This is more of an I need to “type” what I felt was a poor run game on my part. So, pardon the length and its irrelevance but I thought maybe the DMs here have run into a similar situation as I have.
Setup: The party came to a pirate town because the ship they booked passage to Waterdeep was damaged out at sea and sailed into port to get repairs.
Monologue:
I had a bad gaming session on Sunday, and I am still fuming but I know I should not.
So I’ve been planning on an Island Pirate Town (the Legends of Runeterra – Bilgewater setting that had a short front-page life on DDB before WoTC got wind of it and had it pulled.) side adventure for my players going on for close to four months.
I could never introduce the setting into my game because of the timing of the main quest. So now the time comes. I’m excited. I’m ready. I’ve prepped with game notes, tables, shops, casinos, in-game-games, job/bounty boards. NPC’s that can lead the party around town to give them the lay of the land and then open exploration. I had special “encounters/shops/arenas” for each specific party member to give them something special to call their own. I even had images from online that showed what Bilgewater looked like. I know this setting forward and backward. The months of patience have finally come, I told the group how excited to get to this stop-over as I know my players will love this. (see the problem?)
At the beginning of the game, once in port, a party member gave an impassionate speech about how this is a pirate town, and they are terrible corrupt places, and we should just stay in our room. As it turns out the party listened and pretty much did close to nothing for three hours. No, shopping, no gambling, none of the more challenging job/bounty boards items. No exploration, no carousing. One party member even wanted to camp outside of the town to avoid it altogether. At other times, the party just hunker down in their rooms waiting for the ship to be repaired.
It took the wind out of my proverbial sails.
What I thought they would love for something different for a change I got a “meh”. And I struggled during the gaming session to, well, keep the game afloat, plus trying to stay positive all the while.
As I said I was prepped, excited, and ready for anything, but just not the party doing nothing.
I tried to slightly railroad them into certain directions, but I also wanted to balance their agency of doing what they wanted. Still, nothing came from it. The party did what they wanted to do, and I should not fault them for that.
As the DM it stung pretty bad putting all that work in, hours upon hours of fleshing out this setting to give them a special sandbox to play in only to see nothing come from it.
It still stings. Looking back, in my excitement I over prepped, I put so much into this town that I had 36 pages of notes, random tables for all sort of situations names, locations, shops, etc. Everything I thought would bring this setting to life for the players.
I believe that excitement overshadowed what would be the reality that just because I liked it not everyone would as well.
So, if you’ve read this far, and still with me, I appreciate it.
Question:
So do you have a story of a game or session you planned and it just fell flat against all your '"best" intentions?
Though I do have a question -- the did nothing for 3 hours... Like, of game time? Or real time? Do you mean that for a 3 hour session nothing happened? Does that mean not even RP? Or were the players mostly RPing with each other in character, in their "hotel room," but not exploring the city?
I would not consider a session wasted if it was mostly me watching them RP... in fact we've had a couple of those lately. I usually let it go as long as they want -- hey, less work for me! Whatever I prepped for this session I can use next session, which means I don't have to prep for next session (maybe, depending on what happens of course). When the RP dies down I then ask if they want to do anything else or should we advance to the next time period (nightfall, next day, etc.).
I'd say more but I'll wait to see what your "3 hours" comment meant.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I'm pretty sure every single DM who has run more than a couple of one-off games for friends ( and possibly a good proportion of those ) has had this happen - you are by no means alone it this, and a session like this doesn't make you a bad DM. I personally don't have a session like that, I've a whole stack of them that I've accumulated over the decades; I won't bore you with them :)
I have - unfortunately - also been that Player.
The best advice I can give for dealing with this kind of situation is from Matt Coleville: "chase them up a tree", back them in a corner, don't let them not react, put them in a react or die situation. The Players can decide to sit in their hotel room ... but if they do, the Burlog will be eating their families, so maybe they want to get off their asses and do something about it?
Players don't care about our Lore; they care about the adventures framed in our Lore. The Setting & the Lore by itself doesn't bring the world to life for the Players, Action does. Characters are action heroes, and as such, need to react to events. The Players who want to be proactive and self-directed are - sadly - a minority ( although they do exist ).
Sparta kick them into the story, then back off and let them tell it.
That's not railroading. Railroading would be if you forced them into the conundrum of the plot hook, and then dictated to them how & when they were going to solve that conundrum.
Don't let it get you down! Brush yourself off, and next time hit the sleepy pirate town with a Kraken, and see what happens ;)
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You have made an error in DM'ing, here, and the best thing to do is use it as a learning experience so that in future you don't get frustrated this way. The error is essentially this:
You have not given your players a reason to go somewhere, and/or not thought about what the characters want to do, only where you want them to go and what you want them to do. The characters sound like they follow generally Good alignments - and quite rightly, they don't want to go play around in a town funded by evil (people often forget that being a pirate is just about one of the vilest professions available).
If you're going to flesh out a big old area, then you need to give your players a reason to go there. In all those 36 pages of notes, didn't you incorporate something like this as a 'just in case'?
You open the door to the frantic knocking. A bedraggled looking woman with a bruise on her face stares at you with watery eyes. "Please! They took my son and daughter as galley slaves! It was my husband's debt, not theirs. Nobody in this town will help them!"
And that's it. You just need to thread around the town that there are a number of clues to find, and off they go on their sub-quest.
I have a town that my PCs are about to find. There are 2 dungeons in it, an airship to leave on, a pirate ship to raid, as well as sub-quests to take them out the town, a fencing competition, two inns to stay at, a dozen key NPCs and so on. The players get to pick what they want to do, though. I've created an incoming hurricane to persuade them to stay near to the town for a week or so (and to ground the airship) but if they don't go into the library dungeon or the mansion dungeon, they simply miss the vital campaign clues in there. My role as DM is to poke them towards those places, but it's up to them to take the bait.
