My D&D players are clueless, I'm so sick of this

This is something that I never thought my players of going on a decade would ever do. But it happened...

Discover how to navigate open-world adventures in tabletop roleplaying games and tackle challenges like content skipping to create dynamic and engaging gameplay. Learn from a real Pathfinder 2e game session where players faced decisions, bypassed key encounters, and missed immersive lore, revealing how open areas can affect player choices. Explore strategies to balance player freedom with structured storytelling, ensuring every scene adds depth to your Dungeons & Dragons or TTRPG campaigns. Uncover the advantages of enclosed locations, such as dungeons, and how they streamline gameplay while maintaining player agency.

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[brimstoner]

Hey all!! Player in said game here. We don't think Luke did anything wrong here at all. I see a lot of folks who think this was on Luke, I think it was just between the players and the DM, there was not perfect communication. I don't think you can blame one side for that. I think Luke tried to communicate and some of us really wanted to bite, but others felt there may be traps or complications and were worried. I don't find fault here. The solution? Well that already happened, we did what good gamers do and we had a talk about it. Here is what happened, how can we make it better? That's why you watch this channel folks, because that's always one of Luke's #1 solutions. Talk to your players, it always makes for a better game!!

[timothybrodsky]

I had to learn the hard way that description wording means everything. I used to accidentally evoke tropes and stereotypes that would unintentionally scare my players off. For example, in this session, you described a green glow in the woods. That's generally symbolic for bad juju (witches, hags, fae, etc.) and would scare my players off. Adding in "warm", "friendly", "elusive", "nurturing", or something else weird has helped lol.

Of course, there's always good ol' communication. I know it doesn't work for everyone, but in my games, I've found that a simple OOC, "Look, you can go that way/do that thing, but this is what I've got planned and promise it's worth your while" helps cure a session where the players avoid everything.

[sinisterpuddle]

I have never seen players so incurious, especially ones where they're at full health

[MJ-jdrs]

My unwelcomed, unasked for, advice.

You yourself said that you run challanging sessions. As such your players are likely always on alert for the next challanging threat, they fear for their lives. In this campaign you presented them with a horde of "tank-like" dinos, 2 T-rexes, a mysterious green glow, and a cave full of koblods, and, in their eyes, whatever "powerful force" they worshiped likely living in the tunnels.

Yeah, i'd have skipped everything I could too, especally after the T-rex fight and when our priority was to get a rest so the caster can recover their spell slots.

Ways to have avoided that:
1. The horde of dinos: How did you discribe them? Where they discribed as hostle? Friendly? Nutrual? Were they discribed as carnivores or horbaborvers? Did you have a PC with a high level of perception spot a mysterious object on one of the corpses that looked interesting, aka magical? You discribed a ton of "Risk", but what did you discribe as the "Reward" for taking that risk?

2. The T-rex fight kinda set the stage for everything that came next. Sucks that you rolled low, but you did acomplish the objective of all obsticals, you expended their resources.

3. The green glow: How did the pcs "Feel" when enounting it? Did you simply discribe what they saw? Or did you discribe a warmth? Was it discribed as a welcoming glow and left you feeling 'peaceful'? What did the PC's intuition tell them? Sure the PLAYERS were on edge, but the player's arent' the PCs, they simply play them, how the PC's feel about the glow is something you can say without removing agency. It's still their choice to trust it or not, but there's a world of diffrence in a party that is out of spell slots encounting a "mysterious green glow" vs a " Warm, welcoming, glow that radiates off the plants, simply being in it's precence provides a calming sence of relaxation and tranquility, you feel safe here."

4. The kobolds: yeah, you shot yourself in the foot here. They weren't scared of the kobolds, the were scared of whatever the kobolds worshiped. The "big theat" they're used to encounting in your challaing campaign. The one their mind says lives in the caves they couldn't see. In addtion, they were activly looking to rest, to prep and "feel safe" in your campaign so they'd be at full power against the next threat (like say more t-rexes). A better option would have been to have the cave be empty, let them set up and rest, and during the rest, one or two kolbolds appears at the entrence and initiates a conversation with whoever is on watch. This comes down to understanding and adjusting to your player's wants/goals. If they want to rest, if that's their priority, then presenting them with an encounter (of any sort) is going to be met with resistance or skipped alltogether.

