Spoon feed or let them fend for themselves?

[Jixan]

My friends and I are in the midst of a campaign which I am DM'ing. I recently asked for suggestions on ways to improve the campaign. Several of the players suggested that I needed to provide more direction as DM. This board is always full of good advice, so I thought I would ask here what a good balance is between too much and too little direction. I'd like to use a real example from my campaign and get your opinions.

Here's the scenario:

The campaign world has been invaded by an organized army of extra-planar beings bent on domination. The party has escaped their once quiet little village during the invasion (a portal to the outer planes opened nearby) and escaped to the mountains, trying to stay alive and survive run-ins with the outsiders. The party has reached fourth level and have changed from a defensive mindset to a more offensive approach. This means that they are starting to strike back by staging ambushes on the enemies.

Near the town is a Druid grove that is an ancient place of power. The druid grove has been taken over and is in the process of being corrupted and turned to the outsider's purposes by enemy Warlocks. The Warlocks are using a ritual involving black pearl powder as their catalyst. However, they've run out of powder because the grove was stronger than they anticipated and are unable to finish the job. The grove is on the brink of collapse, but the Warlocks can't turn it completely without more powder. Should the Warlocks succeed, they will use the power of the grove to swing the tide of the war in their favor. It would be a crushing blow.

So, what the Warlocks have done is sent two messengers to the outsider armies in the east requesting a supply of powder to be sent at once. The party has intercepted one of the messengers and discovered all of this information. The party is also too weak to take on the Warlocks directly.

Hopefully that's enough info to bring you up to date.

So, here is the question: As DM, to what extent do I lead them to a way to stop this powder from coming from the east?

On one hand, I think...hey, let the party use it's collective brain and figure out some possibilities on their own, then work with what they come up with.

On the other hand, I have them asking for more DM direction. I'm not sure how to proceed.

Thoughts?

 

[Guillaume]

Personnaly, in adventures of my own creation, I usually take a two pronged approach. First, I'll let the party try to figure out a way to deal with the problem at hand. If after a while they seem to be floundering about with no real prospect of a solution, then I'll throw a hint, subtle thought, of how they might solve their predicament. This might be a NPC making a suggestion or an observation, it might be a dice roll from the PCs to see if they have a sudden flash or they might notice something inspiring (sp?). In other words, I'll try to spoon feed them as little as possible and intervene when the game is becoming bogged down. Finally, I try to keep a policy of anything may be tried and nothing is truely impossible. Therefore, I try not to intervene when the most whackiest ideas come up, I'll improvise something instead.

Hope this all makes sense somehow...

 

[Crothian]

Drop hints and drop options, but in the end allow the PCs to choose.

 

[KenM]

If they are asking for direction, do they feel like you are giving them enough direction to lead them to the adventure? Do they have enough info to go on to procceed? Thats the trick, drop the hints/ clues to give them direction, but make it seem like its freedom of choice for the characters without it feeling like railroading.

 

[Jixan]

If they are asking for direction, do they feel like you are giving them enough direction to lead them to the adventure? Do they have enough info to go on to procceed? Thats the trick, drop the hints/ clues to give them direction, but make it seem like its freedom of choice for the characters without it feeling like railroading.

I get the feeling that they are unsure of what is possible or what they can do. Honestly, what I'd like is for them to use their imagination and come up with some possibilities on their own. Like Guillaume in the post above, I'd like to go with "anything may be tried". Maybe I just need to tell them that they can make stuff up within reason or ask about things I've not explicitly talked about in the campaign.

It seems like the advice is to try to do that as much as possible, but drop more hints than I have been.

 

[Nightfall]

I side with Crothy. Just remember a good storyteller/Gm SHOWS but doesn't tell. If the party feels they can stop the supply line, they should try to get another hero to hand the Warlocks for a while. Perhaps said hero dies and becomes some kind of undead in their service. Stuff like that.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I think the most important piece of information here is what your players have asked for. I tend to enjoy more open ended games so I run more open ended games... BUT if the players (as a whole, not just one) clearly conveys that they would like more direction, I'm not going to just say "no, that doesn't make a Good Game in my godly opinion, seek your own way as the path to enlightenment"

