DMs with limited time, and wasted efforts

[Piratecat]

This happens to me, too. Historically the best way to ensure that the PCs don't pursue a plot thread is to map and detail it.

When I'm left with something extra, though, that just means that I can reuse it elsewhere. Either the PCs might come back to the original spot (see below) or I can seamlessly slip it in later in the campaign.

I make up a lair of strange, evil monsters living in a cave complex too near a halfling village. In the game, the PCs discover the tracks of the strange creatures, and follow them back to the cave entrance. And then they walk away from the adventure and go elsewhere.

Remember the concept of consequences. If the group doesn't explore the cave, then the monsters go and kill other people. Maybe rival adventurers (including a paladin) track them to the cave and discover the PCs' tracks. Are these people allied with the monsters? Once the NPCs kill the monsters and take their loot, they work to track down the PCs and question them about their suspicious presence there.

Everything the PCs do, good or bad, has consequences that ripple forward. Predict these and you'll never run out of plot hooks.

I'm also big on reusing locations. After monsters are killed other ones move in, or the original monsters take actions that draw the PCs back to somewhere they've been before. I love the feel of this sort of adventure.

 

[Mercule]

I've been fighting the same thing, lately. And it's compounded by building a homebrew setting.

One realization that I've come to is that the PCs don't make it through an entire adventure in one session. They do unpredictable things and there may be several options for them to take, but they won't make it very far on any given path in a single session. The lesson is that you don't have to have everything done for an adventure the first session you run it. Figure one, maybe two, events of significance (non-emptiy room, major NPC, shopping trip, whatever) per hour. Come up with the basic story and then work in an expanding circle from wherever the PCs are at the end of the last session.

 

[DanMcS]

My solution to this is minimal preparation for the two most likely courses of action. For instance, for this saturday, there's a salt mine which all the miners have been run out of. I have about a page worth of antagonists and two sketched out maps, with notes on the maps for encounters.

There's a possibility that the PCs will ignore this plot hook and stay in the major city. So I have about a page of notes for that, too, including reusing the antagonists I was going to have in the salt mine.

Other than that, I'm not going to worry about it too much. I enjoyed drawing the maps, statting out the badguys wasn't too hard and they'll probably see use again later as generic mooks anyway, so even if they ignore both of the plot hooks I have and decide to go shopping or something, I won't consider the effort wasted.

 

[Mac Callum]

I seem to end up with an inordinate amount of self-written/prepared adventure material that never gets used in my campaign. It seems that a lot of my time-consuming effort during the week is wasted when game time comes around.

You see to have two seperate problems.

I make up a lair of strange, evil monsters living in a cave complex too near a halfling village. In the game, the PCs discover the tracks of the strange creatures, and follow them back to the cave entrance. And then they walk away from the adventure and go elsewhere.

This example, and several of your others, seems to indicate that the party isn't interested in the hooks you're providing. Plot-hooks are only as good as their ability to draw PCs into an adventure. What kind of stimuli do your player's respond to? Use more like that.

I make an interesting and notable encounter with a local patrol who can give the PCs some useful information about the old abandoned temple they are heading to. And when the PCs spot the patrol on the road, they detour around them to avoid the encounter.

Your second problem seems to be a lack of adaptibility, combined with a soft, kids-glove approach. I'll cover both of these in a minute.

I don't want to railroad the PCs in my campaign. I want the PCs to have the freedom to chose their way through my world....

Wimp. Kids gloves; really....

Yeah, I'm being a little overt-the-top here, so don't take it personally. It's just my way.

But seriously, I'm one of those 'grown up' DMs with 'grown up' demands on my time. My quest-prep time is limited. I don't have time to make endless maps and NPC notes. I write a quest, and darn it, the PCs will run that adventure.

Part of it though is realizing that D&D is a group game. If you're writing quests that you'd love to play in there's a chance you're writing quests that aren't what your PCs would love to play in. A good DM knows his players well.

Let me give you an example. I've got this player who IRL has a strong Rebel-Against-Authority mindset which focuses on organized religion. She can't stand 'em. Catholic churches make her angry. Without endorsing or decrying this predilection, I simply accept it and plan accordingly. Her Ranger is an Undead Hunter and she's doubled up on Undead as her favored enemy. So what do I do? Her character comes across a Church that pretends to be good and friendly during services, but is secretly run by a vampire and is making all the converts into spawn.

Hook. Line. Sinker.

The other thing, as I mentioned earlier, is a lack of adaptability. Remember that patrol with the important information? Well, just because the PCs avoided the patrol doesn't mean they get to avoid the encounter. Imagine up some Rangers patrolling the woods who the PCs run into while avoiding the soldiers on the road.

Look, the world is malleable to your will. As the DM its your JOB to see to it that the other players are having fun - but it ISN"T your job to waste your time inventing quests for your PCs to ignore. I can't just improvise this stuff up in the middle of the game ahead of time the way some people can, so I make up an encounter - and then I think of at least FOUR different ways the PCs will end up there. The chance of the PCs avoiding all four of them is so low it hardly ever happens. A little planning can make important encounters unavoidable while simultaneously maintaining the illusion of free will on your player's parts. Trust me, with practice they'll never know.

