The PCs intentionally ignore every plothook

>>The PCs intentionally ignore every plothook.
This why you tell your players some mandatory aspect their character must have (eg, you have some reason why you want to kill the dark lord or {organisation} has earned your loyalty) and reject characters without it. It gives the group a reason to stick together and you can craft plot hooks that you know they will have reason to react to.

>>One of them is playing the cliche 'Dark Brooding Loner' type that sits in the corner and is too cool to talk to anyone, player or NPC.

PCs who won't be interacting with the rest of the party should be rejected by the GM. If a player isn't going to be roleplaying, video games will entertain him more.

I did play this archetype once. I'm usually the talker, do-goody hero that follows his own moral code.

Tried a change of pace, played a loner character, reason being he was wanted by the Kingdom due to treason. Long story short, he was a part of the guard, he found the guard were all corrupt and had a hand in the killing of the King for his brat son to take over (though the real power were the Witches behind the throne) soon after, the guard started getting into witchcraft and demonic enhancements. My character says no, sees his brother butchered, swears vengence on all of them. Manages to escape by the sheer grace of good luck and has made it his mission to kill every last member of the Guard, for they betrayed the one thing they were sworn to protect.

If he's going to be a loner, may as well give him a good reason.

He ended that campaign as the new Commander of the Guard after the overthrow of the Tyrant King and the defeat of the Witches. Found himself an adopted son, and said son found himself a small girlfriend from a rival party, her party ran off leaving her and with no place to go, my PC took her in.

From nothing to everything, it really was a wonderful book end story for my PC.

Was it autist or was it a decent story? Probably autist but that's for you guys to decide.

The loner archetype isn't impossible to play well, but it is difficult. It requires the PC to actually have reasons to care and get involved, even if they begin or try to act distant. A lot of bad players don't grasp that, and never have them grow or change in the way you describe your character doing.

>He ended that campaign as the new Commander of the Guard

You ended the story as something other than a loner. You had character development.

Most of these loner characters don't. They start as a loner, end as a loner.

Though a character who wants to avoid attention is different to a loner. Often loner PCs attract attention by being that guy in the corner of the bar that doesn't talk to anyone. If you want to avoid attention, be just another person in the bar.

I freaking hate that. Players think theyre clever for 'besting the GM' by ignoring the story. Well there's an answer for 'reluctant' adventures

"dont want to hunt bad guys? ok thats cool." When they try to go to sleep, haha sneak attack (including surprise round) by said bad guys on the town. players dont regain any expended short rest/long rest abilities/spell slots (if used any) due to the rest being interrupted.

Another option, make the 'obvious plot hook' actually a diversion for the actual plot hook

The tavern the adventures meet in is actually operated by and run by Changlings and Mimics who have taken over the town and are trying to get rid of any trouble makers by making up task to get them to leave. Thus the town remains under their control.

honestly just take notes from berserk at this point,go from edgy angst lone wolf to trying to rebuild himself as a person

>"Oh no, I'm not falling for that obvious plot hook!"

If a player wants to avoid my plot hooks, I have to wonder why they are playing my campaign. If I'm wondering that, then they have a limited amount of time to send the plot in an interesting direction (maybe a session or two) before I call off the campaign.

There's an answer for 'reluctant' adventurers.

It's not playing with them.

If their reason for not engaging with a plot hook is that it's obviously a plot hook, they're metagaming faggots and not worth playing with.

Of fucking course it's a plot hook. You're not clever for realizing there's a plot in this tabletop fantasy adventure. We all know it's an RPG, it's why we're here. This is like people who claim to hate wrestling because it's all fake. There are valid reasons not to like wrestling as a form of entertainment. but pointing out the obvious thing everyone knows already and goes along with for fun's sake, and thinking it makes you clever and insightful, is kind of pathetic.

The problem with taking it out on their characters is you're stooping to play their game, not the game you actually wanted to play. The correct answer is to call the obstructionist player out on their metagaming cleverer-than-thou horseshit.

