I am fairly new to DMing, been doing it for about 2 years and I've had this problem for awhile now. Whenever I try to start a module that really has a story that's more than something simple like a dungeon like feel to it, they seem to not really focus and then get bored, and end up doing odd things like going to the local tavern and insulting the barman. I feel like they could do something more, but I'm not really sure how to do it, or if i'm just a bad DM. Any pointers on this are welcome.  

Quote from The_Great_Red_Dragon >>

I am fairly new to DMing, been doing it for about 2 years and I've had this problem for awhile now. Whenever I try to start a module that really has a story that's more than something simple like a dungeon like feel to it, they seem to not really focus and then get bored, and end up doing odd things like going to the local tavern and insulting the barman. I feel like they could do something more, but I'm not really sure how to do it, or if i'm just a bad DM. Any pointers on this are welcome.  

if they don't seem to be going in the right direction then give them a little in game nudge. Have some of the people in the town tell the PCs rumors about the place they are supposed to be going. Make them want to go there.

It's ok, sometimes groups just want to go someplace, kick in the door and kill stuff.

That isn't really a problem, just point them in the direction of some bad guys and let them go at it. Make the townspeople happy they did the thing and continue. They can rest up and go out again to kick butt. No problem. 

If they continue to abuse the town, make them unwelcome and now they don't have a safe place to rest.

It's not an uncommon issue with modules. You need to find a way to tie the PC's into the plot. Rather than just because it's what they're meant to do. What do the PC's care about? How invested are the players in their PC's backstories? In those two questions lie your answers because in a nutshell, the players don't find the plot interesting or engaging enough. If you give some more info on your plot and the PC backstories, we may be able to give you some more detailed advice.

The nice thing about D&D is that it's a cooperative game, and both you and your players need to work together to tell the story. They're on your side here, since everyone's there to tell stories of heroes slaying monsters! I think there's two things that might help...

#1 is to talk this out with your players. If you don't have fun when they mess around in town, ask them if they'd be willing to tone it down and actively hunt for plot hooks. If they're reasonable people, they should get it.

#2 is to accept that your players enjoy simple stories and dungeon raiding most, which is great. If you're writing your own modules, make sure plot hooks and objectives are obvious right away, and if you're running published modules, consider dropping the characters right into the "action" part of the game, giving just a few sentences or lines of dialogue explaining their goals how they got there.

Probably try both! By talking things out with your players, you should be able to find a nice balance that works for everyone.

And also be aware that the carefully crafted plot you've put together might not be the direction they want to go in. When I only had a couple of years of DMing under my belt, I often felt the same as you — that I'd put together a wonderful plot for them to enjoy... so why were they spending all of their time not enjoying it!?

Consider how detailed your plot is, and whether you can pull out some of the nitty-gritty. Have much broader hooks to hang your plot on, rather than trying to guide your players through a carefully crafted series of stories. Because the moment they don't go along with the story you'd planned, you'll get frustrated, the content won't be as solid, as a result, your players are more likely to find something more fun to do... like insulting the barkeep.

This applies to both pre-written modules, and your own campaigns. For the premades, go through a pull out the broad plot hooks, rather than trying to funnel your players along the adventure. I've found that simply mapping out some of the intrigue that players will discover, is better than trying to define the individual stories I want to tell. Imagine how you'd tell the story through rumours in the tavern, rather than if you were writing a book:

Rather than this:

'The players will leave the starting village, and after doing a series of quests for local merchants, discover that halflings are being rounded up by bandits and taken somewhere. After a few quests to protect some of their trade caravans, they'll discover that a baron of a nearby city is using halflings as slaves. But after freeing some slaves, they'll tell the players that there's something bigger going on - slaves are being used as sacrifices to summon an ancient dracolich!'

Consider this:

'An ancient dracolich, forced onto another plane in a centuries old battle, is manipulating the baron of a once-peaceful city through dreams, visions, and the promise of power. The word is, slavery —  which was long since outlawed in all the realms — has been reinstated, much to the disapproval of neighboring factions. What's more, rumors of slavers roaming the trade routes are the talk of local taverns.'