Been in a similar situation recently. My players had been bounced from one event to another for many sessions and after returning to their base town I gave them a week of downtime to do whatever they wanted. In prior sessions I'd dropped hints about a few other side quests that I'd worked out (months ago) and thought they would want to explore.
The group turned out to be less self-motivated than I anticipated. After the first day spent shopping they kind of ran out of steam and got paralyzed. There was some fun roleplaying as they spent a day sprucing up their home and buying a dog, but they didn't bite on the prepared quests. I wanted them to be able to experience the wider world their characters inhabited without needing a crisis, but it turned into nudging them to do anything.
By the third session of this I was ready to skip ahead to the next big event, but they decided to follow up on a dangling plot hook and became embroiled in something else I wasn't expecting.
If it helps, all the work you've put in isn't wasted. It sounds like a fantastic basis for a future campaign.
Also it's a little sad that your players, knowing you were excited about something, went out of their way to ignore it. I get it from a character standpoint, but all of you are a team working toward collaborative fun. They could have bent their alignments slightly to help you have a good time too.
I don't think this is necessarily an error in DMing, players should be allowed to pass up on things in favor of other things if they want. And then passing up on it doesn't even necessarily mean that they felt "meh" about something you were excited about.
I think the only 'error' you made in your setup is that you may have put together something the individual players at your table probably would've enjoyed, but you didn't consider the character/roleplay aspect. If you have a party with multiple, staunchly lawful and good aligned players, it's entirely probable that they might take one look at a cool pirate town and say "no thanks, not getting mixed up with that!' Even if the player thinks it's cool, if they're into roleplaying they might also think it's cool to stick with how their character would react.
It's the flipside of the Wangrod Defense, where "it's what my character would do" is a perfectly acceptable response, as it refers to how you would actually roleplay your character, rather than using those words as an excuse to do whatever you want to make the other players miserable.
In that instance, I wouldn't try and force them to do anything in town since the players have already come to a decision, BUT that doesn't necessarily mean all your work is for nothing. I'd move on in the story after a quick 3-day time-skip, and then at a later time you can always introduce a reason for the players to go back. Maybe a villain escapes them and the Intel points to them hiding out in Pitate Town, and the pc's can go there and get involved and do all the stuff, and importantly, now all the lawful and good characters have an in-character justification for getting involved with these lowlives and cutthroats without going against the character they chose to play before they knew there was a cool pirate town. *Now* they're carousing around pirate Town and going to shops and casinos, and while the player is having fun, they can tell themselves that the *character* is still against all this, but they *have* to play along and maintain their cover to get the information on where to find the runaway bad guy. Then everyone wins.
Tldr; don't forget to account for character/rp when prepping content if there's a chance it hinges on characters behaving out of character, AND if they do ignore it, that doesn't mean it's gone forever, just move on, change up your approach to it a little, and come back to it later.
Though I do have a question -- the did nothing for 3 hours... Like, of game time? Or real time? Do you mean that for a 3 hour session nothing happened? Does that mean not even RP? Or were the players mostly RPing with each other in character, in their "hotel room," but not exploring the city?
I would not consider a session wasted if it was mostly me watching them RP... in fact we've had a couple of those lately. I usually let it go as long as they want -- hey, less work for me! Whatever I prepped for this session I can use next session, which means I don't have to prep for next session (maybe, depending on what happens of course). When the RP dies down I then ask if they want to do anything else or should we advance to the next time period (nightfall, next day, etc.).
I'd say more but I'll wait to see what your "3 hours" comment meant.
It was RP, but it was what should we do in conversations, and even those conversations felt forced. I tried to remind them what the NPC had told them at the beginning of what is available to them. It's true I should be thankful there was some RP even if it leads to not much to enjoying their location, so I guess I can be ok with that.
I'm pretty sure every single DM who has run more than a couple of one-off games for friends ( and possibly a good proportion of those ) has had this happen - you are by no means alone it this, and a session like this doesn't make you a bad DM. I personally don't have a session like that, I've a whole stack of them the I've accumulated over the decades; I won't bore you with them :)
I have - unfortunately - also been that Player.
The best advice I can give for dealing with this kind of situation is from Matt Coleville: "chase them up a tree", back them in a corner, don't let them not react, put them in a react or die situation. The Players can decide to sit in their hotel room ... but if they do, the Burlog will be eating their families, so maybe they want to get off their asses and do something about it?
Players don't care about our Lore; they care about the adventures framed in our Lore. The Setting & the Lore by itself doesn't bring the world to life for the Players, Action does. Characters are action heroes, and as such, need to react to events. The Players who want to be proactive and self-directed are - sadly - a minority ( although they do exist ).
Sparta kick them into the story, then back off and let them tell it.
That's not railroading. Railroading would be if you forced them into the conundrum of the plot hook, and then dictated to them how & when they were going to solve that conundrum.
Don't let it get you down! Brush yourself off, and next time hit the sleepy pirate town with a Kraken, and see what happens ;)
In my prep I was trying to avoid putting some life or limb situation in front of them (at that moment.) I was really hoping they'd RP and engage more of the town based on what the NPC at the start had told them. Not so much. It have may come down that I DID need more of an A Location goes to B Location that leads to C Location to see the town while on some do or die situation. It's valid feedback that I should consider when prepping my games.
Yes, many times, actually, usually when I get too excited about something, sometimes my players smell it and become too wary. Or sometimes it's just me, forgetting the trigger for an event because they PCs have gone into a completely different direction and we have gone full impro. It happened to me with a complete arena, including multiple gladiators, betting, etc. for example.
