Players are starting a new campaign, no one has played in a while

>give them what they wanted

>skeleton becomes animated mount
>later in the dungeon
>traps rider and takes him to the BBEG

Sometimes nothing should happen. Most players come to your game with preconceived notions about how things work and what to expect in such games, and will treat certain parts of the environment accordingly. They may treat every skeleton like it's going to leap up to attack, or every corridor like it's trapped, or that because you took the time to describe some minor background detail that it must be extremely important. Sometimes you have to let them examine it in depth and see for themselves that it doesn't matter. They might get mad at you for not reinforcing their expectations, but unless you want to build your game around those expectations you need to let them die.

There are several ways to move the game along when players get distracted like this. You can drop hints of more important things that should be getting their focus, such as describing the damage on the skeleton and questioning what caused it to die and whether it was still around. You can let their actions draw the attention of monsters from nearby rooms, forcing their focus onto the new encounter. You can instill a sense of urgency in your adventures so that players feel they don't have an hour to examine every cobweb; maybe they need an antidote for someone dying of poison or they need to retrieve the ancient sleepstone before the dracoshade wakes, or the ancient ghost that trapped them will claim their souls at the stroke of midnight. Or you can use a little negative reinforcement and simply punish the player for screwing around too much, invoking a curse or triggering a trap as a consequence of their actions. In this case I'd probably have let the player trigger the trap when they attempted to ride the skeleton. Be careful with negative reinforcement though; players develop these habits because they expect something to come from interaction with that object and even bad experiences will often reinforce their expectations.

ride the skeleton? that's fucking hilarious. you need to provide this player an opportunity to ride an animated skeleton sometime in the future, have one trip near him in an encounter or something. like three adventures down the road, just to see if he'll try it again.

>traps rider and takes him to the BBQ

FTFY

The party is going up against skeleton cultists, I can definitely find a way to swing this. I'll have them stick their fingers in the eye sockets or something to turn them on, that's why he couldn't do it before

>I'll have them stick their fingers in the eye sockets or something to turn them on
haha
genius

>A Diary
>just his thoughts and feelings
>a few embarrassing memos
>Skeleton gets up and yells at you for taking his shit
>Demands you apologize
>tells you to take off your pants
>"Now how the fuck do you feel, thats right, don't do it again"

>Given them what they wanted i.e. a skeleton fight.
Don't. Don't encourage your players to be retards. It was a skeleton that died from a trap. Leave it at that. It's one thing to be adaptable to player interests when it comes to legitimate, big picture stuff, but this was a minor detail that was put there for a reason. You only bend reality when it's not obvious what you're doing, and when it's not stupid to do so (or encouraging stupidity to do so). By the time it was clear that the player really wanted the skeleton to be alive (because poking it with a pole is just prudent, after all), it was too late. If I were a player in your game and you undermined your reality to cater to this moron, I would lose respect for and interest in your adventure.

>the entire time, keep saying it's literally just a skeleton
You did nothing wrong. Your player is a self-entitled retard.

Nope. A skeleton is a skeleton. Nothing will happen just because a bunch of dicks wants it. If they want something to happen, they instead of desecrating that poor body, maybe... explore the dungeon or something? GM states it's just a skeleton, then it's just a skeleton. These players were idiots.

>muh railroading

If you didn't describe the state of the skeleton (ie. ribs caved in and spine crushed) on the initial description, take the opportunity to do so when they poke at it.

If you did, emphasize the relevant details while they're poking at it (ie. it's pulverized ribcage crumbles further as you poke at it, clearly they were struck down by a single thrust of great force).

Don't worry about having to improv a dancing can-can line of skeletons unless you're running a lolrandom game (which is your own business). Outside of that, consistency of the world is one of the core elements to being a good GM.

>I'll have them stick their fingers in the eye sockets or something to turn them on.

>tells you to take off your pants

I do not want to visit this dungeon, skellington? Fine, rape? Ok but a dungeon full of skellingtons that are turned on and demand you drop your pants? NOWAY I DONT WANT TO GET BONED.

I can just play a video game rpg if I want a rigid game structure that can't adapt.
The main draw of tabletop over the video game its its fluidity, being able to do and experience shit that is out of the box and wasn't planned for, and the whole playing with a group of friends thing.

Is that Jim Holloway´s, the artist of Paranoia, art?

You could say that whatever part they poked fell off or something

Adaptability is vital, but sometimes a skeleton really is just a skeleton.
A bad DM is one who gives the players exactly what they want every time they ask.

>Party wandering down dungeon
>Come across a mossy archway
>Fighter rolls an attack, saying he's taking the surprise round
>Ask him what for
>He mistook the archway for an archvile from doom.

Should I put a sentient stone golem in the shape of an archway sometime down the line?

>You should explicitly describe the skeleton from the first time that it has shattered bones and obvious signs of being mangled in fight or by some animal.
>This way they would be 100% it's decor.

This. If you just said "there's a skeleton", that tells the party that it's a full, undamaged skeleton, possibly waiting to attack them.

If you described it as a broken tangle of bones with [SIGNS OF DAMAGE FROM NEARBY TRAP], the players might understand your intention a little more clearly.

That player is metagaming, and also probably retarded.

This

Do animated skeletons have a tendency to wear clothes and anything that's not a rusty sword and a buckler?

If the dungeon is manned by intelligent creatures, they would probably loot the dead guy and get rid of his corpse. If it's not, then all his shit will still be around.

...

That's kind of an issue actually. It's very easy to find tons of art of skeletons with nothing on them, and much harder to find decent art with skeletons that have decent clothing or armor or whatnot.

You're searching for "skeleton". What do you think I looked up to find this pic? Dead aventurer

If you let your players learn that poking a game element for long enough will make something interesting happen, your game will become incredibly weird.

