This is true but still... it is rather heartbreaking as a DM to have to recycle stuff here and there that you had prepped for this great adventure and the players were like, "Nah."
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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.
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.
Looking at what you had planned, there is no adventure hook there for a player other than side-quests to earn money.
You are envisaging the characters as 'odd-job' people, willing to go and do someone else's dirty work for a measly 200gp. The type of PC I play wouldn't be up for any of the jobs that you've put on offer. As a player, I am always focused on the main storyline; I don't really have much interest in going around doing the odd side quest just for some gold and xp. Typically I have a focus, and my characters want to get it done. Unless you really engage my emotions with wanting to help someone out - none of those side quests seem interesting to me. But then, I typically play a Good aligned character, and other players may enjoy taking odd-job work. But is that really satisfying?
I would suggest talking to your players about what they want and what focuses them on tasks in the game. I think that you have envisaged this as a bit like a video game MMORPG quest hub, where the characters will want to arrive and clear out all the quests before moving on. But for me, none of this sounds like it has any focus on the main storyline. What is enticing about these ideas outside of earning money/xp? Neither of those would motivate me.
When I say it's an error in DM'ing, it's an error in that you planned a whole ton of stuff that you were excited about, but didn't consider what the players actually want to do. Some players want to be free to explore areas and basically just be mercenaries, but others (like me) want a powerful epic storyline to drive them forward.
My best advice is: find a way to send them back towards this location in the future, having powered up the encounters if the players also levelled up, but don't treat the players like they will want to just run around being someone's lackspittle (picking up a cargo of yeti hides? Why would adventurers opt to do that?). Throw an exciting, dynamic storyline at them instead and they're more likely to engage.
Just a couple of comments. I think this kind of situation is very common. DM prepares material for a sandbox and the PCs make decisions that don't follow the script and don't engage with the content the way the DM was imagining. If the DM has put a lot of effort into the content (or even if they haven't), the DM can feel let down when the players decide not to engage with the surrounding world.
However, I've usually found this situation develops when the DM looks at the exciting wonderful world from their perspective and not from the character perspective.
In this case, the ship they are on needs repairs and puts into a pirate port. At least one of the characters is likely lawful good and is (probably justifiably) suspicious of such a hive of scum and villainy. The characters may also have a strong motivation to follow whatever quest has been disrupted by this stop for repairs. The players may feel like they want to "get on with the adventure" and the fastest way to do so in game terms is to stay in their rooms and not get kidnapped/distracted onto a side quest/find someone who needs their help and distract them from whatever they were "really" supposed to be doing. Keep in mind that the players have NO idea what the DM has planned and all they can see and roleplay is the world from their character perspective.
Yes, in an ideal world, the players might recognize that the DM really wants them to explore this place but this might be completely out of character for some of the characters in the party. The chaotic neutral rogue might fit right in but the lawful good paladin might decide that staying in the inn would be safer than seeing the town and feeling that they had to take action against the criminality and evil present - how could the character live with themselves if they found the slave market of the pirate town and didn't do something to free the slaves even if it could cost them their lives?
One way to ensure that the players explore the content is to give them a task before they get there that forces them to engage with it. Perhaps the captain asks/tells the characters to arrange for certain supplies and deliver a letter to a local contact for them. Arranging for supplies forces the character to engage with the shopping and once there the DM can likely tempt them into at least taking a look at what is available. The letter could be delivered to someone at the casino. Some of the characters might find those activities interesting. However, other characters might just find the whole place uncomfortable - in that case they may need a spontaneous quest to rescue someone or recover something for someone who needs help. You know the characters but you need to put the hooks into your intended content early enough that the characters are motivated to do what you want them to do in the case where they may decide not to engage spontaneously. One thing to keep in mind though is that if the characters are already on a quest, they may be reluctant to follow up on side quests that could delay them.
This is true but still... it is rather heartbreaking as a DM to have to recycle stuff here and there that you had prepped for this great adventure and the players were like, "Nah."
But if this is happening, it means that you didn't make it interesting enough for the players, or hadn't considered what they want out of the game.
Rather than despair that the players somehow didn't do the thing you wanted, ask yourself why they made the choices that they made, and what you could do differently to motivate them.
I will note that it is possible for some players to want nothing. I have experienced this myself, having offered them free-roaming towns, fast paced plot driven adventures, and everything in between, and one player even stated that their character goal was to settle down somewhere quiet. If you have those players, unfortunately, you need to have a conversation with them and advise them that D&D is a high fantasy adventure game and there is nothing fun for the DM in running a simulation of Animal Crossing. Sometimes it's a two way street, and the players need to appreciate that the DM spends a lot of time planning the game. But you have to offer them a variety of motivating hooks to get them moving, and in this particular case, I don't see those from the notes the OP provided.
But if this is happening, it means that you didn't make it interesting enough for the players, or hadn't considered what they want out of the game.
This is perhaps true, but it is also the case, as I said several posts up, the player has a responsibility to find every possible way to get their character to accept whatever plot the DM has put in front of them. Players have got to cooperate with the DM on this or they run the risk of frustrating the DM to the point where he/she just gives up and says "I'm done." And that is of benefit to no one.
The player's one job, only job, in an RPG, is to make sure to have a character who can be relied upon to be a protagonist -- to go on whatever quest(s) the DM provides. If, as a player, you're going to claim the quests the DM has, out of the goodness of his/her heart, come up with for you, are "not interesting enough," then pick up a DM screen and make up the quests yourself. Otherwise, you find a way to make that character go on quests. It's literally the one job a player has at the table, other than not cheating.
I have experienced this myself, having offered them free-roaming towns, fast paced plot driven adventures, and everything in between, and one player even stated that their character goal was to settle down somewhere quiet.
Yup, and as you say, this is someone the DM needs to have a talk with, because not just D&D but no RPG on earth is designed around RPing characters who settle down somewhere quiet and take up knitting or something.
The players in a D&D game, or any RPG, need to make sure that their character has some reason to go on the sorts of quest, adventures, and the like, that the game is about. In Call of Cthulhu, for instance, you are, for lack of a better term, "paranormal investigator." Whatever character you made up had better be at least marginally interested in investigating things, or you're in the wrong game. And in D&D you make up an adventurer who goes on some type of adventurers, whether they are city-based faction/diplomacy adventures or crypt/dungeon crawling or seven-seas swashbuckling. "I want to settle down and grow turnips" is not an acceptable character motivation. Any player who makes up such a character is not cooperating -- again, as I pointed out above, this is a cooperative game.
But you have to offer them a variety of motivating hooks to get them moving, and in this particular case, I don't see those from the notes the OP provided.
This is easy to say, and maybe easy to do for some DMs. It's not always easy to do for new DMs. And players, realizing they have a new DM, should frigging understand that and give the DM a break by cooperating with whatever ideas the DM has come up with. Or else, as I said above, pull out the DM screen if they're so good at coming up with different hooks, and do the DMing themselves.