>This why you tell your players some mandatory aspect their character must have (eg, you have some reason why you want to kill the dark lord or {organisation} has earned your loyalty) and reject characters without it. It gives the group a reason to stick together and you can craft plot hooks that you know they will have reason to react to.
This. A character must have a reason to be there and to go on the adventure. I don't care what that reason is as long as it's logically valid and fun to play.

decent,i laughed then i farted
never a bad thing to add real growt to your character

>One of them is playing the cliche 'Dark Brooding Loner' type that sits in the corner and is too cool to talk to anyone, player or NPC.
The BBEG considers this player the pre-eminent threat to his plans, and targets him/her with extreme prejudice.

take that you little FUCK

The first is easily avoidable by sitting down and asking the players what type of campaign they want to run, so whatever plot hooks you end up making are ones they're interested in for sure. Or alternatively, just have the story be player driven entirely. They don't respond to plot hooks, they go and do things because they want to go and do things.
The answer to the second is to just make it clear that in most cases TTRPG's are team focused games, so don't make characters that won't function as part of the team

>>The PCs intentionally ignore every plothook.

So as others have mentioned, before starting the campaign you lay out the kind of characters that will work and the kind that will not. In general these usually include 'You want to go out and adventure', 'you want to work with the group', 'you do not want to betray people or be the bad guy'. Why that is can be up to the players, but the end result needs to be along those lines unless they work it out with the Game Master prior.

In this case, you could just say 'ok, fine, what do you guys do' and let them do it. You could be a counter dick about it and just pull out YOUR phone and diddle around on it. But honestly just talking to them and setting the rules anew is probably the best thing to do.

>>One of them is playing the cliche 'Dark Brooding Loner' type that sits in the corner and is too cool to talk to anyone, player or NPC.

All of the above to this guy especially. For guys like this I would as others have suggested just nod and he stays in the dark corner of the tavern and becomes a non-player.

But really, just talk to your players and lay it out for them. In effect starting the campaign over. Or ditch them and find a new group.

>This. A character must have a reason to be there and to go on the adventure. I don't care what that reason is as long as it's logically valid and fun to play.

I can't say that I don't care about their reasons. Not when I work the reasons the players give into the worldbuilding and plot. For example, if a PC wants to kill the dark lord for revenge after the PCs village was slaughtered, I ask the player a few questions about what his PC saw. Then I work what he saw into the dark lords methods, or maybe the methods of a specific group of his minions.

No, don't engage with the loner and force him to react. Don't force him to roll a new character by killing off his old PC.

Force him to make a new PC by having all the other PCs leave him behind.

I see your point, many people forget that Strider was still Aragorn (Son of Arathorn). Who had an understanding of companionship and love.

From a nobody to a King with a coronation attended by thousands with his best friends by his side.

People really seem to forget that part.

>As you lean into the corner, a trap door opens and you tumble backwards. You find yourself in the cellar, and before you- a pile of plot hooks.
>"I leave the cellar and ignore the plot hooks."
>As you exit the cellar you run straight into the Captain of the Guard. 'wuts all this then, PLOT HOOKS? and I suppose they ain't yours, eh??'
>"I ignore the guards and go back to the tavern-"
>They arrest you.

idk man, fuck that guy just break his stride.

>As you lean into the corner, a trap door opens and you tumble backwards

haha i've done this one before but with broken chairs, bar stools and windows. usually add the barmaid embarrassing them in front of the whole bar. Certainly takes the 'edge' off

>"Oh no, I'm not falling for that obvious plot hook!"
"Why not? I mean, you're right, this event I have all this prepwork and maps and encounter notes on is indeed a hook for the rest of the plot. I didn't just do these hours of work at random hoping it'll come up. I don't understand why that means you want to deliberately avoid it. Is there something you would rather I be doing?"

Admittedly, I do sometimes throw in events that aren't plot hooks just so the players don't always know what will come up later. So sometimes they come into town and a local was just murdered, because in most cities murders happen and a lot more murders happen in tumultuous or troubled times. Sometimes they hear errant tips that don't actually matter, like fluctuations in local markets. Sometimes they get to town and there's a local festival going on or a religious holiday or some shit. If you give a location even a short backstory, it often becomes a treasure trove of this.

Even better, even details I honestly only intended as fluff or obfuscation sometimes come back. I love it when players seize on some spurious detail and make it actually relevant. Sometimes players theorize connections to previous things that happened, allowing me to play the old "Yes, I *totally* intended that...!" routine.

So maybe this whole plot hook phobia could be a way of telling a GM that he's telegraphing his moves. Yes, sometimes merely the knowledge that you're playing a tabletop game and at the beginning of an adventure or an apparent lull in the adventure makes it obvious for meta reasons - obviously the next big event to happen is a plot hook, no player is clever for seeing that.

>I can't say that I don't care about their reasons.
I just mean that their reason can be whatever they want to play or think is fun or interesting, so long as it fulfills the criteria of "gives them a reason to be there and to go on the adventure." Of course I care about the reason in the context of worldbuilding and plot.

