Some game today (rant)

[BerzerkerUnit]

I ran a one shot today. Here's the gist-
Players get sent to another world. They're level 3. A mysterious gnome explains he summoned them, there's a town to the south that's having problems, they need to go and help with those problems. "This world has no more heroes" he "hopes that by helping the people of the town they'll be inspired to pick up their swords and cut a path to a brighter future." <- literally the instructions. There was a rhyme about a golden horn and tyranny as the gnome left.

They travel to the town there's a brief fight with a deadly threat, not the kind of thing peasants or even nobles with spears could fight off.

They arrive at the edge of the town. There's no wall or fence. There's 1 Dragonborn guard in the police box outside the town. He asks for names and reason for visit. There's a lot of explaining. The PC Dragonborn Barbarian says his reason for visit is "I'm gonna beat your face in." The guard finishes taking names and notes on their purposes. They ask about trouble in town, he lists 3 people that need help with fairly mundane sounding problems and says he's not going to help those people, he's a resource if somebody steals something or tries to hurt you.

He tells them not to steal or fight with locals and things should be dandy but says he has a few more questions for the Barbarian. After party starts to leave he crashes out through door sword in hand and smashes the barbarian in the head then breathes lightning on him. Crit, decent roll on Breath, Barbarian is at 10hp, the rest of the party does nothing. Guard says "Who sent you!?!" Barbarian says he was "just inviting him to spar." They call it the guard's win and they all enter the town.

Town seems idyllic, they don't know what to do. I reiterate, "gnome said town had problems and to help with those problems. Guard listed 3 people with problems."

They see a young man get mocked, he throws a rock at the taunter and breaks a window, then flees. They investigate the shopowner whose window is broken. It's a haberdasher. Instead of asking about the rock, or the boy, or anything relevant, they ask about his hats. Sure, The hat makers hats were technological marvels of wondrous engineering, like a sombrero with an animatronic pinata stampede that ran around it and stabilizers so it never fell off your head and always landed right side up. They offend him by saying his hats were too complicated then send the greatly injured barbarian in to wreck up the joint. The hat makers hats were technological marvels of wondrous engineering. Haberdasher turns his hat into gun turret and almost kills barbarian. Haberdasher blows up his own store and fires into air while cussing like Yosemite Sam.

Cobbler is Haberdasher's brother, comes out and starts to bicker. PC overhears argument, Cobbler is in trouble with town for being too concerned with wealth. No one follows up.

They go to local Inn, the rogue tries to steal booze but is stopped by a Dragonborn hostess. Butcher arrives with greasy sack of meat and heads to kitchen where it's made clear no one else is welcome. Bard follows him into kitchen while Rogue considers fighting hostess. To avoid fight Bard leaves not only kitchen but whole Inn. Rogue opts to pay for drink at bar.

Outside Bard and sorcerer see baker struggling up street with heavy cake trays. They offer to help. He is filled with gratitude, gives them free cake and they see everyone in the Inn is ecstatic to partake of free cakes. They spend 10 minutes deciding if they will also eat cakes everyone is eating and seems to love. They overhear Baker is trying to curry favor with townsfolk to make up for what his daughter did.

Hostess gossips about Butcher's wife's affair and how the whole thing blew up bc baker's daughter blabbed.

Party thinks Butcher murdered his wife and is feeding the town's folk her meat. They investigate the home and find wife is fine. They think maybe butcher murdered her lover, but she saw him just that day.

"Well, it seems like these are just some personal problems, I don't know what we should do here..."

Let's review:
- Gnome says town is having problems and they should go help with those problems.
- Guard lists 3 people having problems and says he, the guard, isn't going to help those people.
- I, the DM, have spent nearly two hours trying to find ways to put these people and stories in their path.

No one investigates, asks questions, or tries to talk to any of the PCs named as needing help.

Every one of these problems is centered around a 10 year old girl telling the townsfolk about someone's personal business. Why does a 10 year old girl know the cobbler is overcharging for his ****e shoes? Why does she know who the butcher's wife is boffing? How does she know the teenager who lives 3 miles outside of town is fapping like there's no tomorrow since his parents are on a trip and he's home alone?