I have a friend who is playing Waterdeep on R20 with a bunch of strangers, including the DM -- he didn't know any of them when they started, although they've been going a couple of months now so I guess they know each other. Yesterday while telling me about it, he complained that the DM, whom he admits is new and this may be the DM's first adventure -- this DM seems (my friend is guessing) to be just "running Waterdeep straight" as written. The DM did not, grumbled my friend, come up with unique, individualized hooks for each character that relate to that character's background and motivations, to get these characters uniquely interested in the Waterdeep storyline. He's running it more like, for lack of a better term, a "jobs board" system.
And I told my friend the same thing I just said here -- You know it's a new-ish DM. You know it is a published adventure. It is unfair to expect this DM to take a published adventure and, as a new DM (I repeat) customize it individually for each character. I said, yes, sure, a Matt Coleville or Matt Mercer would be able to do that, and probably would do that. But you can't expect any DM, let alone a new one, to be like the Matts. These are very high demands, and I don't think it is fair for players to demand this of their DMs. He admitted this was true, and just said wistfully he wishes there were more of these "hooks" into their backgrounds.
But you can't expect this or demand it of a DM. If the DM can pull it off, great. But if not... It's hard enough to just freaking run an adventure that you came up with, let alone trying to gracefully make 17 different types of hooks so that each character has multiple individualized reasons to go on each quest.
The real question is, do these folks want to play D&D, or not? If they do, then they should play it... not dig in their heels and refuse to go on a quest unless the quest takes them to dinner and a movie and buys them a pearl necklace....
Talking about “recycling,” this is a portion of another post I made recently, but I think it applies here too:
It will never matter how much you write, it’s a Schrödinger’s Cat. Whatever you write will always simultaneously be both too much and not enough. Always.
A little while ago the players told me they planned to wait until nighttime, around 9:00 pm, and then attempt to silently infiltrate the suspected BBE’s lair (a hospital) through the 3rd floor balcony. I spent all that week completing the plan and maps for 132,300+ sq ft of dungeons they could potentially navigate getting from the balcony to the target area on the opposite side of the building on the 1st floor, and about half the basement floor where the secret lair would lead them. That should have been at least a month of dungeon crawling if not more. I thought I would be able to divert attention elsewhere temporarily since I felt “stocked up” for a while.
Within the first 30 minutes of the next session, at approximately 10:30 am, they were assaulting the suspected BBE. They were doing it in the middle of broad daylight, in front of a hospital full of witnesses, and even blew a hole in the side of the building big enough to walk through. The explosion was after the party killed several potential civilians who may have just been defend their boss and the clinic since those NPCs were employed there as security guards. 😳
I spent the next week furiously planning wtf I was gonna do to keep them from a TPK because the cops had arrived and players hate when their PCs get arrested. They hate it so much they will frequently willingly TPK rather than submit. 🙄 (They were vouched for by one of the officers and have been released under his recognizance.) I then spent the week after completing the hospital sub basement, and the surrounding caverns, just enough for a solid session. They have been down there 3 weeks and are only half way through.
It will always be both too much and not enough. Always. So you just roll with it because you have no choice, and because honestly, that’s also part of the fun of being a DM.
Some players want to be free to explore areas and basically just be mercenaries, but others (like me) want a powerful epic storyline to drive them forward.
I think a great many epic adventures start as "boring" mercenary work. I could be wrong but if a GM lets you know you are in an epic adventure with legendary consequences then she might be doing you a disservice.
I suppose you could start your campaign telling the players, "Hey guys, you suck right now but in the near future you will save a city from internal strife while fighting off an undead horde! And that will be the least of your accolades. You will then take on the role of emissaries to a foreign dimension and only you will be able to save the planet from ultimate destruction!"
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
For the OP, don't worry too much. Since the players didn't jump at the encounters you presented, you can save them for another time and place.
Others have suggested that you give the PCs a reason to engage and I can't agree more. Whatever it is that will motivate them, give them that. Yes, a good player will recognize your hooks and play along with your effort but sometimes you need to sink the ship around them.
If they refuse to leave the house, set the house on fire.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
But if this is happening, it means that you didn't make it interesting enough for the players, or hadn't considered what they want out of the game.
This is perhaps true, but it is also the case, as I said several posts up, the player has a responsibility to find every possible way to get their character to accept whatever plot the DM has put in front of them. Players have got to cooperate with the DM on this or they run the risk of frustrating the DM to the point where he/she just gives up and says "I'm done." And that is of benefit to no one.
The player's one job, only job, in an RPG, is to make sure to have a character who can be relied upon to be a protagonist -- to go on whatever quest(s) the DM provides. If, as a player, you're going to claim the quests the DM has, out of the goodness of his/her heart, come up with for you, are "not interesting enough," then pick up a DM screen and make up the quests yourself. Otherwise, you find a way to make that character go on quests. It's literally the one job a player has at the table, other than not cheating.
But you have to offer them a variety of motivating hooks to get them moving, and in this particular case, I don't see those from the notes the OP provided.
The real question is, do these folks want to play D&D, or not? If they do, then they should play it... not dig in their heels and refuse to go on a quest unless the quest takes them to dinner and a movie and buys them a pearl necklace....
You are right that there is a need for cooperation, but I don't think we're talking about an inexperienced DM here. The players have a ship and have fought a hydra, putting them around level 7+ at a guess. This is definitely a collaborative game - we're all making the story together, even if the DM is doing the majority of the out of game work.
However, I'm going to say that I do not agree that the characters should feel obligated to take things that are offered to them once they are past a certain level, for a number of reasons. At level 1, you damn well better take the quest - but the nature of what that might possibly involve should have been discussed in session zero. However, we're talking here about characters who have developed session by session for a period of weeks or months, and from what the OP said, nobody at this table is unfamiliar with how D&D works.
The key problem, as I said, is that the DM was not offering the players anything that their characters would want to do. It's not reasonable to expect a LG character to suddenly abandon their morals and do what the DM asks just because the DM suggests it. Where is the room for actual RP in that? This can be taken to crazy extremes and if I'm honest, I think that a good player - even playing LG - would be able to come up with a reason to go into a pirate den. Maybe there's a captive there who could use my help, right? But no PC I've ever created would have taken a job delivering some hides/getting money out of someone. I don't play a thug, a pimp, a delivery person, or a bailiff. However, a quick thinking DM can usually think of something that enables the PC to be motivated to go do it. To take it to the extreme extrapolation, if the DM says "A Night Hag approaches and asks you to help gather children for her to eat" then you don't have to do that. If the DM says "The captain of the guard tells you he wants you to join the guard" then your Chaotic rogue does not have to do that. The characters need to do things that are reasonable to expect of them - e.g. there is a prisoner in the orc camp, you should probably release them.
I think overall the OP has experienced all of the following in this situation:
Created a sub-quest hub, for players who may not be interested in doing sub-quests. Some people just aren't (I am one of those players. If I have a mission to do, I'll do that and ignore side quests)
Put a ton of effort into having a sandbox of things to do, but not included elements that are of particular relevance to the characters to make them want to go there
Created an environment fundamentally at odds with the PCs alignments
The player who made a speech about not going into the port was acting up.
It's probably worth having a conversation with all of the players, and point out to them that they are forcing you into railroad adventures. Talk to them about it, and advise them that if they ever want to find themselves in a free-roaming sandbox again, they need to cooperate with the DM a little. It may be that they just want railroading, but I doubt it. Sometimes players get combative with the DM for weird reasons.
