Hooks
I feel for Quest Giver. Dude only wants to help adventurers reach their full potential through questing… The ungrateful bastards. Don’t get me wrong here, guys. Player agency is cool and all, but at some point you’ve got to accept the job if you want to go on the adventure.
Here’s the scenario I’m imagining. Suppose you’ve set up a murder mystery scenario. The opening scene concludes a little something like this:
“Alright guys. The Duke’s body lies dead on the floor. The nobles eye one another distrustfully. Everyone knows that someone in that room is a cold-blooded killer. What do you do?”
“I go back to town and see if there are any other quests on the bulletin board.”
This is called “rejecting the premise,” and depending on style and group dynamics it can be more or less acceptable. Are you running a sandboxy game without a lot of overarching structure? Maybe you’re one of those gamers that compulsively shouts “play to find out what happens” when someone asks what you want on your pizza. If so, then player decisions like the above are within the bounds of good gaming. If you’re on the other end of the spectrum and playing in a published module however, rejecting that premise makes you a bit of a dick.
This all has to do with player expectations and the social contract. You’ve got to understand when you sit down to play where the story is coming from. Are the players generating it through their shenanigans, or are they only embellishing a GM’s outline? In terms of concrete examples, are you going to fight against Strahd and eventually storm Castle Ravenloft (the path the module expects) or accept his offer and become his evil generals (subverting the expected storyline). Both can make for fun games, but you’re setting yourself up for frustration if you’re trying to subvert when the guy behind the screen wants to play it straight. As in so many parts of this hobby, Session Zero is your friend.
Question of the day then. Have you ever seen these two styles clash at the table? Have you witnessed players refusing a quest despite a GM’s best efforts? Conversely, have you seen a truly railroady GM refuse even the slightest variationg from his script? Did the game survive the conflict of opinions? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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While our games tend to go off the rails a decent bit, all of the players understand we shouldn’t go too far as too destroy any chance of having a functional game, and our dm ks pretty flexible, so we don’t typically have problems like this except for when we break the railroad on accident, such as by having a arcane eye map us a way to the final boss accidently 7 levels early, or having a permanent flying mount in a puzzle area in 5e, since with how much rarer flying is, they take it into account much less often in modules.
The one time we did smash the railroad too pieces on purpose was the time alex jones took over the water cult in elemental evil module, and while it made the dm a bit crazy, everyone agreed it was worth the hilarity, including the dm.
I like to think of Russian nesting dolls in this scenario. A module sets up a space for the game to happen. A GM personalizes it to the group. Players implicitly agree to act within those constraints. And counterintuitive as it may seem, those constraints can elicit creativity in much the same way that formal poetry elicits unexpected word combinations.
Ran into a bit of a problem like this when I joined a live game for Horde if the Dragon Queen. Didn’t know much beyond the fact that I know we’ll be fighting a lot of dragon’s so I figured what the hey, let’s hop right in. Party and I were escorting a caravan when we noticed the village we’re suppose to hit up was, surprise surprise, attacked by a dragon. Now we were all level one and fresh out of character creation; we haven’t even really gotten to know one another yet and there was the looming threat of a dragon less then a mile away.
Being an orcish barbarian I was all for it. The Paladin couldn’t leave the villagers helpless and the ranger actually lived in that village, so they wanted to help. The bard and Druid were… Less eager. They knew they wouldn’t stand a chance at level 1 against the dragon. And it seemed like the dragon brought friends too; a whole army of them. A small group of fresh faced adventures vs a dragon and his bandit army. Sufficient to say, the odds were against us.
Now if this was a sandbox I would have agreed with the bard; were in way over our heads if we try to take on so many bandits, let alone the dragon. However I also knew that this game was called Horde if the Dragon Queen, and it was no coincidence that we ran across a dragon here. We were obviously suppose to go and help this village against all odds and logic.
I imagine that you could try and escape the opening battles only to be caught up in “there’s no way out” type situations. Either that or moral imperatives like, “You can try to sneak away, but a small group of kobolds across the square is about to stumble over some hiding children.” I dunno… Even that seems railroady. Some people think that the mindset of “we were supposed to” is anathema in a “you can do anything you want” fantasy adventure.
How did you guys handle it?
The Druid eventually came around to it when it was made clear that the dragon was under the commands of a higher power (he’s the type of Druid who only gets involved in “big things that subvert natural order), while the bard remained finicky but did go out f her way to at least give us the best possible plans to survive a given situation, since most of us were pretty gung-ho about the whole dragon slaying business.
The GM went out of their way to set up a hook. You’re being an asshole if they say no.
That said, it’s on the GM to give you a hook that makes sense for the character.
