In my games, I feel as the DM that what the players are doing doesn't offer them any bit of options to take, that they are singular tracked to accomplish the outcome that I have set up for them, that no matter what they do they will still wind up in the same situations. My part is on the hunt to find a beholder, but somehow has successfully avoid everybody who would have hand information on to the whereabouts of the beholder, whether by scaring them off, or simply avoiding them. In one example, I had set up an encounter with orcs, but they managed to stealthy avoid the orcs, and now I don't really just want to make them encounter the orcs anyway, by just moving the encounter up the road. My current plan, is to just let the party bumble around in the wilderness, sense they failed to gleam any information, but I don't want to to be like, sense you missed this now you gotta go back and do it. How would you create a different option for them to take. My question is how do you make a story that feels like the players are able to take different paths, and come up with different out comes, instead of just having singular outcome, or even taking different paths that my lead to an set up event with out the feeling of railroading .
Are they not taking different paths, or are they not taking the paths you wanted them to take?
For example, they could have fought the orcs but snuck past. Seems like there were already meaningfully different paths. At that point, if the party knew they were sneaking past, and that’s how they overcame the challenge, I’d give them full xp for it. But then they miss out on the treasure or other information they might have gotten. If they didn’t know about the orca and somehow avoided it, I wouldn’t give them the xp. Actually, if you then throw the orcs at them later, you become the one denying them the opportunity to take a different path.
In a larger sense, you could give the multiple goals, and insufficient time to complete them all, so they have to choose which one to complete. Or if they can do them all, let there be different consequences for which order they work in. If they do A before B, one faction will have time to get stronger. If they do B first, a different faction will be stronger. At least, that’s a simple version. Don’t let it just be a quest-giver waiting for the PCs to engage with them; have the world keep moving if the PCs do stuff or not.
And then you throw in some side quests/backstory quests to complicate things a little more.
I build out different paths and don't plan for any particular outcome. The challenge is keeping that set of tasks small enough to be managed. One easy way to do that is to embrace what I call the Rule of Three.
Have three different plots the characters can get involved in, like your beholder. Then, build the one that they take, with three pathways that lead to the beholder. As they find the path they want, you add three things to it, etc., until it's just the beholder.
Another thing I do is update the world state as choices are made. The beholder isn't sitting there waiting for the characters. It is escalating its plans and becoming more easy to find via the results, the cutting-away version of the Rule of Three. Less and less needs to be done to find the beholder.
In your case, the orcs were avoided. What do the orcs do next? Where do they go, given that they know something about the beholder while the party bumbles? Advance the encounter to its next state vs. forcing it as it is or going through a full new encounter design. One little thing changes the world state of the orcs in response to the party's actions. That will feel alive and breathing.
Ultimately, because we are DMs, it's more work, so my suggestion and goal is to minimize the amount of it you have to do before play.
Everyone's workflow on this will be different, so I'm going to give you the layout (such as it is) for one of my adventure arcs.
Background/setting In this world, there is an society known as Riiarians attempting to eliminate magic. To be successful this society must find and conduct a ritual on the avatars (items) of the five gods.
Potential Endings for the Party - Death: the party fall in combat - Champions of the World: The party one way or another eliminate the Riiarians - Champions of the Gods: The party find an avatar and are asked by the gods to find and secure the other avatars - Champions of the Riiarians: The party decide to join up with the Riiarians - Exodus: The party find a way to lead people from this world into another plane, or onto another world in the multiverse
Right here there is flexibility and meaningful choice built right in. I haven't laid out a railroad, but I have built a world.
Key Lore/Items/Characters - Riiarian Leaders: Five members of the Riiarian Alliance who govern that society - Riiarian Stronghold: Where the Riiarian Alliance lives - The Gods: The Five Gods, and one former god - The Avatars: Six items scattered across the world in hard to reach/dangerous places - The Forgotton Wastes: The site where one god, centuries earlier had their powers ripped away and their magics eliminated - Mardwynn's Gauntlet: A city where every religion can be found represented - The Great Library: Somewhere that every text ever written can be found - Gateway to the Fey Realm - Gateway to the nexus (a place where you can walk between different worlds of the multiverse)
Just these few points allow me to scatter them around the world. Once done, there is my campaign.