What should you do? WHAT SHOULD YOU DO!? I don't know, go try and help those people. Forge letters of apology, invite them both to the same place at the same time and force a dialogue for reconciliations. Maybe investigate the creepy little girl who knows everyone's business?

Finally settle on talking to baker and creepy daughter. After some investigation it's very clear an Imp is whispering to her, trying to make her wield truth like a blunt object, shattering relationships in the town. I also spend almost a full minute talking about this Unicorn drawing the girl did, like she's actually seen a unicorn.

The Imp's presence gets some traction, they don't even ask the girl about the drawing.

"Why is this girl a target of devils?" Father explains he had tricked Asmodeus into a bad deal that protected him. When he had a family the King of Hell came after them.

This town is filled with heroes, legendary artisans, and more. But they're all retired from adventuring and moving the world and revolutionizing industries. They live for mundane peaceful lives but have become indolent and selfish. He had hoped that by retiring there, putting down roots and establishing strong relationships the people might help protect him, just as his legendary alchemical concoctions made his bread cure diseases etc. But alas, very few were willing to take risks for others. They'd grown old and private in their retirement from adventuring and now the Baker's only recourse was to escape. He couldn't teach his daughter to protect herself. She could not perform the alchemical equations necessary for his craft, he needed a mentor capable of drawing out the martial talents she'd inherited from her mother.

"Ah, that's too bad, good luck!"

Even though the Bard watched the entire Inn wait staff, shirtless or sleeves rolled up, all looking like tightly packed bags of rope, perform supernatural acrobatics while they cleaned the tavern and then bow to the hostess when they were done. Yep, no one in town capable of tutoring a talented girl into fighting form...

Like, I get you show up for a one shot and expect maybe a few dungeon rooms, and I get that maybe helping people with difficult personal problems might not seem like a really tough thing. But I use chekov's gun rules man. If I'm talking about it, then it matters. If you follow up on anything I talk about in narration, there will be a story for it. They just kept acting like there was nothing to do. And if they wanted fights, the Barbarian picked 2 and they left his butt hang out to dry both times.

When it seemed like everyone was just looking for something to do I even threw in "In the town square a train of cats is walking around the fountain nose to tail. Their steps become more rhythmic and the tempo increases until it's clear they're dancing. The dance becomes more elaborate and acrobatic until one cat finally loses its balance and falls in the fountain, the rest immediately start acting like normal cats, licking themselves, sitting, or flopping over on their sides."

"We'll just walk right by that..."

If all they'd done was just go to 3 people having problems and say "wha' happuh", they would have heard about the girl (20 minutes). Then go to the little girl and say "wha' happuh" they would found out about the imp (10 minutes). They'd set up an ambush for the Imp, the Unicorn would have shown up instead, the Imp would sting it, corrupting it into a Nightmare, they would have fought it and had the option of killing it or risking letting it escape but give the girl the chance to cleanse it with the purity of her heart which is another reason the Imp was trying to corrupt her (figure prep, RP, and combat, ~1 hour). Epilogue (20-30 minutes). This should have been a breezy 3 hour game.

4 1/2 hours of game and it just felt like the players were waiting for me to spoon feed them the story and I swear I felt like that's what I was doing. Like everything short of creating a document and sharing it, saying "OK, here's a story point, I've already added it to the outline..."

On the upside, I got to do some classic silly voices from the Italian but not Tartavotti, to the Vinnie Jones of Paxon the Dragonborn guard.

And I say "legendary heroes" for the town's folk but really they were ~level 5. 1v1 they'd seem like terrors, but vs a party of 4 lvl 3s, they'd get stomped so hard, and only one of them was every fully prepared for a fight. Just so frustrated.

But it happens, sometimes people just aren't going to pick up what you put down. Better luck next time.

[Battlebooze]

I'm going to be brutally honest here, so I'm apologizing in advance.

Given this a one shot that will have no consequences in the long term (aside from annoying the GM endlessly), my characters would also be more interested in cool mechanical hats and futzing around with the NPC's than trying to solve a mystery my character has no reason to really care about.