Honestly, at least for me it's not that bad, because with experience I have learnt to keep my preparation short and to the point, and only do it while it's still a pleasure to do. Whenever I feel myself drifting away or contemplating that this is really too much work, I usually pull back. If I'm not enjoying the preparation, then the players not using it will very much feel a waste. But if I had fun, then it was not lost, see ?
In general, my problem is that (like for my work) I like to look a lot ahead, and therefore prepare tons of things too much in advance, with the result that, even if it's not wasted, it's a few weeks between the preparation and the use, so I need to refresh, update, etc. Learning not to prepare for more than one session ahead (and thinking that way) really helps.
Yeah, I had five pages of location notes, one paragraph of session notes, and then the rest was either Stat blocks and Random Tables and Shops. It was not deep notes but it was enough that it took time to put together. I do love a good Random Roll (Street, Tavern, Drink, Poison, Casino, Job Board, Male, Female, Ship, Sea Monster, Encounter) Name table. It seems like a lot looking back at it now but it sure was fun to put it all into a document.
You have made an error in DM'ing, here, and the best thing to do is use it as a learning experience so that in future you don't get frustrated this way. The error is essentially this:
You have not given your players a reason to go somewhere, and/or not thought about what the characters want to do, only where you want them to go and what you want them to do. The characters sound like they follow generally Good alignments - and quite rightly, they don't want to go play around in a town funded by evil (people often forget that being a pirate is just about one of the vilest professions available).
If you're going to flesh out a big old area, then you need to give your players a reason to go there. In all those 36 pages of notes, didn't you incorporate something like this as a 'just in case'?
You open the door to the frantic knocking. A bedraggled looking woman with a bruise on her face stares at you with watery eyes. "Please! They took my son and daughter as galley slaves! It was my husband's debt, not theirs. Nobody in this town will help them!"
And that's it. You just need to thread around the town that there are a number of clues to find, and off they go on their sub-quest.
I have a town that my PCs are about to find. There are 2 dungeons in it, an airship to leave on, a pirate ship to raid, as well as sub-quests to take them out the town, a fencing competition, two inns to stay at, a dozen key NPCs and so on. The players get to pick what they want to do, though. I've created an incoming hurricane to persuade them to stay near to the town for a week or so (and to ground the airship) but if they don't go into the library dungeon or the mansion dungeon, they simply miss the vital campaign clues in there. My role as DM is to poke them towards those places, but it's up to them to take the bait.
My notes contained to make clear I had five pages of location notes, one paragraph of session notes, and then the rest was either Stat blocks and Random Tables and Shops. It was not deep notes but it was enough that it took time to put together. Did I have a plan? Sure I did.
My session Notes for that game.
Arrival at Bilgewater
Tour of the city as the ship comes into port.
Walkthrough heading to the Bid House to get someone to carve up the Hydra.
Docks
Carving Bays
Killhouses
Butcheries
Bid House
Once in port Captain offers the party to join him to the Bid House to get someone from the carving bay and killhouse to take on the caught Hydra.
Hit the town.
The party will be informed by Chandler the ship needs to take on repairs and it could be a few days before work would get started. Plus getting the Hydra carved up and selling its party may take some time but we need to act fast otherwise it will spoil worse than it already is.
They will engage in random encounters on this first day.
Give them free rein to do what they want to do in the city.
Raider’s Hold, Captain Breanna Zyll
Willing to give players a chance at a cheaper rate if they agree to do an odd job or two work for her.
The Secret of Skyhorn Lighthouse: A merchant friend of mine was expecting a cache of good from Neverwinter but the ship never made it into port. He has asked me to investigate it and in turn, I’m asking you to look into it for room and board. On top of my generous spirit, the merchant is offering a reward of 200 GP each if you find the ship, the Jade Lion, and secure his cache of goods. The Jade Lion was last seen in the waters near the Skyhorn Lighthouse, an old abandon structure that the Buhru build centuries ago. It seems my merchant friend is worried about the sea monsters that have started to fester up, more than usual, in the area, and the ship has sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
Burn it, find the ship Porto and make sure it never, ever, leaves port.
Bounty Hunter, Voniz Norgyth, Pirate, Male Human. Did not pay his rent so he needs a reminder that the rent is due. Rough him up and make sure he and those around him know you do not ‘forget’ on Captain Breanna Zyll.
Pick-up goods
She had some animal skins come in but was never delivered to the Raider’s Hold please go to the warehouse and pick-up the crate from Ten-Towns with my name on it.
When they go to the warehouse, but the Yeti skins were not supposed to be live Yeti.
Upsetting the Yeti (Mid-Level) A Freljordian ship smuggled a family of yetis into port. Unfortunately, the smuggler forgot to account for the warm island climate of Bilgewater, and the yetis have reacted poorly to the change in weather, breaking free from the flophouse stables originally holding them and running loose among the town. Where have the yetis disappeared off to? And why were they brought to Bilgewater in the first place?
Job Board
There are various jobs specifically bounty hunting jobs of various people.
Bounty Hunting
Power-Monkey Clearing
Delivery from White Docks to a casino in the Eryies.
Need two people to work in a kitchen.
Iron Wills (Low-Level) Eager to show their prowess to potential employers, two raucous ironbacks have engaged in various tavern games, including arm-wrestling, darts, and shouting matches. But their friendly competition is quickly devolving into more aggressive attacks, and the nervous tavern managers of Fleet Street are asking for someone to intervene before the competition brings down the house—literally.
So yes, I had a lot planned for them and I had NPC's (Captain, Tavern Owner, Flophouse Manager) to direct the players to ideas, but it resulted in very little of the players taking up work or going to other locations in the town. It was their choice, that was never my problem, my problem was what did I do wrong that they just disengaged in the game.