Now, I can see not wanting to hand the best battle plan to the players, but character knowlege is greater than player knowlege... what I did in a one shot where I wanted the characters to understand a few of their options and the drawbacks was wrote different bits of the key information on notecards and gave them to different players as "stuff your character knows, thinks or has observed." So when one of the players suggested just going after and beating down the evil impersonators who had stolen their masters' bodies, it was another player who looked at his "flavor card" and pointed out that he'd always thought the masters were too dependant on their gear, to the point where a gang of street urchins who got all their magic items could probably kick their asses in a fair fight, and with the standard gear on the stolen bodies the direct plan probably wouldn't work. Another card had a bit of info on one specific peice of gear that formed a valuable backup plan, but the player was able to bring it up partway through the game, and it was generally veiwed as an option, not the way it had to be done...

So if they want more dirction, but you don't want a 'helpful npc' to wander up and give it to them, consider dividing up the cues and info and hints needed for a good plan (or two) between the different characters and letting them work it out in character. Give one player whose character has some traveling experience a idea of the best route for a caravan and some of the most unavoidable ambush sites. Let the most tactically minded player know roughly how the party would fare against the direct enemy, vs caravan guards, vs whatever guards there are likely to be at the mining/manufacturing site. Give the magic user a feel for what could be done to destroy the powder, or how its power could be spent "harmlessly" or tell him what he would need to find out and tell the sneaky type some seemingly meaningless hints she has picked up scouting the grove, and a feel for her chances of sneaking in to gain a sample of the powder of more info. You may be giving the party the plan (or two plans) but they are putting it together themselves, and roleplaying while they're at it.

Or not, but that halfway method worked for me in a situation where guidance was neccassary...

Kahuna Burger

 

[Wippit Guud]

I run into this all the time with the group I'm part of, consisting of me, a 'reformed' power gamer, and 3 fairly inexperienced players. And it seems like we run into lots of stuff we have trouble figuring out, because we can't work together to come up with ideas all that often. Quite a few encounters actually turn into 'and this is what you don't do' examples at the end (most recently an instance of breaking and entering in a town, into a house rigged to blow up. My character being the de-facto guy in charge at the time, had to jail one of my party members for arson).

 

[Pagan priest]

I'm having this problem too. A while back, the party encountered a swarm of wasps, blocking the road. They dithered about aimlessly for over an hour of real time before coming up with any sort of plan. Most of the time was spent with "Well, there's nothing my character can do, so I'll just sit here and wait" comments from the players. Later, I tried to give them info about a dungeon that I had planned. An NPC told them about a magic sword, told them who had the map to the place. None of the players bothered to even try to get any further info about it, they just complained about not having any "direction".

I think that they have spent way too much time playing games like Diablo, and expect me to hand them adventures all wrapped up with a bow.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

I'm having this problem too. A while back, the party encountered a swarm of wasps, blocking the road. They dithered about aimlessly for over an hour of real time before coming up with any sort of plan. Most of the time was spent with "Well, there's nothing my character can do, so I'll just sit here and wait" comments from the players. Later, I tried to give them info about a dungeon that I had planned. An NPC told them about a magic sword, told them who had the map to the place. None of the players bothered to even try to get any further info about it, they just complained about not having any "direction".

I think that they have spent way too much time playing games like Diablo, and expect me to hand them adventures all wrapped up with a bow.

While I can understand the sentiment, from your presentation, I'm far from impressed. If they're not getting it, talk to them, get new players, or try something new. Do your characters care about magic items? If they don't, then a sword is no big deal. They also might not want to go after one if the last dungeon they went in nearly killed them. I'm sure you don't mean it the way it came out, but from the description, I'm questioning your DM skillz as much as your player's potential. And, by the way, I would have just tried to walk around the wasps, and probablly wouldn't have cared about the sword.

Anyway, to the original topic. The answer is that, of course, it depends on your players, how long they've been playing, and how you like to play. As to how to deal with the lack of direction, I'd send each an e-mail early before the game. It'd reiterate what the note says, and give each person an option. Say, they could intercept it over at these mountians. Or they could let the elves know about it. Each would also have one or two 'next logical steps' with it. I'd ask each person to bring up their point in the next session. This way they're still making the choice, but they're getting some guidance too. Keeping it outside of the game also helps in that regard.