[Zhorn]

It could very well just be the order of revealing information to the players.

With one-shots, it's more ideal to start the session off with everyone aware of the session goals, be they for the whole party or individual goals for each player.
No discovery, no sandboxing, no mystery. Everyone KNOWS what they are aiming to get done before the session ends.

Dropping them into a world and drip feeding information about what their goal is... Yeah it makes sense the players will instead just latch onto the parts that sound most interesting to them.

[Pex]

I'm siding with the DM on this. (GASP!)

It's a one shot. Everyone playing knows it's a one shot. It's not a sandbox. The DM made a specific adventure. Playing the game you buy in to do that adventure. The players can Solve The Plot as they wish, but they are supposed to do the Plot. That's the whole point of playing that one-shot.

[Battlebooze]

BerzerkerUnit has my sympathy for putting in his share of work for no effect, but if the players thought what they were doing was more fun than the plot, are they really wrong?

Maybe the lesson here is, make damn sure your players will enjoy the plot of the one shot you want to run.

[Zhorn]

I'm siding with the DM on this. (GASP!)
...
The DM made a specific adventure. Playing the game you buy in to do that adventure. The players can Solve The Plot as they wish, but they are supposed to do the Plot. That's the whole point of playing that one-shot.
Oh, certainly. Whole heartedly agree that the players should be buying into what the DM has put effort into running for the players.
What I was meaning was I can understand why the players were behaving outside of expectations.
It was not a sandbox game, but the opening reads like they were dropped into one.
They didn't enter into the game with a predefined mission or end-goal objective, they were discovering stuff in bits and pieces. They didn't know what the thing was they were working towards, only hints as to where the next clues would be.

Establish clear objectives.
Deliver the package
Steal the McGuffin
Defeat the princess
Save the dragon
Escape the dungeon

Before dice hit the table or play even starts, have some goal(s) established and known to the players, preferably before characters are made.
The intent is so if the players don't know what to do, they know what they should be trying to work towards.
I like what the DM was trying to do, and had the right players caught onto what the DM had in mind it would have gone over perfectly without a hitch. But players are not mind readers, and what seems obvious to the one person that knows the whole story is not so clear cut to another only seeing it in dribs and drabs.

[Gtdead]

Why am I never thinking about exploring the world in oneshots. It seems an extremely fun thing to do!
I 100% agree with Pex. Players should understand the implications of an oneshot and not be greedy. I'm not very inclined myself to follow linear quests but some people need to understand that DM is human, and they can't expect him to have multiple paths prepared for a small adventure that is supposed to last a couple of hours, nor have an extremely flesh out lore in mind that allows him to seamlessly make changes on the spot.

I think next time you should be more upfront about it. Being frustrated for 4 hours straight isn't a good way to spend your free time ^^

[Corran]

Your campaign could have worked perfectly for other players. That said, here are a few things I would do differently.

Since this is not the kind of one shot that the typical dnd player would expect, I would communicate that to the players before they even had the chance to make characters. I'd tell them that the campaign does not revolve around combat, but instead it revolves around exploring a situation. That said, this is not even the typical investigatory plot quest, so I might as well tell them that it's about exploring a short story waiting to be told.

I'd also warn them about the setting. Probably even detail it before the game even starts. This is far from the typical dnd village. Going into the game with that expectation, but instead finding legendary retired heroes, flying acrobats and dancing cats can take people by surprise in an unpleasant way, if they are not prepared for it, and thus figured out chracters of their own that fit with that playful and unconventional theme (clearly you will not have fun playing in that setting if you go into it with a tough guy, like your barbarian experienced; or you could, if you knew about what you would be up against, otherwise it can leave a bad taste in the player's mouth).