Everything the paranoid, obsessively curious PC touches will turn unusual and stand out like a sore thumb. Walls will grow secret passages, mundane decoration will gain plot relevance, and background characters will develop dark secrets.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe you as a GM, or your players, don't mind. But another group can think it breaks immersion, and that's a perfectly valid complaint.

Don't give an open-ended, vague description when you want the players to reach a specific conclusion. Use something like "The skeleton of a long-dead adventurer lies on the floor..." if you want them to investigate the skeleton's wounds. Or use something like if you want them to generate a conclusion (which matches your conclusion) as to why the skeleton is there.

Forgot pic.

You forgot the golden rule of improv: "yes, and...", brossolini.

>Everything the paranoid, obsessively curious PC touches will turn unusual and stand out like a sore thumb. Walls will grow secret passages, mundane decoration will gain plot relevance, and background characters will develop dark secrets.

> Upon closer inspection, you begin to realize that the wall was repainted some time ago. The new layer of paint is flaking off, showing a different color underneath. This is a very boring wall.

Cue hours of dipshit players messing with the wall.

Hey, if they're having fun, let them. It's a game.

>while you're obsessively staring at a blank wall, goblins sneak up on you! Roll initiative,

>while you're messing around with the skeleton you hear some quiet giggles from the entranceo f the dungeon. Somebody is watching you!

Obviously he touched the 'summon goblins' button hidden under the new layer of paint. Now he must check all the walls to see if they too summon things.

Either other players are having fun and that's ok, or they're not and they will try to take control of the narrative. In which case you can safely ignore the retarded autist and move on.

If someone continuously doesn't want to play a game, why in the world would you invite them back?

That's not the point. You're not supposed to make it interesting. You, AS A GM, are supposed to give the players something small so they have closure.

This isn't about rewarding the players, it's about manipulating them away from the skeleton. If the players were ever meant to acquire anything from the dungeon, just put it in a chest and give the skeleton a key. Once they find the key, they will lose interest in the skeleton, and you will have saved yourself being a retarded idiot who complains about what the players are doing because you have no skill.

>m-muh players, they played!REEEEEEE

Nah fuck that shit. Changing things about some static piece of furniture just vecause the players keep poking it is retarded.

>give the players something small so they have closure.
I like this, but I don't want everything I describe to have to have some stupid little feature about it, that just seems ridiculous. Plus if I start letting this guy turn every setpiece into a toy, he might never stop.

Meet them halfway.

The skeleton locks eyes with the guy poking it.
Then starts pantomiming. It tries to make them fall for that trap.

If they fall for it, mention how the skeleton is grinning.

Are the other players having fun and laughing along with him?
If they are it doesn't matter.
I never really got people who take role playing tabletop game super seriously.
The best times of my life is when the DM was joined in on the silliness.
For example, there was a monkey like thing he created. I forgot the name of it cause we all just called it Monkey Jesus cause it could walk on water. DM just went along with it and made him a paladin and gave him the ability to fling smite evil shit.

I like this cause the skeletons of bandits were still wearing the armor and furs they had on.

You should have had one of several animated skeletons which had gathered in a nearby doorway to watch interrupt by going "He's dead, dude".

(Oops, replied to the wrong post)

IMO the best way to solve the issue is to say "Look, I'm going to be honest with you guys. It's just an ordinary wall/skeleton. Now let's move on." Sometimes a flower is just a flower and dusty bones are just dusty bones.

If you want to you can give the player some flavor text and detail, like "the flower is local to the region, people call it Maryleaf and it smells vaguely like lavender" or "from what you can tell this is a woman's skeleton", that's totally cool.

But something should not become more important the more your players interact with it, otherwise you'll end up with a party that makes everything it touches special. Unless everyone at the table finds it fun, of course. But a lot of GMs don't and it's important to respect that.

Now I'm more of an improv GM, but my advice would be to make something happen.

The most interesting thing is what the players will interact with, not what you planned out before. So if the players would rather go and play with a skeleton than do something else make the skeleton do something. Doesn't have to be a lot.

At the end of the day it's about having fun. Instead of hiding the fun away behind preplanned conditions, just make the fun spring forth from whatever the players interact with.

>The only ones equipped with the right weapons to kill the skeleton in pic related are the people smart enough to not be anywhere near it in the first place.

Sounds about right

Nigger, once they showed that much interesy you could have cleared the whole encounter up with a "upon close inspection of the bones, you can guess he died in XYZ way the trap works"

>I never really got people who take role playing tabletop game super seriously.
That's because you lack the fantasy to immerse yourself in the world a good DM creates

Isn't this just your fairly standard issue of players not being on the same page as far as what they're expecting? I mean spending ten minutes poking a skeleton for ten minutes seems like some dudes who just want to "lol-dungeons man" as opposed to seriously playing an adventure.

>Person dies due to trap
>Other people find the body
>Instead of looking for what could have killed someone here, they start fucking with the body

This is actually pretty funny as no sane person jinks like this. That being said you should have ad-libbed something, like the skeleton getting up and acting like a rodeo bull, or the person's ghost coming back and getting all pissy about the desecration of his body.

That /v/ mentality, though.

Gotta agree with these guys. Fuck that retard.

>There's "reality" in game that's not just whatever GM says happens
>WRONG!

>pandering to players by treating them like spoiled autists with ADHD is the correct way to GM

KYS.

>muh shitty fantasy novel clumsily disguised as an RPG

Gonna give them boners, huh?

The Stanley Parable as a tabletop roleplaying game.

> You walk inside a closet and wait. Nothing happens. You wait some more. You're certain that something will happen if you just wait a little longer.

That actually sounds fun

It sometimes feels like Veeky Forums doesn't want the DM to have fun at all.