DM - "The man tells you the city has been taken over by the plague."
PCs - "We leave."
DM - "...what?"
PCs - "We're not staying in a plague-infested city!"
DM - "The man tells you it's actually not all that bad."
What sort of hooks have you run into that have either been great at getting everyone engaged or terrible and self-defeating (like the above)? I'm interested in hearing some examples from the player side of things so I can do a better job in the future for my own players. I want them to go to the adventure because they actually want to, not because I'm corralling them into it.
Speaking of vampires.... I'm not a big fan of games set in the Ravenloft setting. I love many of the various modules for that setting over the years. But as an actual campaign setting? It just does nothing for me. It feels all hodgepogged & then you add in stupid rules about insanity & dark power checks. Somewhere in there most of it slips from being a horror story to just a horrible story....
As far as misfired plot hooks go;
I ran an adventure about a year ago where the local towns were being raided by a considerable sized orc tribe. Enter the PCs. The townsfolk saw them as the answer to thier prayers. After a few days of rest & recouperation from their previous adventure (and a smallish repelled orc raid) the PCs set off backtracking the orcs. The PCs exercised no kind of planning or stratagy. Just marched right into the teeth of a decently prepaired & orginized enemy.... They got their **** kicked and retreated back to town.
The orcs? They sent out several much tougher bands to punish the towns for the PC attack.
Well, the PCs & the town folk repelled this force as well. Both sides then took a few days to reorginize.
About 3 days later - the PCs head back towards the orc lair. Along the way they get into a heated argument with one another. The wizard says "Screw this." He heads back to town alone to rally the remaining militia. The rest continue on. That evening, as they're nearing the lair, they pass a very large # of orcs & a few ogres heading for the towns. (the 2 forces are on different elevations of a hilly/mountain vally with the PCs being on high).
The PCs response? "xxxxxx that! Robs on his own. How far away is Waterdeep(my version)?"
Yes, they left the mage behind & simply slunk away in the night to a completely different town.
Not at all what I'd been expexting. Especially as this really had been a fairly straight up "raid the orc lair" adventure. One that they were all easily able to handle combat-wise - as long as they didn't do something just plain dumb. At the very least I was expecting them to sack the lair while the bulk of the forces were several hours away burning an already ruined town & then devise some sort of avalanche/ambush vrs the retuning orcs....
But nope, the "heros" simply rode off into the night.
What works for me is something concrete - you know, trading partner of the afflicted city is concerned of a possible plague - or plague-like event - and wants militant escorts for a caravan that includes several powerful healers. The healers will keep the escorts healthy and determine if it's an actual plague or if something is menacing the populace, and if it's the latter, the escorts get to take it down. This also works because you can have several 'adventuring groups,' and even if the healers determine there is an actual plague, having one of those groups disappear, to be found rather gruesomely attacked (or by overwhelming numbers, your choice - I prefer the latter, as it makes the tactical question more important), and the PCs get the choice to hunt down this threat, which is now believed to be connected to the plague.
EDIT: That said, I'm rather tame - with the above structure (specific goals, rather than sandboxes), I tend to go along with the DM's wishes ... or at least the party majority
. Maybe all that time playing video games with linear plots has made me less-than-receptive to sandbox gaming.
DM - "The man tells you the city has been taken over by the plague."
PCs - "We leave."
DM - "...what?"
PCs - "We're not staying in a plague-infested city!"
DM - "The man tells you it's actually not all that bad."
He's clearly an agent of the plague, sent to find new recruits for it's newfound sentience. You should kill him, just to be safe :3.
Because I'm a DM and I know how frustrating it is when players aren't hooking. So out of mutual empathy and courtesy I bite everything a DM throws at me, no matter how railroady/ridiculous/non-profit it is.
It's usually better to follow a DMs planned story, rather than the improvised one. It might or might not yield treasure, but at least it will yield XP and a pleasant evening.
I'll hook on anything.
Because I'm a DM and I know how frustrating it is when players aren't hooking.
I often DM, too, but I never hook just because of that.
For me, a hook has to be well thought out and convincing. I seldom react to money because that's just no interesting bait. I mostly hook for the thrill of proving myself (inside of charakter) alone.
DM - "The man tells you the city has been taken over by the plague."
PCs - "We leave."
DM - "...what?"
PCs - "We're not staying in a plague-infested city!"
DM - "The man tells you it's actually not all that bad."
See now this here is a perfect example. You've got a hook - a plague ravaging a town with, one assumes, a nefarious cause with which the PCs can help - but there is no reason at all for the PCs to get involved and every reason not to. Their "sod it, we're out of here" response is the most logical and reasonible one given the setup as presented. If you want them to take the hook you need to bait it with something.
For instance, in my latest campaign, the group all ended up meeting each other at a tavern - the goblin bard was performing, two others had arrived earlier in the day and were just staying the night (one of these two had come to this particular bar because she had heard that a goblin was performing and wanted to see the fiasco) and the last arrived at night.
During the performance, a half-orc made a scene on the way out - dropping a piece of paper by the pair who were just passing through; a patron later discovered this half-orc was dead outside - drained dry of blood. The goblin also talked with some patrons during the performance and discovered that one of the children of one of the prominent farming families had gone missing.
Now the note indicated some vague directions and mentioned the bard by name.
Other than that - it was up to them on where to go and what to do. They had three hooks to work with - they grabbed onto the note and rolled with it.
When they returned - they still had the other two to investigate if they chose - but instead they decided to go off on their own to seek out who had written the note, and that's where the campaign has gone.