Try to introduce more decision points for your players. Having three ways to end up to the girl are not really decision points, there are multiple ways to get the same clue (which is good, but it doesn't even feel like a decision despite not even knowing that it really isn't). The only decision point for your players would be if they kill the nightmare or spare it, and frankly, that's not enough, and in the course of the battle it may not even be acknowledged as one. If the story is too linear to include multiple decision points, try to intrigue your players into investigating. The invisible imp whispering to the girl is a good reveal at the end of a well carried out investigation, but you need to plant the clues and you need to prepare the situation in a way that will get the players invested. Perhaps the rest of the villagers think that the girl is possessed by a demon and they want to burn her. The party of heroes intervenes and saves the girl, but the girl behaves oddly enough so they cannot just leave things be without further investigating, because what if the villagers are right? Also because they also need to prove somehow that the girl is not possessed so her life wont be in danger anymore. Meaning, you get them invested before they get a chance to think of everything going on, ad when they do they are already a part of what's going on, and the need to find a resolution comes more easily then. This assuming a good party. For a not so good party you need to invent additional motivations which you will ask your players to give you and given this is a one shot means that you can just narrate them while setting up the initial scene. And if you even want to make the rescue a decision point, then you simply have two imps in place.

It takes a lot of luck for such a not ypical one shot to go smoothly if you have not communicated anything to the players. Whoever does not like and was unprepared for the vibe of your setting, will start looking around for something interesting (to them) to catch themselves from. Nobody wants to spends hours doing something they dont like, and tht goes for your players too. So try to pick players who you'll know will like your campaign (by giving them enough detail to decide if they are interested), and/or in the same time make your campaign in such a way that it will be interesting for a wider player base.

[KorvinStarmast]

Since this is not the kind of one shot that the typical dnd player would expect, I would communicate that to the players before they even had the chance to make characters. A lot of the Candlekeep mysteries are similar - not combat heavy and you have to have a lot of dialogue with NPCs to get anywhere.
They are close to one shots though a DM can fold them into a campaign, but that takes some excising of FR specific stuff.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Eh, it happens. I find that tight plots have a habit of dissolving before the might of player obliviousness. It helps to have a plot that moves on even if the players don't.

The one real critique I'd have otherwise is that you didn't really establish personal motive for the characters. In some way this is up to the players, of course. But the only one I can see working here is "I am a do-gooder and thus will perform any menial task given to me, no questions asked". Which then conflicts with the story you wanted to tell.

The simple promise of a reward would help. It's a one shot, go nuts. Wealth, power, the secret to eternal youth, even godhood are perfectly acceptable reasons for virtually any character to follow the plot.

[Imbalance]

I have yet to run a one shot, yet share your frustrations from our main, ongoing campaign. Our sessions are limited to two hours, but I frequently cast numerous hooks in those hours that go unexplored while my players try to find an interior decorator for their stronghold instead of doing any actual adventuring. Fortunately, as it is an ongoing campaign, I have ample opportunities to attempt to string together the things that they aim to do into an interwoven plot, but they make it as difficult as possible for me.

[KorvinStarmast]

Our sessions are limited to two hours, but I frequently cast numerous hooks in those hours that go unexplored while my players try to find an interior decorator for their stronghold instead of doing any actual adventuring. Have the local thieves guild attempt to take over the stronghold. If they won't go to the adventure, have the adventure come to them. :smallbiggrin:

[Kvess]

Like, I get you show up for a one shot and expect maybe a few dungeon rooms, and I get that maybe helping people with difficult personal problems might not seem like a really tough thing. But I use chekov's gun rules man. If I'm talking about it, then it matters. If you follow up on anything I talk about in narration, there will be a story for it. They just kept acting like there was nothing to do. And if they wanted fights, the Barbarian picked 2 and they left his butt hang out to dry both times.
Here's the problem: Your players do not know what you know, and you are not just leaving one gun in plain sight. You have introduced a town filled with extraordinary weirdos who do impossible and inexplicable things... technologically advanced hats, bread that can cure any disease, shoes that are too expensive. Your players could reasonably assume that any of the other throwaway details that you are introducing could be the important clue that they need to invest all of their time and resources into investigating further.

It also seems like the Barbarian really wasn't built for or interested in this entire social intrigue quest, and maybe that would be worth having a conversation about before the game starts.