To empathise with the OP, here is some really weird behaviour I once had from a player who was also a DM for a campaign I was in. He was playing a level 6 paladin/1 hexblade, and was generally CG or NG. I set up an ambush, with a really detailed, animated map on Roll20. There were 2 types of custom assassin monsters, and 2 NPCs with full stat blocks. In the middle of the glade, an extraplanar wagon had crashed, and spilling from it was an old friend of the players, who had saved their butts before. My paladin player didn't want to fight. He had decided his PC was a pacifist now, I think. He had given away his +1 Greatsword. None of it made any sense. The encounter was set up for the PCs to go into the wagon (Tardis style bigger on the inside) and get it started whilst the rest of the group held off the assassins... And my pala player just flat out refused to do anything reasonable. Wouldn't even feed the NPC a healing potion when he went down (and they needed him to pilot the magic wagon). None of it made sense and I was gutted. The encounter had taken about 6 hours to build, with custom tokens, playtesting the damage outputs, special sheets... That campaign folded up 3 sessions later when I'd had enough of the pacifist character and another character who wanted to live in a cave and not adventure. So I do feel your pain on this.
To take it to the extreme extrapolation, if the DM says "A Night Hag approaches and asks you to help gather children for her to eat" then you don't have to do that. If the DM says "The captain of the guard tells you he wants you to join the guard" then your Chaotic rogue does not have to do that. The characters need to do things that are reasonable to expect of them.
I completely agree with you. I am not arguing that the PCs should accept a ridiculous quest that is out of character.
And I don't necessarily think that the PCs in the original story here, needed to go on any specific quest the DM had set out for them. But "not going on the quest the DM has prepared" is not the same thing as "We hide in our hotel room not doing anything at all in the city." What DM, no matter what material you have created, would expect a team of level 7 D&D characters to cower in their hotel room? That's like a DM of a modern-day Savage Worlds campaign bringing the characters to Las Vegas, and since "none of them gamble" they hide in their room. There are lots of other things they could possibly do in Vegas other than gambling. They could take in a show. They could go on some rides. They could sight see. They could go out and have dinner at an expensive restaurant. None of those things is "accepting the quest to go gambling," none would violate their "Lawful Good" nature, but it would still be making use of the setting the DM has worked to make.
To use an example from my world -- it is the Roman Empire. The PCs have not been to Rome yet, but they will go eventually... probably in another couple of adventures (first they have to get back from the Astral Plane, which they blundered into a couple of sessions ago, and then reach a port, and then reach Ostia, the port of Rome, and then Rome... so it will be a while). I have a map made up with lots of detail and many different places they could explore. I don't expect them to explore them all. But one thing I will definitely have "going on" when the players are there, is the games at the Coliseum. Now, those games are violent and by modern standards (well, any standards, really) unethical. Many of the PCs are Good (alignment) -- maybe they won't want to go watch these brutal games. Maybe none of the party goes. They just hear the cheering in the background. And that's OK -- they don't need to go to the games. (This is like not accepting a quest of the DM, kind of, although it's not a quest, at least not on purpose -- lots of things can turn into quests by accident without the DM intending them to...)
However, them saying "We don't condone the violence of these games and won't go watch them" is one thing. Them saying, "Now that we are in Rome, we're going to hide in our hotel room until we leave" would be an entirely different story.
The players in the original story, and the Paladin in yours, weren't rejecting an individual quest. They were refusing to play D&D. Because although you can have a great D&D session just sitting in an inn room RPing (my players did it just a few sessions ago and it was fun), these players weren't doing this just to have a chance to RP with each other. They were refusing to engage with the content the DM had made. And you really shouldn't do that.
It is incumbent upon the players to find a way to get their character as involved as possible in the story. Your Pacifist Paladin could have worked -- if he had focused on buffing and healing his fellow party members but refused to personally do any damage, yup, that is a viable character. If he steps in front of swords to take blows for the party, but won't lift his own sword, yup, you can play that kind of character in D&D. But if he's just going to sit on a 3-legged stool sipping tea watching the battle not doing anything, while the rest of the party is adventuring, no, you can't do that. It's not a viable way to play D&D.
The Players do have an obligation under the Social Contract to "play the game" - cowering in the hotel room wasn't great Player behavior.
However, the GM has an obligation to present a game the Players will engage with, as well. This situation appears to have occurred because the GM made the error - which many of us have - that the setting and lore are sufficiently interesting in and of themselves to engage with. That is true for some Players - but I believe those Players are in the minority ( I've not created or seen any polls - I don't actually have data ).
When the action lags, throw a complication into the stewpot to kickstart the action.
To go back the Vegas example, the GM can prompt the Players with multiple hooks: an ad for the show comes on the TV in their hotel room, a loud flashy tour bus pulls by on the street with a hawker on a loudspeaker, there could be a brochure for the best rides in Vegas in their hotel room, etc.
If the Party in the OP came to the pirate town for a reason, have something related to that reason happen in the town.
There's something to be said for having multiple hooks, and multiple simultaneous adventure arcs in play at any given time.
The Matt Coleville concept of "chasing them up a tree" isn't forcing the Players to take any particular hook - quite - it's just setting the cost of not engaging at a price the Characters don't want to pay. The Ranger contracts a deadly magical disease. The Party doesn't need to engage with that hook, and they're not forced to in that they are not teleported instantly to the dungeon that contains the cure. They could just let the Ranger die.
Of course, a clever Player can engage any hook on their own terms, and twist it to an outcome that they do want: "A Night Hag approaches and asks you to help gather children for her to eat", so the Paladin engages with the hook in an attempt to rescue the previously gathered children, protect the children that the hag plans to target, and defeat her vile plans.
"The captain of the guard tells you he wants you to join the guard", OK - my Ranger/Rogue might buy the Captain a beer in the local tavern and find out why. Maybe, if the Captain has a need to temporarily swell the ranks of the guard because of an unusual event or situation, me and my Party can "sub-contract" out to the guard to cover the extra security needs, etc.
As I've said before, swallowing the hook, or shoving the Characters onto it ( chasing them up the tree ) doesn't have to be railroading, if you let the Players solve the dilemma presented by the Adventure hook in their own way.
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Empathy, hugs, pint of ice cream...? (just laughing to myself, it's almost like spending months planning a great date night and then your date just wants to stay in and watch tv?)
I'm brand new at DMing, so I'm making mistakes all over the place. At least starting on Play by Post forum, I can 'sleep on it' to figure out to get things back on track, look up rules etc. and I'm finally finding all the great advice and links on this forum.
The only thing I can think to offer is from the PC point of view. PCing in a 4 hour weekly game with way more experienced players, I get a bit tongue tied and bow to the louder voices sometimes. Like when everyone wanted to jump down a giant hole before exploring the rest of a cave... I wanted to explore but went with the group. We missed a lot of potential help, we learned later. The DM was shaking his head a lot that session.
So keep an ear out for the quieter PC who would be easier to pull in the direction the DM wants to go perhaps?
There has been some great feedback here as I see valid points that I had not considered and NEED to remember next time I'm developing my game.
