D&D 5E What do you do when your players are gunshy?

[Herobizkit]

I, as well, threw out a massive spread of possible suggestions - I would hope some of them didn't apply to your group.

Hec tor kar.... he was once a demon lord.... (snip) and that is the world the PCs find themselves in...

All the stuff I took out? That's the stiff I call "DM Mas... er... uh... self-..." (I don't know if there's a grandma-friendly way to put it). Bottom line, that info is swell to you and only you - none of that information matters to the players, as it's all background info. How does your villain interact with your players _directly_? Do they have specific recurring villains that make them growl and shake their fists when the villain's name is mentioned or appears?

It's good to remember that players only have the knowledge gained by looking through their character's eyes - they don't know what you know, they never know the stuff they miss or encounters they avoid, and seldom care about anything that doesn't directly affect them.

As sanctioned knights they have more resources then any group in the world...

That's great, but if all they can do with it is "personally look for artifacts", what's the fun in having said wealth?

Well I can't have someone else put together the artifact, it is too powerful.

So your players are the only ones who can assemble the artifact... what happens if they fail? Are they even ALLOWED to fail? Also, are your players the only people in the whole world amassing power?

I think the players might be frustrated at the scope of the campaign... "bigger and more deadly" is a common theme in D&D but maybe they're tired of 'you have to saaaaave the world'. Maybe they're done trying to save the world - so let them stop saving the world and have the villains 'win'. THEN, make a new campaign with new characters who have to deal with the fallout of their old ones. :3

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I, as well, threw out a massive spread of possible suggestions - I would hope some of them didn't apply to your group.

some do, some don't...

All the stuff I took out? That's the stiff I call "DM Mas... er... uh... self-..." (I don't know if there's a grandma-friendly way to put it). Bottom line, that info is swell to you and only you - none of that information matters to the players, as it's all background info. How does your villain interact with your players _directly_? Do they have specific recurring villains that make them growl and shake their fists when the villain's name is mentioned or appears?

in my case they know all that right now... they had game 1 a run in with a orc shaman who seemed to know something... he came back a few games later and when he deid whispered 'Hec...tor... but they thought he said hector as in the guys name... that was when the warlock started getting bad dreams... (the warlock didn't make his own pact, his parents sold his soul...) 3 reacurring threats (all dead now) and an ally all were being manipulated by my villain... they know a lot more then you give them credit for... they just don't seem to care.

One PC (both in and out of game) even says "I know that everything is happening, I just wish we didn't have to deal with it..."

That's great, but if all they can do with it is "personally look for artifacts", what's the fun in having said wealth?

um... that's not all they can do... they have 5 running story/plot lines and have there choice. They also have each sub kingdom and area they can just explore... they can do what ever they want (within reason, no going to look for another continent or anything)

So your players are the only ones who can assemble the artifact...

yes...

what happens if they fail?

then they fail...

Are they even ALLOWED to fail?

I don't understand this question... how could they not be allowed to fail?

Also, are your players the only people in the whole world amassing power?

nope 2 grops allied with them are both ammasing power (another set of Knights, and the assassin guild that one player reformed) and 2 major bad guys (the affor mentioned mummy lord and the undead unkillable orc) and a weird 5th group who is BOTH ally and enemy at the same time (a death knight and his army of disgraced knights of highland with some wizard back up who wants to stop hec tor kar, BUT also wants to over throw the royal family of the highlands)...

I think the players might be frustrated at the scope of the campaign... "bigger and more deadly" is a common theme in D&D but maybe they're tired of 'you have to saaaaave the world'. Maybe they're done trying to save the world - so let them stop saving the world and have the villains 'win'. THEN, make a new campaign with new characters who have to deal with the fallout of their old ones. :3

if they don't want to save the world then next switch of campaigns vote for a different type of game...


right now from my wiki-

When Gnomes ruled the world- a campaign world where the gnome/dwarven steam punk kingdom ruled 3/4 the known world before it fell in a great cataclysm... now 240years later civilization is just coming back. hundreds of small city states dot the map... make 3rd level characters no multi classing some house rules on race...
Dark Sun Caravan- The city of Tyr has been a free city for a few months, and trade with it is just about to reopen... a rich merchant is sending 4 large sand crawlers full of trade good through 2 other cities on the way there, then around through another and back here...they are looking for people to sighn up for a 22 month journey... no divine classes and house rules on casters and races make 5th level characters
Jedi/Marshal/Samari of throwns- The wild orc lands are lawless, so the empire is sending a group of nobles and there elite 'guards' to claim the territory and bring both civilation and law to the wild western lands... make 3 character one a noble who runs a city, one a guard/specialist sworn to someone elses noble character, and a helpful serf character sworn to yet another character... you have 7 levels to break up among the characters you make...
The Rock- The rock is an island that has been avoided for almost a hundred years. Legends and rumors say it is haunted and or cursed.