Been in a similar situation recently. My players had been bounced from one event to another for many sessions and after returning to their base town I gave them a week of downtime to do whatever they wanted. In prior sessions I'd dropped hints about a few other side quests that I'd worked out (months ago) and thought they would want to explore.
The group turned out to be less self-motivated than I anticipated. After the first day spent shopping they kind of ran out of steam and got paralyzed. There was some fun roleplaying as they spent a day sprucing up their home and buying a dog, but they didn't bite on the prepared quests. I wanted them to be able to experience the wider world their characters inhabited without needing a crisis, but it turned into nudging them to do anything.
By the third session of this I was ready to skip ahead to the next big event, but they decided to follow up on a dangling plot hook and became embroiled in something else I wasn't expecting.
If it helps, all the work you've put in isn't wasted. It sounds like a fantastic basis for a future campaign.
Also it's a little sad that your players, knowing you were excited about something, went out of their way to ignore it. I get it from a character standpoint, but all of you are a team working toward collaborative fun. They could have bent their alignments slightly to help you have a good time too.
This is what I was hoping for but my expectations and over-exuberance in setting things up just did not pull through. It is nice to hear in this thread people's own experience in matters like this.
It was RP, but it was what should we do in conversations, and even those conversations felt forced.
When I see this happening I prompt... "So do you want to do anything or should we advance the clock to the next day/night/morning/etc.?" As long as they are RPing, I say nothing, but when the start going in circles or clearly not knowing what to do, I will prompt. Or I might say things like, "So do you want to go hire a ship or would you like to do something else, say shopping?" I give them either/or or multiple choice options, so that something has to happen. Surely they wouldn't say "We just sit here in silence."
Second, these comments:
where "it's what my character would do" is a perfectly acceptable response, as it refers to how you would actually roleplay your character
and
This game would be so much more fun if they just did what they were supposed to.
I wanted to address something here. Yes, players should RP their character and try to have them do what they should, but... there is an extent to which metagaming is not only OK but also required -- to recognize that you are playing a game, and that the bulk of the game play is invented or designed by the DM, and that this takes tons of work, and that, as a player, you should do everything you can to try and find a way to get your character to do the things the DM has so obviously prepped.
I submit that, at a minimum, it is bad manners as an RPG player, to simply refuse to engage with any content the DM has designed on the basis that "my character wouldn't do that." The DM put a lot of work into this thing, either by reading and studying a printed module and adapting it to your group, or by inventing his or her own world and town and random tables and NPCs. One way or another this is a tremendous amount of work, and as you can see from the OP, any DM who did all this work is going to be rather deflated, and maybe quite heart-broken, that the players didn't even try to engage with the material generated by that work. It is rude to effectively say to the DM, practically in so many words, "All those hours of work you did? Yeah, I don't care... let's do something else."
Beyond being bad manners, it is incredibly dangerous, unless you, as a player, are secretly angling to be DM (and I would submit that for most tables there's no need to keep it secret -- as a DM most of us would love to take a break and play instead). Why "dangerous?" Because if you deflate a DM, if you disappoint a DM, if you break the DM's heart or make the DM feel like all that time was wasted enough (and it really doesn't have to be very many times), that person will stop wanting to DM, and your game is done. Again, unless you are in the mood to take over as a DM.
RPGs are cooperative experiences... with "cooperate" being the operative word. You know you are playing the game Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. It would be highly uncooperative for you to RP a character who hates the town of Waterdeep and just wants to leave. You know this is a game about Waterdeep, and that the adventure takes place within the walls of that town (more or less). Purposely RPing a character who doesn't want to stay and will keep trying to go into areas you know, as a player, are not developed by the module's authors, and are probably not something prepared by the DM, is bad manners and will make the DM want to stop DMing. So you shouldn't do it.
Likewise, coming into a clearly well-designed pirate town, graphically and gleefully described by the DM, with all the various prep work that must have been obvious upon getting there -- I don't care if the characters are lawful good pirate-hating cowards, you do not have your character sit in the hotel room and ignore the entire area. Figure out something your character would do that gets you out into the town. As a player, good manners and self-interest (to avoid a DM wanting to quit) demand that you make every effort to find a reason why your character would want to engage with the content the DM has so lovingly prepared. And it is bad manners to just say "My character wouldn't do that so I stay in my room."
Now, I'm not saying here that the DM shouldn't have tried to build something that would engage the players. But I'm betting BK did that. I'm betting BK was pretty sure they'd love it... and that's what made building this area exciting. When I design a dungeon, I am often gleefully chortling at all the things I think the players will like. Sometimes I'm wrong, sometimes I'm right -- but by intent, my goal is for them to have fun and I try to put stuff into the adventures to please them. BK certainly did the same. Were we sometimes wrong? Of course -- we are human, and we cannot read minds. But as DMs, we try to make adventures the players were like. That's our part.
But the players also have a part, and that is, to try as hard as they can to engage with and get a fun time out of the adventure the DM puts in front of them. Not doing this is rude, unfair to the DM, and abrogates the responsibility that all players have when participating in a roleplaying game. You do not get to, as a player, just sit back and demand of the DM, "Please me as my heart desires, and if you don't, I will just sit here and refuse to engage." That's not how RPGs are supposed to be played.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I don't think this is necessarily an error in DMing, players should be allowed to pass up on things in favor of other things if they want. And then passing up on it doesn't even necessarily mean that they felt "meh" about something you were excited about.
I think the only 'error' you made in your setup is that you may have put together something the individual players at your table probably would've enjoyed, but you didn't consider the character/roleplay aspect. If you have a party with multiple, staunchly lawful and good aligned players, it's entirely probable that they might take one look at a cool pirate town and say "no thanks, not getting mixed up with that!' Even if the player thinks it's cool, if they're into roleplaying they might also think it's cool to stick with how their character would react.
