D&D Campaign Advice

Keys**

>Or, of course, if they want to change their mind and not have their character stay in town and get married.
And to add to this even further, when a player starts talking about doing something on their own that you think is too involved, you can just pause and say "I don't want to get too bogged down in this and waste everybody else's time."

You might also want to have a talk with your players about how metagaming for the right reasons is good. It's everybody's responsibility to contribute to a successful adventure, and the players should keep in mind how the actions of their characters will affect this (and avoid particularly disruptive actions).

There are so many self proclaimed metamancers but do few that actively try to help parties. If the MM helped with small things in each character without being too bossy, or doing it in game like a training/strategy session, I bet players would like complex combat more.

Op here

Wow, so much advice, thank you lads.

You give confidence to one with weary prospects of continuing D&D. In particular, I like the idea about giving summaries. Far too often I would detail a person's adventure to the store, when it could be simplified to a brief summary and a roll for barter.

Also, talking with the group is such a simple yet important idea that I haven't really thought of trying to do

Op again-

On the same topic, how do I avoid stagnation in a game? Everyone goes to the bar, and then suddenly we're at the bar for an hour talking and bartering and getting gossip and flirting and trying to figure out massive conspiracy plans from some peasant sitting at a table.

I would like to move things along, but at the same time I want to respect what they want to do in the bar. If some players want to push the adventure along to go off into the dungeon, but most people want to hang around in the boring bar, how do I motivate them into making plays and actions instead of just rolling diplomacy rolls on drunkards all session without having something cheesy happen like a bandit attack happen suddenly?

Gonna steal the thread and ask for my own advice.
Dming a campaign, I let my players draw from the deck of many things, because the campaign might die at any moment due to summer madness and the such, and my paladin player pulled a estate, since hes a minor noble now, he is invited to a meeting with all other nobles in 3months. including the neo-roman emps himself. How do I make the meeting interesting? The meeting is to discuss warplans to fight either the Not!Greek city states that have formed a coalition or the orc viking raiders, or to go destroy the barbarian not!mongol tribes, my point is how do I make this an interesting affair rather then a long drawn out cut scene, wat do

The main point of a TTRPG is to "Role Play". If your characters are running around trying to be random and exclusive. then they're missing out on role playing with one another in a clear and flushed out manner. adding a plot element to the game that encourages interaction and teamwork sounds like a great way to fix that problem.

I agree, but I also agree that it can be done in a less limiting manner

Say, they're forced to remain together by authorities, or each of them has some sort of item or skill needed to advance, or it's simply too dangerous to be alone.

That way if they do choose to go alone, they get hit with a hard punishment but they can overcome it if they are that tenacious.

When in trouble, or in doubt,
The door gets kicked in by [insert enemy of the party] or their minions.

You're the DM, make something happen.

>We order a round of drinks haha we're getting drunk lads so funny.
>DM: "You raise your glass and as it catches the light, you spot red droplets of something fizzing at the bottom of it."

Someone has tried to poison them, now it's a mystery!
MAKE something happen, it's your job.

Hope you have fun user, let us know, I love seeing people try out DM-ing.

Either every players is having fun in the bar and you aren't, and then you can just say OOC "Well, guys, I'm not having fun at all. Can we move on from this bar?"
Unless your players are a bag of dicks, they will quickly do something else with a little push from the plot.
Or, some players, or no players at all, are having fun in the bar, and they're just spending time here because they don't know what to do. Ask them outright "Why do you stay in the bar? Are you waiting for something? What do you want to do?"
Usually players don't reall know what they want to do, because if they know it then they're doing it and they're moving the plot forward, or derailling it totally (but that's fine)
If they're just wasting time, come with a plot of your own. Start a barfight, have a shaddy stranger ask for them, anything, even if it's cliche. The point is to get out of the bar.

If roleplay isn't stemming naturally, then the game isn't set up properly. There is absolutely nothing worse than someone trying to force it.

Some nobles think the king is too warlike, and want to depose him. They're planning to do it during the meeting, and they're talking the paladin into it.
The king actually want to kill every traitors, and it's a fake meeting.Heads are gonna roll, and the Paladin might have to fight.
Some even smaller noble want a husband for his young daughter. Do your paladin want to get married? He might get cash.

You can do a lot of intrigue in a meeting like that. Nobles are not going to talk ONLY about the warplan. And the warplan in itself can be quite interesting. Maybe the paladin can talk a lot because has a soldier on the field, he has experience and people listen to him, even if he's a minor noble.

The thing is, the player should always have something to do, or someone to interact with. He sould not be in a closed cutscene. If people are talking, maybe a noble will lean on him to gossip and give interesting informations.

