The un-expected life at sea

[Dragonus45]

So in a recent first session of pathfinder that im running, one of the players decided to invest all of the gold he swindled into a boat, and run off from every last dangling plothook I had ready. There were a lot of them, I hadn't even gotten through half the dangling plot goodies I had. So he buys a boat. Normally I would block the choice for a bit till I could sink the hooks in. Like making new boats scarce, or let him buy it then make getting cargo and trade rather difficult. You know, just keep the party in the area a bit until I had a chance to stick them in the area by commitments and friendly npcs. The problem is the player buying the boat, a gnome bard, never really shows interest in the games we play unless he is running. Normally that’s not an issue, he’s such an epic dm of win that we usually want him to run. I don’t want to risk him losing interest in the game just for the sake of side stories and the like. The thing is the Plot (capitol P) doesn’t kick in till 5th level or so anyways. And I just because they left the area doesn't mean the story doesn't progress, it just means once it reaches the shore they will really wish they had stuck around. That is if the warforged doesn't fall of

Im the mean while though, im left with no idea about how to run a sea campaign. I have the world and its politics set up enough that I can involve them eventually once BBEG starts eyeing up the far shores. But until then I am at a loss about the wide open sea.

TL; DR Played I like too much to say no too buys a boat, WTF do i do now.

[Yora]

Ask the player: Now that you have a boat, what do you want to do?

[Dragonus45]

O yea thats the other problem, i know what he wants to do. Buy a better boat then sail straight off from land untill he finds more land. He's doing the bard thing well, a bit too well. He wants to run off into uncharted lands. I say that as in i have not yet charted them. Other then going thier kills people. I do know whats on the other side tho.

[Yora]

That's pretty much saying "I don't want to play your campaign, I rather go sandboxing."
I think an out of game solution is called for here, though I don't know which.

[Cartigan]

Maelstrom falls, boat dies.

[Sacrieur]

So what, let him go exploring. Then when he comes back it'll be apocalypse.

[only1doug]

this is your chance to grow as a GM,

The presence or absence of a group of L5 characters shouldn't make a huge swing in any campaign world.

A rival group formed of all your groups childhood rivals (what do you mean they haven't defined any? make them write some backstory!) has saved the continent in their absence, everyone is talking about them.

Random encounters at sea, (should be plenty of CR approriate monsters available, avoid that damned crab until the PC have access to water breathing)

shipwrecks to explore, islands filled with natives (friendly or hostile depending on PC approach).

Strange lands filled with strange encounters.

Think of it as an opportunity instead of searching for ways to get the party back onto the railroad tracks.

[only1doug]

Basically its the perfect chance to run a bunch of one shot adventures (check the Wizards downloadable archive) with no real need to thematically link them as each can occur on a different island.

If your PCs have a TPK load them into the rivals you had them write up and introduce them midway into the plot (You all got together to prove your superiority over those losers you grew up with, you followed up on x plothook and found yourselves here (insert party having just entered a dungeon)).