#Need some advice. I am feeling stuck and disheartened with my campaign

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

pure pawn
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Hello everyone! I've been playing DnD for the last 6 years now and last year I decided to try and DM for them (same group of people). So thi would be my first campaign aside from a few one-shots here and there.

After some ups and down right before kick off (2 players leaving, 1 player joining) we finally kicked off the game last year. It was nerve-wracking, I was struggling with encounters in general (encounter building, balancing etc etc). But I was managing.

1 of the few things I struggling was the party not particularly caring to look too much into things, to investigate, to read the resources I give them - mind you if there is a written resource I make them into stylised pdf (reports, books, etc) - like if I write down something (the whole short story, in-game report etc etc) and make them into a pdf there is important information. I genuinely feel like they don't read them, or just skim read them (they have been super on top of lore in our other games so idk what's going on)

We are now in session 39 - they have not really progress much in terms of story. Lots of going back and forth going about things in a bit of a roundabout manner sometimes. I have tried railroading them but it just felt wrong and I think they got frustrated.

I tried building a whole dungeon and while I know I made lots of mistakes while running them (which we talked about and I apologised for) - I felt like I had to point things out and constantly beg for them to investigate, to look into things - things that had important info, things that have world lore.

I feel like they jump into conclusions, are frustrated that they don't know stuff or they can't connect dots because they don't know stuff, but when I try to give them info they don't try to a)look for them b)care about them. In that dungeon (it was a wizard's tower) they just sped past things. And i felt bad pointing stuff out 'oh there's these books here with xx titles, these items with [insert description], this device'

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[cont]

The high plot is connected pretty much everywhere. Maybe I'm at fault for it but it's actively tied to the world. Sure there's some non big plot related quests... but in most of everything, big plot stuff are there.
Aside from the fact that I feel like they are refusing to chase after things from their backstories or looking in the wrong places and won't go to x place which is highly suggested they can get some answers, because backstory reasons - I also feel like they are avoiding big plot because "well what can we do?" or "well its not connected to me so why should i do anything"
So i decided to bring to the forefront that their backstories ARE connected to the big plot. And still they don't want to interact with them
And last session I felt them feeling frsutrated. Frustrated that they entered a building they couldn't see, frustrated that they reached the end of the corridor and there was nowhere to go but no one asked to investigate so i asked for perception checks etc instead. Maybe I should be more proactive in telling them when to roll? I just don't want to constantly hand them things. But then things won't progress.
And they are struggling to figure out where to go from here. They say that there's not a lot of things they can do (one of those things is talking to an npc that has lots of info - they just did other things first, also timing stuff that needed to happen... so hopefully this will give them a push to look into more things, or feel that there ARE things for them to do?)
Also not to mention a player (in character maybe? im not sure) getting a bit upset that what they thought was going to end up into a fight... did not. They got info that a friend was kidnapped, but when they found him, he was chatting up with some (albeit) powerful people.

I'm feeling stuck, lost and disheartened. And it's sad to feel that. I hate that I can feel them getting frustrated. I want for them to have fun. To share this story with them. I don't know what to do

void cipher
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Hell, the kind of game you're running - less combat, more focus on RP and story - is the type of game I love most.

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I would say hold a second session zero to discuss what kind of game you're specifically looking for here and if your and their expectations are capable of lining up. Do they want the kind of game you want to run?

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Then, if the answer is no, find a new group.

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(And possibly a new system - if you're not big on dungeon crawling and combat encounters and you want a game that's more based on investigation and mystery, D&D isn't really ideal for that. If you want to stick with it, I do have a couple thoughts for how you can run a mystery more smoothly in it, but it might be better to seek out a system that's more purpose-designed for that sort of thing).

pure pawn
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What's a bit odd is that with this group i have played so far at least 4-5 other games? they too were mostly rp-focused. Sure they had a decent balance of encounters, but still rp was the main focus. And they were lore-heavy. And everyone was involved and actively interacted with things - sometimes it was the I'll poke it knowing the it's bad but it'll do something interesting.
Dunno what's going on with this one.. and now!.
I suggested we take a session to do a recap and align a few things. Cause last time one of them suggested they figure out what X NPC wanted for them once they finish their mission (they had completed that mission 2 sessions ago) and also completely confused what the objective was - and yet insisted that they know whats going on and what they did.. which got me confused