How Do You Get Your Players To Stay On An Adventure Path?

[Imaculata]

That's funny - Celebrim has told me that me doing this - putting a dungeon in front of the PCs exactly as
you describe - is me Railroading them.

Haha. Well then maybe my random encounter tables are actually railroading tables.
Maybe campaigns should have nothing in them what so ever!

But seriously though. I think its fine to have the players "discover" a random temple in the jungle. Whether its determined by a random roll, or the DM deliberately placing the temple in the path of the players, I don't think any of that is railroading. That's what I would call "running a campaign".

 

[Zak S]

You don't seem to be very familiar with the real choke points in an adventure path,

This is a wholly incorrect impression.

so you are proposing problems that usually don't really represent problems,

I've gotten really good answers to my questions throughout the thread--I was just pointing out that one answer was off-topic.

you need to read essays like "The Three Clue Rule" as very direct attempts to answer the question, "How do you keep players on an adventure path?"

No, the Alexandrian's 3-clue rule is a rule specifically for players discovering mysteries and, even in those cases (which I run all the time) it's not a relevant comment because I am not asking

"What should I, Zak, do?"

I am asking

"What do you (collected EnWorld denizens) yourselves do at the table?"

I have no intention of running an adventure path. The rest of your answer is much more useful.

 

[Imaculata]

I've played with AP GMs who do indeed disallow anything not anticipated by the adventure.
This Truman Show effect is no fun, and I quit those games pretty fast.

It's like playing in a very small box. I can't stand those sort of games. A DM should be able to improvise, and any action that I take as a player should not completely ruin his plot.

This reminds me of a Lord of the Rings campaign that I once played. Right at the start of the campaign, our party was ambushed by bandits, and the DM expected us to fight. I was playing a wizard, but not one who clearly announced himself as such. And I simply surrendered and gave them my money. One of the players said: "I turn my horse around and simply flee".

The DM ruled that neither were options. The bandits attacked my wizard anyway, even though they already got my money, and I was unarmed. And the bandits suddenly had horses, and instantly caught up with the other player. Thou shalt not escape the DM's cliche encounter, dammit! Yeah, that campaign didn't last long.

 

[howandwhy99]

It's like playing in a very small box. I can't stand those sort of games. A DM should be able to improvise, and any action that I take as a player should not completely ruin his plot.

A DM under no circumstance is allowed to improvise. They are not playing the game, they are running it. It is the players who choose where to go and what to do by telling the DM how to move their pieces around the hidden game board. And just as in any game anywhere a player cannot "ruin the plot", aka act against someone else's wishes, when playing a game. They are expressing their own desires sure, but really they are attempting to score points in a game.

This reminds me of a Lord of the Rings campaign that I once played. Right at the start of the campaign, our party was ambushed by bandits, and the DM expected us to fight. I was playing a wizard, but not one who clearly announced himself as such. And I simply surrendered and gave them my money. One of the players said: "I turn my horse around and simply flee".

The DM ruled that neither were options. The bandits attacked my wizard anyway, even though they already got my money, and I was unarmed. And the bandits suddenly had horses, and instantly caught up with the other player. Thou shalt not escape the DM's cliche encounter, dammit! Yeah, that campaign didn't last long.

This is an example of a DM improvising.

 

[Celebrim]

No, the Alexandrian's 3-clue rule is a rule specifically for players discovering mysteries...

Yes, but ensuring the players find and follow the breadcrumbs is the #1 hardest part of running an adventure path and keeping a in between the ditches. Adventure paths are often a series of mysteries, each of which leads to the next mystery. Creative solutions are usually only problems if they destroy your breadcrumbs. (A classic example would be the PC's burn down the dungeon, destroying all the clues in it. Note almost a whole page of the 16 page G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chieftain is devoted to stopping this from happening.) Usually when bad DMs panic and insist on single solutions it's when the PC's propose a solution that destroys their only breadcrumbs.