If you’re all various shades of Good, and you get offered a quest by the Evil Empire TM to capture the leadership of the Heroic rebels TM so they can be tortured to death, the GM has no right to be surprised/complain when you turn it down.
I think the GM is expecting the players to try and undermine that quest. That sort of manipulation can be a fun tool for GMs to noodle with. Having a rude NPC quest giver, a suspicious one, or absentee ones can set PCs up to about face when they uncover new information and context about their employers or quarry. Is good times when it works.
So, I discovered that my GMing style is an issue in this sense recently and haven’t yet figured out quite the best way to fix it.
I heavily favor sandboxes.
I enjoy exploring the odd little interactions here and there, and heavily embroider out encounters if the players show any interest.
To me, railroading is the worst thing I could do.
So when my players all sit down and we’re pressed for time so we decide to do a little one-off module over the weekend as a side-quest break from the main campaign (I consider it pretty easy to do the minor tweaks necessary to fit a module into our homebrew world)….
I’ve never yet managed to have them finish the module as written. If they walk into a bar looking to gather rumors, there’s going to be more than just the rumors related to the sidequest that they hear. I mean, it’s a world! It has more going on in it than just the one quest they’re on! If they start to question the ‘crowd of witnesses’ some of the witnesses will give them the information they need, yes, but others are going to be useless, or are going to hit on them, or are going to try and sell them something, or….
if they get too far off, I can throw a few things at them to help get them back on track (runner who flirted with them earlier tries to curry favor with that PC by spilling the beans on a plot-relevant thing they’d just delivered, etc).
But if they get interested in something else, I just build that new thing up into a mini-quest/plotline and when they’ve just finished some dramatic something, I call it good for the night and reward them like that was the original quest.
They never even noticed for years, and all was fine….
Until recently one of my players got into PFS play and thought that they had “already played” a module. Since I don’t register stuff with PFS they were using a different character and hadn’t gotten ‘credit’ for it and agreed to play it again for that group with their new character, trying to keep the meta-gaming to a minimum.
And of course they had an ENTIRELY different experience.
Which, being a mature adult, they came to talk to me about.
I hadn’t realized it was a problem. >.<
So then the next session I had to bring it up with everyone and let them know that all those one-offs we’d done…. hadn’t been done as written, and we should have a discussion about whether this was okay with them or not, and…
the thing is, I don’t really know HOW to keep them on track without it being so obvious it breaks the atmosphere?
I mean, I have some great strengths as a DM but that is NOT ONE OF THEM. In fact it’s a glaring issue.
So we’re still kicking this dilemma around, since none of those picky bastards are willing to step up as DMs for the modules when we try and do one.
(A lot of the people I DM for also DM, but not that group)
Anyhow.
If any of YOU all have advice, it would be EXTREMELY HELPFUL and very immediately applicable for me!
I can’t see anything wrong with your current style at all. Why would you want to fix it? You and the players are writing a story, not reading one, and modules are only there to provide checkpoints to the author’s end. If you regard the checkpoints as gospel or only use them as a framework, neither is incorrect. And clearly your players very much prefer the way you’re doing things, don’t you think?
The reason for looking to fix it is that now that some of these players are trying to play with other people, they want to be able to use modules they’ve played as a point of common-experience among gamers who are otherwise strangers. If you make small-talk with someone at a party and discover you’ve seen the same movie, you can talk about that (briefly), get a read for the other person a little bit by hearing what they reacted to and how they reacted, etc. If you come across a gamer who has played the same module, you can talk about that (for longer than it took to play, practically!), and get a read for that other gamer by how they reacted to the scenarios, how they overcame the same challenges you faced, etc.
Once it was pointed out that this is a thing they were desirous of doing, the issue became clear to me.
I see their point.
As long as all we were considering was how much fun we had playing, there really WASN’T anything wrong with that style of play. But…. for this other purpose… it doesn’t work terribly well.
So that’s why I’m looking to modify it a little.
Does that make sense?
I’m more familiar with GMs having the opposite problem with modules: “I can’t seem to insert any of my own ideas. I hate just reading a by-the-numbers adventure at my PCs. Modules suck!” You clearly have talent as an improv GM, and that is something to be proud of. If your picky players want to run the adventure as written though, then you might try reading the module directly at your PCs. Make it obvious that you’re reading at them. Hold the book up and show them that they’re on the right path. Your adventures sound great, but there is something to be said for the sense that “we played through that one.” You don’t force them to go down a path, but you make it obvious which path “the module expects.”
Does that make any sense? If you’ve got a point where your PCs departed from the story completely maybe we could workshop ways you could have hinted at a particular path.
Hm, I like that idea of reading directly from the module when they’re on path.
That leaves it clear to them when they’re following the quest-as-written and when we’re going off on our own thing, without breaking the flow of play by actually stating it directly.
