We’ve all run into it at some point: You’re partway through a session, and your players are utterly and completely lost.
The main plot is a distant blip on the horizon, either way ahead of the party or way behind them — or it’s not even in their flashlight beam at all. If you don’t do something, it’s going to be a long night (and probably not much fun for your players, or for you). So what do you do?
Depending on your group’s social contract, what you do next will vary: have one PC roll to get a clue, just give your players a hint, have ninjas kick in the door, ask your group to recap what’s happened up until that point — there are tons of options.
As in so many situations, I’d start by taking a five-minute break. After that, my best bet is usually some variation on that last option: have my players summarize what they know, and then give them a nudge or two to get the adventure moving again.
How do you handle this situation when it comes up in your games?
My group isn’t big on self-starting, and tends to work for some NPC, at least directly or indirectly. When the game stalls, that NPC or one of his minions/staff will have a chat with the party and they’ll recap the hints and clues the party has received so far. Usually, the party has all the pieces, and just needs to put them together. It’s been said before: some days all you need is a clue, some days you need a clue-by-four.
Some of the group are friends outside gaming, and I have dropped them a few hints when things start to stray.
I really haven’t had ninjas kick in the door, yet. I’m not sure if that will fire them up, or if they’ll just say, “Wow, that was fun, now let’s get back to sitting around and waiting for the plot to show up.” 😉
I either drop a clue at their feet or abandon the plot somehow and try to make whatever they have stumbled into the new plot or sub-plot. With a sub-plot I can usually recharge the players’ mental batteries (being lost is draining on a player from what I have seen/experienced), and then get them back to the actual plot. Plus I can just state what they should do next via an NPC if the sub-plot hook to the actual plot is a good one.
Generally I try to wrap plots around the players. Usually I have some force working against them, so even if they aren’t working on a main plotline, stuff is still going on in the background and I am just waiting for a good moment to introduce some plot element. If something doesn’t spur them on, or they are legitimately stuck, then I ask them for what they know about it, and I try to write it all down. Once it gets written down and they get all their clues in the same place they tend to get some idea of what is going on. Luckily I’ve got a decently perceptive group who doesn’t stall too much.
I’ve done the “ninjas kick in the door” thing. One of the best bits of GM advice I’ve read (and I can’t remember where) was, “When in doubt, think of the most entertaining thing that could happen at this point. Then do that.”
This doesn’t necessarily get the PCs back on track, but it does bleed away some of the frustration that goes with sitting around not doing anything.
If I can’t figure out a way to drop a new hint in to help the PCs along, I will eventually just say, “You might want to take a look at X” or “Remember what NPC Y said about …” I try not to do this except as a last resort, as I don’t want my players to become conditioned to being able to wait me out when they’re stuck. However, I think that sometimes it’s best just to point the PCs in the right direction to preserve the overall fun of the game.
CR
Well if the players are wandering around lost I generally throw in that fellow traveler (usually a bard.) that they come across. Being a teller of tails the bard will ask them what they are up to and generally share a meal with them. This gives then an in game reason to recap things in their own words while the bard as questions, which can give clues by proxy.
I’ve used props, sometimes in the form of a letter, to help players get back on track. This can work great with the “ninja kick in the door” strategy. I’ve created maps and newspapers that work equally as well.
After the “ninja” encounter and they search the bodies, they find a letter. I then hand over the prop to the players which provides just enough hints to kick start them to the next plot point. This usually gets the players motivated and talking.
Rather than me saying, “Don’t you remember that session two weeks ago when so-an-so threatened you to keep clear of his plans?”, the prop letter clues them in on this, but allows them to figure it out on their own, which I think offers a greater sense of satisfaction to the players.
Newspapers are fun too. I’m running an Eberron game, so I just cut and paste 5 or 6 Sharn Inquisitive articles from WotC’s site. To those, I write one addition article that has names, places, events, etc. that relate to what the players have been doing. Again, this presents several reminders and clues to the players, but they still retain the satisfaction of putting those clues together.
