ichabod
Legned
The thread about the player who loves evil characters reminded me of my problem players. I've been playing with them since I got back into D&D at the start of the pandemic. But they are oblivious. The first thing we did was go through the Yawning Portal adventures in a home brew world I threw together in a weekend, and I didn't really notice the problem. By the time that was done, I had redone my home brew world from 3.5E, and we started a home brew campaign in that. In that one they drove me up the wall. They wouldn't search for secret doors most of the time, and often wouldn't open obvious containers. I started being more obvious and they would walk right past treasure. One time I said "You see a skeleton covered in the webbing, and you see something shiny on it." They didn't clear out the webs or search the skeleton or anything. Another time I said "The room has a sarcophagus and a shield hanging on the wall." The did not look at the shield, which was a +1 shield.
They also were horrible with clues. The plan was that some ancient kings always buried themselves at the site of their first victory in battle. They could figure that out, do some research on the kings and the battles, and find all the tombs. They never researched anything. One of them was a warlock, and I had his patron wake him up in the middle of the night and do some of the research, and the character never did anything with it, much less tell the other characters about it. There was another plot about a professor of alchemy at their university sending them out to find magical spiders, which he used to concoct potions to kill off other professors and become the head of the university. They never noticed that the deaths were related to the spiders they were collecting, they never searched for clues in the murders (which would have pointed at the professor), they swallowed whole the professor's story of a former student being the killer, they ignored evidence contrary to this theory, and they killed the former student.
I ended that campaign in frustration after the villain became head of the university. I like running campaigns were you get a bunch of clues and piece them together to figure things out. And I'm aware of the general rules about not hiding clues and giving out multiple clues. I'm currently running them through the Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which is working because I house ruled PF2-style exploration activities so I can automatically roll search checks for them. But they seem to be tiring of the endless dungeon. Any ideas on a more interesting campaign I could create that wouldn't run foul of their searching and puzzling out clues?
They also were horrible with clues. The plan was that some ancient kings always buried themselves at the site of their first victory in battle. They could figure that out, do some research on the kings and the battles, and find all the tombs. They never researched anything. One of them was a warlock, and I had his patron wake him up in the middle of the night and do some of the research, and the character never did anything with it, much less tell the other characters about it. There was another plot about a professor of alchemy at their university sending them out to find magical spiders, which he used to concoct potions to kill off other professors and become the head of the university. They never noticed that the deaths were related to the spiders they were collecting, they never searched for clues in the murders (which would have pointed at the professor), they swallowed whole the professor's story of a former student being the killer, they ignored evidence contrary to this theory, and they killed the former student.
I ended that campaign in frustration after the villain became head of the university. I like running campaigns were you get a bunch of clues and piece them together to figure things out. And I'm aware of the general rules about not hiding clues and giving out multiple clues. I'm currently running them through the Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which is working because I house ruled PF2-style exploration activities so I can automatically roll search checks for them. But they seem to be tiring of the endless dungeon. Any ideas on a more interesting campaign I could create that wouldn't run foul of their searching and puzzling out clues?
