Dealing with overly cautious players!

[Dukthulhu]

I'm in a bit of a pickle, lately. I find that, no matter the situation, my players are so amazingly wary of everything I throw at them that they essentially Trapfind/Detect Traps/Detect Magic every speck of dust that floats their way! I'd like to have them cut back on this behavior, as it produces meta-gaming out the wazoo, as well as breaks immersion and generally ticks me off. I've never been the kind of DM who lobs a TPK at them whenever they let their guard down, so I'm not quite sure where this is coming from (besides the fact that they are all too smart for their own good).

Any advice on making them relax for once?

 

[Jack Simth]

I'm in a bit of a pickle, lately. I find that, no matter the situation, my players are so amazingly wary of everything I throw at them that they essentially Trapfind/Detect Traps/Detect Magic every speck of dust that floats their way! I'd like to have them cut back on this behavior, as it produces meta-gaming out the wazoo, as well as breaks immersion and generally ticks me off. I've never been the kind of DM who lobs a TPK at them whenever they let their guard down, so I'm not quite sure where this is coming from (besides the fact that they are all too smart for their own good).

Any advice on making them relax for once?

Any number of ways.

1) Talk to them (recommended).
2) Stop using traps and hidden treasure of any kind for several sessions.
3) Give them a time-sensitive mission, then be vastly over-descriptive for a few sessions. They don't go "down the road, and meet a T intersection, where the road branches both East and West". They head down "the road which seems to be made of dark-gray pea-gravel; the left side of the path looks to be just slightly lighter in shade, but still fits the description of 'dark gray'. The road appears to be three inches thick, seems five feet wide, and looks to be lined with two-foot, bright-green grass for five feet, followed by dense bushes going up to human shoulder-height with bright-green three-pointed leaves, which is backed by trees twenty feet tall, with three-inch long pine needles, which block out the light from the sun. This path seems to continue until it appears to reache another road - this one is seemingly of the same makings: it looks to be the same dark-gray pea-gravel; the North side of the cross road looks to be just slightly lighter in shade, but still fits the description of 'dark gray'. The road appears to be three inches thick, seems five feet wide, and looks to be lined with two-foot, bright-green grass for five feet, followed by dense bushes going up to human shoulder-height with bright-green three-pointed leaves, which is backed by trees twenty feet tall, with three-inch long pine needles, which block out the light from the sun" (the repeated description is deliberate). Make sure to use a lot of 'seems to be', 'appears to be', 'looks to be' and similar qualifiers every time you describe anything. Nothing gets a fully concrete 'is'. Keep track of the time and action cost as they check each and every square foot. There are no traps, magical doodads, or anything else of actual note until they come up against an obvious threat (which is exactly as it appears to be, but you keep up the qualifiers). Once the obvious threat is killed, it's obviously carrying obvious treasure - but again, you keep up the 'appears' 'seems' 'looks like' and so on. The mission itself needs to be not overly cumbersome, other than the time limit. Watch them fail due to the time constraints. Repeat until they get the hint.

 

[Dukthulhu]

I'll try to work methods #2 and #3 into my next session, which will likely be a scenic, combat-light romp through a natural environment which seems like it wants to kill them. As for #1, I'm trying to hold off on that as long as possible, as this group is... let's say they're just 'adamant' in their views.

 

[jonesy]

You could tone down on the number of 'invisible' traps you use. If they keep searching and won't find anything, it might eventually make them stop. Leave clues when there might be traps, and none when there are none. A corridor lined with glimmering gems < looks like a trap. A corridor with nothing < no traps. A faint acrid smell < something wrong. And so on. Clues vs lack of clues.

Or maybe reward heroic behaviour with extra experience?

Have them read this:
It's a Trap, Role Playing Games | STUFFER SHACK

Or, prove their paranoia true and give them a real challenge: Crypt of the Devil Lich, The Dread Crypt of Srihoz, (the very hard) Tomb or Horrors, or (the impossible) Grimtooths' Dungeon of Doom.

 

[Sorrowdusk]

Yeah but how did things get this way? Did something happen recently or in their pasts? Players can get this way if they were under the habit of gaming under a killer DM.