Things I must present to my players - At least one avatar - The location of: the library, religious city, fey realm gateway, nexus gateway, forgotten wastes - The opportunity to join or ally with the Riiarians - The opportunity to develop at least one contact of influence in a settlement - An encounter with a god (or former god)
This seems really reductive but that's because it is. I started out at the possible end points and worked backwards. With these options I have run three campaigns for three different groups. One group died in a glorious battle where they eliminated the Riiarians. A second group found a way to become literal gods, replacing the previous gods. The final group found a way to collect and hide away the avatars so that the threat could never be acted upon again.
The key to my type of planning and world building is not to limit myself to pieces of information being in a specific place. Nor do I force my party on specific quests. With the above structure I have the flexibility to respond the things that seem to interest my party. Let's say for example that one party enjoy the investigation and chase of a fetch quest chain. Then they might go after the avatars and lock them safely away. The quests that they will get offered are going to lean more toward the investigative. They're going to hunt down lore, myths, and rumours. They're going to venture into the dark and dangerous places in the world to find these items.
If a party enjoys large scale combat - great! They can lead armies against the Riiarians. And every quest that they encounter is going to be geared around assembling allies, building armies, securing settlements. Then finally when they are ready, leading the seige against the enemy.
This is to my mind the better way to develop a campaign. Don't write the story, write the world. That gives the most free selection of options to your players. Don't have one all or nothing end condition...have several, only one of which might be achieved. Work out then what might be needed to get there and give the players things to encounter that will help them with that goal.
The answer to this depends somewhat on the problem you're having. Assuming the PCs are actually interested in hunting the beholder, your general choices are
Come up with alternative ways for them to find out about the beholder.
Place additional hints about the information they missed before.
They don't find anything (other than maybe random trouble) and whatever plot they're interested in foiling progresses, likely creating new clues (e.g. return to town, discover in their absence the beholder has taken control over the town and is now ensconced in the Mayor's house. Or, depending on how direct you want, has left a minion in charge, who presumably has clues).
When players are wandering aimlessly in the woods, that's a great opportunity to use the much-neglected Exploration pillar of play. Have the players discover something!
When I have players out in the wilderness going no particular direction, I have a table I roll on for things they might find out there, including any number of homebrew dungeons or dungeons from Tales from the Yawning Portal. The trick is, if they're wandering randomly, I choose randomly, and the thing they discover might be meant for a higher level party. They might soon find themselves over their head and needing to retreat, coming back when they're more powerful and feeling like revenge on whoever sent them running before. That way there's inherent risk to discovery and a choice to be made on the part of the players.
It'll have nothing to do with your plot, but your players will more likely come away feeling like they had agency over the situation.
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In my games, I feel as the DM that what the players are doing doesn't offer them any bit of options to take, that they are singular tracked to accomplish the outcome that I have set up for them, that no matter what they do they will still wind up in the same situations. My part is on the hunt to find a beholder, but somehow has successfully avoid everybody who would have hand information on to the whereabouts of the beholder, whether by scaring them off, or simply avoiding them. In one example, I had set up an encounter with orcs, but they managed to stealthy avoid the orcs, and now I don't really just want to make them encounter the orcs anyway, by just moving the encounter up the road. My current plan, is to just let the party bumble around in the wilderness, sense they failed to gleam any information, but I don't want to to be like, sense you missed this now you gotta go back and do it. How would you create a different option for them to take. My question is how do you make a story that feels like the players are able to take different paths, and come up with different out comes, instead of just having singular outcome, or even taking different paths that my lead to an set up event with out the feeling of railroading .
Are they not taking different paths, or are they not taking the paths you wanted them to take?
For example, they could have fought the orcs but snuck past. Seems like there were already meaningfully different paths. At that point, if the party knew they were sneaking past, and that’s how they overcame the challenge, I’d give them full xp for it. But then they miss out on the treasure or other information they might have gotten. If they didn’t know about the orca and somehow avoided it, I wouldn’t give them the xp.
Actually, if you then throw the orcs at them later, you become the one denying them the opportunity to take a different path.
In a larger sense, you could give the multiple goals, and insufficient time to complete them all, so they have to choose which one to complete. Or if they can do them all, let there be different consequences for which order they work in. If they do A before B, one faction will have time to get stronger. If they do B first, a different faction will be stronger. At least, that’s a simple version. Don’t let it just be a quest-giver waiting for the PCs to engage with them; have the world keep moving if the PCs do stuff or not.
And then you throw in some side quests/backstory quests to complicate things a little more.
I build out different paths and don't plan for any particular outcome. The challenge is keeping that set of tasks small enough to be managed. One easy way to do that is to embrace what I call the Rule of Three.