I'm having a sort of crisis of faith, here. Recently it seems that 50% of my work preparing for my game is wasted effort.

Well, hopefully some of this helped. A little bit of extra effort can ensure that most of it doesn't get wasted. Knowing that your players avoid patrols, you can now plan accordingly.

Most importantly though, if none of this helps, talking to your players pretty much always does. Find out what they want to do. If after half-an-hour of conversation you realize that the adventures they want to play aren't the ones you want to run, a compromise can often be reached.

 

[Numion]

In my circles its perfectly ok to just say "follow the damn adventure". Yeah, it's metagamey and chips away suspension of disbelief, but surely worth it when precious work and time is wasted.

The sad fact is that most of my group have lives and are pretty busy. No point spend the gaming night chasing red herrings or looking for the adventure hook.

 

[Umbran]

Sometimes, it isn't enough to simply create material. Sometimes you have to do so with a bit more forethought as to what the PCs are likely to do.

As an example, in two of your stated examples, the PCs are busy with travel to some goal when they encounter something. You present them with a choice - continue on to their planned destination, or take up a sidetrack that may not be related.

You should not be surprised that they choose to ignore the sideline. These are people who live dnagerous lives with finite resources. The sideline may only serve to deplete those resources. If they say to themeselves, "The DM presented us with it, so it must be relevant and interesting," they are guilty of meta-gaming, which players are always told to avoid.

They make choices based upon what seems like a good idea at the time. And when you've already got a major goal, getting entangled in other things may not be a good idea.

 

[jester47]

I think you need to learn to wing it. I have found that the best way to do so is to stat up some monsters, prepare a few interesting rooms, and not place them anywhere in the game world. Then set out the hooks and see where the players go. Drop prepared materials in path. Best example-

kobolds. you have a band of Kobolds that come hell or high water you are going to use.

The party goes South, Kobolds! The party goes North, Kobolds! The party avoids the Kobolds? "Another" band of kobolds ambushes them! (and thus the party starts to think the area might have a kobold problem... Essentially it comes down to reusing your code.

Aaron.

 

[Delgar]

Your players don't really sound very much like hereos.

It sounds very much like they are trying to do everything possible to screw with your designs.

I was running a game a while ago, where the group (travelling with an NPC bard) ambushed a ruined keep that was housed by orcs that had been raiding the nearby town, they had snuck in and defeated most of the forces and had the rest trapped in an entangle. They had killed the evil wizard, but his imp familiar disappeared, and they were worried (afraid is more like it) of what the imp was going to do, so fled leaving behind the orcs trapped in the entangle. It's hard to explain, but they were being very unheroic and keep in mind they had the NPC bard with them.

So the orc leaders were dead, and there were only a few orcs left, so after the players fled I had the orcs pack up and leave, but as they left I had them raid a farmstead, kill the father and son and steal all the families belongings. The NPC bard of course told of their lack of bravery and the widow blamed the players for her loss, at which point she slapped the paladin, and stalked out of town. I had planned to have her come back at some point in the campaign to seek out vengenance.

This stunned a few of the players and immediately they sprang into action and tracked down the orcs to find her belongings and the paladin actually took a vow of silence, until he had righted his wrongs.


Now for your game, I would have the monsters from the cave continue to raid the village, perhaps killing off someone close to the party. The closer to the party the more effect it has on them. Have another NPC party deal with the threat, reap the rewards.

Remember if the players don't interfere, those forces are going to continue to wreak havoc upon the land.

Never let a good idea go to waste.

Delgar

 

[GSHamster]

I think that your players are very goal-oriented, and like to take the path of least resistance, like assassins or thieves. They avoid (slip out of the way) of anything that might distract or cause them problems getting to their goal.

This isn't really wrong. They may see themselves more as a special forces team with a specific goal to accomplish, than an adventuring party looking for a random adventure. I think that they may also need a more concrete reason to investigate than "because it is there".

My solution would be spend more time enhancing the goal (what they've been hired or want to do), and less time on incidental encounters. Also, I would make the side encounters have a more compelling reason to be investigated. Up the stakes a little.

For example, in your cave complex, have the halflings hire the PCs to investigate the complex and remove the threat. Instead of the assassins attacking the PCs, have them attack someone else (let the PCs save him) and get him to ask the PCs to take on the assassins guild. Have the bandits capture some young women from the caravan, and have a dying parent beg the PCs to rescue them.

 

[swrushing]

[/QUOTE]

I seem to end up with an inordinate amount of self-written/prepared adventure material that never gets used in my campaign. It seems that a lot of my time-consuming effort during the week is wasted when game time comes around.

I think the best suggestion in general is to stop spending so much time designing "interesting encounters" and spend more designing "personal encounters."