I have yet to run a one shot, yet share your frustrations from our main, ongoing campaign. Our sessions are limited to two hours, but I frequently cast numerous hooks in those hours that go unexplored while my players try to find an interior decorator for their stronghold instead of doing any actual adventuring. Fortunately, as it is an ongoing campaign, I have ample opportunities to attempt to string together the things that they aim to do into an interwoven plot, but they make it as difficult as possible for me.

If the players have something in their world that they have signalled that they care about... that is a gift for you as the DM. Have a nearby lord hold the party responsible for unpaid backtaxes from the previous owner. Have a corrupt official contest their claim to the stronghold. Have a contractor tell the party that there's something wrong with the foundation, leading them to caverns beneath the building which are swarming with weremoles. Let them make it their own, staff it with NPCs they like, and then threaten to destroy it.

[OldTrees1]

I'm siding with the DM on this. (GASP!)

It's a one shot. Everyone playing knows it's a one shot. It's not a sandbox. The DM made a specific adventure. Playing the game you buy in to do that adventure. The players can Solve The Plot as they wish, but they are supposed to do the Plot. That's the whole point of playing that one-shot.

This is true, if the players know what they are signing up for. There are several places where it sounds like the GM and the PCs are expecting to be playing different games.

Apparently one of the PCs said:
"Well, it seems like these are just some personal problems, I don't know what we should do here..."

Meanwhile the DM believed there was a plot with 3 different hooks/clues (rule of 3 in full effect).

This kind of disconnect primarily happens when the GM sees 3 clues and the PCs see 3 background setting fluff details.


When designing an adventure, it is important to choose something the Players will be willing to play, able to play, and aware they are playing. If I designed an "on the run from big brother" one shot but my players thought they were in a "curb stomp our enemies" one shot, then there would be some major problems leading to a TPK.

So I would side with both on this. There was a significant miscommunication. It was good that one of the players voiced their confusion. It brought the misunderstanding to light (Are these minor personal problems just background color? I thought this was an epic heroes one shot instead of nosy neighbor one shot) and gave the table an opportunity to course correct. If there was a confusion over sandbox one shot vs plot one shot, that would have been good to mention earlier too.



A sandbox one shot is basically just a sandbox campaign with an out of game agreement to end the campaign at the end of the session. These can be great fun and you can easily convert any linear campaign into the setting for a sandbox one shot (provided the group accepts the derail will happen).

Optional: You can have an in game reason for the time limit. Say the world is going to end or a portal is going to close in 24 hours. What does the party do?

[Glorthindel]

Here's the problem: Your players do not know what you know, and you are not just leaving one gun in plain sight. You have introduced a town filled with extraordinary weirdos who do impossible and inexplicable things... technologically advanced hats, bread that can cure any disease, shoes that are too expensive. Your players could reasonably assume that any of the other throwaway details that you are introducing could be the important clue that they need to invest all of their time and resources into investigating further.


I agree with this, there just sounds like there were far too many unusual details, the actual plot threads just got lost in the noise and static. I mean, even if the party knew an Imp was orchestrating mischief in the town (which they didn't even know that much), how would they be able to pick up it was the slightly creepy daughter, compared to the even more creepy butcher, the seemingly possessed cats, the strangely apathetic (but also explosively tempered) guard, the insane hat-designer, or performing bar staff (indeed, the bar staff and cats seem to indicate two instances of bizarre performing possession, so is probably more likely to draw attention as a common theme).

Some times less is more, particularly in a one shot where time is limited and dead ends and pointless distractions are just wastes of that time.

[Selrahc]

A mysterious gnome explains he summoned them, there's a town to the south that's having problems, they need to go and help with those problems. "This world has no more heroes" he "hopes that by helping the people of the town they'll be inspired to pick up their swords and cut a path to a brighter future." <- literally the instructions. There was a rhyme about a golden horn and tyranny as the gnome left.


This part seems key. From what you've said alone: A mysterious gnome appears, and says something that sounds like a truism or a random hope, then gives them what sounds like a riddle to solve. You wanted them to see the first part as explicit instructions, but they didn't latch onto that. You potentially needed to emphasize or repeat it if it seemed like they weren't getting it. If they literally don't understand what they're meant to do, they are going to have trouble doing it.