Some assumptions I should correct or expound on:
1) The party is five 5th level characters. (Warlock, Wizard, Monk, Ranger, and Rogue)
2) I believe I mentioned this before but the speechmaker was a Chaotic Good Warlock. There is no Paladin or Lawful Good characters in this party.
3) While not in the notes I had planned specific events for each player so I had some hooks, but upon reflection, with everyone help here (Thanks!) where my mistake was as things were falling apart not meeting what I had in my mind I sort of never hooked them in, I was rationalizing that the NPC (Captain, Tavern Owner, Flophouse Manager) would get them moving in the right direction. But I agree with the feedback on the Hooks, that I did a poor job putting them out in the game for the characters.
4) The players do want to play, I just missed the mark by a large margin in the last session.
While I don't think it was prevailing advice here I ended up talking to one of the players on the side last night about the last session as he was the one who was the most open to explore and do the more difficult jobs. He gave me the standard "We had fun" response when I ask what he thought of the session. I explained what my concern was and taking some of the feedback from here and presented to him how I felt. He agreed that the Warlock "Pirate Town Bad" speech came out of nowhere but it did suck other players in to follow him along. One point my friend made and it was the simplest explanation, "We don't have the gold/coin to spend." It's true. They are currently tight on gold because of their last spending spree and gold has been hard to come by (just how the adventure has been running.). Even the job boards were tight with money so how can I expect things to play out if they cannot spend money or earn enough to feel comfortable spending it when money is such a prevailing force in the town?
What Next:
For my next game, I'm contemplating two options.
First, starting hand wave getting the ship fixed and having the characters back turned to Bilgewater and maybe come back to it sometime in the future with more concrete reasoning than the DM "They'll love this!" with more thought of hooks to apply and move on to the Saltmarsh campaign (For those wondering, much scaling for the first few modules, but I digress). This would make me cancel the Sunday game so I can ramp up on Saltmarsh and the first adventure. (Which I thought I had time to work on using Bilgewater as a buffer, again, but I digress)
Second, and this is what my friend suggested to "Keep going. Give it another session to see how things play out with what you know now maybe you have enough time to revamp things." While it's a sound suggestion not to give up after one session it also makes me nervous because I do not want another repeat of what happened before even with some changes. I watch Matt C.'s "Chase Up a Tree" video and I understand what he is saying so I have some ideas I could include in the game on Sunday. If things do fall flat again early in the game, then I know it's time to move on and put the notes in a folder for another time (maybe) and start option one.
Have an NPC barge into their room looking for help with the kind of problem that the players can't usually refuse while offering them some reward ... in this case a bit of coin seems likely since they are hard up for it.
e.g. "A young man hammers on the door, pleading that they let him in and listen to him" He noticed them getting off the ship, not talking to the folks in town, and figures that they might actually be good people since they don't seem to have any local contacts and are keeping to themselves. They look much more capable that him. His sister has been taken by a slaver band likely for use in "unsavory business". The weak in a pirate town are preyed on by many. He can't let this pass. He needs help to rescue his sister. The characters are his only hope since he knows he can't trust anyone else with contacts in the town.
This may not be the intro to the town you had in mind but you have a party of characters that is not apparently comfortable in an evil town, doesn't have resources to spend, and doesn't want to move out of their comfort zone.
During the quest, have the characters encounter both bad and good NPCs. Maybe even one or two slavers talk to them or look the other way during the rescue - they don't approve of the actions of the higher ups but it is work and they don't want to become a victim themselves. Try to show the characters that even a town like Bilgewater has a wide range of people with different beliefs. Not all the merchants are evil, they aren't all bad though there is a greater proportion of lawlessness than other towns. Also, define what the laws actually are and if there is any enforcement.
Anyway, some sort of quest is the best way to get them to engage with the town and then use that engagement to fix their perceptions of how the town works so that they aren't as hesitant to engage with it. (It may not work - you may need additional quests to pry them out of the hotel room but with a town like this are tons of side quests that can happen).
But if this is happening, it means that you didn't make it interesting enough for the players, or hadn't considered what they want out of the game.
This is perhaps true, but it is also the case, as I said several posts up, the player has a responsibility to find every possible way to get their character to accept whatever plot the DM has put in front of them. Players have got to cooperate with the DM on this or they run the risk of frustrating the DM to the point where he/she just gives up and says "I'm done." And that is of benefit to no one.
Cooperate yes. Bend their character over backwards to engage with content that the character wouldn't touch. No. ... at least not in my opinion. As you said, it is a cooperative game, the DM provides content and adjudicates interactions while the characters play their roles and decide how they interact with the content. Cooperation is two way.
In the present case, staying in the room until the ship is repaired, especially since they have no funds, might actually be the smart character move. The city is likely dangerous, filled with pirates, and they are on some other mission that they do not want to delay by getting arrested or killed roaming a strange town for "fun". Depending on the experience of the players they may not recognize the DM hinting or encouraging them to get out and explore and even if they do notice, if it still makes far more sense to the characters to stay in their rooms then that is really what the characters should do. The DM needs to provide the circumstances and motivation that drive the engagement with the content. Sometimes this is just creating the sandbox, other times it needs more direct interventions.
The player's one job, only job, in an RPG, is to make sure to have a character who can be relied upon to be a protagonist -- to go on whatever quest(s) the DM provides. If, as a player, you're going to claim the quests the DM has, out of the goodness of his/her heart, come up with for you, are "not interesting enough," then pick up a DM screen and make up the quests yourself. Otherwise, you find a way to make that character go on quests. It's literally the one job a player has at the table, other than not cheating.
Nope. The players job is to play, to role play. If a player creates a character that doesn't play well with others this needs to be resolved in session 0. Why are these characters together, working with each other, what are their motivations and goals. However, the characters do NOT need to "go on whatever quest(s) the DM provides" - it is up to the DM to ensure that the content makes sense for the characters in their current circumstances. "Build it and they will come" only works in the movies. In real life and role playing games, the players need to figure out and understand why the characters choose to act the way they do.
I have experienced this myself, having offered them free-roaming towns, fast paced plot driven adventures, and everything in between, and one player even stated that their character goal was to settle down somewhere quiet.
Yup, and as you say, this is someone the DM needs to have a talk with, because not just D&D but no RPG on earth is designed around RPing characters who settle down somewhere quiet and take up knitting or something.
The players in a D&D game, or any RPG, need to make sure that their character has some reason to go on the sorts of quest, adventures, and the like, that the game is about. In Call of Cthulhu, for instance, you are, for lack of a better term, "paranormal investigator." Whatever character you made up had better be at least marginally interested in investigating things, or you're in the wrong game. And in D&D you make up an adventurer who goes on some type of adventurers, whether they are city-based faction/diplomacy adventures or crypt/dungeon crawling or seven-seas swashbuckling. "I want to settle down and grow turnips" is not an acceptable character motivation. Any player who makes up such a character is not cooperating -- again, as I pointed out above, this is a cooperative game.
Living a quiet life is certainly a good long term character motivation. Frodo, Sam, Pippin and all the other halflings had this as their long term goal. Sitting in a pub eating good food, drinking good ale after a good day's work and some fun was the actual long term goal for some of these characters. However, for a role playing game, there is something that prevents them from persuing this goal right now. It is the plot, the events in the world, the reasons WHY the character just doesn't go home and settle down. The DM and the player need to know why the character isn't at home growing turnips now even if that is what they really want to do - for some reason they are choosing to do otherwise.
