything you or they are doing is wrong, but that again there needs to be a reorientation around the table on how to use the framework of the rules. How exactly, do you mean, they "never initiate" trying to persuade or trying to investigate? Maybe They think they are, but you don't?
I read something somewhere about how it's tough to run or play in murder/intrigue type games in ttrpgs, especially where (such as in D&D) the rules are a stricter pass/fail setup or otherwise not overly designed to support such a campaign. Some good advice I remember reading about is that it should never be hard for clues to be discoverable, and even that such clues could always be discoverable no matter what, and that it's more about piecing the clues together to figure out the bigger picture and filtering out the deadends.
Boldly go
It sounds like you have a situation that the players think they know what they want and are asking for but possibly don’t get the part they need to play to get that.
All roleplay games are a 2 way interactive experience, we all know that, however a lot of players struggle to remember it in the moment and expect the dm to either spoon feed them the information they want or just forget to engage and that’s ok, many players simply want to hit things in a dungeon crawl, or be fed monsters in a clear storyline or have the secrets be really obvious that is a perfectly fine way to play the game and I have run many campaigns like this for players who want this. When a DM tries to engage these types of players in a different way it can be frustrating.
Now you have a benefit in that your players have asked for a more mysterious narrative. My advice to you is to sit down with them and almost have a mid campaign session 0 to reset things a little bit, just before the next session. Use this time to explains the mechanics behind passive perception and insight checks, make it become as much a part of your players habit as searching for traps. But explain to them that the DC of this check will be dependent on how they approach the interaction. They don’t have to engage in first person, simply explaining to you how there character will talk and act, what they are trying to get out, how they want to shift the conversation is perfect to begin with. Slowly you can ask them to suggest lines they might be saying or explain actions in more detail.
You can help in the way you describe your NPCs, “The Barman keeps polishing the same glass as you question him” “your contact shifts on his feet eyes darting around.” “The merchant holds his hand out to shake yours in agreement to the deal, but you notice his hand seems a bit clamy, or his grip is a bit weaker/firmer.” Some simple research online to look for common signs of deception, lies, hiding a secret, feeling scared or worried etc can give you a list of things you can feed into your descriptors for the scene.
But ultimately you can only do so much, your players need to meet you halfway hence I suggest a session 0 reset and then treat it as you do any introduction of a new mechanic. The first traps you gave your players where probably weak, simple affairs they could spot easily, over time you trained them to search every space. Social interactions are the same, work from making them easier to start with and then slowly more complicated as your players become more comfortable in engaging the scene more.
I think we got off on a bit of a detour here, mostly because I haven't given enough information (lol)
We're well past the investigation/mystery part of the adventure, the players are a few sessions from defeating the bad guy in his lair and things are coming to ahead very well. What the problem arose from was that one of my more roleplaying players called one of my key NPCs a "macguffin" that he didn't feel like he knew, and that was a "toy" for one of the other characters... But from my perspective, he, and most of the other characters, never talked to the NPC and treated him like a macguffin to drive their plot forward, and not a character to talk to or persuade.
It is, from my perspective, a recurring issue that the players don't see the NPCs as anything but an NPC from a game like Skyrim, where you just have to find the one thing you need from a character so you can get moving and kill more dragons. I feel like we had a misunderstanding between us because I assumed they would want to talk to the characters since they wanted an intrigue/mystery game, but they generally didn't seem to be that curious about them.
And that is totally fair. My players may just have realized they aren't into that kind of game and that's fair, but it confuses me when a player, who had multiple opportunities to talk to the NPCs just for fun, felt like the characters were macguffins. Like, he said that after a session where they took a short rest with that "'macguffin" NPC who they'd just saved, where he could easily have just talked a with him for a spell.
I hope this clarifies what my issue is here.
I have some semblance of an idea of what I'm doing!
That does help to clarify my understanding, Jakebit, thank you for elaboration. All this advice does seem to be a bit hindsight in that regard. I'd wager that lessons can be learned on both ends of the table, concerning expectations, mechanics, procedure, that can be built upon the next time there's a mystery/intrigue in your campaign. I'll often premise the start of a session in a very direct manner, "This'll be a very roleplay heavy session, I encourage you to actually talk to and interact with the NPC'S and you'll pick up what I'm laying down." It can be tough though, what "roleplay" means to one player means something entirely different to another, or to the GM. Best wishes on your adventure.
