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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chimera" data-source="post: 1875948" data-attributes="member: 2002">Chapter 2:  Same group as above.They visit a friendly new town being established by some NPCs they know and others they're trying to become friendly with.  Town  has a problem.  Every 3 days, someone vanishes without a trace.  The person is always alone at the time.  They can find no trace of struggle, no tracks (plenty of rangers among town founders), NOTHING.What does the party decide to do?  Spend the next 3 days "patrolling" the edge of town.  Just mindlessly marching about en-masse.So then another person vanishes.  Players get angry at me.  Why?  Because they figure that now that they're on the scene, whatever it is that is taking defenseless isolated people should suddenly change it's tactics and attack the party in broad daylight.    HUH????   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /> Not so very calmly, I explain what they're asking for and tell them it ain't going to happen.  A bit of arguing ensues and I ask them to come up with a more realistic solution than being stupid and lazy.  (Well, I actually said it in a much nicer manner.  I was being patient.)So the party decide to have the Monk walk around alone.  Followed by the party?  OK, how far behind?  "20 feet."  *pfft*  Use your brains, guys.  "Ok, 50 feet".  (slamming down papers.)  NO!  WAKE UP!!!  "OK, 100 feet."So they spend THREE DAYS doing this stupid "five guys follow one guy at a distance of 100 feet and hope something is stupid enough to attack him" bit.  I figure they'll get a clue, but they don't.  Another disappearance.  Another angry response from the players.OK, so I pull no punches and tell them bluntly that they're being stupid and that they cannot expect something that is preying on defenseless and isolated NPCs to suddenly attack them or fall into a blatantly obvious trap.  They argue that it should, or they'll never be able to solve this.  (The ultimate Lazy, Stupid Player Gambit.)Next tactic.  Monk walks up and down river banks outside of town while Ranger follows behind wearing Cloak of Elvenkind and rest of party hides behind some trees some distance away.  (Took a bit of discussion before they'd agree to be more than 50' away!)Monk walking along.  Suddenly stops (Hold Person).  Then vanishes!  (invisibility)Without making a single move to investigate or do ANYTHING, ranger immediately runs back to party and tells them that the Monk is gone, probably dead, and there's nothing they can do about it.Holy string of expletives, Batman.Of course, I didn't allow this to stand, as the Monk was being played by someone else in his owner's absense and I didn't like this kind of monstrous bad play being the death of his character.(The killer was a Doppleganger Ranger/Wizard, btw)</blockquote>

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