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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Carnivorous_Bean" data-source="post: 4616588" data-attributes="member: 57974">I wish my players were a bit more like yours -- not totally, but closer.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  I always run intrigue-style adventures, anyway, with only a very occasional combat -- we often go weeks without mayhem breaking loose -- but the paranoid resistance of my players to plot hooks is still a source of great frustration to me.A case in point -- a young noble was being chased through a nighttime city by a monster that had broken loose from another aristocrat's menagerie. The players had their characters use skills, magic, etc. to rescue the youth without confronting the monster, leaving that on the rampage until another bunch of NPC adventurers mopped it up. Well and good.However, they became desperately paranoid when the young noble offered to take them back to his family's manor to get a reward. I was planning to give them about 200 GP each and a piece of information they needed for the quest I'd actually arm-twisted them into attempting. I even had the kid mention the goal of their quest to let them know that his family could help them out with information about it. There was also another adventure hook -- to be hired, if they wanted, to investigate why the monsters broke out of the menagerie.Instead, they decided it was too "risky" to see the young noble's father about a reward, because "they might get involved in politics" and "they don't know him, so he might be hostile." They told the young noble some false names, sent him on his way, and immediately changed the inn where they were staying. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/worried.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":-S" title="Uhm    :-S" data-shortname=":-S" />It's the same in every adventure I write. They do the utter minimum needed to reach their immediate goal, and, heads down, ignore every single last adventure hook that's thrown at them. In fact, the more obviously it's an adventure hook, the less likely they are to do anything except run in the opposite direction and hide out. What I wouldn't give for a bit of swashbuckling and, well, adventuring. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> Once or twice, I even tried railroading them into action encounters (which I hate doing) where the opposition was much weaker, so that they mopped them up easily and, I hoped, would build their confidence. But they persist in their timidity, and I'm thinking of running the game from now on as a completely combat-free RPG -- all the weapons and armor are just there to make them feel safe so that they dare to buy loaves of bread and stuff....I've got a touch of DM burnout from this, because I'm thoroughly sick of coming up with interesting plot hooks and then having ALL of them ignored or avoided.</blockquote>

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