But you have to offer them a variety of motivating hooks to get them moving, and in this particular case, I don't see those from the notes the OP provided.
This is easy to say, and maybe easy to do for some DMs. It's not always easy to do for new DMs. And players, realizing they have a new DM, should frigging understand that and give the DM a break by cooperating with whatever ideas the DM has come up with. Or else, as I said above, pull out the DM screen if they're so good at coming up with different hooks, and do the DMing themselves.
This is part of learning to be a DM. What content works for some characters and what doesn't. However, when you have a new DM it is often just best to go with the storyline and take comments offline and out of session when there are logical inconsistencies but it still doesn't force your character to participate in something that makes no sense for them. (There was a recent thread where a good party was tasked with doing chores for evil creatures that most of the characters would NEVER undertake - that is a plot line that doesn't fit the characters in play and is probably doomed to failure - the players just can't go along with it because their characters never would - no matter how cool the DM seems to think it is).
I have a friend who is playing Waterdeep on R20 with a bunch of strangers, including the DM -- he didn't know any of them when they started, although they've been going a couple of months now so I guess they know each other. Yesterday while telling me about it, he complained that the DM, whom he admits is new and this may be the DM's first adventure -- this DM seems (my friend is guessing) to be just "running Waterdeep straight" as written. The DM did not, grumbled my friend, come up with unique, individualized hooks for each character that relate to that character's background and motivations, to get these characters uniquely interested in the Waterdeep storyline. He's running it more like, for lack of a better term, a "jobs board" system.
And I told my friend the same thing I just said here -- You know it's a new-ish DM. You know it is a published adventure. It is unfair to expect this DM to take a published adventure and, as a new DM (I repeat) customize it individually for each character. I said, yes, sure, a Matt Coleville or Matt Mercer would be able to do that, and probably would do that. But you can't expect any DM, let alone a new one, to be like the Matts. These are very high demands, and I don't think it is fair for players to demand this of their DMs. He admitted this was true, and just said wistfully he wishes there were more of these "hooks" into their backgrounds.
Honestly, I don't think you can expect a new or experience DM to customize the campaign to their characters. If they are running something homebrew ... sure ... but to be honest, I currently run published content on Roll20 for friends solely because the prep time to do home brewed material is far more time than work, family and other activities currently allow. I can spend 30 minutes reading the gist of the upcoming content, use the maps and content I've bought on Roll20 to efficiently run the module and it keeps prep time to a manageable level for me. Bottom line is that there is nothing wrong with intrinsically running published content straight. If the DM wants to and has some ideas they can adlib some additional character hooks but it shouldn't be expected.
But you can't expect this or demand it of a DM. If the DM can pull it off, great. But if not... It's hard enough to just freaking run an adventure that you came up with, let alone trying to gracefully make 17 different types of hooks so that each character has multiple individualized reasons to go on each quest.
The real question is, do these folks want to play D&D, or not? If they do, then they should play it... not dig in their heels and refuse to go on a quest unless the quest takes them to dinner and a movie and buys them a pearl necklace....
Bottom line is that the game is cooperative and it is up to both the DM and players. Clearing, in this case, with an experienced DM involved, they created some very cool content and forgot that they are the only one who can see it. This left the players with limited motivation to go out and explore the town, especially since, from their perspective, this was an unplanned stopover on their way somewhere else.
Anyway, I agree that players do need to have an open mind but a DM can't expect them to automatically run out and jump into absolutely anything unless that would be in character.
On the bright side (for me at least lol) it's nice to know that even experienced DMs have this happen! I put a travelling caravan of actors on the road to Phandelver and had to give up on the fact that... the PCs didn't care. I assumed that it was 'my bad' as a new DM, too much RP, not enough hack and slash.
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This is true but still... it is rather heartbreaking as a DM to have to recycle stuff here and there that you had prepped for this great adventure and the players were like, "Nah."
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.
Looking at what you had planned, there is no adventure hook there for a player other than side-quests to earn money.
You are envisaging the characters as 'odd-job' people, willing to go and do someone else's dirty work for a measly 200gp. The type of PC I play wouldn't be up for any of the jobs that you've put on offer. As a player, I am always focused on the main storyline; I don't really have much interest in going around doing the odd side quest just for some gold and xp. Typically I have a focus, and my characters want to get it done. Unless you really engage my emotions with wanting to help someone out - none of those side quests seem interesting to me. But then, I typically play a Good aligned character, and other players may enjoy taking odd-job work. But is that really satisfying?
I would suggest talking to your players about what they want and what focuses them on tasks in the game. I think that you have envisaged this as a bit like a video game MMORPG quest hub, where the characters will want to arrive and clear out all the quests before moving on. But for me, none of this sounds like it has any focus on the main storyline. What is enticing about these ideas outside of earning money/xp? Neither of those would motivate me.
When I say it's an error in DM'ing, it's an error in that you planned a whole ton of stuff that you were excited about, but didn't consider what the players actually want to do. Some players want to be free to explore areas and basically just be mercenaries, but others (like me) want a powerful epic storyline to drive them forward.
My best advice is: find a way to send them back towards this location in the future, having powered up the encounters if the players also levelled up, but don't treat the players like they will want to just run around being someone's lackspittle (picking up a cargo of yeti hides? Why would adventurers opt to do that?). Throw an exciting, dynamic storyline at them instead and they're more likely to engage.
Just a couple of comments. I think this kind of situation is very common. DM prepares material for a sandbox and the PCs make decisions that don't follow the script and don't engage with the content the way the DM was imagining. If the DM has put a lot of effort into the content (or even if they haven't), the DM can feel let down when the players decide not to engage with the surrounding world.
However, I've usually found this situation develops when the DM looks at the exciting wonderful world from their perspective and not from the character perspective.
In this case, the ship they are on needs repairs and puts into a pirate port. At least one of the characters is likely lawful good and is (probably justifiably) suspicious of such a hive of scum and villainy. The characters may also have a strong motivation to follow whatever quest has been disrupted by this stop for repairs. The players may feel like they want to "get on with the adventure" and the fastest way to do so in game terms is to stay in their rooms and not get kidnapped/distracted onto a side quest/find someone who needs their help and distract them from whatever they were "really" supposed to be doing. Keep in mind that the players have NO idea what the DM has planned and all they can see and roleplay is the world from their character perspective.
Yes, in an ideal world, the players might recognize that the DM really wants them to explore this place but this might be completely out of character for some of the characters in the party. The chaotic neutral rogue might fit right in but the lawful good paladin might decide that staying in the inn would be safer than seeing the town and feeling that they had to take action against the criminality and evil present - how could the character live with themselves if they found the slave market of the pirate town and didn't do something to free the slaves even if it could cost them their lives?
