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© 1998-2001 Dru
Pagliassotti
All rights reserved. How
to Avoid Herding
 About a week ago one of my friends asked,
"How do you keep adventurers on track without forcing them to do
something?" It's a good question, and one every GM has had to face
at one time or another.
Every GM who has been running games for a
few years has a handful of adventures that were ignored by the PCs, or
that the PCs abandoned for one reason or another. Sometimes the PCs don't
accept the mission. Sometimes the PCs don't realize they are supposed
to take the mission. Sometimes the PCs are distracted by red herrings.
Sometimes the PCs decide they want to do something else entirely.
The PCs don't accept the mission.
The old "you see a sign in the Adventurer's Guild" or "A
mysterious cloaked stranger approaches you in the alley and offers you
a job" adventure beginnings have, fortunately, been going out of
style, at least in published adventures. Although the flat offer of a
job is a useful way to start a game when running for brand-new players
or starting a brand-new campaign, it runs the risk of being turned down.
This is especially true when there is a mix of moralities in the party;
for example, my burnt-out-mage in Shadowrun once turned down a lucrative
job because it involved working for the Mafia, and although my mage was
on the skids, he wasn't that corrupt! The other PCs whined and moaned
a little bit before deciding not to take the job, either. (Or at least,
they didn't while my character was around!)
One way to avoid having the PCs turn down
an offer is to set up the campaign so that the PCs simply cannot turn
it down; for example, they are members of the military who do whatever
their commanding officer tells them. This requires informing the players
in advance that their characters will all belong to a military force or
other strict organization (like the Yakuza, for example, or a cult.)
Another way to avoid this is to set up the
offer so that the PCs run a risk if they turn it down; for example, they
earn a reputation as cowards, or a dark secret from their past is made
public, or their dearly beloved little brother gets thrown into jail.
This works best in a gritty, noiresque game, such as the cyberpunk genre,
when the person making the offer is ruthless and desperate.
The best way to avoid having the PCs turn
down an offer, however, is to link it to their backgrounds or weaknesses
in some way. Is there a bleeding heart in the group? Make it a sob story
of injustice and corruption. A romantic? Make the supplicant a desperate,
gorgeous object of desire. Has one of the characters been striving after
a certain goal for a long time? Make sure it's clear that carrying out
the mission will help the character get closer to that goal. Do any of
the characters have family or friends in town? Have one of those friends
or family members making the offer.
PCs will be most interested in taking a job
offer when they can see how it immediately affects them. Money, believe
it or not, is not always—or even usually—the best motivation.
The PCs don't realize they are supposed
to take the mission. Often a GM will try to nudge the PCs into
an adventure without spelling it out for them. A series of events happen
that the GM hopes the PCs will investigate. But often the players just
ignore the events, not realizing they have any significance at all. Or,
alternatively, the players realize the events might have significance
but their characters simply wouldn't be interested in them, so in the
interests of good roleplaying, the events go ignored. This
happened in an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game I played in once,
when my character, an arrogant and amoral noble, ignored a scream in a
dark alley in the bad part of town his carriage was passing through. If
it weren't for the meddling PC riding in the carriage with him, I would
have had Mikhael ignore the entire set-up. In fact, Mikhael kept trying
to persuade the other PCs to ignore the adventure and let the city guard
deal with it until it became clear that the guard commander was on the
side of the villain.
One way for the GM to deal with ignored events
is to finally make them obvious enough to catch the PCs' attention. Perhaps
someone who has been following them finally approaches them. A series
of petty mishaps escalates into serious accidents. Or, as a last resort,
an NPC finally points out how strange all these events are!
A better way to clue in the PCs is to gradually
make the events relevant to them. My character objected to meddling in
a series of murders because the police force was supposed to handle such
things. In this case, the GM needs to make sure the police force is otherwise
occupied, or obviously corrupt; the GM has to make the crime affect the
PC directly. Once again, bringing in the PC's family and friends is a
good way to make sure the events don't get ignored—even seeing one's
local grocer being shaken down by a gang will tend to motivate most PCs
into action. After all, they know that grocer; it's not a stranger being
harmed anymore, it's personal.