For example, Imaculata mentions the case of an inexperienced DM panicking when the PC's tried to route around an encounter with bandits and not fight them. Almost certainly the reason that the inexperienced DM panicked is that he wasn't following the three clue rule. Probably the scenario involves killing the bandits and finding a letter on them that says something important to figuring out where to go next, or if the AP was really crazy stupidly dumb, because the scenario involves the PCs getting captured by the bandits and taken to their camp, where they discover an important prisoner whom they then escape with and the scenario only imagined a single trail of bread crumbs that lead to that point. Point is, the DM didn't want them to run away or negotiate, because the bandits had the game's only breadcrumb and he needed the PC's to take it.

A well written scenario that involved rescuing an important prisoner from a bandit camp would have like a dozen breadcrumbs out there that all lead to the bandit camp, and each ultimately lead to rescuing the prisoner _by some means_ (including perhaps befriending the bandits, paying the ransom, or any number of other things).

If you were to write your own adventure path, being wise, you'd either have anticipated the various player actions or being experienced be able to improvise answers. You probably already do in some fashion, whether you run adventure paths or not. After all, if you arrange mysteries for the players to solve, you've already got the basics down. All you have to do to write or run an adventure path is string a series together toward some climatic end.

 

[Celebrim]

A DM under no circumstance is allowed to improvise.

Not this again. You realize you are one of the few people in the world that thinks D&D is nothing more than a tactical boardgame with a hidden board, right? I mean, there is a sense in which I agree with you, which I mentioned in the discussion earlier regarding "no myth", but you take this so far and so immoderately that it becomes unworkable. It's impossible to not improvise as a DM to at least some degree. DM improvisation is what allows players the ability to do things the DM never anticipated. It's what allows players to "walk off the map".

This is an example of a DM improvising.

No, this is an example of a DM not improvising, or to the extent he is improvising he is improvising badly.

 

[Celebrim]

I've played with AP GMs who do indeed disallow anything not anticipated by the adventure.
This Truman Show effect is no fun, and I quit those games pretty fast.

Bad DM is bad.

 

[Celebrim]

That's funny - Celebrim has told me that me doing this - putting a dungeon in front of the PCs exactly as you describe - is me Railroading them.

Oh, yeah? Quote me. If you quote me, it's not dishonest slander. Or if it is because you quote out of context, I can at least defend against it by pointing out the framing language you left out. If you can't quote me...

To keep this brief, I never said finding a dungeon was railroading. Indeed, wandering in the jungle and stumbling on an ancient temple is probably not railroading. But having a temple wander in the jungle and make a b-line to the PC's because you the DM want them to find it is railroading (unless of course, the temple has legs and can cast commune with nature). The problem of having a dungeon move to the PC's was what I called railroading, not merely finding a jungle by accident.

 

[KingsRule77]

A DM under no circumstance is allowed to improvise. They are not playing the game, they are running it. It is the players who choose where to go and what to do by telling the DM how to move their pieces around the hidden game board. And just as in any game anywhere a player cannot "ruin the plot", aka act against someone else's wishes, when playing a game. They are expressing their own desires sure, but really they are attempting to score points in a game.

This is an example of a DM improvising.

Lolwut?

 

[howandwhy99]

Not this again. You realize you are one of the few people in the world that thinks D&D is nothing more than a tactical boardgame with a hidden board, right? I mean, there is a sense in which I agree with you, which I mentioned in the discussion earlier regarding "no myth", but you take this so far and so immoderately that it becomes unworkable. It's impossible to not improvise as a DM to at least some degree. DM improvisation is what allows players the ability to do things the DM never anticipated. It's what allows players to "walk off the map".

Then we'll not get into it. You and I both know all the rules in D&D were designed to be a game not a story. And that means no improvising at all by a DM.

Everything players attempt are run through the game and relayed back to them. Anything confusing the players try is questioned until they are covered by the game system. This could even be as banally simple as "Are you attempting to be the rock and move or are you moving your character to move the rock?" Character/not character could be the only rule and easily judged.

And it's was widely known that any DM must stop the session if the players reach the edge of the map. That's why DM's generate the game board beyond what the players can reasonably reach in a session.