It might be a little odd because the phrasing of module writers doesn’t really match mine, but it shouldn’t be too jarring, hopefully.
Then it becomes their choice, and they know when they’re wandering off.
Thank you! I’m going to try that out, next time we do this. (probably end of the month, rate things are going)
Cheers! I made a big stink about the phrase “read or paraphrase the following” when I was writing about the Glass Cannon Podcasr play-through of “Battle of Bloodmarch Hill” for my MA thesis. Paraphrasing is an opportunity to personalize the experience for your players and make it specific to their characters. If that’s not what they want though, it’s an opportunity to remind them that they are on the rails and headed in the right direction.
Good luck with the shift in style, and happy gaming. 🙂
My group takes, or at least we try to take a middle path we have a road ahead but we travel it on our terms, while the DM allow it. But one good thing to do, in my prideful opinion, is that if the players don’t take the hook you can try with another hook. In the above example, they go to the town and in the board they see a reward for something that doesn’t have anything to do with the duke death, except that it does. That is how the umbrella quest work, you make the duke death the umbrella and the quest that the group find interesting the task of the quest. I not mean umbrella quest like in Skyrim, nor like Resident Evil, that is another Umbrella, i was thinking like in The Witcher. One big quest with like fifty task, each and everyone of them a quest in his own right.
Chris Perkins called this “the invisible railroad.” Page 75 over here:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/DM_Experience_2011.pdf
I tend to like the model quite a bit myself.
Yes, something like that. In that article he writes more about rerailing the campaign, i was thinking more of every path is the correct path. In The Witcher you have the mission of finding a criminal group called The Salamandra, that only quest guide you across all the game, five chapters complete. If i recall correctly in one quest you sneak in a Salamandra hideout, you discover that they are working with some mage and after that you chase a werewolf, it makes sense in context, the thing is, yes the mage has some connections with the criminal group and the werewolf has even more connections with them, just not the ones you are thinking. Then you need to help the werewolf with that days problems and put some magic detector across the city to find the wizard and then… wait wasn’t Gerard in some Salamandra hideout? Yes he was, and yes that little encounter leads to all of this, IIRC anyway. In the example of the death of the former Duke Killable III the friendly-one, the group can investigate another thing like some other criminal group or monster group, that group was the one that needed to take the assassins off the city, so the heroes has already progressed on the main quest even without knowing. Then with time they finally clash with the killer, some guy with a really weird metal mask and a switch-sword 🙂
Did you read the next article, “The Covenant of the Arcs,” just below the first? I think Perkins describes a way to do exactly the sort of thing you’re talking about in that one.
O_O
My reaction to your response.
Ready, i read it, yes something like that was what i was talking about. To continue with my Witcher example, in that game many thing are passing in the city of Vizima. You have the political instability of a king who is not in the city, the Salamandra bandits, the Scoia’tael vs The Flaming Rose Knights, the things that the professor stole for the witchers, and the kingdom princess has new old problems. So, pick you lost cause and enjoy the witchers life. Yes, “The Covenant of the Arcs” was what i was talking about. Next time, please tell be with articules i need to read, i am not full-time DM, or even part-time DM, great title for an anime anyways, but that little collection is very interesting thanks for the tip 🙂
Meh. I think they’re both relevant to the discussion. Just thought I’d throw ’em out there to show where I was coming from a bit.
For us it was never an issue because our we either were following a module, or if it was play-as-you-go, the DM said up front that if there was anything we wanted to do, then let him know in advance, so he has time to make it work.
I have heard stories of parties playing (as they put it) “screw the DM”
My favorite story was the time they decided to murder an retirement village… It turned out to be full of retired adventurers. They laughed while recounting how quickly they all died.
This was the same group who’s DM had a “Mysterious Voice”…
“You are in a cave. It is raining heavily outside in the storm”
“I’m gonna leave the cave!”
“You hear a mysterious voice saying ‘Do not leave the cave'”
“I leave anyways”
“Lightning strikes just outside the cave entrance, scorching the ground…”
“I’m gonna stay in the cave.”
They had some crazy and funny stories, like the rabid camel with cleave…
“Oak’s words echoed… This isn’t the time to use that!”
Well I have two different things to say for the question of the day, but neither are exactly 100% answering it.
