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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5293201" data-attributes="member: 87792">...Wait a second.  The merchant gave them coins which would turn gold when they did a good deed worthy of it.  Not "the specific good deed magically bound to that coin" but "a good deed worthy of it".  So the PCs tried to do a good deed - providing food for the poor.  In what sense is this not a good deed?  The players here were providing their own solution to the adventure - exactly what you claim to want.  It just wasn't the one you wanted which magically had something to do with one of the hundred or so stray cats there were likely to be in the town.  (Or one of the other few good deeds on your magically approved list.)You're running a <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SolveTheSoupCans" target="_blank">Solve the Soup Cans</a> game there. (Warning: TVTropes link).  And when the players had their own idea for plot, you rejected it as worthless (providing food to the poor is somehow not a good deed?).  Some of the players did exactly what you claim you wanted them to - and you ignored this.  So of course they were frustrated.  They couldn't read your mystical list of approved good deeds - and knew that any good deeds they came up with that weren't on your approved list wouldn't count for anything - you had demonstrated this.This isn't fail players.  This is an example of a fail DM.  What you were supposed to do was take the ideas the players had provided and run with it.  Use their deed to open up a plot (for instance instead of going to the poor, the priest the next day invited all the rich merchants and minor nobles round for dinner - at that point the good deed becomes exposing the priest's corruption so charity can flow to the poor (far more of a good deed than giving a home to a stray cat)).So how do you get players to provide their part of the story?  Simple.  Listen to their ideas.  Act on them.  Let them matter.  If you reward the ideas the players come up with by taking them and expanding on them then the players will find that fun and will keep adding new ideas and story to the mix until you get overloaded.  If you reject them (e.g. by restricting your definition of "good deed" to a DM-approved list of good deeds) then it won't be fun for the players, they won't give you ideas because there's no point - they won't get any reward for them and will, in fact, be frustrated as their ideas are rejected.  So they will stop trying because they know it won't do any good.</blockquote>

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