The PCs are distracted by red herrings.
Adventures often include red herrings, clues that lead nowhere and are
intended to slow down the investigation. The problem is, sometimes those
red herrings can get out of hand. Players often develop far more complicated
and dastardly theories about the underlying plot than the GM ever imagined.
If they convince themselves that their theory is correct, they may very
well go off on another tangent entirely, chasing down false clues for
days. This can be a real problem, especially if the GM has a timeline
of events. While the adventurers are tracing false leads, the villains
may be carrying out their crime!
The best way to avoid this problem is to minimize
the use of red herrings. False clues may abound in real life, but who'd
want to watch a movie or read a book in which the protagonists did nothing
but chase down dead ends? RPGs are like good action movies and books;
they should be exciting and entertaining. (Okay, some RPGs are like soap
operas and romantic dramas, but those, too, are exciting and entertaining
in their own right.) I personally try to avoid sending PCs on a tangent
for very long, and I try to make it obvious that they are at a dead end
before they waste too much time questioning the wrong NPCs.
Another way is to describe an event that makes
it clear to the PCs that they've miscalculated. Perhaps while they're
chasing down their red herrings the villain sets a bomb off elsewhere—and
the PCs must scramble to figure out why and realize they made a mistake
somewhere along the line. Perhaps an NPC blows a hole in the theory. ("Naw,
he's a long-time friend. Why, we were playing cards together just last
Tuesday. All night? Yup. I remember 'cause we had the TV on and we watched
the news about that big kidnapping together ... hey, where are you going?")
Truly hard-core GMs may choose to exercise
no mercy whatsoever in these cases, of course. If the PCs get distracted,
they fail. The villain wins. Sometimes the GM may allow an eleventh-hour
rescue (the superheroes race back to combat the villains when they hear
about the hijacking), but other times the PCs may just have to live with
their failure. This darkens the mood of the campaign and the players and
should only occur when either the PCs made a very stupid mistake or the
campaign lends itself to that sort of gritty realism.
The PCs decide they want to do something
else entirely. Every once in a while the GM has an adventure
prepared but never gets to it because the characters decide they want
a wild night on the town, instead. Or they finally decide to go off to
deal with some old enemy the GM hadn't intended to bring back in so soon,
or one PC proposes to another and they decide to have a wedding, instead.
The GM shouldn't be upset when things like this happen (as long as they
don't happen so frequently that the campaign collapses). They're a sign
of good roleplaying and satisfaction with the campaign. Still, what does
the GM do?
First, if the GM expects something like this
to happen, s/he can prepare in advance. For example, an old enemy that
survived an adventure should be tucked away someplace safe, and every
once in a while the GM should sit down and adjust the enemy for time—making
the enemy more powerful, perhaps. If the GM has based the campaign in
a town or city, s/he should have some maps and NPCs on hand—a few
bars, a restaurant, the city jail; generic police officers, thieves, and
thugs. (Most published city campaigns will provide these for you; my general
rule is to buy any good RPG supplement that describes a city and its denizens,
regardless of the game system. Maps are maps and personalities are personalities—it's
not hard to adapt one game system's city to another game system! If that's
too expensive, check out Irony
Games On-Web RPG Tools for instant mapmakers.)
Second, even if unprepared, the GM should
sit back and enjoy. The players realize the GM may need a few minutes
to prepare; they'll wait, if asked. The GM should keep track of any names
made up on the spot, so that they can be used in a later game if necessary.
The GM should avoid bringing in any major adventure, confining combat
to brawls, duels or attempted muggings in the city, random encounters
in the wilderness. If the PCs intend to face an old enemy, the GM might
want to bring them up to the point of discovering the old enemy's fortress
or lair, and then end the game. That gives the PCs a chance to plan and
the GM a chance to prepare the adventure for the next session! If the
PCs are engaged in romance, throw in an old rival, a family curse, or
a series of comedic problems to liven the session up, depending on the
tastes of the players. The main point is to relax and go with the flow.
After all, the adventure that didn't get run
during that session can always be run later, right?
originally written January 14, 2000
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