… and I find myself quite frustrated over it.

We have a semi-regular party and this is our fourth campaign, but they’re chaotic and make it difficult to DM for. (Sorry, rant incoming)

I put a lot of plot threads throughout the campaign. The party would find an important NPC that has been assassinated… But rather than investigating it, they opted to ‘not touch the crime scene’ and move on. They found a dwarven girl who was cursed, but decided to drop her off at a tavern. Lastly they found an unidentified plot related magic item but chose not to identify it until the last ~2 sessions, when it was largely irrelevant.

In the end, some of the players said they didn’t understand the story and wanted more narrative. They noted they were aware of some of the plot hooks but chose not to engage with them, but were also frustrated by suffering the consequences of ignoring quests/issues/NPCs.

One party member would frequently start big fights, and at one point walked up to the BBEG’S fort (noticing a massive row of archers, I made the danger very clear), he knocked on the front door and announced he wanted to fight.

The hail of arrows left two party members very injured and two on death saving throws, which led the party to be upset with me for an unbalanced encounter. (It wasn’t supposed to be an encounter)

He turned another low level encounter into a near TPK by yelling into a goblin cave as he wished to fight ‘all’ of the goblins at once.

The rogue couldn’t decide who he wanted to be and kept changing up his personality. At one point he was wearing heavy armor (without proficiency) and using a weapon he didn’t have proficiency in. He wanted to subclass into spellcasting, but also wanted to use a heavy crossbow. (He had 12 weapons he collected, and would randomly use a different one). He would often charge the enemy, and never got to use his sneak attacks bonus until 75% through the campaign.

When he very nearly died from these choices (probably around 4-5 near deaths, thanks to his party rescuing him each time), he proudly announced his next character would be the same rolled character, but with a 2 at the end of his name.

I had one player message me afterwards that it was the worst campaign so far, and wanted more roleplaying and narrative. Immediately followed by another player very excited for the next campaign.

I am at a loss.

On one hand, the party obviously enjoys the chaos but they also dislike the consequences and lack of narrative their chaos brings. What would you do?

  • Maharashtra@lemmy.world
    8·
    1 year ago

    What would you do?

    • set clearer goals for the party (instead of letting them to set their own goals, allow them to choose their actions according to the current situation)
    • introduce less plot hooks, but work more on their possible variations (assume that each of your plot hooks will be skipped/misunderstood and prepare the solution for such an occurrence)
    • GUMSHOE rule: never give players the scene to search for the clues, give them straightforward clues and have them find the way to decipher them
    • let players suffer the consequences of their idiotic actions, but don’t apply TPK - goblins kick the crap out of the party, but rather than die, the characters wake up in a cage, or slave pens

    “But that’s not how D&D works!” I hear you scream.

    Yes, you’re right. But that’s exactly how we prevented disasters from the times of Arenson & Gygax if the situation called for it. By bending the rules, thus introducing some order to the chaos that is the table like yours.

    Best of luck, it’s still salvageable!