It's the flipside of the Wangrod Defense, where "it's what my character would do" is a perfectly acceptable response, as it refers to how you would actually roleplay your character, rather than using those words as an excuse to do whatever you want to make the other players miserable.
In that instance, I wouldn't try and force them to do anything in town since the players have already come to a decision, BUT that doesn't necessarily mean all your work is for nothing. I'd move on in the story after a quick 3-day time-skip, and then at a later time you can always introduce a reason for the players to go back. Maybe a villain escapes them and the Intel points to them hiding out in Pitate Town, and the pc's can go there and get involved and do all the stuff, and importantly, now all the lawful and good characters have an in-character justification for getting involved with these lowlives and cutthroats without going against the character they chose to play before they knew there was a cool pirate town. *Now* they're carousing around pirate Town and going to shops and casinos, and while the player is having fun, they can tell themselves that the *character* is still against all this, but they *have* to play along and maintain their cover to get the information on where to find the runaway bad guy. Then everyone wins.
Tldr; don't forget to account for character/rp when prepping content if there's a chance it hinges on characters behaving out of character, AND if they do ignore it, that doesn't mean it's gone forever, just move on, change up your approach to it a little, and come back to it later.
When the player (Chaotic Good Warlock) threw out his speech of "It's a pirate town we should just stay in our room because I'm from Waterdeep and I know this can only lead to bad things." I did not expect that. Not at all. Even looking back at character notes in the player game there was nothing that would have given me an idea something like this would have occurred let alone the game sessions. Then to have the rest of the party buy into it also I did not see that one coming even trying to keep things moving in a positive direction felt forced.
Don't see any of this as wasted effort, put it away and then think about pulling it all out the next town they are in, you can probably tweak it all slightly easily enough and then reuse it in a future location. I do this all the time, create a location or set of events that my players never trigger, then just park them and reuse them again later on in the campaign tweaked slightly.
It was RP, but it was what should we do in conversations, and even those conversations felt forced.
When I see this happening I prompt... "So do you want to do anything or should we advance the clock to the next day/night/morning/etc.?" As long as they are RPing, I say nothing, but when the start going in circles or clearly not knowing what to do, I will prompt. Or I might say things like, "So do you want to go hire a ship or would you like to do something else, say shopping?" I give them either/or or multiple choice options, so that something has to happen. Surely they wouldn't say "We just sit here in silence."
Second, these comments:
where "it's what my character would do" is a perfectly acceptable response, as it refers to how you would actually roleplay your character
and
This game would be so much more fun if they just did what they were supposed to.
I wanted to address something here. Yes, players should RP their character and try to have them do what they should, but... there is an extent to which metagaming is not only OK but also required -- to recognize that you are playing a game, and that the bulk of the game play is invented or designed by the DM, and that this takes tons of work, and that, as a player, you should do everything you can to try and find a way to get your character to do the things the DM has so obviously prepped.
I submit that, at a minimum, it is bad manners as an RPG player, to simply refuse to engage with any content the DM has designed on the basis that "my character wouldn't do that." The DM put a lot of work into this thing, either by reading and studying a printed module and adapting it to your group, or by inventing his or her own world and town and random tables and NPCs. One way or another this is a tremendous amount of work, and as you can see from the OP, any DM who did all this work is going to be rather deflated, and maybe quite heart-broken, that the players didn't even try to engage with the material generated by that work. It is rude to effectively say to the DM, practically in so many words, "All those hours of work you did? Yeah, I don't care... let's do something else."
Beyond being bad manners, it is incredibly dangerous, unless you, as a player, are secretly angling to be DM (and I would submit that for most tables there's no need to keep it secret -- as a DM most of us would love to take a break and play instead). Why "dangerous?" Because if you deflate a DM, if you disappoint a DM, if you break the DM's heart or make the DM feel like all that time was wasted enough (and it really doesn't have to be very many times), that person will stop wanting to DM, and your game is done. Again, unless you are in the mood to take over as a DM.
RPGs are cooperative experiences... with "cooperate" being the operative word. You know you are playing the game Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. It would be highly uncooperative for you to RP a character who hates the town of Waterdeep and just wants to leave. You know this is a game about Waterdeep, and that the adventure takes place within the walls of that town (more or less). Purposely RPing a character who doesn't want to stay and will keep trying to go into areas you know, as a player, are not developed by the module's authors, and are probably not something prepared by the DM, is bad manners and will make the DM want to stop DMing. So you shouldn't do it.
Likewise, coming into a clearly well-designed pirate town, graphically and gleefully described by the DM, with all the various prep work that must have been obvious upon getting there -- I don't care if the characters are lawful good pirate-hating cowards, you do not have your character sit in the hotel room and ignore the entire area. Figure out something your character would do that gets you out into the town. As a player, good manners and self-interest (to avoid a DM wanting to quit) demand that you make every effort to find a reason why your character would want to engage with the content the DM has so lovingly prepared. And it is bad manners to just say "My character wouldn't do that so I stay in my room."
Now, I'm not saying here that the DM shouldn't have tried to build something that would engage the players. But I'm betting BK did that. I'm betting BK was pretty sure they'd love it... and that's what made building this area exciting. When I design a dungeon, I am often gleefully chortling at all the things I think the players will like. Sometimes I'm wrong, sometimes I'm right -- but by intent, my goal is for them to have fun and I try to put stuff into the adventures to please them. BK certainly did the same. Were we sometimes wrong? Of course -- we are human, and we cannot read minds. But as DMs, we try to make adventures the players were like. That's our part.