Have three different plots the characters can get involved in, like your beholder. Then, build the one that they take, with three pathways that lead to the beholder. As they find the path they want, you add three things to it, etc., until it's just the beholder.
Another thing I do is update the world state as choices are made. The beholder isn't sitting there waiting for the characters. It is escalating its plans and becoming more easy to find via the results, the cutting-away version of the Rule of Three. Less and less needs to be done to find the beholder.
In your case, the orcs were avoided. What do the orcs do next? Where do they go, given that they know something about the beholder while the party bumbles? Advance the encounter to its next state vs. forcing it as it is or going through a full new encounter design. One little thing changes the world state of the orcs in response to the party's actions. That will feel alive and breathing.
Ultimately, because we are DMs, it's more work, so my suggestion and goal is to minimize the amount of it you have to do before play.
Everyone's workflow on this will be different, so I'm going to give you the layout (such as it is) for one of my adventure arcs.
Background/setting
In this world, there is an society known as Riiarians attempting to eliminate magic. To be successful this society must find and conduct a ritual on the avatars (items) of the five gods.
Potential Endings for the Party
- Death: the party fall in combat
- Champions of the World: The party one way or another eliminate the Riiarians
- Champions of the Gods: The party find an avatar and are asked by the gods to find and secure the other avatars
- Champions of the Riiarians: The party decide to join up with the Riiarians
- Exodus: The party find a way to lead people from this world into another plane, or onto another world in the multiverse
Right here there is flexibility and meaningful choice built right in. I haven't laid out a railroad, but I have built a world.
Key Lore/Items/Characters
- Riiarian Leaders: Five members of the Riiarian Alliance who govern that society
- Riiarian Stronghold: Where the Riiarian Alliance lives
- The Gods: The Five Gods, and one former god
- The Avatars: Six items scattered across the world in hard to reach/dangerous places
- The Forgotton Wastes: The site where one god, centuries earlier had their powers ripped away and their magics eliminated
- Mardwynn's Gauntlet: A city where every religion can be found represented
- The Great Library: Somewhere that every text ever written can be found
- Gateway to the Fey Realm
- Gateway to the nexus (a place where you can walk between different worlds of the multiverse)
Just these few points allow me to scatter them around the world. Once done, there is my campaign.
Things I must present to my players
- At least one avatar
- The location of: the library, religious city, fey realm gateway, nexus gateway, forgotten wastes
- The opportunity to join or ally with the Riiarians
- The opportunity to develop at least one contact of influence in a settlement
- An encounter with a god (or former god)
This seems really reductive but that's because it is. I started out at the possible end points and worked backwards. With these options I have run three campaigns for three different groups. One group died in a glorious battle where they eliminated the Riiarians. A second group found a way to become literal gods, replacing the previous gods. The final group found a way to collect and hide away the avatars so that the threat could never be acted upon again.
The key to my type of planning and world building is not to limit myself to pieces of information being in a specific place. Nor do I force my party on specific quests. With the above structure I have the flexibility to respond the things that seem to interest my party. Let's say for example that one party enjoy the investigation and chase of a fetch quest chain. Then they might go after the avatars and lock them safely away. The quests that they will get offered are going to lean more toward the investigative. They're going to hunt down lore, myths, and rumours. They're going to venture into the dark and dangerous places in the world to find these items.
If a party enjoys large scale combat - great! They can lead armies against the Riiarians. And every quest that they encounter is going to be geared around assembling allies, building armies, securing settlements. Then finally when they are ready, leading the seige against the enemy.
This is to my mind the better way to develop a campaign. Don't write the story, write the world. That gives the most free selection of options to your players. Don't have one all or nothing end condition...have several, only one of which might be achieved. Work out then what might be needed to get there and give the players things to encounter that will help them with that goal.
At least, that's what works for me.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
The answer to this depends somewhat on the problem you're having. Assuming the PCs are actually interested in hunting the beholder, your general choices are
When players are wandering aimlessly in the woods, that's a great opportunity to use the much-neglected Exploration pillar of play. Have the players discover something!
When I have players out in the wilderness going no particular direction, I have a table I roll on for things they might find out there, including any number of homebrew dungeons or dungeons from Tales from the Yawning Portal. The trick is, if they're wandering randomly, I choose randomly, and the thing they discover might be meant for a higher level party. They might soon find themselves over their head and needing to retreat, coming back when they're more powerful and feeling like revenge on whoever sent them running before. That way there's inherent risk to discovery and a choice to be made on the part of the players.
It'll have nothing to do with your plot, but your players will more likely come away feeling like they had agency over the situation.