The empire used to be huge, spanning two contents and dozens of islands, it was 90% of the known world. Then the cyatastraphy knocked down all of civilization back to a stone age... the elves rebuilt first, the gnomes and dwarves next. It took almost three hundred years before humans had reestablished themselves at all. No longer was the world united now it was fractured and people made small kingdoms. One such person was an evil necromancer/demonologist who set himself up as Sorcerer king of some islands.

When the Necrodemon king tried to expand he was stoped, and killed. His evil empire broken. Most of the islands reclaimed by people... except the one that held his personal keep. That one has sat for over a hundred years... no one has dared to claim it, and stories say even pirates avoid the place like the plague.

make 3rd level characters

Saving the souls- the world is messed up... and everyone knows it. The gods have sent dreams to you and have 'called' you to a place called 'the well'

make 1st level characters....

 

[Endur]

I recommend taking a break. Play a board game. Let someone else gm for a while. You can come back to this campaign when people are more interested.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

One thing I'm planning on doing for my new campaign that is just starting is having two different parties. Each player has a standard 1st level character, and will also (later, because I need more resources first) have a higher-powered monstrous character (like a dragon or oni). Both parties are adventuring in the same multiverse, but don't actually know each other (and may never meet--though they might after a long time). This will give the players a built in opportunity to switch gears. When they get burned out a bit on the lower-level party, switch to monster characters. Once they've had their fun, switch to the main party.

In addition, both the games I play in and the games I run always take breaks to do something completely different. I like trying different game systems, or just running shorter theme adventures (8-13 sessions or so) with PCs made just for that adventure.

 

[Lanefan]

A few ideas...maybe too late for this campaign but possible grist for the next:

- start at level 1 and for gawd's sake slow down the advancement rate to a crawl.
- review your previous campaigns and look for the rough character level (or equivalent) where the game was at when it collapsed, then design the next campaign to never reach this level.
- run two or more parties concurrently - do an adventure with one then put that crew on hold and do an adventure with another one; or for more fun let each player have a small stable of characters they can cycle through between adventures (I leave you the joys of interweaving all this together and also keeping them vaguely equal in game-world time with each other - it's do-able, but can be a challenge sometimes)
- be patient; if you think an adventure will take 'em three sessions to complete and it ends up taking ten, don't sweat it.
- don't make them special snowflakes...let them know there's other adventurers out there and if the PCs don't get the job done someone else will...this both gives them some competition for the good adventures and gives them an out if they hit an adventure they're really not excited about.

And before you start get your players together at the local pub, knock back a beer or three, and hash over what you all want out of the game. From what you write in the OP it sounds possible you've got enough disparity within your player group that you might be better off splitting them up and running two groups (with maybe a few new hands in each to shake things up).

Lan-"a preconceived overarching story is always good but make sure to keep lots and lots of disconnected side adventures on hand for if-when it doesn't work out"-efan

 

[Mecheon]

A few ideas...maybe too late for this campaign but possible grist for the next:

See, I don't really think any of this isn't going to help. Its not the advancement that's hurting, its the fact that they don't care about the scenario at hand and don't feel like they're enjoying it. I mean, just from the first page...

the vault is a death trap, but they circumvent it and get into it just to find it is empty.... he designed the vault as a genre savvy villain. He keeps the artifact not locked away, but in his pocket... One PC screamed " it, I quite... my character is leaving I'm not fighting the king of the giants" and the Players out of game got into a fight.

No, let me correct this. The players came up with a clever plan and you just said "Lol, no, you're not getting it that easy, he's 'genre savy' and you have to fight". This is why the rogue is saying he can't do anything, because when he's done something, you've just stolen it from his grasp. Doesn't matter if this isn't how you think, because that's most likely what's happened

You're not rewarding your players for coming up with inventive things, you're just adhering to a plot. Basically this entire thing they've done you've gone and not only put impossible challenges in front of them (Because... Why? Why would you even bother with impossible challenges?), you've then stolen the moment of glory out from under them

Give the players a chance to shine in their way. I highly recommend cribbing straight from Dungeon World the Montage system, in that you create a scenario, one of the players describes how to get out of it and then another problem that results. No rolling, just pure, simple "who can come up with the solution and the next horrible thing to happen", even if its something as silly as "Now there are bees. How do you solve the bees?"

