I started a new campaign yesterday for a smaller group of players that are new to pen and paper roll playing games. Before we started actually playing the players and I were talking about how P&PRPGs work. It became clear that a lot of them had this negative preconception about it that they were all like old school 1970s D&D campaigns (as in, the adventurers meet at a tavern, hear about a dungeon that needs a lootin’ or a dragon that needs a slayin’ and… that’s about it for nuanced narrative).
In response I tried to set up a good narrative hook that would start them exactly where they thought it would — in a tavern (actually a Mexican dive bar/motel, but same premise) but then moving ahead with a more tightly wound mystery narrative.
And it worked great!
Players met up, had some drinks, got drunk, talked to some NPCs and did some skill checks to get them used to the system. They woke up the next morning with a killer hangover… and in the process of being arrested for the murder of the good natured NPC they spent most of the night hanging out with.
Long story short, the session ended with them breaking out of their jail cells, finding a mysterious locked box that the murdered NPC was trying to hide and finding video that gave them a clue to the whereabouts of someone who might know more about who framed them.
My players loved it. They all exclaimed loudly that it was way more fun than they thought it would be and that they really liked how strong the narrative came through. They high fived. It was awesome.
Except, as I listened to them all talk about the game afterwards I realized I had missed something. Terribly. I hadn’t considered my PCs’ alignments. The PCs are all anarchist-type alignments. Part of this hook was that while they weren’t “bad guys” (they didn’t hurt good people) they were career criminals (an art thief, a con-man and a memory hacker). All of the players seemed to agree after the game that the logical thing for them all to do was… just leave. Get out of town and disappear into the post-apocalyptic setting.
Which is a problem because I had the whole narrative setup for them to try and go prove their innocence. Or at least try and find out who framed them. But… they looked at the situation and just kind of decided “screw it, I’m out!”
Now, this isn’t their problem. Clearly this was my fault as the GM for not realizing the hole I was leaving for them. But now here we are.
Obviously I want to leave the agency with the players. If they really want to just go off then… okay. That’s their choice and I’m not going to take it away from them. But if I can find a way to incentivize them to follow the plot a bit it would make my life a lot easier. And, frankly, they would probably enjoy it more since they specifically wanted a game with a tighter plot rather than just a sandbox.
How do I steer my players back towards the central plot, which they've said they wanted, when they wander this far off course?
Best Answer
As it stands, they have two parties with a vested interest in their capture/destruction: the one(s) who framed them and the authorities that arrested them. If they don't want to pursue the plot, have the plot pursue them!
Escaping from jail is certainly frowned upon and bounty hunters could easily be employed to run them down and return them to justice. Maybe they're safe for a time but it's clear they're being pursued and will need to do something about that. At the beginning of the campaign, the characters shouldn't have the skills and means to truly disappear, and that will quickly become obvious to the players.
Also, the ones who framed them are, presumably, going to want that box back and to keep the characters from talking about what really happened. They might be targets of theft to recover the box or its contents. If those are stymied long enough, perhaps it becomes assassins instead as the interested party begins to care less and less about subtlety.
To answer more generally, every action the characters take should have some degree of consequence, both good and bad. Those consequences will slowly become the story. When they help people or foil plots, those people will react, and the characters will adjust, and so on.
When I'm plotting out the overall arc of a campaign, between each major piece, I try to anticipate a few very general ways the players might steer the story based on events. Then, I loosely determine the results of those actions, and how to steer it toward the next major plot point. Repeat until the conclusion is reached. This ends up feeling a lot less "railroaded" than strong adherence to the planned narrative and gives the players strong agency in how the story is ultimately told.