D&D General Advancing the Plot when the PCs don't take the bait. . .

[aco175]

I like to have a few options for the PCs to take. I also like to advance plots of monsters and NPCs that they do not take. For example, the Essentials box has a message board that the PCs are to take v2 of the 3 missions to gain a level. The 3rd option I'll take a NPC party and have them complete that one or have that problem get worse. The NPC party can get fame and favor from the town same as the PCs, but are around operating in the PCs space for good or ill, but mostly as frenemies.

At low level the players may not take the problem with pirates and focus on the goblins and orcs. At mid level, the pirates may come back and the players can go at them again. If the players choose to go after the trolls and leave the pirates, they may come back with a fleet at 10th level and then the PCs will need to deal with them..

There may be a part of that that stems from DM planning. I may make a map of the pirate hideout and want to eventually use it. I do not usually force encounters where I take an orc camp and place it regardless if the PCs turn right or left, but I like to use the things I spend time developing as some point. I even made things that eventually was used in another campaign.

 

[lordabdul]

But wanted to know if anyone else loved moments like these in their games as much as I do, and ask for examples of in-game events where PCs had to deal with the consequences of not acting or taking a different path for a while.

Yep as a GM I really love it, but to me that's actually a subset of the more general task of taking care of the game world. That is: while the PCs are doing their thing, the world (including the NPCs in it) don't stay idle, waiting for the players to come interact with them. Regardless of what the PCs do, there is always at least some stuff happening in the world. Of course, ideally a lot of what happens is a direct or indirect consequence (in the neutral meaning of the word) of what the PCs did.

 

[Weiley31]

You make the world explode. Or the Out of The Abyss Demonlords destroy everything and the next campaign, and the new characters you require your players to make, is the one you play afterwards. Or Tiamat eats their animal companion. Or the Rival NPC to your one PC steals their girl/guy/cat, or they suddenly get zapped to Adventures in Middle Earth and all their magic becomes low magic. Or suddenly they are a Tasha's elf or a chicken.

 

[werecorpse]

Yep, give the players choices - that’s what player agency is about. Have there be consequences to their choices - otherwise they weren’t real. Don’t predetermine what the consequences will be as you don’t know what the characters will do but lean towards a more dramatic consequence. Remember it’s a game of adventure - the consequences can be dire but should lead to new adventures not eliminate them.

 

[Imaculata]

During a grand feast, my players learned that a port town that they often frequent, was under some kind of attack. This could have made for a great battle, but instead they chose not to respond immediately. And this is where things got very interesting.

When they returned to the port town, they found it in ruins. A great battle had been fought here, and it had cost a lot of lives, and destroyed a large part of the town. The town was ill-equiped to defend itself against whatever it was that attacked it. It was interesting having the players investigate the aftermath of a battle, rather than take part in the battle.

As they would soon find out, not only was the damage to the town a direct result of their choices, but so was the source of the attack. You see, way back at the start of the campaign, the players had fled from a ghastly living ship. They had invoked the help of a nearby giant to aid them, and he had picked up the pursuer and thrown it over his shoulder, onto the island. The players knew it probably wasn't dead, and that they would have to deal with it at some point.

In the town square they found the smoking carcass of the creature. It had taken every man in town, and the entire supply of the weaponsmith, to take the beast down. It was indeed the weapon smith himself who dealt the killing blow. During the battle however, the smithee had been destroyed. The weaponsmith was now the hero of the town, but his business and home were ruined.

Taking some responsibility for all this, one of the players offered to hire the smith and fully fund a new work place for him. He had earned it. This is however not the end of this story. The living ship was a corrupted creature, and many a man had taken parts from the carcass as a trophy. Others had sold parts of it as magical ingredients. The consequences of this could be disastrous.

 

[Scott Christian]

So I was just prepping my notes for next week's 19th session of my D&D 5E game and I realized that some of my notes from Session #16 could be copied over since in that session the PCs made a choice to follow one thread at the cost of not following up on something else. Now they will be coming back to see some of the consequences of their choice and I have to think through how things have advanced since when I originally planned for them to go back to a town from their early adventuring days.

The details don't matter. I am not asking for advice or suggestions, I have some ideas that make sense and I am very aware of avoiding making the consequences seem like a "punishment" for making their own choices (either choice came with benefits and downsides and they talked them through as a group when choosing). But wanted to know if anyone else loved moments like these in their games as much as I do, and ask for examples of in-game events where PCs had to deal with the consequences of not acting or taking a different path for a while. What was the choice? What were the consequences? How did the players react?