One way to ensure that the players explore the content is to give them a task before they get there that forces them to engage with it. Perhaps the captain asks/tells the characters to arrange for certain supplies and deliver a letter to a local contact for them. Arranging for supplies forces the character to engage with the shopping and once there the DM can likely tempt them into at least taking a look at what is available. The letter could be delivered to someone at the casino. Some of the characters might find those activities interesting. However, other characters might just find the whole place uncomfortable - in that case they may need a spontaneous quest to rescue someone or recover something for someone who needs help. You know the characters but you need to put the hooks into your intended content early enough that the characters are motivated to do what you want them to do in the case where they may decide not to engage spontaneously. One thing to keep in mind though is that if the characters are already on a quest, they may be reluctant to follow up on side quests that could delay them.
But if this is happening, it means that you didn't make it interesting enough for the players, or hadn't considered what they want out of the game.
Rather than despair that the players somehow didn't do the thing you wanted, ask yourself why they made the choices that they made, and what you could do differently to motivate them.
I will note that it is possible for some players to want nothing. I have experienced this myself, having offered them free-roaming towns, fast paced plot driven adventures, and everything in between, and one player even stated that their character goal was to settle down somewhere quiet. If you have those players, unfortunately, you need to have a conversation with them and advise them that D&D is a high fantasy adventure game and there is nothing fun for the DM in running a simulation of Animal Crossing. Sometimes it's a two way street, and the players need to appreciate that the DM spends a lot of time planning the game. But you have to offer them a variety of motivating hooks to get them moving, and in this particular case, I don't see those from the notes the OP provided.
This is perhaps true, but it is also the case, as I said several posts up, the player has a responsibility to find every possible way to get their character to accept whatever plot the DM has put in front of them. Players have got to cooperate with the DM on this or they run the risk of frustrating the DM to the point where he/she just gives up and says "I'm done." And that is of benefit to no one.
The player's one job, only job, in an RPG, is to make sure to have a character who can be relied upon to be a protagonist -- to go on whatever quest(s) the DM provides. If, as a player, you're going to claim the quests the DM has, out of the goodness of his/her heart, come up with for you, are "not interesting enough," then pick up a DM screen and make up the quests yourself. Otherwise, you find a way to make that character go on quests. It's literally the one job a player has at the table, other than not cheating.
Yup, and as you say, this is someone the DM needs to have a talk with, because not just D&D but no RPG on earth is designed around RPing characters who settle down somewhere quiet and take up knitting or something.
The players in a D&D game, or any RPG, need to make sure that their character has some reason to go on the sorts of quest, adventures, and the like, that the game is about. In Call of Cthulhu, for instance, you are, for lack of a better term, "paranormal investigator." Whatever character you made up had better be at least marginally interested in investigating things, or you're in the wrong game. And in D&D you make up an adventurer who goes on some type of adventurers, whether they are city-based faction/diplomacy adventures or crypt/dungeon crawling or seven-seas swashbuckling. "I want to settle down and grow turnips" is not an acceptable character motivation. Any player who makes up such a character is not cooperating -- again, as I pointed out above, this is a cooperative game.
This is easy to say, and maybe easy to do for some DMs. It's not always easy to do for new DMs. And players, realizing they have a new DM, should frigging understand that and give the DM a break by cooperating with whatever ideas the DM has come up with. Or else, as I said above, pull out the DM screen if they're so good at coming up with different hooks, and do the DMing themselves.
I have a friend who is playing Waterdeep on R20 with a bunch of strangers, including the DM -- he didn't know any of them when they started, although they've been going a couple of months now so I guess they know each other. Yesterday while telling me about it, he complained that the DM, whom he admits is new and this may be the DM's first adventure -- this DM seems (my friend is guessing) to be just "running Waterdeep straight" as written. The DM did not, grumbled my friend, come up with unique, individualized hooks for each character that relate to that character's background and motivations, to get these characters uniquely interested in the Waterdeep storyline. He's running it more like, for lack of a better term, a "jobs board" system.
And I told my friend the same thing I just said here -- You know it's a new-ish DM. You know it is a published adventure. It is unfair to expect this DM to take a published adventure and, as a new DM (I repeat) customize it individually for each character. I said, yes, sure, a Matt Coleville or Matt Mercer would be able to do that, and probably would do that. But you can't expect any DM, let alone a new one, to be like the Matts. These are very high demands, and I don't think it is fair for players to demand this of their DMs. He admitted this was true, and just said wistfully he wishes there were more of these "hooks" into their backgrounds.
But you can't expect this or demand it of a DM. If the DM can pull it off, great. But if not... It's hard enough to just freaking run an adventure that you came up with, let alone trying to gracefully make 17 different types of hooks so that each character has multiple individualized reasons to go on each quest.
The real question is, do these folks want to play D&D, or not? If they do, then they should play it... not dig in their heels and refuse to go on a quest unless the quest takes them to dinner and a movie and buys them a pearl necklace....
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.
Talking about “recycling,” this is a portion of another post I made recently, but I think it applies here too:
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I think a great many epic adventures start as "boring" mercenary work. I could be wrong but if a GM lets you know you are in an epic adventure with legendary consequences then she might be doing you a disservice.
I suppose you could start your campaign telling the players, "Hey guys, you suck right now but in the near future you will save a city from internal strife while fighting off an undead horde! And that will be the least of your accolades. You will then take on the role of emissaries to a foreign dimension and only you will be able to save the planet from ultimate destruction!"
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
For the OP, don't worry too much. Since the players didn't jump at the encounters you presented, you can save them for another time and place.
Others have suggested that you give the PCs a reason to engage and I can't agree more. Whatever it is that will motivate them, give them that. Yes, a good player will recognize your hooks and play along with your effort but sometimes you need to sink the ship around them.
If they refuse to leave the house, set the house on fire.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
You are right that there is a need for cooperation, but I don't think we're talking about an inexperienced DM here. The players have a ship and have fought a hydra, putting them around level 7+ at a guess. This is definitely a collaborative game - we're all making the story together, even if the DM is doing the majority of the out of game work.
However, I'm going to say that I do not agree that the characters should feel obligated to take things that are offered to them once they are past a certain level, for a number of reasons. At level 1, you damn well better take the quest - but the nature of what that might possibly involve should have been discussed in session zero. However, we're talking here about characters who have developed session by session for a period of weeks or months, and from what the OP said, nobody at this table is unfamiliar with how D&D works.
The key problem, as I said, is that the DM was not offering the players anything that their characters would want to do. It's not reasonable to expect a LG character to suddenly abandon their morals and do what the DM asks just because the DM suggests it. Where is the room for actual RP in that? This can be taken to crazy extremes and if I'm honest, I think that a good player - even playing LG - would be able to come up with a reason to go into a pirate den. Maybe there's a captive there who could use my help, right? But no PC I've ever created would have taken a job delivering some hides/getting money out of someone. I don't play a thug, a pimp, a delivery person, or a bailiff. However, a quick thinking DM can usually think of something that enables the PC to be motivated to go do it. To take it to the extreme extrapolation, if the DM says "A Night Hag approaches and asks you to help gather children for her to eat" then you don't have to do that. If the DM says "The captain of the guard tells you he wants you to join the guard" then your Chaotic rogue does not have to do that. The characters need to do things that are reasonable to expect of them - e.g. there is a prisoner in the orc camp, you should probably release them.
