Also, in this particular case. A derilict vehicle emmiting an SOS or a beacln doing so, it is most likely interstellar law to stop and offer assistance.

Maybe try an odd number of party members so you'll never get a deadlock, one side will always have more votes.

Until one guy says he doesn’t care.

Until one guy says that he is abstaining from voting.

Until one guy doesn’t show up for the game.

Then you’re back to the even-numbered problem.

Just wondered if anyone else had had similar issues, or if anyone has any solutions for if a similar incident crops up?

This is definitely an issue to address in session zero with the group template. Especially in a modern/futuristic paramilitary campaign, it does help if there is one PC who is nominally "in charge" -- not to boss other players around, but someone who can make the call those times the party can't agree on a course of action and splitting up is just not an option. It might be the face character, the guy with leadership skills (i.e. by party "role") or just based on the fiction -- the nominal captain of the ship, the guy with the most experience, whatever. Of course the player at the helm of this character must have a certain level of trusted maturity.

In my experience, players not taking hooks is often a result of obtuse players, selfish players, and inexperienced players.

Imagine how frustrating this can be from either side of the screen: when a player says "My character wouldn't be interested in that."

Look, sitting in silence is for Silence: The Gathering, not Star Wars.

I might be a little biased here, since I mostly GM, but my view on RPG'ing is as follows: The GM and players have an unspoken agreement: the GM does all the prep work and provides the evening's adventure for everyone's entertainment, and the players go along by biting whatever hook the GM dangles in front of them. Otherwise you end up with everyone looking at each other sheepishly and going home early to watch TV. In other words, everyone loses.

Is every single adventure hook going to be super-exciting and interesting to every separate player/player character in the group? Probably not. But everyone's there to have fun, and so you kind of have to exercise a little willing suspension of disbelief. Otherwise it's like going to watch an Avengers move in the theatre and complaining that gamma radiation wouldn't REALLY change Bruce Banner into a giant green rage monster because that's not how radiation works. Everyone already knows that, but they're ignoring that knowledge in order to have fun. Same thing with RPGs.

The GM and players have an unspoken agreement: the GM does all the prep work and provides the evening's adventure for everyone's entertainment, and the players go along by biting whatever hook the GM dangles in front of them

So...no PC free will?

Well they can...but there are 2 simmilar but different issues this could be a symptom of

1) They players are purposefully being difficult or obtuse or otherwise using their "Free Will" to circumvent the adventure

2) The GM and the Players not coming to an agreement prior to the campaign

In the case of 1) too many players rely of the "That is not what my guy would do" to avoid something they as a player do not like (or similarly to use the "That is what my guy would do" to be dicks to the NPCs or the GM).

As I stated earlier, how exciting would the Hobbit have been if Bilbo had not followed Gandalf and the Dwarves to Moria and then to Lake Town to kill Smaug? It was not in Bilbo's nature to be adventurous in the slightest. If that were a RPG, the player could have easily said "No, I'm not going" and ended at least that session right there.

Simmilarly, Luke's player refusing to accompany Obi-Wan to Alderaan, as it is not what my guy would do, would have ended that session as well

There has to be a compromise. If there are some PCs who are not willing to compromise, then you have to ask yourself if the adventure could be done by the remaining PCs — maybe with the help of some NPCs.

If so, then you have to ask yourself what you’re going to do with the difficult players while the cooperative ones get to go off and have their adventure. You could just tell the uncooperative players to take a hike while the game continues with the others. You could make the uncooperative players sit there and watch while the other players have an adventure and have fun, but nothing happens to the PCs who didn’t cooperate. You could decide to focus primarily on the cooperative PCs but then allow the uncooperative ones to come back into the adventure at a later time, if they change their mind. Lots of options here, depending on how you feel towards the uncooperative players.

But if the adventure can’t be done without the uncooperative players, then you have to decide if you’re just going to cancel the game and go play something else for the night, or however else you’re going to handle that.

But there definitely seems to be some sort of a communication issue here, and perhaps also a trust issue. And you’re going to have to resolve those one way or the other if you ever want to move forward with the game.

Simmilarly, Luke's player refusing to accompany Obi-Wan to Alderaan, as it is not what my guy would do, would have ended that session as well

I disagree.

If I were GMing ANH and that's what happened, okay...fine.

The area is still crawling with stormtroopers looking for your droids, and you've seen what they are doing to people who came into contact with them and didn't have them...you can imagine what they'll do with the guy who does.

Two options, really. Leave town, head for the sticks, lie low (which won't work, because the Empire, and Hutts, and everyone hoping to make a buck from either of them are all looking for you, and they'll find you eventually).

Or...

