I might not be using the right terms exactly, but hopefully this makes sense.
This is only my second time DMing and this is with a group of newish players. I’m running an adventure out of a book which is fairly linear, since during our session 0, the players communicated that they would prefer following a set story rather than freely roaming around. I’m totally ok with that and am trying to accomodate.
The problem I struggle with, is I am utterly failing at presenting the plot points in an interesting way without it feeling lame and forced. For example:
“As you make your way down the path, you see two figures ahead. You recognize them as the odd couple from the tavern. What do you do?”
The answer is sometimes “uh… We ignore them and continue down the trail” which is frustrating when they are major characters for the story. The players sometimes get so focused on advancing the plot that they just skip past it all.
However it’s almost worse then their answer is “well I guess we’re supposed to talk to them. So… I do that.” I feel that awkwardness, because if I were in their shoes, it would feel just as forced to me.
But… It’s in the adventure book! They need to meet these guys or the next section kind of doesnt make sense. I have tried having the NPCs directly approach the player characters, but even that tends to feel like the players are just going through the motions. They know this must be important so they play along but I feel like it just turns into me giving info dump after info dump as each NPC appears, and it feels so contrived.
So, yes, I have talked to the players, and they are trying their best to engage. This is now me asking how I can be a better DM and present plot points in a natural, interesting way that doesn’t just feel like a queue of NPCs lining up for their turn to “stare menacingly at the PCs” so they can stumble through another stilted conversation.
This is particularly difficult for “random encounters” that are meant to flesh out the world and give the players a chance to roleplay. “You come across a goblin next to an elaborate painting on the side of a large oak tree. ‘my brushes! My brushes are missing!’” If I were a player, I would have no reason to engage with this. It might be a fun little interaction but would our group of adventurers really stop and talk to every random person they see? Help every cat out of a tree? I want to make the world feel full and exciting and fun to play inside but instesd I feel like I’m just presenting my players a series of chores.
Maybe setup an event that leads to the characters.
At midnight there is a gathering of villagers. As the players talk to them they encounter the two. Which two? Whichever they chose to talk to. Or maybe the second set. You gave them the choice but you also kind of didn’t.
Need them in a certain spot? Oh look, a thief stole something from them and is running down alleys or across roof tops. Leading them there.
Why does the whole adventure hinge on this one conversation? It’s helpful if you don’t think of the story as a chain of events from A to B to C, but instead start by asking, “What happens if the party does nothing?”. Did the cult resurrect their leader? Does the baron usurp the throne? Does an innocent person go to prison?
Whatever the “bad thing” that might happen is, your encounters each bring the players one step closer to it coming true unless they step in and stop it. The secret of course, is that the “bad thing” can be delayed as much as you need it to, and you can invent as many consequences along the way as you need.
When it comes to starting conversations with NPCs, this is where the backstories your players give you are useful. PC backstories are basically a set of plot hooks your players have already opted into. You can even go as far as requiring backstories to answer questions like, “Who does this character care deeply about?” “Who does this character never want to see again?” “What would they do if they had 1000 gold?”
If the PC’s background talks about loving painting, or collecting artwork, then your example with the goblin missing their paintbrushes would be an excellent hook.
At the end of each session, it’s also helpful to ask the players what they plan to do next. That way, you can be reasonably certain about what they will do and plan around that. You can start your sessions more “on rails” because the players have already chosen the rails they want to be on. As the session goes on, things get less and less certain, and it doesn’t make sense to have detailed encounters planned out. Just improvise to the best of your ability, and when you run out of steam say, “Great session folks! What are you planning to do next?”
Thank you. Yeah, this is usually how I would approach it if it were a more open sandboxy gsme like my last campaign.
In this case however, the whole adventure doesn’t hinge on this one conversation, but rather the adventure book assumes the players have hit certain story beats in a certain order and plans the narrstive accordingly. If they ignore the couple, then they miss out on receiving their quest to find their daughter or whatever, and arriving at the wolf den the body of the mangled girl has no meaning. If they don’t talk to the paintbrush goblin, they don’t learn about the pixies causing trouble for the goblin clan. Sometimes its critical to the main plot. Sometimes its just a side bonus reward or just a roleplaying opportunity to learn lore or information. The way the book lays it out it states explicitly: players must encounter these 3 points in order so the final encounter of this chapter makes sense.
Unfortunately asking the players what they want to do next session results in “we want to do what the book says to see what happens in the story!” And that tracks with our session 0. They want a linear story.
But I can only have my players walk past so many burned out villages before it gets awkward and I just say “look, guys you’re supposed to go in and investigate.”
I just have no idea how to balance this “on-rails” approach with actually inviting player intersction. Am I just describing scenery or am I hinting they should interact? Is this NPC plot-critical or just setting up some world building? When do the players know they got what they needed from the conversation or if this is just a random guy trying to sell them stuff?
Wow, yeah it sounds like your group has very different expectations from the ones I’ve played with, which is fine, but it feels really foreign to me. Clearly your players are comfortable with walking past obvious hooks, so maybe the story needs to come to them. In your examples, maybe the odd couple approaches the party and asks them a question first, or the goblin offers to paint a portrait of the party if they help find the missing paintbrushes.