I think overall the OP has experienced all of the following in this situation:
It's probably worth having a conversation with all of the players, and point out to them that they are forcing you into railroad adventures. Talk to them about it, and advise them that if they ever want to find themselves in a free-roaming sandbox again, they need to cooperate with the DM a little. It may be that they just want railroading, but I doubt it. Sometimes players get combative with the DM for weird reasons.
To empathise with the OP, here is some really weird behaviour I once had from a player who was also a DM for a campaign I was in. He was playing a level 6 paladin/1 hexblade, and was generally CG or NG. I set up an ambush, with a really detailed, animated map on Roll20. There were 2 types of custom assassin monsters, and 2 NPCs with full stat blocks. In the middle of the glade, an extraplanar wagon had crashed, and spilling from it was an old friend of the players, who had saved their butts before. My paladin player didn't want to fight. He had decided his PC was a pacifist now, I think. He had given away his +1 Greatsword. None of it made any sense. The encounter was set up for the PCs to go into the wagon (Tardis style bigger on the inside) and get it started whilst the rest of the group held off the assassins... And my pala player just flat out refused to do anything reasonable. Wouldn't even feed the NPC a healing potion when he went down (and they needed him to pilot the magic wagon). None of it made sense and I was gutted. The encounter had taken about 6 hours to build, with custom tokens, playtesting the damage outputs, special sheets... That campaign folded up 3 sessions later when I'd had enough of the pacifist character and another character who wanted to live in a cave and not adventure. So I do feel your pain on this.
I completely agree with you. I am not arguing that the PCs should accept a ridiculous quest that is out of character.
And I don't necessarily think that the PCs in the original story here, needed to go on any specific quest the DM had set out for them. But "not going on the quest the DM has prepared" is not the same thing as "We hide in our hotel room not doing anything at all in the city." What DM, no matter what material you have created, would expect a team of level 7 D&D characters to cower in their hotel room? That's like a DM of a modern-day Savage Worlds campaign bringing the characters to Las Vegas, and since "none of them gamble" they hide in their room. There are lots of other things they could possibly do in Vegas other than gambling. They could take in a show. They could go on some rides. They could sight see. They could go out and have dinner at an expensive restaurant. None of those things is "accepting the quest to go gambling," none would violate their "Lawful Good" nature, but it would still be making use of the setting the DM has worked to make.
To use an example from my world -- it is the Roman Empire. The PCs have not been to Rome yet, but they will go eventually... probably in another couple of adventures (first they have to get back from the Astral Plane, which they blundered into a couple of sessions ago, and then reach a port, and then reach Ostia, the port of Rome, and then Rome... so it will be a while). I have a map made up with lots of detail and many different places they could explore. I don't expect them to explore them all. But one thing I will definitely have "going on" when the players are there, is the games at the Coliseum. Now, those games are violent and by modern standards (well, any standards, really) unethical. Many of the PCs are Good (alignment) -- maybe they won't want to go watch these brutal games. Maybe none of the party goes. They just hear the cheering in the background. And that's OK -- they don't need to go to the games. (This is like not accepting a quest of the DM, kind of, although it's not a quest, at least not on purpose -- lots of things can turn into quests by accident without the DM intending them to...)
However, them saying "We don't condone the violence of these games and won't go watch them" is one thing. Them saying, "Now that we are in Rome, we're going to hide in our hotel room until we leave" would be an entirely different story.
The players in the original story, and the Paladin in yours, weren't rejecting an individual quest. They were refusing to play D&D. Because although you can have a great D&D session just sitting in an inn room RPing (my players did it just a few sessions ago and it was fun), these players weren't doing this just to have a chance to RP with each other. They were refusing to engage with the content the DM had made. And you really shouldn't do that.
It is incumbent upon the players to find a way to get their character as involved as possible in the story. Your Pacifist Paladin could have worked -- if he had focused on buffing and healing his fellow party members but refused to personally do any damage, yup, that is a viable character. If he steps in front of swords to take blows for the party, but won't lift his own sword, yup, you can play that kind of character in D&D. But if he's just going to sit on a 3-legged stool sipping tea watching the battle not doing anything, while the rest of the party is adventuring, no, you can't do that. It's not a viable way to play D&D.
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.
The Players do have an obligation under the Social Contract to "play the game" - cowering in the hotel room wasn't great Player behavior.
However, the GM has an obligation to present a game the Players will engage with, as well. This situation appears to have occurred because the GM made the error - which many of us have - that the setting and lore are sufficiently interesting in and of themselves to engage with. That is true for some Players - but I believe those Players are in the minority ( I've not created or seen any polls - I don't actually have data ).
When the action lags, throw a complication into the stewpot to kickstart the action.
To go back the Vegas example, the GM can prompt the Players with multiple hooks: an ad for the show comes on the TV in their hotel room, a loud flashy tour bus pulls by on the street with a hawker on a loudspeaker, there could be a brochure for the best rides in Vegas in their hotel room, etc.
If the Party in the OP came to the pirate town for a reason, have something related to that reason happen in the town.
There's something to be said for having multiple hooks, and multiple simultaneous adventure arcs in play at any given time.
The Matt Coleville concept of "chasing them up a tree" isn't forcing the Players to take any particular hook - quite - it's just setting the cost of not engaging at a price the Characters don't want to pay. The Ranger contracts a deadly magical disease. The Party doesn't need to engage with that hook, and they're not forced to in that they are not teleported instantly to the dungeon that contains the cure. They could just let the Ranger die.
Of course, a clever Player can engage any hook on their own terms, and twist it to an outcome that they do want: "A Night Hag approaches and asks you to help gather children for her to eat", so the Paladin engages with the hook in an attempt to rescue the previously gathered children, protect the children that the hag plans to target, and defeat her vile plans.
"The captain of the guard tells you he wants you to join the guard", OK - my Ranger/Rogue might buy the Captain a beer in the local tavern and find out why. Maybe, if the Captain has a need to temporarily swell the ranks of the guard because of an unusual event or situation, me and my Party can "sub-contract" out to the guard to cover the extra security needs, etc.
As I've said before, swallowing the hook, or shoving the Characters onto it ( chasing them up the tree ) doesn't have to be railroading, if you let the Players solve the dilemma presented by the Adventure hook in their own way.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Empathy, hugs, pint of ice cream...? (just laughing to myself, it's almost like spending months planning a great date night and then your date just wants to stay in and watch tv?)
I'm brand new at DMing, so I'm making mistakes all over the place. At least starting on Play by Post forum, I can 'sleep on it' to figure out to get things back on track, look up rules etc. and I'm finally finding all the great advice and links on this forum.
The only thing I can think to offer is from the PC point of view. PCing in a 4 hour weekly game with way more experienced players, I get a bit tongue tied and bow to the louder voices sometimes. Like when everyone wanted to jump down a giant hole before exploring the rest of a cave... I wanted to explore but went with the group. We missed a lot of potential help, we learned later. The DM was shaking his head a lot that session.
So keep an ear out for the quieter PC who would be easier to pull in the direction the DM wants to go perhaps?
There has been some great feedback here as I see valid points that I had not considered and NEED to remember next time I'm developing my game.
Some assumptions I should correct or expound on:
1) The party is five 5th level characters. (Warlock, Wizard, Monk, Ranger, and Rogue)
2) I believe I mentioned this before but the speechmaker was a Chaotic Good Warlock. There is no Paladin or Lawful Good characters in this party.