As a DM I have written a few, including one that specifically had them sailing across a lake (east) to track down a group of thieves that were holding an NPC family hostage or sailing across the lake (west) to stop an oncoming assassin attack on the elected mayor. Both NPCs had several RP sessions with the players. Both were liked by the players. And they found out the information while in the center of said lake via a thief with a guilty conscience. Both were time sensitive, so it was an act now. One boat. One decision. One person (or family) to save. I loved the idea as a 25 year old DM.

It was the worst thing I have ever done. Rotten to the core. Players hated it. I hated it afterwards.

Then I tried it again, this time with much more subtle nuances because I thought it would be cool to have some magic coins infected with a lycanthropy curse. I also wrote three or four other adventures they could do outside the city rather than track the coins. I figured the coins would infect 1d4 people a day. Well, they did two of the adventures outside, which took a week. I thought, okay, 1 werefolk (each coin had the curse of the actual creature on it). I had someone run into them in the wilds (where they were) and tell them about the strange things going on in town. They chose the third adventure. It took 2 weeks! Then they stayed outside of town to rest. Another day. Now there were 44-66 werefolk in town. I had the guards kill some off, but they were neither the level nor able to prevent the carnage. So I had a choice. Should I just say 2 or 3 people got infected, and have them deal with it, or stick to what I originally had planned. Because when I planned it I meant for there to be a change in environment or consequence/reward due to time. I chose the latter.

It became the new worst thing I have ever done. Rotten to the core. Players hated it. I hated it afterwards.

So I know you said you don't want the consequence to seem like punishment, but outside of simple storytelling, like, that barkeep you have been pining after got married because you were gone for two months, always seems like a consequence. Once you put a countdown on it and don't allow them to do it all, it is a punishment for some players.

I have also been on the player side (after I did it twice as a DM) and can say I thoroughly disliked the experience. Felt happy for the DM because I had had those thoughts. But, as a player, yuck.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Oriental Adventures, 1e.

Took place in Kozakura, port city of Tu Pe.
PC's were all at about level 4 at this point (two Samurai, Monk [Sumo], Bushi, Wu Jen and a Sohie).

Long story short... the Players decided to follow one storyline involving trying to gather more info on a "new daimyo that took over" at the Shogun's order after arriving in a fleet of about a dozen ships and over a hundred bushi and samurai, ...and when their suspicions finally kicked in and they climbed over the city walls back into the city after a city-wide party outside the town walls (celebrating the new daimyo and a couple other plot completions involving a gargantuan preying mantis called Shidorah), the PC's found the town deserted. No guards patrolling. Nobody at the palace. Stores ransacked and the dozen ships, the bushi, samurai, and new daimyo sailing away into the rising sun...

Turns out, the entire daimyo-replacement thing was a HUGE con by a Pirate Lord to 'steal the city blind'. The bad guy's managed to "steal an entire city"!

Well...the PC's took other plot hooks that lead them down different paths...and allowed the fleet of "wave-men" (oriental pirates, basically) to pull off the most elaborate and profitable heists in the history of Kozakura! This "ruse" even caused the direct death of one PC...a Samurai who was given the choice to swear fealty to the new daimyo, or commit sepukku; he chose the later. The other PC Samurai refused both and became a Ronin!

Absolutely AMAZING campaign result. PC's became obsessed with revenge at that point.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[el-remmen]

So I know you said you don't want the consequence to seem like punishment, but outside of simple storytelling, like, that barkeep you have been pining after got married because you were gone for two months, always seems like a consequence. Once you put a countdown on it and don't allow them to do it all, it is a punishment for some players.

I have also been on the player side (after I did it twice as a DM) and can say I thoroughly disliked the experience. Felt happy for the DM because I had had those thoughts. But, as a player, yuck.

I meant nothing so onerous as the Sophie's Choice you described. Nor am I so beholden to arbitrary frameworks like how quickly lycanthropy spreads that I'd let it outweigh keeping things a reasonable challenge for the player. I mean more like, advancing things so that they are challenge. Maybe what was a 2nd level adventure is a 4th level one now because the bandit band recruited new members or the party's rival took over as the leader of the scheme, stuff like that.

Some kind of stakes to give the choices meaning without being too grimdark, is what I mean.

Then again, based on what you described Aragorn having to decide between going after Merry and Pippen or Sam and Frodo would have been a hated experience - and I agree, if I were actually Aragorn, but for drama? I love it, both as a player and a DM.