5. Encounting the broken items: Ehh, this felt petty. Again, i don't know how you discribed it, but based on what I was told, you gave them an "all risk - no reward" type situation before. Showing that there was a reward they couldn't have known about but they missed out on feels like sour grapes. I'd have simply removed the items alltogether. Sure, keep the gold, but that's it.

A useful skill for any DM is to put yourself in the player's shooes. Ignore the knowlage "you know" and consider what "they know" and then what the most logical course of action they would take based on that knowlage. Adjust the campaign to it and you'll have better games overall.


My two cents anyway.

[gmikese]

I'm sitting here thinking "he should have described the 'green glow' as a 'soft soothing green glow'" and "He should have had the rogue overhear the Kobolds having a conversation about the staff".... but I also know I've made these exact same sorts of mistakes all over my own game and that this is hindsight. Things work differently when the players are in front of you and you're tracking everything as a DM. The rogue is sneaking around and you're working with them, but the other players are chatting or wanting to do things at the same time... etc...

[expressionamidstcacophony]

Eggs are fragile though. I suspect the players might have been less interested in *things* generally while handling such a delicate payload. Can happen with crucial (flimsy) NPCs, precious relics in danger of being stolen, etc. General willingness to explore and take risks diminishes when there's an important plate already spinning.

[DUNGEONCRAFT]

"it's like there was nothing to do." Laughed until it hurt,

[gloopy-error]

Dear all DM's who havent been a player before, and some who have, (p.s. i am also a dm and player)

Players know that they are playing a game. A game that is meant to be challenging, with traps, enemies, etc. They also know that if the dm is talking about it in a way that makes it stand out, its probably significant in some way, bad or good. You may know that whatever object or area or creature you are describing is friendly or otherwise will not hurt the players. The players DO NOT KNOW THAT. If the players happen upon something that seems threatening in any way, theres a pretty good chance that they will just avoid it because they have a character that they likely dont want to die. If one door in a dungeon is trapped, every other door in every other dungeon could be trapped. And that rule follows for every unknown NPC, monster, area, or anything else you can think of. Especially if your players know that you are prone to have threats catch them by surprise (not only from a mechanics standpoint, just in general), they will begin to treat every standout entity that you describe as a threat on some level first until they have a reason not to.

[KepeskUrthalre-hr]

I'd argue kobolds breed like chickens and its actually goblins that breed like rabbits.

[philwatkins]

I think context is everything. Had a Starfinder scenario recently where the party was on a planet and had decided to try and escape a pirate ship waiting for them in orbit rather than confronting it. It had been established earlier that there were sandstorms around the planet that were difficult to fly through but otherwise did no direct harm to ships, so their plan was to hop from storm to storm until they had reached the other side of the planet, then launch into orbit and activate the Drift (Warp) engine before the pirates knew what was happening. This creativity in "avoiding content" resulted in at least as fun and exciting of a situation as if the party had just entered into a standard ship combat.

[alexmomonga]

Man, the very same situation you described happened at the table I'm playing on, but as a months-long pattern, and I understand your veteran player's frustration because I was on their shoes the whole time. It's painful when you can clearly identify your GM's intentions (and most of the time they're as subtle as neon lights at night) and the rest of your party is just there like "nah...".

[joeymullins]

Good reflection! Here's an idea for Wilderness Adventures: use more Branching Paths. Here's how I'd go about it:

Assume players will skip some amount open-world content. Note which encounters may be optional in your adventure. For every one, create a short/separate encounter if your players avoid it.

Let's take The Druidic Staff Encounter: If players avoid the meadow, perhaps an NPC is trying to find the staff nearby. They may look lost and could know some lore regarding the staff...

Players may be inclined to lie about not seeing the staff/knowing it's whereabouts, making it an interesting social encounter. Or maybe they don't do anything. Either way, they've learned a bit about it via the NPC.