A meeting like that is a plothook nest, don't focus on the warplan talk.

Start the campaign in a way that gets the party some powerful enemies. Like, the party starts off captured by a cult, they fight their way out, now the cult is after them, and it's best to stick together for protection.

You can just move time along. You can ask "Ok so are you going to stay in the bar until nightfall or are you going to do anything else today?" If they are just drinking you can roll on a carousing table.

jrients.blogspot.com/2008/12/party-like-its-999.html

Just have them know each other from the start. It's that easy.

The problem is that I have some difficult players that intentionally like putting a roadblock in the adventure.

They are good friends, and I want them to enjoy themselves and get involved but... I just can't, unless they have a player character to bully (steal from, get arrested, etc), and usually it makes for a difficult experience not only to DM, but also to play if you're one of the bullied!

In fact, I'm the OP and both examples I gave, the player wanting to hang out at the bar and marry the innkeeper's daughter and the player who went off on his own adventure without including others were the same person

I guess I have trouble with such spontaneity.

If I suddenly try to poison a drink, or have bandits break in, or a bar-fight, or etc, i'm not sure how to follow it up, if there is a thread to follow up on at all.

I guess I don't want to be cliche', but cliche's are a thing because they work I suppose.

>If some players want to push the adventure along to go off into the dungeon, but most people want to hang around in the boring bar, how do I motivate them into making plays and actions instead of just rolling diplomacy rolls on drunkards all session without having something cheesy happen like a bandit attack happen suddenly?
Ask: "is there anything in particular anybody is trying to accomplish before you head into the dungeon / head out on the mission?" If somebody has something they're trying to do, roll some dice or just make some shit up and summarize the results. If somebody has a million involved plans, tell them you don't want to get bogged down too much in stuff that's peripheral to the adventure, and ask them to just pick the most important couple of things.

One of the most important jobs of the GM is to manage pacing, and you're frequently going to have to fight against the inclinations of at least some players when it comes to this. People tend to be myopic and may do things that will ultimately make things less fun for themselves, at least when applied on a group level (they may want you to spend endless hours dealing with their own personal exploits, without realizing that if you do that for every person in the group, they will be very bored by the time you get back around to them). You must ultimately make the decisions about when to push things along and when to indulge your players.

>If I suddenly try to poison a drink, or have bandits break in, or a bar-fight, or etc, i'm not sure how to follow it up, if there is a thread to follow up on at all.
If it seems natural to manufacture an incident of some sort, go with it. But don't contrive things too much and have chaos and hijinks happen anytime the PCs try to have a drink or putter about town. That's quickly going to seem silly and may even come across as GM harassment, and could actually interfere with your ultimate goal of getting them out on the damn adventure already. Just fast forward past and summarize your way through unimportant shit (and ultimately appeal directly to your players, if necessary).

You also often have the option of starting the session out when folks have already begun the adventure (describing the entrance to the dungeon, or the tracks of the kidnappers they're trying to track, or whatever). If necessary, you can ask them if to summarize anything they did when they were in town. People will tend to be quicker about things if it's background to something that's already happening.

That is very good advice.

I get too bogged down in describing the town, describing the barkeeper, the customers, the wares, etc. Not every bar is going to have the grand cultist, and not every bar is going to have the leading conspirator.

Sometimes placing restrictions allows for greater freedom, since the PCs are essentially told: "nothing of interest towards the mission is here so you don't have to waste time here"

Other stuff may be there, but it doesn't pertain to the mission, and unless they really want to investigate, they're not going to find anything

I like that, get the players to summarize what they do in town. It emphasize past tense, and it emphasizes that they are going to do something up-and-coming.

A lot of game mastering hinges on group management, as in you, the game master, managing your group of players. This can be tricky as even if you're used to situations where you're in charge of things (and you may well not be), you probably aren't used to running projects where people have some much latitude (the players can have their characters try just about anything, and it's up to you to keep things in line and running smoothly). It's something that rarely gets the focus it deserves, and as a result, I'm still learning new things about it after decades of game mastering. I used to assume that other people shared my understanding of what was good for the game and of the basic etiquette to follow, and I would get discombobulated when they went against these things, having their characters do things that were disruptive or compromising to the health of the game. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that most of the time people were just oblivious and not looking past their own noses. They weren't thinking about the meta-ramifications of their actions or even considering that they might share some responsibility for keeping the game on track. Oh, most people are savvy enough to know that they need to join the party and not just fuck about on their own, but past that, it mostly just came down to doing what they wanted to do and/or playing in character.

Fuck this is a treasure trove user

Forgot to mention, paladin is a mute.
Vow of silence.

Fade two black on the first two, roll on some tables.
Second scenario's dude takes control of a hireling.