 

[touc]

...examples of in-game events where PCs had to deal with the consequences of not acting or taking a different path for a while. What was the choice? What were the consequences? How did the players react?

• Curse of Strahd. 2 decisions, intermixed, to leave an emotionally vulnerable NPC alone and giving advice to a madman. I tend to play adult games and not pull punches.
  • Players sat on the fence about what to do with NPC Ireena, who was being stalked and emotionally worn down by the immortal vampire Strahd. It's a complicated plot
    Spoiler

    Centuries ago, Strahd became a vampire by killing his brother, whose fiance Strahd lusted after. He thought she'd love him, he used his powers to charm her, but in the end she killed herself, and he found himself in a shadow plane, the poster child for the Dark Powers of Ravenloft. Ever since, the fiance is reincarnated every generation or so, and Strahd tries to recreate events of the past (get her to come to him voluntarily rather than charmed), with the belief that if he succeeds, the "curse" that holds him in this shadow Barovia will end). He knows he is cursed, but he thinks, as an eternal being, he'll get it right one day.
    . Rather than help the poor girl deal with her stalker situation, they would often leave her alone to gallivant around the countryside doing quests.
  • Alone, in an Inn with only her thoughts, she gradually began to feel no one cared for her. One day, while alone, the Abbott came (while the PCs were off on another adventure, if you've run it you know how insane this guy is) to take her face for his homemade "bride" for Strahd, designed to cure Strahd's madness. He did so largely off advice the PCs gave him earlier.
  • The PCs previously had convinced him killing Ireena was wrong just to "get rid of the competition" for his bride. The Abbott consulted with his "gods" and realized the PCs must be messengers of the gods sent to lead him to the right path. Instead, he realized he could, peacefully, kill two birds with one stone. He had her face carefully removed to stitch onto to his "bride" while the PCs yet again left Ireena by herself in her hotel room, but was kind enough to heal her so she wouldn't die. This way, Strahd got the best of both worlds: the face he lusted after and the pliant, perfect wife he needed. The Abbott later thanked the party (genuinely, he's mad).
  • Consequently, Ireena wanted to die, and as the conjunction of Strahd's original anniversary date where he killed Sergei and attempted to seduce Tatyana approached (the original incarnation of Ireena, much of this is added by me knowing the original material that didn't make the module), the party had to keep suicide watch. Instead of doing anything, they simply immobilized her on suicide watch. When the time came, she disappeared into mist before their eyes, finally giving herself to Strahd, the only one who promised her in his dreams he'd always love and care for her, never abandon her. And, he didn't. He gave her eternal life, restored her face. Thanks largely to the PCs actions, she was abandoned and ignored by them, but not by her stalker. It fit the theme of the setting perfectly, and I never saw this coming when we started. In the end, they used Strahd's obsession with her as his downfall, but that's all for another thread.

A long description, but one of my better moments on the DM stage. This one stung my players, but they weren't upset at the DM. I think there was curiosity how I'd handle them doing nothing about Ireena. Would the DM sabotage his own "story" wherein Ireena is supposed to be "saved" by the PCs? Isn't that how all these type of stories go? The key NPC never actually dies, right? And when I went a different direction, they enjoyed it. They didn't enjoy what the Abbott did, and after the end said it was damn good "horror" when they realized this madman used their own words to twisted purpose.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

One of these moments occurred early on in my game. The party found the extremely poorly-concealed paper trail of Shadow-Druid shipping routes (they're rabidly anti-city, so it never occurred to them to check things like "tax receipts"), and learned there were two relevant locations. One location shipped something out from its area (a semi-isolated pockmarked bluffs region called "The Honeycomb"), through the main city (following all the other major caravans, to blend in with the crowd) before heading out to a spot in some marshy headwaters of the Sadalbari river. Then stuff came back from that area to the city, which the party had already found and dealt with. They elected to go to the marshy area first, and had some bad rolls on their journey out there. This meant they arrived after someone else had attacked that location, and by the time they got through it and returned to town, the Shadow-Druids had already completely cleared out of the other location.

There were still things to learn in both places, but this communicated relatively clearly that there are Costs and Consequences to favoring one path over another. I won't screw my players over, but if they choose to put out Fire A first, then Fire B and C will be harder to fight when they arrive, or will have produced Fire D while they were distracted, etc. If they really neglect a plotline, it kudzus, becoming more entrenched, reaching closer and closer to its nefarious goals. Never enough to be insurmountable, but showing that it isn't just what they do choose that shapes the story.