Dealing with my party.

[Doomboy911]

Alright in our last campaign we were in the talenta plains (We're playing ebberon) our DM created some kind of monstrous spider that was a combination of a evil celestial spider and a good celestial spider. Which he let us use as a mount. (Annoying). Than we traveled up a mountain where we found a shapeshifter that shifts into mounts (the campaign was us mostly finding mounts to get from place to place faster). This isn't the problem we later went to town robbed a bank to buy a boat than sailed away. Again not the problem, we went to an island this is where I took over. Now throughout the campaign of cannibalism island the group seemed to just be jumping around just saying things like "I want to go to the boat lets just skip to the part to where I'm on the boat". This bugs me because I have stuff planned and they just don't care. What should I do?

[Gan The Grey]

Let them go to the boat?

I mean, if your plan isn't being spun in a way that interests your players, then maybe it's time to move on to something that IS interesting them. Find out what that is and work from there.

Also, if you really want to improve your ability to draw your players into your story, pick up a book that teaches aspiring writers how to spin plot. The key is to make your story mysterious and not-at-all straightforward. You want them to want to figure out what the crap is going on, and the best way to do that is to give them snippets of information that don't seem to fit in the norm. People inherently want to understand things, to fix things that don't fit. Learn how to do that and you shouldn't have any problem seducing your players into your carefully constructed story.

[magic9mushroom]

Alright in our last campaign we were in the talenta plains (We're playing ebberon) our DM created some kind of monstrous spider that was a combination of a evil celestial spider and a good celestial spider. Which he let us use as a mount. (Annoying). Than we traveled up a mountain where we found a shapeshifter that shifts into mounts (the campaign was us mostly finding mounts to get from place to place faster). This isn't the problem we later went to town robbed a bank to buy a boat than sailed away. Again not the problem, we went to an island this is where I took over. Now throughout the campaign of cannibalism island the group seemed to just be jumping around just saying things like "I want to go to the boat lets just skip to the part to where I'm on the boat". This bugs me because I have stuff planned and they just don't care. What should I do?

If they say "skip to X", then start the on-the-way encounter as you intended ("As you're travelling through XYZ part, a monster jumps out at you" or whatever) and give them a penalty on their Spot checks for being distracted.

[DabblerWizard]

Doomboy911, my guess is that your players just aren't enjoying the current mood of the story, or they're fed up with the island jaunt, and want to move onto something different.

See if that's the case, and if so, move the story along to a new point. Any story elements you had planned in between can be recycled to another location with a little creative tweaking. If your players aren't enjoying a story element, move on. Just because you created something to be played, doesn't mean your players must take part in it.

[Doomboy911]

I think I might solve my problem by being a little harsher with making checks. Like one of them tried getting past a block path (a massive pit) by throwing a grappling hook across. Every time he failed the strength check a monster deep inside the pit would see it and try climbing closer up. This way I kind of forced them back. (eventually one of them used a growth spell and just walked over) I'm also planning on making the story more enticing. My plan is a mysterious fog hits the ship with the spell sleep everyone goes down but the warforged. Than I have this story where all the other D&D worlds are combined (so we can branch out more) which leads to them being able to hit better locations. (Just to ask roughly how many D&D worlds are their?)