>The first is easily avoidable by sitting down and asking the players what type of campaign they want to run, so whatever plot hooks you end up making are ones they're interested in for sure.
This is one reason session zero is so important. You forge a disparate group of players and a loose group of GM ideas into a game everybody wants to play. It prevents issues like this exact situation OP described.

Because most people who play tabletop games grew up in the 90's, when that shit was 'cool' because every action hero and comic book hero were edgy loners.

I have one of these in my group. He makes the same fucking character in every game, fantasy or scifi.

Same ass attempts to brow beat, manipulate or just ouright threaten npcs. When it does not work on all npcs, he throws a fit. Tried it years ago with a cross spat WoD game in session one, attempted to threaten a trio of local werewolves trying to make a deal to get rid of a vamp to strong to just assault his mansion. He was red when they all went to war form and slaughtered him and his ghoul.

Always wants to be older than the party members and some form of trained assassin.

>playing a character with brooding loner tendencies
>has already stepped in the shit once by going to handle something alone, deliberately keeping the other PCs out of it because he didn't feel that it was their business
In his defense, it was a presumably safe situation, but should I not have done it in the first place? I do plan for him to develop out of it.

Make it a lich at the gay marriage situation. They ignore plot hooks? Make the big evil you have in your campaign gradually take over.

Well you played an actual character and not a 3edgy5you cardboard cutout, so that's fine.

The problem with that is that eventually someone's going to ask why literally nobody else bothered to try stopping the big evil, especially if we're talking about a low level party who had no way of dealing with the threat even if they stayed on the rails.

Like I understand that they're supposed to be the heroes of the story and all, but if their decisions carry that much weight then you might as well have not even had a big evil in the first place since they obviously aren't interested.

Gonna play devil's advocate.

Are you one of those GMs who NPCs can NEVER be intimidated or lied to in any way?

I see you already understand that not everyone can be threatened.

A more subtle thing to note is how people react to threats. Since we are talking a loner, he is probably only able to threaten immediate physical harm. That can threaten some people now, but their power is very limited once they leave the room. So expect anyone of note who gets threatened arrange protection against it happening again. Then they might start looking into revenge/undoing whatever they were threatened into.

>some form of trained assassin.
Somebody trained him. "Loner" suggests he is no longer working for them. They won't be happy. Plot hook.

Possible answers include but aren't confined to:
> Lich just makes a blitz Krieg, kinda like Hitler in the 39-42, before he stumbled on the Soviets, except there are no Soviets in this world, the party could have defeated him if they bothered to, but as he grows stronger, their chances to survive decrease.
> Lich was preparing to arise in his tomb secretly, the few who believed the rumors and went to investigate didn't return, the rest were either too afraid to check, or just didn't care, kinda like the party.
> Leaders of a few strong countries were corrupted by the lich and decided to become his servants in exchange for immortality or whatever, this is why their armies didn't stop the lich's army.
Oh, they're a low level party? Then make them run for their lives if they're such pussies, or stand up and fight for their lives and for those they care for (provided they're persons enough to care for anyone) until they become an appropriate level.

I had someone playing a 2edgy4u assassin guy in a party of 7-8, always wanted to go off on his own and get side jobs and shit. Eventually I just started putting him in ridiculous and embarrassing situations so the party could treat his attention seeking as humurous little vignettes that they could all point and laugh at.
He kept doing it anyway, of course.

Honestly this is something I never understood about threats or bribes in stories. What's stopping the person from doing a total 180 on you?

>Hey, I'll give you 200 gold pieces to leave the East Gate side door unlocked around midnight.
>You got it.

Now why does the guard actually do it, instead of taking the gold, and putting himself in a position to ruin your plan and get some glory? Same with threats, why actually do what you agreed to do under duress? If your'e corrupt enough to take a bribe, you aren't going to honor a deal you made with your briber. If you're a pussy who bends to threats, you aren't going to have the guts to go through with whatever the guy who threatened you wants you to do. I don't get it.

Because I rolled a 20, user.

>If your'e corrupt enough to take a bribe, you aren't going to honor a deal you made with your briber.
Honor among thieves? But this sort of backstabbing is more plausible than
>If you're a pussy who bends to threats, you aren't going to have the guts to go through with whatever the guy who threatened you wants you to do.
Yes you are, if you're more scared of him than you are of the consequences whatever he's asking you to do.

