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Message: <blockquote data-quote="3catcircus" data-source="post: 2001023" data-attributes="member: 16077">While I'm all for having active, involved players, I have a compound problem with my group - they *do* have to be led by the nose, unless it involves some bizarre out-of-pace-with-the-rest-of-the-campaign background or plot hook involving their own character.  Basically, my players want to be the center of the campaign universe and want to go off and totally ignore all of the threads that I've introduced for them.  They balk when I do things that demonstrate that they are not alone in the universe.  As an example, I've been using a modified version of A1-4, set in Thesk, Altumbel, and the Sea of Fallen Stars.  They are a special commando-style unit of Purple Dragon cavalry, sent to investigate a Thayan warehouse - their larger unit got captured while they fled.  Their goal is to find out where their captured comrades are and rescue them (hence the Slavelords modules as a tie-in...  After all, Thayans love slaves.)I introduced a plot device where a Purple Dragon Knight sent from Cormyr to become the new Commanding Officer ends up dissapearing himself the night before he was to have relieved the existing CO (which just happens to correspond with the intelligence the PCs received indicating that agents of the Slavelords were getting the heck out of Dodge for a while and there were indications that they were headed to Altumbel or the Pirate Isles and that a large portion of the slave trade involved pirates acting as transporters for the Slavelords.)  I also indicated that this particular Purple Dragon Knight had recently finished up a tour as a Blue Dragon exchange officer, stationed at the Isle of Prespur as a "military advisor" to the Cormyrean Freesails.  Instead of thinking something obvious "Maybe these slavers captured or killed him to shut him up," or even something not-so-obvious-at-first like "Maybe he is somehow involved with these slavers" and begin preps to set off for those two places, they instead want to continue to snoop around the city of Telflamm, even after I told them "Yeah, the Telflamm thieve's guild is evil and is capable of this, but all evidence indicates that they *aren't* behind his dissappearance, especially since a witness reported seeing him step into the portal rather than being carried, dragged, or sucked into it."Likewise, I, early on, intoduced the idea of a plague that was killing Theskian orcs that the party was ordered by their CO to investigate since there were indications that it involved the same Thayans who had captured their comrades.  Telflamm being a port city, they wanted to put to sea, despite all evidence indicating that the plague source could be found inland.  Their response was, "Yeah, we don't care - we want to travle by sea."  This despite the fact that inland Thesk is only reachable by land or by portal.  They balked when I told them "Your gather information check reveals that the city has locked down the port to prevent the plague spreading across the Sea of Fallen Stars due to all of the foreigners that visit Telflamm by way of sea."  While I was willing to let them do at-sea stuff, our at-sea house rules were not ready for prime time (a cobbled-together combination of Pirates of the Fallen Stars that was converted to 3.x and Corsair, modified slightly.)  More importantly, I slaved away creating encounters (planned and otherwise) and spent a ton of time statting our NPCs.  So - I really envy the fact that you have to lead your players by the nose - at least they stay on-topic.  I guess I'm one of those DMs who hate the fact that 3.x makes it so difficult to just switch gears in the middle of the game and on-the-fly go down an uncharted plot thread.As to Castellan's problem - simply dead-end every one of their investigations into the matter of the fire elemental unless or until you want or are ready to pursue it.  Perhaps a witness is too frightened to come forward, especially if the guild is involved and starts making potential witnesses dissappear.</blockquote>

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