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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quasqueton" data-source="post: 1457687" data-attributes="member: 3854">Do you other DMs ever feel the need to explain things happening in the background of the campaign so the Players realize things aren't as silly/dumb/unorganized/whatever as they may complain about?You know, sometimes a Player will drop a comment like, "Why doesn't the baron just send some troops to take out the bandits, instead of sending us out to do it?" You, the DM, have thought out the reasons, and have a neat campaign plot hook behind it, but the Players seem to think it is all just a half-thought-out plot railroading.Or, "How come no one has raided and pillage this dungeon years ago? If one group of 3rd-level adventurers can take out the monsters here, and find all this gold and magic, surely the local wizard could have conquered this in one afternoon." There may be real reasons why stuff has or hasn't happened, but the Players' thinking about it stops at the game level and they don't consider any potential campaign reasons.Or, the PCs defeat the towering, walking, steam-powered colossus and the wizard that drove it, and then never mention the obvious, "Where in the world did this thing come from, and how could no one know about it before it just showed up coming out of the Tallious Mountains?" They just assume it was a self-contained adventure with no real back-story?I've been guilty of this as a Player myself, but sometimes it has been revealed that the DM truly hadn't thought plots through. And the Players were supposed to just go along with the game without questioning the plot or looking too closely.But then when I DM, I really do think plots through pretty deeply. I usually have weeks to think things through before the PCs interact with certain plot elements, so I've had plenty of time to work out the subtleties. But then the Players may look at that element and think, "Oh, there's a holy sword in this orc treasure. OK, give it to the paladin and lets go to the next dungeon." Instead of thinking, "A holy sword in an orc treasure? How did that happen?"I once had a DM who had a pretty cool reason behind why the baron sent us, a group of 2nd-level adventurers, out to take on bandits. Unfortunately for that DM, we did the very thing I'm talking about here -- we accepted the mission, went out and performed (and failed), didn't investigate any plot threads we found, and just left and found a different adventure. The DM, in frustration afterward, explained to us why we were sent on the bandit mission -- he wanted/expected us to fail and die. The bandits were working for the baron, but the baron had to make a show of at least trying to stop the bandit raids in his territory. He even had a trumpted up "border dispute" in another part of his fiefdom to explain why he couldn't put troops on the bandit problem. The plot went much deeper and complicated, and the DM figured this adventure could turn into a campaign. But we were thinking as Players in a game rather than as characters in the world.So, do you DMs ever feel the urge to just tell the Players hints to get them to realize things in the world are happening logically and beyond what the PCs see in their small, little part of it?But then again, sometimes the Players can think too hard, and you end up with this: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=76220" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=76220</a>How do *you* walk that narrow line between keeping the Players thinking "in the campaign world" and not have them spend a game session investigating/questioning *everything* or totally irrelevant things/people?Quasqueton</blockquote>

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