It's the same plot - but frees you up to take the individual stories in any direction, based on what the players want to do. They will defy your expectations - but if you have the overarching plot, it doesn't matter if they don't pick up on your quest hooks, or story-lines. They see the advertisement for caravan guards on the community board, but ignore it? No worries, they can hear about rumours of trade caravans being attacked in the tavern instead. Even if they wander off in search of adventure, they can come across a caravan that's been attacked... adventure finds them!

But as others have said, if they simply want to race to the next dungeon to get back to the hack n' slash - then cater for it. You can still tell your story, and tie each dungeon together.

Finally, no, you're not a bad DM. The very fact you're here asking how to improve tells me that. Also remember that just because your players aren't getting as invested into deep plots and stories... it doesn't mean that they're not having a good time. They just don't know what they're missing!

1. talk before hand what the players want. If they're not into a more serious plot driven campaign... then see if you're willing to run a "beer and pretzel" game. where you just get together and do silly non consequential stuff.

2. If all people are on-board for a more story driven game... Then find out what kind of story they want and if it is something you want to run. Can't really run a dungeon crawl with lots of combat if people want to hang out at the tavern and play card games or sale the high seas.

3. people think that modules are meant to be run out of the box. But in the 15-20 years that I run games... Modules take a hell of a lot more work than doing homebrew. With Homebrew you still do a fair amount of preparation, but you can wing it and see where it takes you. Which impacts how much you need to prepare. Modules require a lot of time for reading the stuff. Fixing the holes in it. Sprinkling hooks and foreshadowing events in the previous adventure. In short tying the adventure modules together in a larger coherent narrative/campaign. Which means a lot of puzzling and fixing and adjusting. But once it has become your own thing you can run it freely and easily. My current campaign for example has used Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury and 1 or 2 small adventures from old magazines, some homebrew content and now starting on Red Hand of Doom. That all took me 3-4 months of full time hours to prepare it properly. No way you could just run that out of the box. Modules often contain a lot of flaws that you, as DM, need to address beforehand.

4. Don't prepare a plot/narrative in great detail. You'll hate yourself when players will go off those tracks. Focus on being familiar with the big red threads of each module first and foremost. The theme and atmosphere of the area it takes place in, the major factions and creatures, some of the important rooms/areas that function as set pieces, the goal of the baddie and what steps/timeline it would take for them to accomplish their goal. Then you have enough to improvise. When the players go elsewhere you can let them, because you know the area well enough. You can let them deal with whatever it is they want to deal with... while making sure that their thing somehow ties in with the overall big picture.

people think that modules are meant to be run out of the box. But in the 15-20 years that I run games... Modules take a hell of a lot more work than doing homebrew. With Homebrew you still do a fair amount of preparation, but you can wing it and see where it takes you. Which impacts how much you need to prepare. Modules require a lot of time for reading the stuff. Fixing the holes in it. Sprinkling hooks and foreshadowing events in the previous adventure.

This.

This is why I am doing homebrew right now... Published adventures take a lot of time and effort to adapt. They can be highly useful as idea sources (for instance, you can take a cool trap or encounter or even a cool dungeon level and paste them into your own adventure), but it's extremely difficult to run them just "as is." They are (of necessity) designed for the generic or "typical" D&D party, but no group of players is exactly "typical" and all have their quirks. As a DM, it is your job to figure out what your players like, and give it to them.

Note, this also has to be something you like. If they want to be murder hobos and you want run a palace intrigue campaign, that is not going to work because you will be miserable while they are having fun, or vice versa. But if you can find something you all like, do that -- and if that's not what the published adventures are about, then you'll have to make your own.  As Giblix says, it's actually in may ways easier. Since you wrote it, you will know it like the back of your hand rather than having to constantly look stuff up all the time.

I’m so glad my players like following a plot/story/adventure. I’m going to say something a lot of people won’t agree with but just roaming around killing shit for no reason is boring as ****, from a player and a DM perspective. I have an even stronger opinion on it that I will keep to myself because it will really ruffle some jimmies, and quite frankly is quite assholeish of myself. Personally, I need purpose, I need a reason for my existence. If you’re a DM that can create meaningful encounters off the top of your head, that’s great and I hope to be able to do that someday. I mean, you can and should insult a barkeeper from time to time, but there is no reason they can’t do stupid shit AND follow the plot. 