Boldly go
Just to follow up, as with all things it takes practice, some will get it quickly, others will take a while. There will be some who after trying it really dislike it and others who love it and ask for more roleplay then actual combat. I would suggest initially leading them by explaining each session, or nudging them in game, say, do you want to talk a bit more to this person or have those initial encounters have low passive perception DC's
Over time you will find your players need less and less prompting and just start doing things naturally. Don't feel disheartened or think you shouldn't try again in future equally dont try ramming it down the players throats, maybe create some interesting NPC's you and the players can practice with in the next town, maybe one knows a secret about the other 2 and they are employed to try and find it out and instructed to be subtle and not use violence or force.
As a player, feeling like we are on a time table yet at the same time trying to figure out what riddles one of our DMs has for us is always stressful. Cause we've been there when we didn't make the timer thing and he was upset and things just fell apart after that. As a DM, I understand trying to motivate players to stay focus on the task. So there is a dichotomy in me when it comes to timers, but in general... especially with one DM, I hate them... and boy does he like to use them. Inside I'm like, "Ok, so you have these grand plans of things we're supposed to find out... we start asking some questions and get some bad rolls and don't get information... so we try to follow the clues we can, but now we feel behind... and we know that clock is ticking... so we try to rush the next conversation and rolls happened again and we've only got one guy with good Investigation because we never have a session 0 and we never know what everyone else is doing... and that one guy never asks good questions... but we'll slog on and go to the third point where we had a lead and hope that we'll get a good roll!" Now, that doesn't mean that is how you are playing this. That is just my experience as a player with one of our DMs. I'm on campaign 3 with him and they all have this element at some point. As I usually am the face of the party, I deliberately stat and skill wise made it so that I couldn't take on that role (and notified the other players in our secret discord... yes, we only have a secret discord for that one DM... and he knows about it... but some weeks it's the only way we fell we can discuss planning and hope to survive)... and boy has that turned into a failure. So, at some point in the near future I expect we're going to fail the timer again... but this time I don't care about it as much as the first time and we'll go on and do whatever happens in the aftermath. I still like the DM... and there is a lot of fun in the campaigns.. but they are more stressful than most other ones. And half the time the clues are very difficult to find or interpret. So... if we get some... great! If we don't... oh well... we'll either figure it out or we won't. We've realized by now that we're not going to change him and that sometimes we're going to go out in our Diablo Hack-n-slash way in the dark mist filled streets of London and walk by Watson ten or twelve times before the campaign is over.
On the other side of the fence, I'll try to get information to them in more than one way. Sure, conversations are great... but I'll also have my NPCs send characters notes. I'll use dream sequences. Actually allowing Divination to have some meaning in games... sure, I try to couch most of it with tarot-esque kind of language to obfuscate, but I want them to have a general sense of what is going on, even if they mess up some rolls. And a written letter from an NPC is a great way to have a second conversation. A dream sequence involving someone's property can have them second guessing something. I do throw in some red herrings every now and then and I don't try for full on "Intrigue"... because that is not our table. And we've all been bitten by intrigue in the past... so I don't want to invoke those feelings. And if they fail with one NPC at some point... I will sometimes let one of them have a run in with a family member of close friend that might know a different set of information on the same thing. I very specifically try to have three places they can find the same key information and hope to not need them. Which is also another reason I don't run a lot of intrigue (and timers)... it takes a lot of extra work that you don't have to plan for when building combat encounters. And let's face it... two of our five guys are never going to enjoy Intrigue. They are there for combat and loot and have been fairly effective at communicating that for a long time. So building out intrigue needs to tickle their fancy somehow so they don't feel left out (and it can be done if you don't go into weeks of social dialogue). Or have a good plot twist if they left me any dangling loose ends in their backstory that I can surprise them with (you can't have a long lost lover in every campaign, but you can do it once... and the same for the brother that turns against the family and reveals he has joined the enemy). I try to spend more time on creating the air of mystery and suspense than I do on an intricate social game. And some checks they are meant to fail... because things go bump in the night. As long as I can get them headed in the right direction and have them spooked and curious... then I have done what I set out to do. Hopefully I got to get in some good conversations with NPCs along the way...