So in the Curse of Strahd game I’m playing (Gee thanks for the spoilers btw! … Just kidding, having ANY knowledge of Ravenloft I knew those were at least the two most likely expected paths the module would expect people to take assuming it allowed for any others at all), we got into a situation where the GM had to clarify the intentions of the module. We were trying to deal with a certain group of enemies that just wouldn’t stay dead and there was nothing we could do about it…. but we didn’t actually know that for sure and were getting annoyed and worried the GM was being not so great to us. Fortunately they had the wisdom to step in and explain that yes, this was how the module was designed to play this out to give a feeling of hopeless frustration. Which is…. on one hand, they certainly nailed it. On the other hand I’m not 100% sure that’s a particularly good thing to design for. Sure it fits the concept of the setting but…. even if you know that, being aggravated and having no built in release valve combined with a possibility of beating your heads against what should be a mid-boss tier threat until your characters eventually die because you maybe didn’t realize you should stop doesn’t seem like the best idea for a D&D experience for absolutely everyone. I’m not saying it was “wrong” of them to make that experience. I’m just saying I’m not sure if it was wise for that experience to be a key part of one of their major modules. Unless maybe they had the foresight to include in the GM notes in the module to actually explain this to players if it seems like it’s going to make the game explode, but man I doubt that. I’m not generous enough to assume something like that.
The other thing I have is for my own game I’m running. It’s more or less a sandbox game… though I had Part 1 (which is about 5 quests long) start in an intended to be more or less on the rails section. My players were reasonably and expected to be annoyed/a bit frustrated with the fact that the starting situation was NPCs more or less telling them “Do what we want or be slave labor”. What I wasn’t expecting was for them to frequently get seriously upset that they couldn’t simply waltz out of that situation and keep acting like I would let them buck the entire premise. And then every time they were actually in a position to escape they’d make no effort to do so when earlier they were complaining about their inability to do so (while being actively watched and massively outnumbered in location they know little about). And then…loop back around to complaining about the situation again the next time they were back in a position where they couldn’t reasonably escape. It just makes me bang my head against the wall sometimes. Though personally I’m glad they’re just complaining and not making serious attempts at escape as I like the quests I have in Part 1 for them and if they did escape the entire location would be closed off to them forever afterwards which would be a shame. And yes, I have explained to them that I am not saying they can’t try (I just also tell them reasons their characters would be aware of certain ideas wouldn’t work and might get them killed) and that this is not a permanent situation and the most enjoyable way out is likely by going through, not trying to convince me they should be able to skip out without any good explanation in game for how or why that would occur.
(For some context here, the game moves at a glacially slow pace since sometimes I won’t get a post from a player that’s being waited on for over two weeks. We’re in the middle of Quest #2 right now. The game has been going on IRL for over 3 years. Thus putting in to context why the same issue of a single frustrating aspect of the game that is in the long view a temporary one would remain an issue in their minds long enough for it to come up repeatedly.)
For that second story you had, with the early part 1 quest(s)?
I think the context you’re missing which makes sense of that kind of player “inconsistency” is that what they want is not necessarily actually TO ESCAPE, but the possibility of escape.
They want the illusion of choice -that there’s the possibility that they can.
And as long as they have that illusion of choice, they don’t need to actually act on it and do anything about escaping to be able to enjoy the story again: because they have agency. They get to CHOOSE to ‘see how it plays out’ and stay in that situation.
When they don’t seem to have a chance at escape at all, now they don’t seem to have that option.
I don’t think they were so upset necessarily about the situation as in ‘we don’t like being here’ as they were upset about the situation as in ‘we don’t have a CHOICE about being here.’
Looked at that way, there is no illogic or inconsistency to their reactions.
Of course, I wasn’t actually there, so maybe that doesn’t fit your group at all. Just, as a DM, I would look at the way they complained when there wasn’t choice and were content when there was choice, and read it in that light.
Which means the simplest solution that I would take personally is exactly what you described, where you go meta-game and talk to the PLAYERS about options (“You CAN attempt an escape… but I really think that long-term your more enjoyable solution is through.”) so that rather than try and convince the characters, you talk to the people playing the characters and let them come up with their own motivations for said characters to make the choice that you as a DM and they as players have decided will make the best game.
Which you’d think would work for me in my own issue with the one-offs and going off-rails, except that if I break the flow of things enough to say, “Hey guys we’re off-module now” they all complain. So take everything I’m saying with a nice serving of salt, I guess.
I’m not sure whether this is the topic of today’s comic, but my players are great at coming up with shenanigans to mess up my storyline. It started with them at level 4 convincing a level 13 necromancer to surrender to the guars and confess to his crimes. Then, they mistook the goal of a second adventure and ran away from the evil noble’s city instead of preventing her starting a war with the dragons. (The players were fully aware of the war thing, to – they just decided to leave instead of doing anything). Now, they’ve gone to an unmapped war-infested territory (the same war that they failed to stop) and have convinced an ancient red dragon to take out the campaign’s BBEG.
Fortunately, I’ve adapted, and I’ve decided that the ancient red dragon will discover the BBEG’s plans and become the new BBEG.
Ancient red dragons: they are never your ally.
your user name is so PERFECT for what you are describing….
😀