You find a way to skip town. No matter how you, as the PC, decide to do that, once you do, in fact, make arrangements, you get aboard the ship and strap yourself in...only to find the old man from the Jundland Wastes sitting in the seat beside you.

Unless the player flatly refuses to do anything at all, it's my job, as GM to give them something, and if I'm on my A-Game, to steer those events to tie back into my overall plot.

Unless the player flatly refuses to do anything at all, it's my job, as GM to give them something, and if I'm on my A-Game, to steer those events to tie back into my overall plot.

I think that is a good idea, but you also have to allow for the fact that sometimes the players are just **** stupid stubborn and refuse to give you anything you can use to help move the story forward.

I don’t know if that was the case for the OP, but I know that I’ve found myself in situations like that in the past.

Unless the player flatly refuses to do anything at all, it's my job, as GM to give them something, and if I'm on my A-Game, to steer those events to tie back into my overall plot.

I think that is a good idea, but you also have to allow for the fact that sometimes the players are just **** stupid stubborn and refuse to give you anything you can use to help move the story forward.

I don’t know if that was the case for the OP, but I know that I’ve found myself in situations like that in the past.

Thankfully, then, I've been blessed with players that are there to play.

Really, though, as long as they're choosing action over inaction, I can work with it.

If they're literally going to sit around and do nothing, I have the long arm of Imperial justice...or bounty hunters...or lack of funds...to prod them along.

And if they simply wish to take themselves out of the action, that's when we hit pause and have an adult conversation about what's going on. If they're choosing to do nothing, it's because that's no less fun than doing anything else, so if they're not having fun, I need to address that. Maybe they're burnt out on the criminal life and want to be fighter jocks? Maybe they're sick of their Hutt boss stroking them around and rather than do what he's commanding, they want to go after him instead? Maybe they're burnt out on Star Wars in general? I can accomodate the first two really easily (we either roll up new characters and spend the next few weeks putting together plans for a new game...or we stay in character and the players plot how to throw off the yoke of their slimy overlord...good stuff either way)...or if it's the last option, since I'm a SW fan first, and an RPG fan through that, I can't help them. But I'd rather know that than keep them all bored!

While I'd never personally hinge my entire session/prep on the party choosing one option of a 50/50 decision (leaving a 50% chance of having zero in terms of preparation for the session), I'd also not pander to players who prefer to do nothing.

There's focusing your game around one decision, having the plot narrow down to one focal point. That's a bad idea. And then there's the player buy-in that says they wont go "Hmmm, investigate a big spooky castle in the vampire infested woods? Naw, who's up for a game of chess back at Ye Olde Warm Dry Inn?"

If you dont have that, you might as well stay at home.

While I'd never personally hinge my entire session/prep on the party choosing one option of a 50/50 decision (leaving a 50% chance of having zero in terms of preparation for the session), I'd also not pander to players who prefer to do nothing.

There's focusing your game around one decision, having the plot narrow down to one focal point. That's a bad idea. And then there's the player buy-in that says they wont go "Hmmm, investigate a big spooky castle in the vampire infested woods? Naw, who's up for a game of chess back at Ye Olde Warm Dry Inn?"

If you dont have that, you might as well stay at home.

´

Hey, sometimes I like to roleplay a retard who thinks that investigating that spooky castle in the vampire infested woods. But usually I don't, which means 9 out of 10 times my characters will decide to play that chess game back at the Ye Olde Warm Dry Inn. It is not like my GMs tend to promote dumb decisions with loot, usually dumb decisions like that make dead characters. At the other hand it not like most GMs are not perfectly able to force a player's hand into making those "dumb decisions" for their characters. My character and myself might know that this castle is a death trap, but unfortunately we were ordered by Captain Treville to investigate this vampire stories around the castle, and duty is duty. One for all, or something like that. ;-)

To get back to Star Wars: If the group is not really eager to investigate suspicious mayday signals than I can just trigger an obligation and downright tell the characters that some crime lord or whatever is angry about pirates who trigger false distress calls and disrupt his business. Not only do the players now HOPE that it is a trap, they as well feel like they are the preying on the hunters themselves, which gives the player a (false) sense of security and control over the following encounter.

edit: Oh and another thing: Keeping normal things more often than not actually normal helps as well to establish that not every distress call is a trap. GMs imho need to keep sometimes such events simply short harmless encounters else players will always (rightfully) assume the worst when running into such encounters.

After following this thread for a while it occurred to me there's a long term way to handle this. I once used a distress message to lure PCs into a trap. They new something was fishy, but they also knew they were obligated to respond, being the closest ship within many days. Yep, they got jumped. And they prevailed.

Some sessions later, a Despair on an Astrogation check leaves them stranded in the inner system. Plenty of shipping traffic, so they activate their distress beacon. They begin to worry pirates will answer their call for help. They worry that someone will arrive, hole their ship, and claim it as salvage. They worry about this and that, back and forth, their beacon getting turned on and off. I'm thinking to myself it's like prank calling 911. So...