Depends on the group. My old group when they were lost, usually tried to stir up something by going door kicking primarily, which in lot of cases got them in trouble and then they are happy.
My newer group tends to need clues and tips from npcs or some sort of skill roll. It works ok for them. Kicking in doors wouldnt work for them
I tend to drop my players a hint if they are completely lost and have exhausted all other means of finding a clue (basically, they’re hopelessly lost). I’ll give them a slight nudge towards the plot, but usually with a cost of a small amount of XP.
Telas:
“Let’s get back to sitting around and waiting for the plot to show up.â€
I HATE when players say that. Reactionary characters just piss me off. Sometimes it felt like my last group left everything up to me except for the die rolls.
This is a quote I’ve held on to that I found to be all too true:
“Most of us are in agreement that this younger generation — raised on video games — has learned to be reactive, instead of active, and worse, they have lost their imaginative abilities and creativity because the games provide all of the images, sounds, and possible outcomes for them. Our students tend to not know how to initiate questions, formulate hypotheses, or lead off a debate because they like to see what ‘comes at them.’ They also have difficulty imagining worlds (places and/or historical times) unless you (as a professor) can provide them with a picture and a sound to go along with the worlds. . . . In essence, they seem to have lost the ability to visualize with their minds.”
-Lara M. Brown, professor at California State University. Game Master, The New Yorker, November 6, 2006.
Some of my new players are exactly like this and I’m trying to train them out of it. Sometimes I’m just tempted to scream “You’re characters aren’t cardboard! Make a plot happen yourself!”
These days, I’m inclined to really try and avoid “mysteries” or “puzzles” that the players must solve to proceed in the game. If these aren’t present, then the players should always have an option open to them, or, if the players are dithering, the GM can force action.
Thoughts from two different games and play styles:
In Dogs in the Vinyard, while there is a “mystery,” the GM is encouraged to just get it all out there. The game is not about the investigation, but how the players deal with the mess. If the players aren’t investigating a clue that might be important to understanding the town, and the players seem stuck, the GM can just force action by an NPC. Forcing action also works if the players are dithering. Or, as I have done once, the GM can just tell the players “You have found out all there is to find out, now you need to decide how to resolve the sitiation and move on.” The resolution may very well still have an hour or two or more of fun play to come, but there is no more prying information out of NPCs.
In old school D&D dungeon exploration, there may be puzzles, but they lead to isolated spaces, or bypass some hazzard. There should never be situations where there is no obvious (if dangerous) way to proceed. If the players are stuck or dithering, the GM can just throw random encounters at the PCs to toss things up. Of course there’s always the possibility of tossing the players another clue if the GM really wants them to solve a particular puzzle.
Of course in the end, the two play styles are similar. So long as puzzle solving isn’t actually the goal of the game, the GM can always toss a clue, force action, or just encourage the players to move on if stuck. If the players are dithering (and it’s not just because they need a break from the game), forcing action will solve the problem.
The stuck player problem becomes a game breaking issue when the GM creates puzzles the players MUST solve. Eliminate mandatory puzzles and the stuck player problem pretty much goes away.
Frank
Benjamin,
Players waiting for plot to come their way may be a symptom of lazy players. Or it may be a symptom of players who have suffered from abusive GMs. If your experience of RPGs is that the GM drives the plot, at some point, the players will give up trying to drive plot themselves. Of course when they join a game where the GM ISN’T forcing his plot, the players may become lost.
In one sense, the problem of the players being stuck on a puzzle is because the GM is forcing plot. Plot can be forced by the GM laying out only a single road, or by the GM laying out multiple roads, but quickly turning the players back from the wrong road (silly you trying to bypass the evil village by taking the mountain pass, a landslide blocks your way), or by making all roads lead to Rome (why are you making us choose, we’re going to end up at your pet encounter anyway?).
