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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 3861640" data-attributes="member: 2">Way back when I was running 1e (so in '89 or so) I saw a Dungeon Module that looked really fun - a monk/wizard who specialized in puppets, who had stolen a libram to create a powerful golem of negative energy. The dungeon was really challenging, and I loved the idea. I immediately shunted the PCs off their current quest with an NPC who stressed the urgency and asked them to retrieve the book for them. Maybe he blackmailed them, I forget. I missed the looks between the players, but they went along with it.They got their butts kicked by the adventure; the bad guy used hit and run tactics, and the PCs started to take damage as they slogged through the dungeon. I probably gloated 'in character' as the bad guys as well. I thought the player muttering was in character, too.Finally they had the bad guy trapped in the last room, but it's tactically hard to enter. The adventure was almost over, but one of the players said, "You know what? My hero is leaving."I blinked. "Leaving? The dungeon?""Yup. I'm leaving. He can keep his book, because I don't especially care about it.""I don't either."  "Neither do I."  "We're all leaving." The whole gaming group chimed in.I was floored. They virtually had the guy beaten! "But... why?" I asked."We don't care about this module. We were having fun before, with your adventure. You sort of railroaded us into this. Can we just go back to what we were doing last session?"It was an important lesson for me. They just left the (very relieved) bad guy there, and doing this never came back to bite them. I dunno, maybe he had a change of heart or something and repented -- but I had missed their mutterings, and they had a good point. I think that's about the time I started to annually poll the players to see how my game could improve.</blockquote>

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