 

[Dukthulhu]

I'm not entirely sure. Having only known them for two years, I only have our own history to go on. Most of them are semi-experienced gamers, and the rest are new to the idea.

Although... now that I think about it, there is one player who is usually the instigator of most of this behavior. He's an ex-Marine, so that might explain some things.

 

[Jack Simth]

Although... now that I think about it, there is one player who is usually the instigator of most of this behavior. He's an ex-Marine, so that might explain some things.

There are no Ex-Marines. There's just Marines who are no longer actively serving.

Also: In that case, he's probably letting his own personality bleed through to his character. And it likely makes absolutely perfect sense to him to do so, and for the way he envisions his character to view the world. Examining everything that seems the least little bit out of place, paying extreme attention to detail, and being as cautious as circumstances permit, is one of the ways soldiers of any stripe survive (or at least avoid the lion's share of criticism from the Sergent... which is close to the same thing). Additional, this makes option 1 (talk to him) more likely to succeed, as there's a very good chance he doesn't think of it as a problem.

 

[Sorrowdusk]

To be fair though, you can keep detect magic up for a while. IMC we allowed unlimited cantrips after a certain level. Just let them keep it up (while they are able or willing) and promise to let them know if they see anything. Likewise with trapfinding, let them say they are searching for traps as they go along -but rather than have them make a roll every 5ft either let them take a 10 result as average or let them make so many rolls in a row for some distance traveleld. It certainly seems fair to let a roll cover all of a door or a hall, or a room much as a search check would.

I'll mention a anecdote once of a GM whose players were trying to scale a wall. But after they started one of them fell on an average result, and the GM said "This wall is slick with moss." rasing the difficulty of the expected climb to which they objected, because the GM had described NO such moss at all in his description.

After this (to spite him) his players kept announcing search and spot checks in case there was more "ninja moss" all throughout their exploration.

 

[Senko]

Hah here's a worse one for you, happened to me in a game once, . . .

GM
"You enter a large room that appears to be set up as a dining area containing a large number of shrouded tables and chairs, opposite you on the other side of the room is a doorway while to the east and west lie glass doors leading out to a balcony lit by the occasional flash of lightning arcing across the dark skies beyond."

Me
"I move over towards the windows to have a closer look at the balcony."

GM
"The 15 foot tall statue grabs you and hauls you towarsd the door."

Me
"What statue?"

GM
"The one in the corner of the room."

Me
"You didn't mention a statue."

GM
"It was a dark room and the occasional lightning flash kept you from noticing it."

After an argument about how dark room or not my character should have seen that big a statue especially given the other circumstances, dragged to another dimension, a weird house, dangerous objects (a vantriloquists dummy that was stuck on another players hand) which would make them paranoid she still wound up chucked down a chute in the next room . . . and then got the rest of the party dumped on her several minutes later after managing an amazing check to climb up the smooth, steep chute when she was seconds away from climbing out.

Now that I think about it that DM had a nasty habit of describing things that relied on backstory we didn't have like the time another character came home to find their mentor/parent figure dead on the path outside the house and should have gone over to the pond because there was a magical talking fish in there that saw everything or the time that same character was meant to hide in a pool of water to escape the pursuing trolls because they hunted by scent.

Anyway yes I agree speak to the player/s because searching for traps is a good way not to die.

 

[Cavall]

If I can be really honest here, if they are searching a dungeon, why wouldn't they look around for traps? Isn't that part of the dungeon crawl?

What you really should be doing is finding new and clever traps that they feel rewarded for disarming. But use traps sparingly and make them harder. Maybe with puzzles to figure out to disarm, not just simple locks and mechanics.

If they want to deal with traps, do so. What you could also do is wait for the natural 1 that will one day come up. Still keep the trap, but have a bunch of monsters come out too, so they have to find a way to escape the trap while fighting bad guys and time is a massive factor. It would make for a great encounter and give them a decent story to tell afterwards.

Really you are asking how to keep a way to screw your players over in the game, when you should be asking how to reward their ingenuity and planning. Besides, the more spells they spend looking for traps the less they will have to deal with whats behind it. And some traps can be set off manually by bad guys on the other side, making it not as simple as taking your time and looking around with a few skills and magic.