Abandon Quest!

[Jhaelen]

When the PCs refuse to pick up the quest hook, what do you do?

Nothing, really. I normally don't have 'the' quest hook, but 'a' plot hook, or rather several plot hooks.
I don't plan very far in advance except for a very general outline of events. If the players show interest in one of the plot hooks I've planted, I'll start to develop it in more detail.

If I have some 'really cool (TM)' ideas for some hooks, I'm not below recycling them, i.e. they'll stumble over slightly re-dressed variants of the hook until they bite.
But I'm rarely that invested in a particular idea, unless it's very late in the campaign and I want to draw things to a satisfying close.

From time to time it's happened, that my players decide to abandon an adventure at some point - usually because they get the (sometimes correct) impression it would be too tough for them to continue. This is a case where I don't typically let them get away without some negative repercussions later in the campaign. Often it's possible to re-use at least some of the planned encounters in a different context to avoid having wasted the time to prepare them.

 

[Razjah]

When the PCs refuse to pick up the quest hook, what do you do? Forcing it seems like a bad idea, but do you abandon your prepared storyline entirely? Do you circle back to it a few sessions later? And if you do decide to abandon the quest, when do the consequences for doing so start to feel punitive rather than a natural consequence of the game world?

If something is absolutely dependent upon the PCs taking a quest hook- I'll start in media res. But I do this rarely, part of the fun of rpgs is making decisions. I will circle back, but not to that quest hook itself. The world happens; if PCs don't tackle the goblin tribe threatening a little hamlet then it may be razed next time they come through. Or the King's Guard had to intervene, but they dislike adventuring types and won't allow them into the town to rest and recuperate. Consequences like the first aren't punitive, the second may be. But it can increase the verisimilitude of the world.

Prepared storyline? Honestly, I don't prep storylines anymore. I prep situations and I know what will happen if the PCs don't intervene. When they do, the next prep is "how do [bad guys/monster/thing] react to this setback?" But that leads to another situation. I'm not writing a story; I'm setting up situations to see how the story unfolds once the players interact with it.

 

[Lanefan]

Prepared storyline? Honestly, I don't prep storylines anymore. I prep situations and I know what will happen if the PCs don't intervene. When they do, the next prep is "how do [bad guys/monster/thing] react to this setback?" But that leads to another situation. I'm not writing a story; I'm setting up situations to see how the story unfolds once the players interact with it.

I'll storyboard out a whole series of maybe a few dozen adventures in different paths - with some as standalones - at the start of a campaign, thinking "If everything goes exactly as I'd like it to, here's what I want to run" and knowing full well I'll be lucky to end up running half of it.

As the campaign goes along and things happen and parties decide that different hooks or plots or stories are important than what I expected, I'll revisit and update this storyboard. I'm on version 11 (or 12?) in my current campaign. There's still some things on there that have been there since day 1 that the parties just aren't high enough level for yet, there's other things on there that will probably never get played (parties are too high of level is the main reason), and other things on there that I'd never dreamed of when the campaign began (2008). If a canned module fits with a particular adventure idea I'll note that, so five years later when I come to run it I'll remember what I had in mind and can pull out the module and go.

The storyboard is useful in all stages of the campaign:

- in the early stages it tells me what sort of hooks to cast, and what they might later point to, and what loose threads to lay down that can later be woven into a coherent story or plotline
- in the mid stages it helps me keep things organized, shows what's been done, what's been abandoned, and what's yet to come
- in the later stages it gives me a guideline as to how much legs the campaign has left and whether I should start planning for the next one.

Lan-"but don't get too attached to the storyboard, and always have some standalone adventures on it to throw in for variety"-efan