Go out of character if necessary for this kind of stuff. Make sure that the players understand it, even if their characters might be confused.



They travel to the town there's a brief fight with a deadly threat, not the kind of thing peasants or even nobles with spears could fight off.

They arrive at the edge of the town. There's no wall or fence. There's 1 Dragonborn guard in the police box outside the town. He asks for names and reason for visit. There's a lot of explaining. The PC Dragonborn Barbarian says his reason for visit is "I'm gonna beat your face in." The guard finishes taking names and notes on their purposes. They ask about trouble in town, he lists 3 people that need help with fairly mundane sounding problems and says he's not going to help those people, he's a resource if somebody steals something or tries to hurt you.

He tells them not to steal or fight with locals and things should be dandy but says he has a few more questions for the Barbarian. After party starts to leave he crashes out through door sword in hand and smashes the barbarian in the head then breathes lightning on him. Crit, decent roll on Breath, Barbarian is at 10hp, the rest of the party does nothing. Guard says "Who sent you!?!" Barbarian says he was "just inviting him to spar." They call it the guard's win and they all enter the town.


This part is second most important. What you want them to do following the conversation with the guard is to go and look into those three problems. But what you do immediately following the conversation disrupts that. Having the guard attack one of the characters, is hugely distracting, and does not incline them to be doing odd jobs to help him out. Very few players are going to go from that confrontation to "Well, how about we check out those odd jobs he told us about?"

Everything else follows from these two interactions. You haven't properly got them invested in the premise, so they're just exploring aimlessly.

[Keravath]

I'm siding with the DM on this. (GASP!)

It's a one shot. Everyone playing knows it's a one shot. It's not a sandbox. The DM made a specific adventure. Playing the game you buy in to do that adventure. The players can Solve The Plot as they wish, but they are supposed to do the Plot. That's the whole point of playing that one-shot.

I agree that the players should play the adventure presented.

However, and politely, I would have to agree with some of the others that the "adventure" in this case wasn't that well presented.

This is a team of adventurers and "heroes" come to save the town at the request of a gnome - transported from another world. When they get here there are people who need help! Party to the rescue. However, what are the problems?
- a baker whose wife was having an affair and the knowledge became public
- a cobbler is overcharging for his shoes
- (the third one is in the text but I won't get into it).

As a player, I would wonder wtf the "adventuring" party is supposed to do about any of these. None of them are "problems" that the party can "solve". If I am roleplaying a Barbarian - they may not be that much of a "people" person - unless I break character.

The DMs response ..
"What should you do? WHAT SHOULD YOU DO!? I don't know, go try and help those people. Forge letters of apology, invite them both to the same place at the same time and force a dialogue for reconciliations. Maybe investigate the creepy little girl who knows everyone's business?"

A party of strangers comes to town ... how can you expect them to dig into and SOLVE the personal business of people they don't know and have just met? Forged letters don't work when the parties will actually talk to each other (they are neighbors after all). Forced conversations don't work if there is no way to resolve the problem. It is not a party of counselors - it is a party of adventurers and expecting them to try to solve a bunch of personal problems isn't likely to happen with almost ANY group of players I have run into ... unless the DM goes out of their way (and I mean beyond obvious) to make it clear. On top of that, many players won't find that kind of forced RP interactions to be very much fun. Not every player is good at walking around pretending to talk to NPCs about personal problems.

However, narrativly, the real problem is supposed to be the imp and the girl spreading the stories but a party new to the town has NO way of knowing what everyone knows and what they don't. In this case, the DM needs to make it exceptionally clear that there is someone/something sharing knowledge in town that should not be available (make it seem very eerie - add in undercurrents with townsfolk being angry and glaring at each other). The DM might want to have fights breaking out between some of the townsfolk. Present the entire town as being on the edge of some sort of violent breakdown. Make sure that the players also know that the town is filled with retired (and possibly powerful) adventurers so that a civil war in the town would not go well for either the townsfolk or the players. This gives the party something to actually do and a context - something "supernatural" has turned this town of generally friendly folks into a "powder keg". This kind of approach would be more obvious to the players. It is much easier to step in and break up a fight than it is to try to get the baker to reconcile with his wife - which ISN'T actually the problem - since the problem the DM presented is the knowledge of the affair becoming public and not the affair itself. The players can't really fix the affair and the connection to the knowledge spreading isn't particularly obvious.