Also, remember that you know your players better than the adventure author. If some vital information gets skipped, you now know that you need to twist the next encounter to somehow include it, or invent a new encounter. Prewritten adventures are there to make your life as a DM easier, not harder. If part of it isn’t working for you, you can drop it and your players will be none the wiser. Focus on what you find fun about DMing and let the adventure fill in the bits you don’t like. If the whole thing really doesn’t work without these strict events happening in a certain order, the adventure might just be… not good. In which case, you really aren’t losing much by rewriting it to your liking.
Here is a couple of techniques that I developed for running a prewritten adventure that had these Single-Point-of-engagement type problems:
- dont be subtle: you gotta have better descriptions than “odd couple”. Just giving longer and more detailed descriptions let’s your players know: these guys are important and worth interacting with. An odd couple can be ignored. A couple where one is significantly larger than the other (like 2x larger), both are engaged in an active heated discussion which drops a few key words that the players are interested in and the smaller of the two is clearly the dominant party in the dialog is much harder to ignore.
- make them justify it to you: Instead of waiting for the players to say “I talk to the odd couple”. You say “on the way out of town you meet a strange couple, you strike up a conversation with the wart faced woman with hunched back, the smaller of the pair. What thing did you notice/overhear about their conversation/behaviour/appearance that made you want to get in?” This way your players experience what they need to and their descriptions actually get to highlight traits of their character, this not taking away their narrative control/Agency (eg my character likes tattoos and the woman has a very large tattoo of a specific design on her cheek or sth).
- make hitting that single-point-of-engagement an actual quest. Maybe the daughter of one of the pair sees the characters head that way out of town and asks them to give them a letter/item/whatever when they run into them.
In summary: single point of engagement situation are usually a sign of a badly written adventure. With a little bit of experience you can drag your players by the nose through anything and they will never be the wiser.
This is some solid advice, thank you!
If single-point-of-engagement is a sign of a badly-written adventure, do you have any suggestions on how you might rework some of these encounters if you were writing your own adventure?
One helpful starting point for me is often: What is it the bad guys want to do? Whatever they want to do usually causes problems for good and normal people. So you look for intersections between what the players do/plan/like experiencing and what the bad things the bad people have done are.
When you write your adventure like that a single point of engagement situation happens only under one of 2 circumstances:
- the bad guys evil deeds only cause a problem for like… 2 people and their dog, or
- the bad guys evil deeds are virtually undetectable unless you follow a very specific trail of breadcrumbs
If it’s (1) your bad guys are not very evil and the PCs time is probably better spent thwarting some other bad guys (i.e. you need to make your bad guys more bad).
If it’s (2) your bad guys are too competent and will likely only be stoppable by Batman (who is the world’s greatest detective). I.e. make your bad guys (or at least some of their minions) more incompetent.
You can also analyze prewritten material from the perspective of the bad guys. Often you will find that what is written as a single point of engagement thing actually lends itself to a multitude of hooks that you can find by looking at the plans of the bad guys.
There is one type of adventure that can’t be dealt with like this: environmental adventures. Stuff that relies on players being in a specific place/situation (like a classic dungeon crawl) and that doesn’t have a bad guy per se. But those are the easiest to deal with with my methods 2 (make them justify being in that place/situation) and 3 (give them a quest to be there) from above (“I have heard there is a cursed ruin in these woods, can you check so I know wether it’s worth buying the land?”)
This is really helpful! Thank you so much for your time writing this all out!
I’m fairly new myself, but a few ideas come to mind:
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Can you make the plot queues a little more enticing to make your players curious? Is there anything specifically unusual about the odd couple when they see them this time? Is there any weird body language? Do they see the characters and then look away suddenly? Is there anything about them that could connect to character backstories or motivations and trigger a desire to have a conversation? Are NPCs having a conversation amongst themselves that sounds interesting when the PCs overhear it, even if it’s not really about the plot itself?
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It can be helpful to make multiple routes to plot queues and clues. That way, if they miss one opportunity, there are other options, rather than having the plot just get stuck. If they bypass the couple this time, could they see them again later somewhere else? Just roll with the digression a bit then and then give the PCs another chance to engage. Could you also make a redundant way to get the same info in another form? A letter with the same info that would have been shared verbally?
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Can you make the plot queues more active? Can the odd couple approach the PCs and start a converstation? This brings the plot to them. You can do it without taking agency away from the players if you’re careful about having a reason for the approach that would occur to the PCs or could be explained briefly during the encounter.
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What’s Plan B if they don’t take a hook?
Recycle the hook into the next thing, they’ll never know it’s reheated.
Why not come up with a reason why the important NPC strikes up a conversation with the party rather than expecting them to strike up a conversation with the NPC?
I have tried having the NPCs directly approach the player characters, but even that tends to feel like the players are just going through the motions. They know this must be important so they play along but I feel like it just turns into me giving info dump after info dump as each NPC appears, and it feels so contrived.
It shouldn’t have to feel contrived. Especially once the party have a few quests under their belt. Someone comes up to them in a bar and is like “hey, aren’t you those guys who did X? I was wondering if you were able to help me with a thing”
Also, pre-adventure info-dumping shouldn’t ever be strictly necessary. The way that sort of thing should happen is for the players to try to do a thing, realize they need some new information and then go look for it. Players don’t like being lectured at, they like feeling like they discovered some information after it became important for them.
