D&D 5E Rejecting the Premise in a Module

[Lanefan]

If the players reject the premise without substituting their own, it's bad news.

If, however, the players reject the premise and proactively substitute another of their own - as in the OP - then run with it to the end! You might have to do some winging-it for the rest of that session, but that's no big deal and it's easy enough to bog 'em down in some random combats if you're really stuck. But yeah, if they've got their own collective idea for where they want to go and-or what they want to do, you're gold! Keep those players!

 

[Baron Opal II]

Now that I thought about it, the last time this happened to me what when I was running an adventure that started on shore and was headed underwater. Before they headed off against the sahaugun they packed up and traveled across the map. It was a distance and change equivalent to traveling from Spain to. Greece.

Simply put, it was because my adventure stank and I was missing the player's signals that I was making things too hard to find.

 

[Flamestrike]

I had a group of players in my WHFRP campaign up and decide to ditch the quest to save the world from the End Times and instead head to the Chaos Wastes as Aspiring Champions.

The Hedge Wizard copped a mutation from a bad Winds of Chaos result, hailed Tzeench and it all went to hell from there.

 

[Eltab]

My group is more-or-less giving up on Undermountain. Our DM has IRL scheduling problems, and Undermountain is so big that we mostly feel lost in a maze. I hope we can get off one more session to get back to the Yawning Portal, though.

(Fortunately we have a second DM but he is running a different campaign and we have different characters.)

 

[SavageCole]

After a discussion like mature adults.

There was, at least implicitly, an agreement made at the beginning of play setting expectations of style and buy-in and such. Before violating that agreement, you owe it to everyone at the table to talk about it first.

This! A social contract is formed when you sit down a table for COLLABORATIVE storytelling.

 

[robus]

I blew up our OotA campaign with the willing help of the party wizard because I could tell that the grinding monotony of it all was getting to the players.

Fortunately they rolled with it and we retconned our way (via wish) to an entirely different and more enjoyable scenario.

Did this 180 by the players surprise the OP or was there already rumblings of mutiny?

 

[Charlaquin]

In general, I think the players should carry through on their agreements, which means engaging with the buy-in of the module if they agreed to it. On the other hand, if the players agreed to the premise of the module and then decide to abandon it partway through, there’s a problem. It’s time to talk to the players out of character to figure out what’s going on. Is the module not meeting the expectations the initial discussion set? Did they not end up liking it as much as they thought they would? If you can sort out why they don’t want to buy-in to the module you agreed to play, you might be able to salvage the experience for them.

 

[Flamestrike]

In general, I think the players should carry through on their agreements, which means engaging with the buy-in of the module if they agreed to it.

If the players arent enjoying it though, why?

It's time to have a new session zero and group chat with the DM about it for mine. It could be the adventure isnt working, the DM isnt working, a dynamic in the group isnt working or some outside influence.

Personally If im not enjoying the game, I see no reason to play it.

 

[Charlaquin]

If the players arent enjoying it though, why?

It's time to have a new session zero and group chat with the DM about it for mine. It could be the adventure isnt working, the DM isnt working, a dynamic in the group isnt working or some outside influence.

Personally If im not enjoying the game, I see no reason to play it.

It’s like you didn’t like the first sentence of my post so you responded to that without reading the rest of it...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Depends on situation. I've had players bail on Tomb of Horrors.

Yup. But that's just common sense. And one issue that has to be considered, even if the adventure is not a sandbox, is does expected course of action actually make sense for those characters?

And that's something that really needs to be established in session zero. If the adventure isn't a "do whatever you like" sandbox the players need to create characters with the right motivations.

I suppose this would be a place to invoke the Dragonlance modules. In those you are expected to play pregenerated characters who (if played as written) already have strong motivations for accepting the premise of the campaign.