I’m running a homebrew campaign, and I’ve tied a couple of the PCs to the actual plot of the adventure and this has given incentive to the players and they have told me they are excited to see what comes of it all. I’d recommend this but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn your players haven't even created any backstory for themselves you could try to connect to the plot/adventure in the first place, maybe you could encourage this and work together with them: “maybe your character is from ______ and they know this person but they hate each other cuz of ______” but then it turns out they are siblings and one was lost at birth and they just never knew it or some shit, I don’t know that’s a dumb example but hopefully makes the point I’m trying to get across.

But also, embrace their chaos, ultimately you can’t control them but you can control yourself. So if you want to have fun, you’ll just have to accept their play style. You do have an advantage here though. Keep some info regarding the plot in your back pocket for the next time they start insulting a bartender or whatever and use their own behavior to introduce plot elements via the NPCs they harass possibly.

So, here are my recommendations:

- connect PCs to the plot/story/adventure 

- use their behavior to your advantage to introduce plot elements 

good luck and have fun!

I encountered this problem and the underlying reasons nearly made me drop a group (including a woman I have been friends as with for 30 years and her husband who I have been friends with for 20 years). The session we had prior to our last was just awful. I would get nothing but silence when I stopped speaking, save for my brother who was invested in the game and session. They didn't even begin to show signs of life until combat started and then they never knew where the enemies were.

I learned that one player was on a Nintendo switch during the game (camera off), another was playing Warcraft (camera off), and the other was genuinely not feeling well (chronic pain so he was not part of the problem on purpose). So it felt like a 2 person campaign, me and my brother.

So, after I calmed down, I told them I didn't enjoy the session, that I was not cancelling the campaign, but my enthusiasm was really low. Apologies were given. I moved on with no expectation of things being better.

Then, between sessions, I worked with each "problem" player to add personal enemies and friends to their backgrounds. I created an NPC journal detailing the adventure so far and let them all read it and encouraged them to do the same.

We had the next campaign yesterday.

The moment we started it was different. Everyone was on camera and invested. A minor tavern stop turned into a 3 hour RP romp that everyone enjoyed and participated in. I invented wild NPCs on the spot, a bushy bearded Dwarf that chanted Chug Chug Chug when the Minotaur was tossing back drinks that required Con saves with increasing disadvantage for every mug, colorful descriptions of the taste of the mystery meat and the drinks (the mystery meat's flavor bites you back, etc), and general hilarity. 9 layer Devil Cakes. Beignets called "Angel Farts" that are ordered by the baker's dozen by Balors. On the spot, I improvised a plot for the town that involved it shifting into Avernus each night. They spent tons of gold on useless, gaudy junk. 

And, three hours in, they laughingly rejoined the main plot, ventured further down the road, got ambushed, and had to return to the town because they dont have a healer in the party and freaked out when the young prince they were escorting got poisoned. Then they paid a fortune to the only healer in town, who worked at the Burning Bush Brothel.

The fun session happened because I spoke with my players, my friends, and told them how I felt. I recommend you do the same. No in-game punishments, just honest conversation. If it works, it will be great and everyone will have a good time. If it doesn't work, you tried and can move on to a new D&D group knowing you did your best.

Good luck and happy gaming.

Quote from The_Black_Fox >>

I learned that one player was on a Nintendo switch during the game (camera off), another was playing Warcraft (camera off), and the other was genuinely not feeling well (chronic pain so he was not part of the problem on purpose). So it felt like a 2 person campaign, me and my brother.

 Reading this section here, it's pretty clear that a piece of the problem you and your group was facing was the virtual nature being "in the way".  Before all this pandemic nonsense, were you an in-person group?  Perhaps it's just not working over video chat...

I have always been on Skype for the last 7 or 8 years and recently jumped over to Discord. I moved to California and my group is in Washington but they used to all be at one house and I would call in. They would use a web cam or X-Box to do video all together.