[JKevinCarrier]

I know people hate to break immersion, but sometimes it's worthwhile to just have a conversation about this above-table. "Guys, I put these encounters in here for you to explore, advance the plot, and get loot. Some may be challenging, but I promise you they are fair and winnable (or at least survivable). I'm not going to pull a 'Tomb of Horrors' and instantly kill you because you took one wrong step."

[fhuber]

I was running an EARLY AD&D game. (Original PHB, DMG, MM and not much else was out)

The players kept ignoring rumors of undead and went doing other stuff.

I kept telling them about bigger and worse issues with undead over 6 months of weekly sessions. they kept saying "Skeletons and zombies... No fun."

And then the massive mob of undead destroyed their home base town. I had increased the difficulty level of the undead and increased the size of the undead hordes, then merged them under one leader as the players kept ignoring the issue.

The PCs had to flee the small continent that was over-run with undead.

[Cameron-quvz]

I avoid this problem by throwing out the model of "Combat Encounter / Exploration / Roleplay". Instead I engineer conflict scenarios that set up Action scenes. (The 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' truck scene is my #1 example.)

Create a problem where something bad is clearly going to happen if the players don't react. Leave the reaction open ended to the players' creativity. It is not necessarily Combat, Exploration, or "Roleplay".

This gives players just as much (or more) agency, but the agency is not "Do we engage with this?" but rather "HOW do we engage with this?"

For example, instead of there just being a herd of Ankylosaurs standing there with potential treasure teased in the middle... start with a herd of stampeding ankylosaurs heading straight for the PC's with another adventuring party just barely ahead of them, getting overrun and trampled one by one. One of these NPC's will get mortally injured and be screaming for help.

[HenriFaust]

If you really wanted the players to do something about the herd of dinosaurs, have the last survivor scream out in pain while the players are contemplating what to do. Now suddenly it's a hostage situation! Sometimes you've got to use obvious signposting to hook the players.

[FrostSpike]

In the "old days", when XP was awarded for GP value returned to the characters' "home base", and GP was required for training to level up (rather than just being awarded a level up at a milestone) the characters had an incentive to investigate every opportunity for potential income that they could.

In an "open world" environment like that you could, fairly early on in their exploration, just have them stumble across a entrance to a tomb mini-dungeon or something that required a multi-piece key of sorts to open. Perhaps have them find a body at the entrance with one of the pieces and a clue that there were more. Have some of the other locations that you'd like them to visit contribute to that key - they might be sufficiently intrigued to following up on that and try and find them. This only works up to a point though - eventually they'll be of a sufficient level to work around any blocks you put in place at the site unless you use arbitrary DM Fiat to prevent them.

[d_camara]

You managed to get every dinosaur name wrong except for T-Rex, my liver didn't like that because i took a shot every time.

[kevinfelton]

You can't complain about meta gamers and murder hobos and wonder why players find the easiest least violent way around an encounter.

Imagine you are in each of these scenarios. Not a fictional you, but your actual mortal body. Would you, while undertaking a dangerous mission to fight actual dinosaurs, take a bunch of unnecessary risks that have nothing to do with the job?

Hell no! You'd grab the eggs, run back to town, and self medicate your newfound PTSD with copious amounts of alcohol.

Do you want players to immerse themselves in your world and take it seriously? Well, congratulations, cause that's what you got.

[nctpti]

My sympathies. Long time DM and see this way too often lately

"The spellcasters were mostly just out of spells" umm... that is what they do. It is like saying the melees all had misplaced their weapons.

Modern players seem to go to absolutes. I have had groups too aggressive or too cautious, often vacillating between those two extremes :( Note the "Can we take them (the Kobolds) as pets" is a different kind of too aggressive.

One suggestion that I have is that when you want there to be an encounter, have the encounter. Party rogue hides from the kobolds and reports them as scary? Have a kobold on patrol (completely normal behavior for them) encounter the party, watch long enough to realize they are 'powerful and non-malevolent' (and possibly even similarly cautious to the Kobolds themselves) and decides to make contact.

Do not bind yourself by treating your own writing as etched in stone.