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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Speaks With Stone" data-source="post: 762876" data-attributes="member: 375">I'll preface by saying that I've run many adventures and campaigns in the past with this crew.  I've been a player in their games as well and some of us talk probably more than we should about what we want from a game.  Prior to starting the current game, I was informed that the players wanted action, a little RP, but not too much (as the last one I ran was heavy RP).Based on that info, I informed the players that I didn't want us muddling around in moral relativism, so while most people in town aren't necessarily angels, I was going to make the bad guys clearly bad so we could keep things moving.Now we have only had 4 nights of play so far, but the trend has been for the players to make every NPC encounter very complex.  The rogue in the party has clearly stated that he wants to manipulate situations to maximum advantage.  To that end he pushes NPCs pretty hard in most conversations, trying to get that extra edge.  When NPCs respond poorly to this, the entire party sees the lack of cooperation as an indication that the NPC is evil/lying/or out to get his butt kicked.  This has lead the party to distrust pretty much everyone they have encountered except for their employer and the NPCs that they invented in their own backgrounds.I find this frustrating as every NPC encounter (in the city!) tends to end up with the players deciding to investigate the NPC for other bad acts they can use against him.  They also distrust nearly every clue they get, as they don't trust any source.Add to this the players will investigate something and make a gather info check.  I tell them what they learn.  They then start going down a list of other people they will question to get the same general info including: bums on the street, next door neighbors, NPCs from their backgrounds, and any one else who seems to be walking by.  All of this in preparation of speaking to someone they have a clear indication they should speak to.  Again, a lot of this, I think,  has to do with the rogue wanting to be able to manipulate the situation so he want more info before he gets there.Furthermore, the players have had a tendency in the process of gathering so much information secondary to their mission, they are losing track of vital clues and frequently they are following a tangent of their own making to the detriment of their mission.  I mean after investigating the sister (in case they needed leverage) of the store keeper as well as keeping tabs on the store keeper's familiar, and asking all of the nearby shop keepers about the store keeper, they sometimes forget that they were just supposed to talk to the guy.  (Last night, they were attacked.  Found an address in the pocket of one of the dead guys that attacked.  They pocketed it and forgot about it, while they healed one of the other guys and spent an elaborate evening around getting this guy out of town, rented a boat and rowed out to sea, revived him with threat of drowning, got some info they felt was not very useful, so they drowned him.  They get back to town and are trying to figure out how to investigate the back trail of their attackers.  Finally, I had an NPC suggest that when stuck, go back over everything you've FOUND out.  They finally remembered the address.)They also have tended towards passive solutions.  They finally find this cult's lair, they break in to the abandoned building and then instead of investigating the basement, they decide to camp in the building and ambush the first bad guy that enters the place.  They essentially camped on the doorstep of the dungeon crawl (granted they didn't know that the basement led to bigger stuff, but that's primarily because they weren't paying attention to the clues they had been given).The kicker to all of this is that while none of the things they are doing is entirely unreasonable, it's not very exciting.  And the players are clearly frustrated that they aren't learning as much as they'd like and they aren't kicking as much tail as they'd like.  I'm not having as much fun as I'm trying to provide a simple situation with a lot of back story and ambience, but a lot of action.My questions are: Should I scrap the city setting and get these characters out in the woods where things are simpler?If I keep the city setting (and the rest of the planned stuff), how do I encourage the players to keep moving?  I've always likened a good game to the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and my players are well aware of the high adventure feel I'm after.  I've told them that the campaign is not contingent on them outsmarting all of the bad guys, but is somewhat reliant on them engaging the bad guys.I guess I'm looking for ideas to make things move more quickly.  I realize that a city setting encourages a certain level of suspicion, asking lots of questions, and so on.  So if I have to evict them from the city, I can (I just hate having to change venue on night 5).  Oh, did I mention that after night 2, I got feedback from players, that they felt they were in over their heads with an encounter with some low level demons (1/2 CR, 3 of them).  So I changed the story line to de-emphasize the demon stuff and bought a module that was easily modified to my setting.  I hate to keep changing the game to fit the players, but I also want to have fun while DMing.</blockquote>

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