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View Full Version : How to keep the players on-quest? And other DM'ing advice



Drokrath
2017-01-30, 12:36 PM
I'm a relatively novice player and and even novice-er DM. So I just recently ran my first ever game with two players. The rogue was playing for the first time and the fighter had played a few games with a completely different group, who were apparently very loose with the rules(he claimed they leveled up after every fight). Our Ranger couldn't make it to the session so we decided we would work him into the story later on, and I replaced him with an NPC wizard (named Alvyn "The Chip" Munk. That isn't relevant I'm just very proud of it).
We were playing the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure so we started out with the characters escorting a wagon of supplies to Phandalin. The person that hired them, Gundran, had gone ahead with a companion to complete some business in Phandalin. They came upon the dead horses of Gundran and his companion and were ambushed by Goblins. This is where it first went to ****. The Goblins got the drop on them and removed Alvyn from the fight in the surprise round, so it was just the two inexperienced players against four of them. I tried to fudge rolls and throw random advantages and disadvantages to help them but in the end I had to randomly resurrect Alvyn and the fighter when it ended up 3v1. I used some bs excuse about heavenly light shining down from above or something, I just didn't want to TPK in the first fight. This pretty much killed their confidence in being able fight anything. They almost didn't take the plot hook to follow the goblin trail to their hideout, where they took Gundran's companion, but I kind of forced it on them. (I made the ox run over the final goblin when the fighter crit failed an arrow and hit the ox, then kept repeating, so do you tie this guy up? And stuff like that) when they got to the hideout they were out of heals and the rogue nearly died fighting two Goblins outside the hideout. They flat out refuse to go into the hideout (they can hear wolves or dogs just inside). In a last-ditch effort I decided Alvyn was lawful good and had him demand the party to go into the hideout to rescue their employers, but they just knocked him out and looted him, leaving his unconscious body directly outside the goblin hideout with two goblin corpses. From there, they returned to the cart and instead of delivering it to Phandalin for 50gp, they decided to return to Neverwinter and sell it (contents worth 100gp). On the way the fighter decided he wanted to be a ranger so he had himself die if rockjoint in the night and we picked up his new character in neverwinter, along with a Paladin NPC that I luckily had prepared. I used this NPC as a plot hook to take them about halfway to Phandalin (he had known the fighter and wanted to give him a proper burial). From there I just meta-game begged them to keep going to Phandalin cause I was out of ideas.

So tl;dr how do I motivate my players to stay on-quest when they made the perfectly reasonable decision of ****ing right out of there?

Also, one of the players correctly pointed out that I threw like 3 or 4 ambushes total at them on the road, so how can I work in interesting encounters into traveling? Or should I just ease off and let the story-planned encounters happen?
Also any other DMing tips you can give me are greatly appreciated

SilverLeaf167
2017-01-30, 12:49 PM
To oversimplify a bit, when the players' decision to leave is perfectly reasonable, you need to make it perfectly reasonable for them to stay on the quest instead. :smalltongue:

Most people are willing to give new DMs and campaigns some leeway and stay on the rails for at least a moment, but honestly, if I were one of the players, I probably wouldn't enter that hideout either. Whether you think about it IC or OOC, it seems like suicide at that point. Just give them the opportunity to restock, maybe be a bit more generous with healing resources, and make it clear that they should have a chance this time around. Hopefully they'll give it another shot.

Doesn't the adventure provide any motivation other than getting paid for the job? I feel like a lot of published adventures don't, or alternatively expect the DM to come up with something. That can be pretty hard to do on a party's first quest, though.

As for travel and random/filler encounters, there's several schools of thought, but personally I only bother with random if they a) add something to the story (revealing information, guiding them the right way), b) are needed to make the area especially dangerous for some reason or c) are otherwise interesting. Don't feel obligated to throw them in constantly; that'll become boring for both you and the players. Besides, that really is a lot of encounters for a low-level party to fight in one day, they really ought to get a long rest after that.

kyoryu
2017-01-30, 01:09 PM
So I just recently ran my first ever game with two players.

This is your first problem. D&D is a difficult game to run for two players. 4-5 is really the typical minimum party size.


The rogue was playing for the first time and the fighter had played a few games with a completely different group, who were apparently very loose with the rules(he claimed they leveled up after every fight). Our Ranger couldn't make it to the session so we decided we would work him into the story later on, and I replaced him with an NPC wizard (named Alvyn "The Chip" Munk. That isn't relevant I'm just very proud of it).

Second related problem. No healing.

Adding NPCs isn't a terrible idea here, but I would have made at least one a healer, and probably done more to fill out the party, or at least modify the encounters appropriately.


and were ambushed by Goblins.

Third problem. New players with no healing and the first thing you do is ambush them.


This is where it first went to ****. The Goblins got the drop on them and removed Alvyn from the fight in the surprise round

Fourth problem. Why did you do that? At least divide up the attention of the goblins if you're going to do a surprise round.


They almost didn't take the plot hook to follow the goblin trail to their hideout

Why would they? Their job is to get the stuff to Pan-whatever, not to investigate goblin caves.


but I kind of forced it on them.