3) While not in the notes I had planned specific events for each player so I had some hooks, but upon reflection, with everyone help here (Thanks!) where my mistake was as things were falling apart not meeting what I had in my mind I sort of never hooked them in, I was rationalizing that the NPC (Captain, Tavern Owner, Flophouse Manager) would get them moving in the right direction. But I agree with the feedback on the Hooks, that I did a poor job putting them out in the game for the characters.
4) The players do want to play, I just missed the mark by a large margin in the last session.
While I don't think it was prevailing advice here I ended up talking to one of the players on the side last night about the last session as he was the one who was the most open to explore and do the more difficult jobs. He gave me the standard "We had fun" response when I ask what he thought of the session. I explained what my concern was and taking some of the feedback from here and presented to him how I felt. He agreed that the Warlock "Pirate Town Bad" speech came out of nowhere but it did suck other players in to follow him along. One point my friend made and it was the simplest explanation, "We don't have the gold/coin to spend." It's true. They are currently tight on gold because of their last spending spree and gold has been hard to come by (just how the adventure has been running.). Even the job boards were tight with money so how can I expect things to play out if they cannot spend money or earn enough to feel comfortable spending it when money is such a prevailing force in the town?
What Next:
For my next game, I'm contemplating two options.
First, starting hand wave getting the ship fixed and having the characters back turned to Bilgewater and maybe come back to it sometime in the future with more concrete reasoning than the DM "They'll love this!" with more thought of hooks to apply and move on to the Saltmarsh campaign (For those wondering, much scaling for the first few modules, but I digress). This would make me cancel the Sunday game so I can ramp up on Saltmarsh and the first adventure. (Which I thought I had time to work on using Bilgewater as a buffer, again, but I digress)
Second, and this is what my friend suggested to "Keep going. Give it another session to see how things play out with what you know now maybe you have enough time to revamp things." While it's a sound suggestion not to give up after one session it also makes me nervous because I do not want another repeat of what happened before even with some changes. I watch Matt C.'s "Chase Up a Tree" video and I understand what he is saying so I have some ideas I could include in the game on Sunday. If things do fall flat again early in the game, then I know it's time to move on and put the notes in a folder for another time (maybe) and start option one.
Have an NPC barge into their room looking for help with the kind of problem that the players can't usually refuse while offering them some reward ... in this case a bit of coin seems likely since they are hard up for it.
e.g. "A young man hammers on the door, pleading that they let him in and listen to him" He noticed them getting off the ship, not talking to the folks in town, and figures that they might actually be good people since they don't seem to have any local contacts and are keeping to themselves. They look much more capable that him. His sister has been taken by a slaver band likely for use in "unsavory business". The weak in a pirate town are preyed on by many. He can't let this pass. He needs help to rescue his sister. The characters are his only hope since he knows he can't trust anyone else with contacts in the town.
This may not be the intro to the town you had in mind but you have a party of characters that is not apparently comfortable in an evil town, doesn't have resources to spend, and doesn't want to move out of their comfort zone.
During the quest, have the characters encounter both bad and good NPCs. Maybe even one or two slavers talk to them or look the other way during the rescue - they don't approve of the actions of the higher ups but it is work and they don't want to become a victim themselves. Try to show the characters that even a town like Bilgewater has a wide range of people with different beliefs. Not all the merchants are evil, they aren't all bad though there is a greater proportion of lawlessness than other towns. Also, define what the laws actually are and if there is any enforcement.
Anyway, some sort of quest is the best way to get them to engage with the town and then use that engagement to fix their perceptions of how the town works so that they aren't as hesitant to engage with it. (It may not work - you may need additional quests to pry them out of the hotel room but with a town like this are tons of side quests that can happen).
Cooperate yes. Bend their character over backwards to engage with content that the character wouldn't touch. No. ... at least not in my opinion. As you said, it is a cooperative game, the DM provides content and adjudicates interactions while the characters play their roles and decide how they interact with the content. Cooperation is two way.
In the present case, staying in the room until the ship is repaired, especially since they have no funds, might actually be the smart character move. The city is likely dangerous, filled with pirates, and they are on some other mission that they do not want to delay by getting arrested or killed roaming a strange town for "fun". Depending on the experience of the players they may not recognize the DM hinting or encouraging them to get out and explore and even if they do notice, if it still makes far more sense to the characters to stay in their rooms then that is really what the characters should do. The DM needs to provide the circumstances and motivation that drive the engagement with the content. Sometimes this is just creating the sandbox, other times it needs more direct interventions.
Nope. The players job is to play, to role play. If a player creates a character that doesn't play well with others this needs to be resolved in session 0. Why are these characters together, working with each other, what are their motivations and goals. However, the characters do NOT need to "go on whatever quest(s) the DM provides" - it is up to the DM to ensure that the content makes sense for the characters in their current circumstances. "Build it and they will come" only works in the movies. In real life and role playing games, the players need to figure out and understand why the characters choose to act the way they do.
Living a quiet life is certainly a good long term character motivation. Frodo, Sam, Pippin and all the other halflings had this as their long term goal. Sitting in a pub eating good food, drinking good ale after a good day's work and some fun was the actual long term goal for some of these characters. However, for a role playing game, there is something that prevents them from persuing this goal right now. It is the plot, the events in the world, the reasons WHY the character just doesn't go home and settle down. The DM and the player need to know why the character isn't at home growing turnips now even if that is what they really want to do - for some reason they are choosing to do otherwise.
This is part of learning to be a DM. What content works for some characters and what doesn't. However, when you have a new DM it is often just best to go with the storyline and take comments offline and out of session when there are logical inconsistencies but it still doesn't force your character to participate in something that makes no sense for them. (There was a recent thread where a good party was tasked with doing chores for evil creatures that most of the characters would NEVER undertake - that is a plot line that doesn't fit the characters in play and is probably doomed to failure - the players just can't go along with it because their characters never would - no matter how cool the DM seems to think it is).
Honestly, I don't think you can expect a new or experience DM to customize the campaign to their characters. If they are running something homebrew ... sure ... but to be honest, I currently run published content on Roll20 for friends solely because the prep time to do home brewed material is far more time than work, family and other activities currently allow. I can spend 30 minutes reading the gist of the upcoming content, use the maps and content I've bought on Roll20 to efficiently run the module and it keeps prep time to a manageable level for me. Bottom line is that there is nothing wrong with intrinsically running published content straight. If the DM wants to and has some ideas they can adlib some additional character hooks but it shouldn't be expected.
Bottom line is that the game is cooperative and it is up to both the DM and players. Clearing, in this case, with an experienced DM involved, they created some very cool content and forgot that they are the only one who can see it. This left the players with limited motivation to go out and explore the town, especially since, from their perspective, this was an unplanned stopover on their way somewhere else.
Anyway, I agree that players do need to have an open mind but a DM can't expect them to automatically run out and jump into absolutely anything unless that would be in character.
On the bright side (for me at least lol) it's nice to know that even experienced DMs have this happen! I put a travelling caravan of actors on the road to Phandelver and had to give up on the fact that... the PCs didn't care. I assumed that it was 'my bad' as a new DM, too much RP, not enough hack and slash.