I make up a lair of strange, evil monsters living in a cave complex too near a halfling village. In the game, the PCs discover the tracks of the strange creatures, and follow them back to the cave entrance. And then they walk away from the adventure and go elsewhere.

You were relying on a sense of what, boredom?, to drive the PCs into the dangerous life-n-death encounter. Most people when they spot a danger they can avoid, WILL do so.

Now, make this personal.

the night before...

Introduce the PCs to the family of halflings who live down by the lake, who offered them food and a warm dry place to rest on their trek, and who listened wide-eyed and in awe as the heroes recounted their stories, have little Jenna give one of the PCs a drawing of them sitting by the fire so that "when its all cold and you are camping outside you can look at this and remember the warm night you spent with us."

Then have them move on the next day, spot the tracks and realize this is a dangerous beast who is expanding his hunting ground for the winter... whose hunting may well range into jenna's family's comfy home... or to the stream where they go and get their water.

then see if they pass up the danger and just move on.

I make an interesting and notable encounter with a local patrol who can give the PCs some useful information about the old abandoned temple they are heading to. And when the PCs spot the patrol on the road, they detour around them to avoid the encounter.

Do they have any reason to trust the patrol is not going to be a problem? Have you SHOWN THEM in the past these patrols being helpful good guys? Have they, for instance, seen a patroll helping a family whose wagon has gotten mired off road or had the patrols chatting with others about dangers? Have they seen little caution signs posted by the patrols at rest stops about the dangers?

if they had seen, had been shown by you before now, that the patrols can be helpful or at least a nice break from the drudgery of travel, would they have hid?

I create an Assassin's Guild in the main city of the campaign. An assassin attacks the PCs in the night trying to kill a particular PC. The next morning the PCs decide to not bother investigating why they were attacked, and instead decide to just leave town.

What did they have in town that they should have second thoughts about leaving? What made leaving town a "tough choice?" What made staying vs leaving "personal issue"?

I create a bandit gang with a special treasure. The PCs come across the recent remains of the bandits' attack, with clear evidence of who did it and where they may be now. But they figure they need to keep on their current travel, and so merely bury the dead and then walk away.

Well, if they need to keep on their current travel, then obviously they are doing something. Unless they are taksed with policing the streets, why should they stop.

Again, make it personal. If the dead people in the caravan were known to them, if say they had hitched on with this caravan as guards or just travelling companions a couple times before, if they knew them, if they flirted with the wagon master's daughter, and maybe even had stood together against raiders once... they would likely have felt more of a desire to hunt down the brigands.

You mention how you spent time to make the treasure the bandits had (which the PCs could not know of) "special".

if instead you had spent time to make the dead people special to the PCs (after all, they are the trigger to get the PCs to go), you might have gotten a different reaction.

In years past, these situations wouldn't have bothered me much. The unused material would get filed away for possible use in a later campaign. But now adays, with work, family, etc., time is a valuable thing -- and I don't have much of it. So the time spent creating encounters and adventures ignored is time wasted. It actually is frustrating, now.

As time has gone on and gotten shorter, much like my hair!, i have found i need to focus more in on what matters more. I find having the story be personal, having the players WANT to follow up not because "its what we are here for" or "well they got loot" but because "i want to do this", is far more rewarding for me and them.


So i wont expect them to just go "hey, lets follow the monster tracks to room 1" but i sure will expect them to "hey, we better get this thing or at least move it out of the area before it gets to jenna and dali."

I don't want to railroad the PCs in my campaign. I want the PCs to have the freedom to chose their way through my world. But sometimes. . . it just gets aggravating when I've spent all my very limited free time making an adventure for the game, and it just gets ignored, bypassed, or missed.

Don't worry as much about making an adventure, as making something they will be interested in in character.

Those of you who are DMs with jobs and families and other constraints on your D&D-creation time: do you have these feelings too? I don't want to be mad with the Players, as they are not intentionally "wasting my time" or anything like that. But sometimes, when I sit down to make up all the NPCs of the Assassins' Guild, I start wondering, "Is this even going to matter in the game?" When I start mapping out that dragon's lair, I start thinking, "Are they even going to go into it?"

I spend most of my time with the ongoing and interrelatiosn that tie events and decisions to the PCs. i don't care if the bandits have an interesting bauble as much as i care whether going after the bandits will be something the PCs want to do, need to do, wont sleep until they do.

if the PCs have strong desire to CHOOSE to pursue the bandits, then catching the bandits and getting revenge/justice becomes "the neato bauble" you were hoping would make them go "oh cool!"

So my advice would be to start off with "what will motivate character a" and do lists for each of them. Then start building encounters to make them occur. The best will be ones which take time, like several good caravan runs leading up to an eventual "oh my god, they killed louis" scenario start.

heck, have the wagon master's daughter not killed by taken off with the bandits.

I'm having a sort of crisis of faith, here. Recently it seems that 50% of my work preparing for my game is wasted effort.
Quasqueton

it looks like too much of your effort is spent on the "once the party is hooked" side and not enough on the "we get the party hooked by..."

make it personal!