Ugh. Fifth problem. Players can usually tell when that's happening, and they don't like it, about 95% of the time.


they were out of heals and the rogue nearly died fighting two Goblins outside the hideout. They flat out refuse to go into the hideout (they can hear wolves or dogs just inside).

Well, yeah. They're down on the recommended number of people, and they have no healing, and no real reason to go into the cave.

Going into the cave would be stupid at that point.


In a last-ditch effort I decided Alvyn was lawful good and had him demand the party to go into the hideout to rescue their employers, but they just knocked him out and looted him, leaving his unconscious body directly outside the goblin hideout with two goblin corpses.

Yup. I mean, at that point it's obvious that the just-invented NPC is saying that in order to get them to do what the GM wants them to do. This kind of in-world railroading rarely if ever works - it's much better to just say "hey, guys, this is kind of where the adventure goes, if we don't do this, we'll basically have to call it while I figure out what to do. So, what'll it be?"


So tl;dr how do I motivate my players to stay on-quest when they made the perfectly reasonable decision of ****ing right out of there?

Don't give them hooks. Give them reasons to become engaged in the plot.

Hooks suck. Seriously. Think about the definition of them - much like a fish hook, they're designed to look innocent but enticing. Forget that! Give the players something that's actually engaging, so that they *want* to go into the cave.

Secondly, look at the recommended levels and party size. If you don't have that, and especially if you don't have a healer, you need to tone down encounters (if you're playing the type of game where you just feed the players encounters one after another, which is what it sounds like). It's difficult at this point because you don't have a feel for what the party can handle, and I get that - but it's always better to start soft and ramp up than the other way around.

And when you do start encounters, avoid things like focus firing. There's a ton of inefficient tactics you can use to gauge out the feel of the combat before going whole hog on the offensive, and it's a lot easier to ramp up than down in most cases.

EDIT:

The reason I point out these problems is not to beat you up. It's to point out decisions early in the session that contributed to the ultimate failure of the session (and yeah, it sounds like a failure - I don't think your players left going "WOW WHAT A GREAT GAME I CAN'T WAIT FOR NEXT TIME"). There's a number of early things that made later situations harder to handle appropriately - by identifying these, you can avoid them in the future.

Maglubiyet
2017-01-30, 01:30 PM
If I got ambushed 3 or 4 times on a road, I'd probably head back to town too.

One thing you can do is not have every fight be to the death, like in video games. Most critters value their skins, especially guys like goblins. The rest might decide to run if one or two of them die.

Darth Ultron
2017-01-30, 01:47 PM
The most obvious is to make the quest interesting to the players so that they want to finish it. If you can get the players to role play their characters, you can motivate them ''in world'' to do something....maybe. Mostly, the best motivation is a simple bribe. Just damage something the players will like or want and can get if they do the quest.


In general, travel is boring. A lot of players see travel encounters as a waste of time. They could be having ''real'' encounters and not wasting time on ''travel encounters''. It often works best to just have more ''site'' encounters at your main spot, and just drop the ''bandit ambush on the road''.

Drokrath
2017-01-30, 03:00 PM
@Silverleaf167
Yeah they're level two now and have the paladin for tank/healing, plus they bought a health potion or two in town, and the party morale is really up because I threw a few encounters at them between long rests which they absolutely decimated (thanks to some lucky nat 20's and strategic planning). I think they're going to head to Phandalin or back to the cave again now that they're more confident.

@kyoryu
We were expecting to have our ranger there with us, who had really nice rolls for his abilities. To be clear, The adventure also sets it up so that an ambush is the first encounter they have.
Surprisingly, they actually did leave this session saying exactly that- "Wow this was fun I can't any wait for next session!". I think this is because I gave them some encounters that they beat without anyone on the party being touched. Once in a while, completely destroying a combat a lot of fun, what I'm mostly worried about is a few sessions down the road, when they get bored by this and want a more interesting plot. Hopefully by then I'll have fine tuned my DM skills. Will definitely be taking your advice into account, thank you.

@maglubiyet
I actually gave them several opportunities for that on some of those
One ambush was two orcs hiding behind rocks on the side of the road, which they aced with two ranged nat 20's. The next was four bandits that the party saw before the bandits spotted them, so they snuck up behind them and used the Paladin as bait, killed 3 of the 4 in the surprise round. I had the fourth beg for mercy but they ruthlessly executed him lmao

@Darth Ultron
Yeah the problem was that their characters are more on the chaotic neutral-evil side of the spectrum and instead of returning the cart for the 50gp so I could get them interested in the other parts of the plot, they sold it for 100gp in another town. It's alright though, I think we're back on track and I have some ideas for the next session

kyoryu
2017-01-30, 03:06 PM
Once in a while, completely destroying a combat a lot of fun, what I'm mostly worried about is a few sessions down the road, when they get bored by this and want a more interesting plot. Hopefully by then I'll have fine tuned my DM skills.

Yeah, the "go easy" advice is while you try to find the sweet spot, not a long term recommendation. "Hrm, I'm sure they could handle between 3 and 7, but have no idea what" - go with 3, maybe 4. Five at most. After a few encounters, you'll have a better idea of what can be handled.

Also difficulty of encounters and having an interesting plot are almost completely orthogonal. Though if you're doing an Adventure Path type thing, you may find yourself somewhat constrained in that.