But the players also have a part, and that is, to try as hard as they can to engage with and get a fun time out of the adventure the DM puts in front of them. Not doing this is rude, unfair to the DM, and abrogates the responsibility that all players have when participating in a roleplaying game. You do not get to, as a player, just sit back and demand of the DM, "Please me as my heart desires, and if you don't, I will just sit here and refuse to engage." That's not how RPGs are supposed to be played.
Yeah. Not to belabor this point, but I generally agree. Personally, I'm not above breaking the fourth wall and just telling them: "Folks, this is what I prepped for today. I gave you a few plot hooks, and you could probably come up with more of your own if you thought about it. Please, go do stuff." I realize there's a fine line between saying something like that and saying I'm going to take my ball and go home, but generally once the players and DM trust each other enough, that isn't an issue anymore.
One thing that helps is having players who have DMed/GMed before. I am lucky that 4 of my 5 players have (one is new). People with DMing experience can sometimes turn into 'back seat DMs' which is frustrating in a different way. But they also know just how much work is involved and they will often try to help the DM keep the party on task.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I'm sure they'll visit another town at some point, and so some of the plot ideas can be reused without the party ever knowing that you'd originally put them in the pirate town.
There's some Matt Colville video somewhere which explains how to reskin existing encounters elsewhere.
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This is more of an I need to “type” what I felt was a poor run game on my part. So, pardon the length and its irrelevance but I thought maybe the DMs here have run into a similar situation as I have.
Setup: The party came to a pirate town because the ship they booked passage to Waterdeep was damaged out at sea and sailed into port to get repairs.
Monologue:
I had a bad gaming session on Sunday, and I am still fuming but I know I should not.
So I’ve been planning on an Island Pirate Town (the Legends of Runeterra – Bilgewater setting that had a short front-page life on DDB before WoTC got wind of it and had it pulled.) side adventure for my players going on for close to four months.
I could never introduce the setting into my game because of the timing of the main quest. So now the time comes. I’m excited. I’m ready. I’ve prepped with game notes, tables, shops, casinos, in-game-games, job/bounty boards. NPC’s that can lead the party around town to give them the lay of the land and then open exploration. I had special “encounters/shops/arenas” for each specific party member to give them something special to call their own. I even had images from online that showed what Bilgewater looked like. I know this setting forward and backward. The months of patience have finally come, I told the group how excited to get to this stop-over as I know my players will love this. (see the problem?)
At the beginning of the game, once in port, a party member gave an impassionate speech about how this is a pirate town, and they are terrible corrupt places, and we should just stay in our room. As it turns out the party listened and pretty much did close to nothing for three hours. No, shopping, no gambling, none of the more challenging job/bounty boards items. No exploration, no carousing. One party member even wanted to camp outside of the town to avoid it altogether. At other times, the party just hunker down in their rooms waiting for the ship to be repaired.
It took the wind out of my proverbial sails.
What I thought they would love for something different for a change I got a “meh”. And I struggled during the gaming session to, well, keep the game afloat, plus trying to stay positive all the while.
As I said I was prepped, excited, and ready for anything, but just not the party doing nothing.
I tried to slightly railroad them into certain directions, but I also wanted to balance their agency of doing what they wanted. Still, nothing came from it. The party did what they wanted to do, and I should not fault them for that.
As the DM it stung pretty bad putting all that work in, hours upon hours of fleshing out this setting to give them a special sandbox to play in only to see nothing come from it.
It still stings. Looking back, in my excitement I over prepped, I put so much into this town that I had 36 pages of notes, random tables for all sort of situations names, locations, shops, etc. Everything I thought would bring this setting to life for the players.
I believe that excitement overshadowed what would be the reality that just because I liked it not everyone would as well.
So, if you’ve read this far, and still with me, I appreciate it.
Question:
So do you have a story of a game or session you planned and it just fell flat against all your '"best" intentions?
It happens... there's not much you can do.
Though I do have a question -- the did nothing for 3 hours... Like, of game time? Or real time? Do you mean that for a 3 hour session nothing happened? Does that mean not even RP? Or were the players mostly RPing with each other in character, in their "hotel room," but not exploring the city?
I would not consider a session wasted if it was mostly me watching them RP... in fact we've had a couple of those lately. I usually let it go as long as they want -- hey, less work for me! Whatever I prepped for this session I can use next session, which means I don't have to prep for next session (maybe, depending on what happens of course). When the RP dies down I then ask if they want to do anything else or should we advance to the next time period (nightfall, next day, etc.).
I'd say more but I'll wait to see what your "3 hours" comment meant.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I'm pretty sure every single DM who has run more than a couple of one-off games for friends ( and possibly a good proportion of those ) has had this happen - you are by no means alone it this, and a session like this doesn't make you a bad DM. I personally don't have a session like that, I've a whole stack of them that I've accumulated over the decades; I won't bore you with them :)
I have - unfortunately - also been that Player.
The best advice I can give for dealing with this kind of situation is from Matt Coleville: "chase them up a tree", back them in a corner, don't let them not react, put them in a react or die situation. The Players can decide to sit in their hotel room ... but if they do, the Burlog will be eating their families, so maybe they want to get off their asses and do something about it?
Players don't care about our Lore; they care about the adventures framed in our Lore. The Setting & the Lore by itself doesn't bring the world to life for the Players, Action does. Characters are action heroes, and as such, need to react to events. The Players who want to be proactive and self-directed are - sadly - a minority ( although they do exist ).
Sparta kick them into the story, then back off and let them tell it.
That's not railroading. Railroading would be if you forced them into the conundrum of the plot hook, and then dictated to them how & when they were going to solve that conundrum.