Finally, the one shot has no convenient resolution. Let's say the players find the girl spreading the information. They aren't going to kill her. They find out a voice is whispering secrets in her ear and encourages her to say things. They don't know it is an imp, they can't see it, they can search around a bit but the imp will just hide from the adventurers. When the adventurers leave town, the imp just starts up again. If the players DO find the imp, it only has 9 hit points, it is easy to kill, giving an unsatisfying conclusion and it doesn't really solve the problem since the NPC at the center of the problem has irritated a creature with an infinite supply of imps. So they will just send another or something more intimidating sometime after the characters leave.

-------

I still agree that the players SHOULD have picked up on the DM hints and tried following up. They didn't follow up as much as they should. However, when they DID follow up, all they found were mundane social problems where the NPC would be much better off getting a local counselor (talk to their buds at a bar) rather than some strange adventurers from another world. This left the players wondering exactly what they should be doing. What exactly is the "adventure" here.

One issue I have run into as a DM is that problems presented in the adventure are almost always much harder than I expect them to be for the players. This is because, as DM, I know all of the pieces and how they fit together. From the DM perspective it is obvious. From the player perspective however it can be completely opaque and even when I tell them almost exactly what to do, there is a good chance they still won't get it because they just don't see enough pieces and so decide to do something else. I have the feeling that this may be what happened here. Players usually come to play, they don't come to intentionally go off script and do something else. As a result, when something like this happens it is usually because the players just aren't seeing enough to put anything together (this can depend a lot on the players and their play preferences too as well as the characters they are playing - certain players and characters are more likely to use some solutions e.g. combat vs roleplay etc over others).

Basically, the concept of someone in town whispering others secrets and causing social strife is a bit too subtle for many groups of players unless the DM really goes out of their way to emphasize it.


P.S. Some ideas that might be of use?
1) The guard at the edge of town should be irritated - possibly visibly angry. He deals with the players in a perfunctory but mostly respectful way.
- if players don't ask about why he is angry - he should tell them - have him give examples of some information - he should also tell the party that the town is mostly retired adventurers and craftspeople so don't go poking folks or they are likely to hit back hard.
- the guard can also mention 3 or so folks who are having it worse than him - if the party wants to help the town strongly SUGGEST that they talk to these folks first AND the DM needs to keep reminding the players (though it sounds like the DM did this and they didn't follow up)
2) If the players follow up then they find that everyone's secrets appear to become common knowledge (everyone is gossiping) AND almost everyone is affected (2 or 3 people doesn't create a problem needing a party of adventurers).
3) Either following up with the names suggested by the town guard OR after some conversations with various townsfolk lead to rumors about the girl telling the secrets.
4) Wrap it up with something like the following - a minor demon has a group of imps working the town. The town has a warding circle to keep out influences like this - but they found a way around it (tunneled under or something). Goal of the party is to find and defeat the demonic influence and close off their access to the town. However, that suggestion might be taking the adventure in a direction the DM isn't interested in ..

[Sigreid]

Ok, I think I may see the problem here. The three examples given, are:

First one: Not really out of the ordinary for a merchant. Things are worth what you can get people to pay.
Second one: So what?
Third one: Why is it anyone else's business if he's beating it like it owes him money?

The problem is, none of these tasks scream "A HERO IS NEEDED!!" They're just the petty kind of bs that you probably find in any village with more than 2 families. What I'm saying is, hearing those people "needing help" I wouldn't have any idea why it wasn't something for them to sort out for themselves. If I'm summoned to be a hero to inspire them to cut a path to the future, I would expect there to be murder, animal mutilation, mysterious famine, or at least drought and crop failure.