I am pretty new DM, hence I have little experience.
I was going to run a [HOARD OF THE DRAGON QUEEN] campaign with my two friends.
I did not expected them to run away from trouble. They decided to ditch everything and run away from dragon, and it was pretty good idea now that I think about it.
However, that did ruined whole idea of running campaign for me.
What would more experienced DM would do I wondered, hence I made this thread to learn.
Hopefully I can find some ways to steer them back to the track.
If they just ran away from the Dragon in chapter 1, that is fine. At the end of the chapter there is a section labeled "developments" that sort of covers that scenario and you can kind of get the adventure back on track from there.
If they noped out of the whole campaign, maybe change campaigns. Curse of strahd or lost mine of phandelver are both good capaigns that start at level 1 (there is a special mission for leveling up players to level 3 in CoS).
Running from danger is not a bad thing to do, and probably the smart thing to do.... unless you're playing a D&D module/adventure. In other words, if they have this common sense "flaw", you might find it difficult to get them to follow a written adventure. There are a lot of threads and advice about not "railroading" players into doing a certain series of events, but sometimes, that's what is needed. Players and DMs alike need to walk the line of what's heroic vs stupid. (Stupid meaning: if the real me was in this situation, I would be stupid to charge into a town under attack from huge blue dragon.)
It's easy to get them back on track from an adventure as written standpoint, but my concern would be (for that adventure, at least) are they "heroic" enough to make the "illogical" jumps needed to advance the story. Might be worth finding out what their goals are as characters. Do they want to save the world? If yes, then find a way to push on. If no, then pre-written adventures might not be their cup of tea.
Running away from a dragon attack at 1st level is the most common way that first part of Hoard of the Dragon Queen goes down at most tables if you ask around. I mean, personally if you ask me, Hoard of the Dragon Queen is one of the most poorly thought out adventures in the entire Wizards of the Coast line up of adventures for 5e. The entire thing is just a mess and its primarily because the core assumption of the entire story is that "the characters are heroes who will sacrifice everything". There is no other built in assumption about who the characters are in the module and basically they are going to have to make completely irrational decisions no player would actually ever make for their character throughout this entire adventure to stay on track.
My suggestion would be, do a reset. Tell your players that this adventure is just not going to work out and grab pretty much anything else ever written for 5th edition and you will be in much better shape. Hoard of the Dragon Queen is the first published adventure book if memory serves and so many people assume that its for beginners, but it actually requires the most experienced DM's to run it well and is without question one that requires the most customization and intervention to make work.
Of all the adventure to run, Hoard of the Dragon Queen is the only one I would say "skip it entirely", its just a very badly built story.
To be honest, let the dragon be something... let's call it environmental. It keeps flying around the castle to struck fear in the town guards hearts and keeping them at bay while the Cult pillages the town of anything valuable, and if your characters go out and reclaim the mill or rescue the people in the Church, when they come back, the dragon is gone. At least that's what I did.
If they just ran away from the Dragon in chapter 1, that is fine. At the end of the chapter there is a section labeled "developments" that sort of covers that scenario and you can kind of get the adventure back on track from there.
If they noped out of the whole campaign, maybe change campaigns. Curse of strahd or lost mine of phandelver are both good capaigns that start at level 1 (there is a special mission for leveling up players to level 3 in CoS).
Phandelver is great, but I do not recommend trying CoS as your first time GMing. It is fun, but it is a lot of work and is one of the most complicated official 5e campaigns, along with being one of the hardest to run.
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I am pretty new DM, hence I have little experience.
I was going to run a [HOARD OF THE DRAGON QUEEN] campaign with my two friends.
I did not expected them to run away from trouble. They decided to ditch everything and run away from dragon, and it was pretty good idea now that I think about it.
However, that did ruined whole idea of running campaign for me.
What would more experienced DM would do I wondered, hence I made this thread to learn.
Hopefully I can find some ways to steer them back to the track.
If they just ran away from the Dragon in chapter 1, that is fine. At the end of the chapter there is a section labeled "developments" that sort of covers that scenario and you can kind of get the adventure back on track from there.
If they noped out of the whole campaign, maybe change campaigns. Curse of strahd or lost mine of phandelver are both good capaigns that start at level 1 (there is a special mission for leveling up players to level 3 in CoS).
Running from danger is not a bad thing to do, and probably the smart thing to do.... unless you're playing a D&D module/adventure. In other words, if they have this common sense "flaw", you might find it difficult to get them to follow a written adventure. There are a lot of threads and advice about not "railroading" players into doing a certain series of events, but sometimes, that's what is needed. Players and DMs alike need to walk the line of what's heroic vs stupid. (Stupid meaning: if the real me was in this situation, I would be stupid to charge into a town under attack from huge blue dragon.)
It's easy to get them back on track from an adventure as written standpoint, but my concern would be (for that adventure, at least) are they "heroic" enough to make the "illogical" jumps needed to advance the story. Might be worth finding out what their goals are as characters. Do they want to save the world? If yes, then find a way to push on. If no, then pre-written adventures might not be their cup of tea.
Running away from a dragon attack at 1st level is the most common way that first part of Hoard of the Dragon Queen goes down at most tables if you ask around. I mean, personally if you ask me, Hoard of the Dragon Queen is one of the most poorly thought out adventures in the entire Wizards of the Coast line up of adventures for 5e. The entire thing is just a mess and its primarily because the core assumption of the entire story is that "the characters are heroes who will sacrifice everything". There is no other built in assumption about who the characters are in the module and basically they are going to have to make completely irrational decisions no player would actually ever make for their character throughout this entire adventure to stay on track.
My suggestion would be, do a reset. Tell your players that this adventure is just not going to work out and grab pretty much anything else ever written for 5th edition and you will be in much better shape. Hoard of the Dragon Queen is the first published adventure book if memory serves and so many people assume that its for beginners, but it actually requires the most experienced DM's to run it well and is without question one that requires the most customization and intervention to make work.
Of all the adventure to run, Hoard of the Dragon Queen is the only one I would say "skip it entirely", its just a very badly built story.
To be honest, let the dragon be something... let's call it environmental. It keeps flying around the castle to struck fear in the town guards hearts and keeping them at bay while the Cult pillages the town of anything valuable, and if your characters go out and reclaim the mill or rescue the people in the Church, when they come back, the dragon is gone. At least that's what I did.
Phandelver is great, but I do not recommend trying CoS as your first time GMing. It is fun, but it is a lot of work and is one of the most complicated official 5e campaigns, along with being one of the hardest to run.