Don't let it get you down! Brush yourself off, and next time hit the sleepy pirate town with a Kraken, and see what happens ;)
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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You have made an error in DM'ing, here, and the best thing to do is use it as a learning experience so that in future you don't get frustrated this way. The error is essentially this:
You have not given your players a reason to go somewhere, and/or not thought about what the characters want to do, only where you want them to go and what you want them to do. The characters sound like they follow generally Good alignments - and quite rightly, they don't want to go play around in a town funded by evil (people often forget that being a pirate is just about one of the vilest professions available).
If you're going to flesh out a big old area, then you need to give your players a reason to go there. In all those 36 pages of notes, didn't you incorporate something like this as a 'just in case'?
You open the door to the frantic knocking. A bedraggled looking woman with a bruise on her face stares at you with watery eyes.
"Please! They took my son and daughter as galley slaves! It was my husband's debt, not theirs. Nobody in this town will help them!"
And that's it. You just need to thread around the town that there are a number of clues to find, and off they go on their sub-quest.
I have a town that my PCs are about to find. There are 2 dungeons in it, an airship to leave on, a pirate ship to raid, as well as sub-quests to take them out the town, a fencing competition, two inns to stay at, a dozen key NPCs and so on. The players get to pick what they want to do, though. I've created an incoming hurricane to persuade them to stay near to the town for a week or so (and to ground the airship) but if they don't go into the library dungeon or the mansion dungeon, they simply miss the vital campaign clues in there. My role as DM is to poke them towards those places, but it's up to them to take the bait.
Been in a similar situation recently. My players had been bounced from one event to another for many sessions and after returning to their base town I gave them a week of downtime to do whatever they wanted. In prior sessions I'd dropped hints about a few other side quests that I'd worked out (months ago) and thought they would want to explore.
The group turned out to be less self-motivated than I anticipated. After the first day spent shopping they kind of ran out of steam and got paralyzed. There was some fun roleplaying as they spent a day sprucing up their home and buying a dog, but they didn't bite on the prepared quests. I wanted them to be able to experience the wider world their characters inhabited without needing a crisis, but it turned into nudging them to do anything.
By the third session of this I was ready to skip ahead to the next big event, but they decided to follow up on a dangling plot hook and became embroiled in something else I wasn't expecting.
If it helps, all the work you've put in isn't wasted. It sounds like a fantastic basis for a future campaign.
Also it's a little sad that your players, knowing you were excited about something, went out of their way to ignore it. I get it from a character standpoint, but all of you are a team working toward collaborative fun. They could have bent their alignments slightly to help you have a good time too.
I don't think this is necessarily an error in DMing, players should be allowed to pass up on things in favor of other things if they want. And then passing up on it doesn't even necessarily mean that they felt "meh" about something you were excited about.
I think the only 'error' you made in your setup is that you may have put together something the individual players at your table probably would've enjoyed, but you didn't consider the character/roleplay aspect. If you have a party with multiple, staunchly lawful and good aligned players, it's entirely probable that they might take one look at a cool pirate town and say "no thanks, not getting mixed up with that!' Even if the player thinks it's cool, if they're into roleplaying they might also think it's cool to stick with how their character would react.
It's the flipside of the Wangrod Defense, where "it's what my character would do" is a perfectly acceptable response, as it refers to how you would actually roleplay your character, rather than using those words as an excuse to do whatever you want to make the other players miserable.
In that instance, I wouldn't try and force them to do anything in town since the players have already come to a decision, BUT that doesn't necessarily mean all your work is for nothing. I'd move on in the story after a quick 3-day time-skip, and then at a later time you can always introduce a reason for the players to go back. Maybe a villain escapes them and the Intel points to them hiding out in Pitate Town, and the pc's can go there and get involved and do all the stuff, and importantly, now all the lawful and good characters have an in-character justification for getting involved with these lowlives and cutthroats without going against the character they chose to play before they knew there was a cool pirate town. *Now* they're carousing around pirate Town and going to shops and casinos, and while the player is having fun, they can tell themselves that the *character* is still against all this, but they *have* to play along and maintain their cover to get the information on where to find the runaway bad guy. Then everyone wins.
Tldr; don't forget to account for character/rp when prepping content if there's a chance it hinges on characters behaving out of character, AND if they do ignore it, that doesn't mean it's gone forever, just move on, change up your approach to it a little, and come back to it later.
Yes you need a poker face to be a DM....
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I think everyone who has DM’d for any length of time has had something close to this happen. It’s a real drag.
Frickin players. This game would be so much more fun if they just did what they were supposed to.
It was RP, but it was what should we do in conversations, and even those conversations felt forced. I tried to remind them what the NPC had told them at the beginning of what is available to them. It's true I should be thankful there was some RP even if it leads to not much to enjoying their location, so I guess I can be ok with that.
In my prep I was trying to avoid putting some life or limb situation in front of them (at that moment.) I was really hoping they'd RP and engage more of the town based on what the NPC at the start had told them. Not so much. It have may come down that I DID need more of an A Location goes to B Location that leads to C Location to see the town while on some do or die situation. It's valid feedback that I should consider when prepping my games.
Yeah, I had five pages of location notes, one paragraph of session notes, and then the rest was either Stat blocks and Random Tables and Shops. It was not deep notes but it was enough that it took time to put together. I do love a good Random Roll (Street, Tavern, Drink, Poison, Casino, Job Board, Male, Female, Ship, Sea Monster, Encounter) Name table. It seems like a lot looking back at it now but it sure was fun to put it all into a document.
My notes contained to make clear I had five pages of location notes, one paragraph of session notes, and then the rest was either Stat blocks and Random Tables and Shops. It was not deep notes but it was enough that it took time to put together. Did I have a plan? Sure I did.
My session Notes for that game.
So yes, I had a lot planned for them and I had NPC's (Captain, Tavern Owner, Flophouse Manager) to direct the players to ideas, but it resulted in very little of the players taking up work or going to other locations in the town. It was their choice, that was never my problem, my problem was what did I do wrong that they just disengaged in the game.