They finally decide pirates are better than starving in space. They leave the beacon on. They wait. And wait, and wait, and wait. Finally a passing ship scans them, then hails them. "Everybody alright over there?" Joy! "Yes! Our drives are out, could you lend us a hand?" "Sure. Which side would you like us to dock at?" Instant paranoia. Their would-be rescuers are acting too casual, too nice. "Never mind. We'll be okay."

What?

The responding ship towed them (via tractor beam) to their next stop. Grateful, the crew sheepishly admit they didn't trust their rescuers at first, but now they're safe they sure appreciate the help. And the commander of the freighter responds with "Uh, yeah. Look, towing you all that way put a serious strain on our tractor emitter. Think you can cover those repairs?" And the players are like "No, we didn't ask you to tow us." Well, you wouldn't let them aboard to help you repair your drives, and they couldn't leave you helpless because they were obligated to assist!

So, the PCs find themselves fined for wasting everybody's time and resources. Consequences that directly affect them. For inaction.

So, your PCs are split: offer assistance or don't. Do they know for certain it's a trap? Not unless the trap is sprung, so if they ignore it they get to wherever they were headed and hear about the ship they abandoned, how everyone was found dead because of a malfunction in the life support, and, well, it can't be too hard for someone to investigate and discover the PCs were near enough to help but didn't.

I guess what I'm trying to say is players need to get over themselves. Not everything in the story is about them, even if the story is about them.

And then there's the player buy-in that says they wont go "Hmmm, investigate a big spooky castle in the vampire infested woods? Naw, who's up for a game of chess back at Ye Olde Warm Dry Inn?"

If you dont have that, you might as well stay at home.

I'd say that if your GMing relies on the expectation that players will act out of character to jump at every hook with no incentive other than "that's what I've got for you", you need to explore more options as a GM. Ultimately, players not wanting to jump at your hooks means the hooks themselves need work.

The GM and players have an unspoken agreement: the GM does all the prep work and provides the evening's adventure for everyone's entertainment, and the players go along by biting whatever hook the GM dangles in front of them

So...no PC free will?

Sure they have free will. But at some point the player (not the PC, but the person playing them) has to ask himself: Is my PC's free will so important that I want to go home early today? Or sit and watch as the rest of the people around the table play the game because my character exercised his free will not to join them on the adventure?

You're all there to play the game and have fun, not impress everyone with your deep immersion into your character's motivations and personality. There's amateur theater for that.

The GM and players have an unspoken agreement: the GM does all the prep work and provides the evening's adventure for everyone's entertainment, and the players go along by biting whatever hook the GM dangles in front of them

So...no PC free will?

Sure they have free will. But at some point the player (not the PC, but the person playing them) has to ask himself: Is my PC's free will so important that I want to go home early today? Or sit and watch as the rest of the people around the table play the game because my character exercised his free will not to join them on the adventure?

You're all there to play the game and have fun, not impress everyone with your deep immersion into your character's motivations and personality. There's amateur theater for that.

Your are absolutely right. Technical it would be the moment when you have to talk with your GM about his adventure hooks and why they suck so hard and if he needs some help. Not every GM has the same amount of experience or thinks in the same ways, so you should be trying to help your GM or well … replace him. Either way you (as a player) should make sure that a table stays entertaining for everyone. Accepting some bumpy rides sounds acceptable for that. Still this does not mean that my characters have to follow every dumb adventure hook, even when obviously retarded; Some one should write a memo for the adventure module writers for FFG, they tend to have adventure hooks which are downright absurd.

The GM and players have an unspoken agreement: the GM does all the prep work and provides the evening's adventure for everyone's entertainment, and the players go along by biting whatever hook the GM dangles in front of them

So...no PC free will?

Sure they have free will. But at some point the player (not the PC, but the person playing them) has to ask himself: Is my PC's free will so important that I want to go home early today? Or sit and watch as the rest of the people around the table play the game because my character exercised his free will not to join them on the adventure?

You're all there to play the game and have fun, not impress everyone with your deep immersion into your character's motivations and personality. There's amateur theater for that.

Sorry, if part of the agreement on my end, as a player is that I agree to "go along by biting whatever hook is dangled in front of me", that's essentially the same as "as the GM, I'm telling you what choices your character must make"...at which point, it's much more a session of "go listen to the GM tell you what your PC does in their story" than anything else.