> Lich just makes a blitz Krieg, kinda like Hitler in the 39-42, before he stumbled on the Soviets, except there are no Soviets in this world, the party could have defeated him if they bothered to, but as he grows stronger, their chances to survive decrease.
Thing is, you're not going to be able to get so strong without somebody noticing, especially if you're amassing undead armies that are razing villages to the ground.
>Lich was preparing to arise in his tomb secretly, the few who believed the rumors and went to investigate didn't return, the rest were either too afraid to check, or just didn't care, kinda like the party.
Wouldn't the fact that the people who went to check out the rumor never coming back kinda raise a few red flags?
> Leaders of a few strong countries were corrupted by the lich and decided to become his servants in exchange for immortality or whatever, this is why their armies didn't stop the lich's army.
So it basically already won, gotcha.

>Yes you are, if you're more scared of him than you are of the consequences whatever he's asking you to do.
But in that moment, the consequences are more immediate than whatever he threatened you with. Unless it was something really drastic, like he kidnapped your daughter and sent you a finger.

>Oh, they're a low level party? Then make them run for their lives if they're such pussies
Yes friend, because dropping the equivalent of an adult red dragon on a Level 1 party makes you so fucking tough.

If you didn't want to run the game, you might as well have just told the group to fuck off and save everyone involved the wasted hours.

Some of my npcs roll over with little pressure, this player just attempts this with every npc.

He attempted this every campaign he plays in and every npc we deal with in his games are level 40 if we even try to be disrespectful to them. We play a game of keeping him out of the dm chair for aslong as possible and i stopped going to his games.

I normally fluff my rolls so they get knocked out and feel like they aren't shit.

>when he said he wanted to show up unannounced i said his character didn't know where the others were done ghee didn't leave with them

That's actually great

>If your'e corrupt enough to take a bribe, you aren't going to honor a deal you made with your briber.

If you've been bribed, the briber also has blackmail on you: The fact you took the bribe.

If you back out on the bribe, word of that could spread. So you get in trouble for taking a bribe, in trouble for not following through and, if you survive all that, nobody will offer you a second bribe.

>If you're a pussy who bends to threats, you aren't going to have the guts to go through with whatever the guy who threatened you wants you to do.
Depends on what he wants you to do. You might not have the guts to kill someone directly. Leaving a door unlocked or looking the other way so someone else can is a different story.

If anybody believes the criminal accusing the guy who caught him of taking a bribe. What are they going to do, take the criminal seriously and turn the guy's house (who is presumably a guard) upside down to find a stash of hidden money? Not very likely.

>What's stopping the person from doing a total 180 on you?

The possibility that whoever threatened them might come back and follow through on the threat. Unless that possibility can be neutralized.

For example, in Saints Row 2 a gang leader threatens a corporate executive in his own office. Executive gives in. Gang leader leaves.

Executive then pisses off gang leader. Gang leader comes back. Tries same threats of immediate harm. But this time there are armed corp security personnel in the office, so the threat doesn't work.

Blackmail only works if there isn't a corporate reward scheme that gives you a bonus equal to the bribe for informing your superiors so that a trap/appropriate counter can be arranged...

Did you try talking to the player in question?

This is the correct response.

Cue employees arranging for themselves to be offered 'bribes' so that they can report them and get money from their company.

Or some other entity offers bribes to some staff to get the company to move people around.

Or someone just screws with the company by offering shitloads of $1 bribes to overwhelm the company in reported bribe paperwork.

did you try not playing with these fuckwits? i know it's hard to find people to play with, but if that's your situation you might as well call it a fucking day and stop.

meetup dot com usually has PRG meets. unless you live in bumfuck egypt you can probably find some people close to you who are actually interested in playing a game.

>the player plays a character who isn't the brooding loner archetype
>still doesn't talk to NPCs
>or to his fellow party members
>Gets frustrated when the players' investigation isn't going anywhere
>complains to me that his character has no agency in the story

>Cue employees arranging for themselves to be offered 'bribes' so that they can report them and get money from their company.
Because people will really pretend to give bribes to people with security teams who will beat the shit out of them if they find out about it.

>Or some other entity offers bribes to some staff to get the company to move people around.
See above. If it's another company, that's legal action, and the person reporting the bribe would need evidence.

>Or someone just screws with the company by offering shitloads of $1 bribes to overwhelm the company in reported bribe paperwork.
Wow, perhaps the person offered a bribe can fucking laugh at you, and tell you to get the fuck out without reporting it? Are you retarded? TIny sums of money will just make the person get pissed off at the briber.