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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oryan77" data-source="post: 4848174" data-attributes="member: 18701">Man, I follow all of these suggestions myself, and I seem to have the same general opinion. But what the heck do you do when your players make no effort at all to gain information from NPCs on their own in order to move forward in the adventure?Earlier on in our campaign, we began joking about how the parties tactics seem to always be, "kill first & cast Speak with Dead second".It was funny to me at first (but still frustrating as the DM). But now I'm at my wits end. People always complain about DMs railroading players, but I'm not kidding when I say this....my players make me railroad them, literally. If I don't hold their hand and bluntly railroad them into what to do next, they will either spend several hours discussing what to do (again, not an exaggeration), or they sit there and wait for me to make things happen.For example, several sessions ago they figured out that they needed a guide to help them get to the Vault of the Drow. So they are hanging out in a tavern; not really telling me what they are doing in the tavern. They sit at the gaming table doing 'whatever' until I'm yet again forced to say, "what are you guys doing". They tell me they are just hanging out in the tavern and then one of them says, "So do we find a guide?" They all laugh and then one of them says, "So anyway, who's our guide?" They were not joking, they were simply being lazy. Keep in mind, we're playing a Planescape game and they are in Sigil trying to go to the Vault of the Drow...they had absolutely no idea how to get there and they made zero effort to figure it out.This is also not supposed to be a hack-n-slash game and they all claim to be roleplayers. But I really do not see much roleplaying & the only time the game is moving is when a combat happens. So I've unintentionally turned it into a hack-n-slash game.I'm trying to run the Dead Gods adventure and so far it's been a real let-down. We just got to a point where they had the chance to have the entire plot revealed to them, and once again, they talked more about killing the only NPCs that knew anything, rather than roleplaying to find out what the NPCs know. But all they've talked about for several sessions is how they don't know what the hell is going on (which is how the adventure is written).I mean, last session one player playing a wizard was captured and then rescued, but is now without his gear (and spellbook). They are in the middle of a drow war camp that consists of hundreds of tents, and the first thing they do is tell me they look in the first random tent to see if his equipment is there (expecting me to just have it appear so he can effortlessly get his stuff back). They even know the gear could be at a 2nd drow war camp half a mile away that is almost just as big. The wizard even had the chance to negotiate his release & if he attempted to roleplay, could have negotiated to get his stuff back. But all he gave for roleplaying were 3 word responses (like all of his characters do). They could even try to roleplay and talk to various drow NPCs to try and find out where the stuff is. But the players first thought was that he was just going to make a new PC if he doesn't find his spellbook, "cause he'll be gimped". I didn't plan for the capture to happen, but geez, part of playing D&D is to overcome challenges...and this became his challenge. He'd rather scrap the character than try to overcome the challenge.They don't even try, they just expect me to throw in that NPC (guide) to do all the leg work for them and then if they aren't being railroaded, they seem bored. I don't get it. They literally do look to their NPC guides as the one that will fill them in on all the information they need to know. I could just DM & play by myself if I wanted to make everything happen <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />The crazy thing is, if I turned it into nothing but a hack-n-slash game with random encounters & a BBEG to fight, they would be bored of the game cause it has no substance. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /></blockquote>

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