Tone it back, go for some small, consequence free stuff for a bit and just let the characters do their own thing.

 

[Herobizkit]

I don't understand this question... how could they not be allowed to fail?

if they don't want to save the world then next switch of campaigns vote for a different type of game...

Well, being told "if you don't want to save the world, game's over, boys" leads me to believe that they can't fail, or they can't play. This leads into something else I've noticed:

When Gnomes ruled the world- a campaign world where the gnome/dwarven steam punk kingdom ruled 3/4 the known world before it fell in a great cataclysm... now 240years later civilization is just coming back. hundreds of small city states dot the map... make 3rd level characters no multi classing some house rules on race...
Dark Sun Caravan- The city of Tyr has been a free city for a few months, and trade with it is just about to reopen... a rich merchant is sending 4 large sand crawlers full of trade good through 2 other cities on the way there, then around through another and back here...they are looking for people to sighn up for a 22 month journey... no divine classes and house rules on casters and races make 5th level characters
Jedi/Marshal/Samari of throwns- The wild orc lands are lawless, so the empire is sending a group of nobles and there elite 'guards' to claim the territory and bring both civilation and law to the wild western lands... make 3 character one a noble who runs a city, one a guard/specialist sworn to someone elses noble character, and a helpful serf character sworn to yet another character... you have 7 levels to break up among the characters you make...
The Rock- The rock is an island that has been avoided for almost a hundred years. Legends and rumors say it is haunted and or cursed.

With the exception of The Rock, you're dictating to the characters what they must play to fit your campaign. YOUR story... not theirs. Why the need to force players into specific roles? Most players resent being told what to play and how they should play it, especially if it's to serve YOUR/the DM's story goals. In this case, what you want to do is write a book, not an adventure.

At the barest of bones, good adventures tend to be a loose collection of what I call 'scenarios' - events, locations, and NPCs that are present in a scene - and the players get to decide how to interact with said scenes. As DM, you decide how they get from scene to scene based on what they've accomplished.

It's okay to have an overarching plot, but if the player's cant influence the plot, or are told "do this or no game", then (to borrow from Egoraptor's Zelda Sequelitis) "they're no longer adventurers - they're being taken on a tour". It's tough to buy into a all-or-nothing scenario, especially if the players aren't enjoying what's being presented to them.

Now, to be fair, the players do need to stop whining just a little bit and turning up their nose at everything you put in front of them. They all want pizza, but can't agree on the toppings, so no one gets pizza as a result. Someone's gotta make compromises on their side of the table, too.

One of the biggest things is "you are the chosen ones" or "mysterious place no one has touched" or even "some guy pays you money" aren't very strong hooks to get players motivated to play. Here's an example of what I did to get my players into Savage Tide.

The first adventure puts them in a city with six or seven distinct City wards, each providing examples of what kinds of people work/grow up in each. The Path also has a _free_ Player's guide to teach the players about the city and their possible place within it.

Now, here's where you hook the PC's - ask them to pick a ward and make a PC that would be appropriate for said ward. Then, ask them to identify 2 or 3 key places they may frequent in that ward (the maps to each are extremely detailed). Finally, strap a relevant NPC to them from that ward (Fighter got a regular fighting partner for the Arena, Paladin got a job working with City Watch, Sorcerer got a gig working for a sour Antiques dealer).

Next, have the PC's come up with one way they all have met or heard about one another. In our game, the men agreed they were all adopted brothers, raised by the same Elven woman. She 'took in' folks on a regular basis who couldn't find a place in the predominately human town and helped them get settled.

Finally, give them a place that's "theirs" - either individually or as a group. The Elven woman went missing, and the NPC brother left in charge owed money to the local thieves' den; he was going to lose the 'family house' if someone didn't come up with cash... and fast.

Now they're properly ensconced in the setting, they have contacts and a potential reason for working together.

THEN start the campaign. This is when an NPC shows up with a letter requesting aid; the benefactor NPC turned out to be the secret lover of the Fighter.