Frank
Frank,
Equate “computer RPG” with “abusive GMing”, and your POV and Benjamin’s hardly differs.
I tend to try to prepare the major plot points to happen not in a location but with certain npcs, that way, in my current instance when they announced that instead of going to the northern kingdom of Lord Thomas they want to randomly run off to the far distance holy kingdom to hide it out until this all clears over (no one said we wanted to be heroes they claim) they still ar going to run into those npcs, because frankly they haven’t shown up yet, they can be anywhere. Those npcs will give them a nudge in the right direction eventually.
or I throw ina supernatural villian to threaten them with the painful death thing
I agree with corrosive rabbit though “One of the best bits of GM advice I’ve read (and I can’t remember where) was, “When in doubt, think of the most entertaining thing that could happen at this point. Then do that.â€
I don’t think I’ve ever run a game where people actually got “stuck”. At worst, I wind up with characters that are drilling holes in walls and annoying the crap out of my NPC’s trying to make things fit together that don’t actually fit together.
They sure stump *me* a lot, though, and when this happens I tell them, “well, it’s time to wrap up the session, what do you guys plan to do next week?”
We never play for more than 4 hours at a stretch, though.
After a couple bad experiences with puzzles (my fault, totally my fault), I’ve basically given up on the in-game puzzle, unless the puzzle is “Which of these seemingly nice NPC nobles do I trust?”
The reason? My players got stuck.
I’m still a relatively new game master by many standards, and I’m still developing the touch for what to do when my players get stuck, and how to build a game that sidesteps that problem 95% of the time.
After my first session in my current campaign, I did realize that two of my players were used to kick-in-the-door smash-and-grabs, and my other player was really interested in some of the other parts of the plot but lacked the force of personality to get the others to play along.
Even my smash-and-grab players have a hard time driving the plot on their own, so I’m resorting to a bit of the open-ended railroading. Session one is over and they have about five different rails, and the order in which they head down these rails will open up some possibilities and close others.
I think that the comment about “whatever the most entertaining thing that could possibly happen is” is pure brilliance, and I will most definitely be using Andaron’s traveler at some point in my game (unless the evil PCs kill the traveler on sight *rolls eyes*)
😀
Well, along the lines of Ninja’s kick in the door and “do the most entertaining thing you can think of” I tend to do the most outrageous thing I can think of. I have a NPC drop an ambiguous line to the effect of
“Now we are in place to capture Napalm” The players don’t know if it is referring to the substance, a person’s name or a code word. And in that situation they tend to come up with wild theories as they talk among themselves and I decide which random theory they have come up with is true and by how much it is true.
Anyway that is my trick of last resort for getting a campaign unstuck
I tend to leave my games pretty open to players doing whatever they want, so there isn’t much space for them to get stuck.
I start out with a campaign-length timeline of “What evil NPC group A will be doing unless the players interrupt”, along with similar documents for each other important faction. If the players seem to be lacking motivation, I look through the timelines for what events are likely to be in the news, or being recounted by local gossips. this week, and give them some of those.
Usually the players will investigate one of these news stories that interests them most. Sometimes, mid-campaign, they switch to another one they find more interesting. But as long as they’re investigating something related to a story I’ve handed them at some point, they’re going to end up interacting with one group or another (which probably means I’ll have to add notes in the margin of that timeline, and plan out a new version properly before next week)
Alternatively, the players “go hunting” or “go on patrol”. That’s easy to deal with … just pick a random NPC and decide what they’re doing that night.
Mind you, the last few weeks of my game have been pretty interesting with players just spinning around doing their own thing. I could have given them a prod back towards the plot, but it didn’t really seem necessary. Now two members of the party are having a baby, and we spent a couple of hours in the most recent session with an in-character game of ‘truth or dare’.
To be honest, if everyone’s deep enough in character, I think it doesn’t matter if they’re stuck or have wandered miles from the plot. The game’s still fun.