This is what I was hoping for but my expectations and over-exuberance in setting things up just did not pull through. It is nice to hear in this thread people's own experience in matters like this.
I'll address a couple of things here...
First:
When I see this happening I prompt... "So do you want to do anything or should we advance the clock to the next day/night/morning/etc.?" As long as they are RPing, I say nothing, but when the start going in circles or clearly not knowing what to do, I will prompt. Or I might say things like, "So do you want to go hire a ship or would you like to do something else, say shopping?" I give them either/or or multiple choice options, so that something has to happen. Surely they wouldn't say "We just sit here in silence."
Second, these comments:
and
I wanted to address something here. Yes, players should RP their character and try to have them do what they should, but... there is an extent to which metagaming is not only OK but also required -- to recognize that you are playing a game, and that the bulk of the game play is invented or designed by the DM, and that this takes tons of work, and that, as a player, you should do everything you can to try and find a way to get your character to do the things the DM has so obviously prepped.
I submit that, at a minimum, it is bad manners as an RPG player, to simply refuse to engage with any content the DM has designed on the basis that "my character wouldn't do that." The DM put a lot of work into this thing, either by reading and studying a printed module and adapting it to your group, or by inventing his or her own world and town and random tables and NPCs. One way or another this is a tremendous amount of work, and as you can see from the OP, any DM who did all this work is going to be rather deflated, and maybe quite heart-broken, that the players didn't even try to engage with the material generated by that work. It is rude to effectively say to the DM, practically in so many words, "All those hours of work you did? Yeah, I don't care... let's do something else."
Beyond being bad manners, it is incredibly dangerous, unless you, as a player, are secretly angling to be DM (and I would submit that for most tables there's no need to keep it secret -- as a DM most of us would love to take a break and play instead). Why "dangerous?" Because if you deflate a DM, if you disappoint a DM, if you break the DM's heart or make the DM feel like all that time was wasted enough (and it really doesn't have to be very many times), that person will stop wanting to DM, and your game is done. Again, unless you are in the mood to take over as a DM.
RPGs are cooperative experiences... with "cooperate" being the operative word. You know you are playing the game Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. It would be highly uncooperative for you to RP a character who hates the town of Waterdeep and just wants to leave. You know this is a game about Waterdeep, and that the adventure takes place within the walls of that town (more or less). Purposely RPing a character who doesn't want to stay and will keep trying to go into areas you know, as a player, are not developed by the module's authors, and are probably not something prepared by the DM, is bad manners and will make the DM want to stop DMing. So you shouldn't do it.
Likewise, coming into a clearly well-designed pirate town, graphically and gleefully described by the DM, with all the various prep work that must have been obvious upon getting there -- I don't care if the characters are lawful good pirate-hating cowards, you do not have your character sit in the hotel room and ignore the entire area. Figure out something your character would do that gets you out into the town. As a player, good manners and self-interest (to avoid a DM wanting to quit) demand that you make every effort to find a reason why your character would want to engage with the content the DM has so lovingly prepared. And it is bad manners to just say "My character wouldn't do that so I stay in my room."
Now, I'm not saying here that the DM shouldn't have tried to build something that would engage the players. But I'm betting BK did that. I'm betting BK was pretty sure they'd love it... and that's what made building this area exciting. When I design a dungeon, I am often gleefully chortling at all the things I think the players will like. Sometimes I'm wrong, sometimes I'm right -- but by intent, my goal is for them to have fun and I try to put stuff into the adventures to please them. BK certainly did the same. Were we sometimes wrong? Of course -- we are human, and we cannot read minds. But as DMs, we try to make adventures the players were like. That's our part.
But the players also have a part, and that is, to try as hard as they can to engage with and get a fun time out of the adventure the DM puts in front of them. Not doing this is rude, unfair to the DM, and abrogates the responsibility that all players have when participating in a roleplaying game. You do not get to, as a player, just sit back and demand of the DM, "Please me as my heart desires, and if you don't, I will just sit here and refuse to engage." That's not how RPGs are supposed to be played.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
When the player (Chaotic Good Warlock) threw out his speech of "It's a pirate town we should just stay in our room because I'm from Waterdeep and I know this can only lead to bad things." I did not expect that. Not at all. Even looking back at character notes in the player game there was nothing that would have given me an idea something like this would have occurred let alone the game sessions. Then to have the rest of the party buy into it also I did not see that one coming even trying to keep things moving in a positive direction felt forced.
I tried to stay positive and keep engaged but I'll say that session was difficult to maintain.
Don't see any of this as wasted effort, put it away and then think about pulling it all out the next town they are in, you can probably tweak it all slightly easily enough and then reuse it in a future location. I do this all the time, create a location or set of events that my players never trigger, then just park them and reuse them again later on in the campaign tweaked slightly.
Yeah. Not to belabor this point, but I generally agree. Personally, I'm not above breaking the fourth wall and just telling them: "Folks, this is what I prepped for today. I gave you a few plot hooks, and you could probably come up with more of your own if you thought about it. Please, go do stuff." I realize there's a fine line between saying something like that and saying I'm going to take my ball and go home, but generally once the players and DM trust each other enough, that isn't an issue anymore.
One thing that helps is having players who have DMed/GMed before. I am lucky that 4 of my 5 players have (one is new). People with DMing experience can sometimes turn into 'back seat DMs' which is frustrating in a different way. But they also know just how much work is involved and they will often try to help the DM keep the party on task.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Also, your notes aren't completely wasted.
I'm sure they'll visit another town at some point, and so some of the plot ideas can be reused without the party ever knowing that you'd originally put them in the pirate town.
There's some Matt Colville video somewhere which explains how to reskin existing encounters elsewhere.