Hope this helps, or at least gets some ideas going.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Well, being told "if you don't want to save the world, game's over, boys" leads me to believe that they can't fail, or they can't play.

well they can fail still...but failing is a major campaign changer, so I still don't get 'can't fail' thing... as for the 'or can't play' I don't understand that either... (and I really want to)

this campaign was dreamed up when one player (years ago, since we play most campaigns for 9-15 months on average) said "we should do a knight game... can you make up a knightly order" and then another player (one that is no longer in group because of second child birth robbing him of free time) adding an idea that was I should have the knight hood be a little more jedi and less sir lancelot....

then when it came time to vote on the campaign and I was doing this out more I had to make more changes when my PCs drew up...
A rouge (arcane trickster) who is a cuisine to the royal family (the Kinshields) who pretend to be bumbling Fops, but are really trained counter assasins that protect the royal family.
A druid/Wizard who belives there is a dark alignment of stars coming (She doesn't play anymore...that was my girlfriend, now my ex)
A Rouge (assassin)/Bard who was part of an assassin creed like organization before it was destroyed by some anctient evil that feared there power. He was undercover at a bard college in the capitol when that happened, so he has continued to play the part of the bard ever since.
A warlock (sword lock fiend pact) who didn't sell his own soul. He was born without it because his parents made a deal with a power broker middle man before he was born... he was raised an orphan because by the age of 3 his parents died trying to break the seal on a anctient prison or something... he grew up to use this curse and make it his own, now he is a town guard in the capitol specializing in solving the impossible crimes.
A fighter (eldritch knight) who was literally raised by wolves and fought orcs in the outer area of the kingdom, and came to the attention fo the royal family and was knighted for bravery...

the plot may be over arching, but it was as much theres as mine...

This leads into something else I've noticed:

With the exception of The Rock, you're dictating to the characters what they must play to fit your campaign.

I really wish you would give more details here... only the rock is 100% my story idea, other then that they are all based on things they have said over the years... of course I have idea's for all of them, but I just don't understand...

YOUR story... not theirs.

I always think of it as OURS, not mine or theirs...

Why the need to force players into specific roles?

with the exception of the one where they are drawing up 3 characters to fit roles (and that is the idea of the campaign) I just don't under stand... most are listed as level/race requirements and that's it...

Most players resent being told what to play and how they should play it, especially if it's to serve YOUR/the DM's story goals. In this case, what you want to do is write a book, not an adventure.

well I do want to be a writer (and am trying to sell a novel as we speak) I think that is very different...

please be more spesfic... this is something I need an example of. WHat that I wrote do you see that in?

At the barest of bones, good adventures tend to be a loose collection of what I call 'scenarios' - events, locations, and NPCs that are present in a scene - and the players get to decide how to interact with said scenes. As DM, you decide how they get from scene to scene based on what they've accomplished.

sounds like my set ups so far...

It's okay to have an overarching plot, but if the player's cant influence the plot, or are told "do this or no game", then (to borrow from Egoraptor's Zelda Sequelitis) "they're no longer adventurers - they're being taken on a tour". It's tough to buy into a all-or-nothing scenario, especially if the players aren't enjoying what's being presented to them.

please again... at what point have they been told "do this or no game"? the closest thing I can think of is "Hey this bad guy wants to blow up your kingdom... if you don't stop it no one will" and that isn't "do this or no game" it's "Here is what is going on"

One of the biggest things is "you are the chosen ones" or "mysterious place no one has touched" or even "some guy pays you money" aren't very strong hooks to get players motivated to play.

ok, what about "Your parents sold your soul to this monster, and he is going to take over the world," and "This monster manipulated people into killing your family and friends because he feared one of you may raise and oppse him" or "that star alignment you fear, is what is giving this monster a chance to escape" because those of the motivations based on the backgrounds PCs wrote that made the game take shape...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

No, let me correct this. The players came up with a clever plan and you just said "Lol, no, you're not getting it that easy, he's 'genre savy' and you have to fight". This is why the rogue is saying he can't do anything, because when he's done something, you've just stolen it from his grasp. Doesn't matter if this isn't how you think, because that's most likely what's happened

so in your mind, if someone does something that can't work, and that you seeded into the story of the course of levels can't work, you should just say "Ok you win."?

in your mind I should not describe the world as it comes, but instead make it so no matter what the PCs do they win?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*