Hey, sometimes I like to roleplay a retard who thinks that investigating that spooky castle in the vampire infested woods. But usually I don't, which means 9 out of 10 times my characters will decide to play that chess game back at the Ye Olde Warm Dry Inn. It is not like my GMs tend to promote dumb decisions with loot, usually dumb decisions like that make dead characters. At the other hand it not like most GMs are not perfectly able to force a player's hand into making those "dumb decisions" for their characters. My character and myself might know that this castle is a death trap, but unfortunately we were ordered by Captain Treville to investigate this vampire stories around the castle, and duty is duty. One for all, or something like that. ;-)

Its not a matter of it's a dumb decision or a good decision, or that there's lots of loot or barren catacombs. It's the covenant that the GM and Players have that when the GM spend the entire week writing up a game, that the players will go follow the bread crumbs, that when they are pulled out of hyperspace by a millennia old wreck of a Sith Battleship, that they wont go "Ah man, the hyper-drive limiter tripped. Now we'll be late getting back home." and jump away from the accident. That when a man staggers out of the bushes, gasps "They mustn't get this" pressing a datadisc into their hands before dying, that they turn around and give it to the authorities without a second thought.

Unless the game is a complete sandbox game, the players should have enough respect for the GM's time to put some effort into telling the story too. That if they are going to avoid the spooky castle and go play Chess at the tavern, that the next words out of my mouth will be "Well, I guess that wraps up the game for tonight. Everyone gets 1 experience point. Good game everyone!"

Also, back to the OP's original scenario a SOS as a possible trap.

The vast majority of people WOULD stop, even if they expected a trap. Most of the time it is an actual emergency and most people are not pirates. The other reason would be a combination of Maritime law and Karma.

In our world and in most space based games, it is the law that you need to offer assistance to disabled vessels (in Canada, the trains even have to stop if the see someone trying to flag them down to offer assistance or take them on as a passenger). Can and do some people take advantage of this, sure. Can your PCs disregard the law, sure they can. However, it is actually something that your PC would do, or is it something that YOU, the PLAYER does not like.

Your typical spacer PC would most likely be overly cautious when doing so, but WOULD render what aid they could as they would want someone else to do the same if it happened to them.

Also, that particular module encounter allows for the PCs to over power the NPCs or vice versa AND has a very decent reward as well.

Hey, sometimes I like to roleplay a retard who thinks that investigating that spooky castle in the vampire infested woods. But usually I don't, which means 9 out of 10 times my characters will decide to play that chess game back at the Ye Olde Warm Dry Inn. It is not like my GMs tend to promote dumb decisions with loot, usually dumb decisions like that make dead characters. At the other hand it not like most GMs are not perfectly able to force a player's hand into making those "dumb decisions" for their characters. My character and myself might know that this castle is a death trap, but unfortunately we were ordered by Captain Treville to investigate this vampire stories around the castle, and duty is duty. One for all, or something like that. ;-)

Its not a matter of it's a dumb decision or a good decision, or that there's lots of loot or barren catacombs. It's the covenant that the GM and Players have that when the GM spend the entire week writing up a game, that the players will go follow the bread crumbs, that when they are pulled out of hyperspace by a millennia old wreck of a Sith Battleship, that they wont go "Ah man, the hyper-drive limiter tripped. Now we'll be late getting back home." and jump away from the accident. That when a man staggers out of the bushes, gasps "They mustn't get this" pressing a datadisc into their hands before dying, that they turn around and give it to the authorities without a second thought.

Unless the game is a complete sandbox game, the players should have enough respect for the GM's time to put some effort into telling the story too. That if they are going to avoid the spooky castle and go play Chess at the tavern, that the next words out of my mouth will be "Well, I guess that wraps up the game for tonight. Everyone gets 1 experience point. Good game everyone!"

.

Your are absolutely right. Technical it would be the moment when you have to talk with your GM about his adventure hooks and why they suck so hard and if he needs some help. Not every GM has the same amount of experience or thinks in the same ways, so you should be trying to help your GM or well … replace him. Either way you (as a player) should make sure that a table stays entertaining for everyone. Accepting some bumpy rides sounds acceptable for that. Still this does not mean that my characters have to follow every dumb adventure hook, even when obviously retarded

Tailor your plot hooks to the motivations and IQ's of your players, then decide if you are going to use a carrot or stick to get them on board.

Don't make the hook to obvious or to faint or else it will be ignored, just give a hint as to what type of reward it will be. Imagination can work far better than an actual value, a value can open negotiations which can lead to a party walking away from a hook.

For example, broadcasting a SOS in both common and hutt will give players an expectation of a bigger reward/salvage than just broadcasting in common.

It doesn't mean anything, the ship could have been previously owned by a hutt or just be used to travelling in hutt space. Some player types would be instantly hooked by the hutt connection more than the distress hook.

Racial, sexual or named motivations also work well.

Alien characters tend to want to help NPC's of the same race, the party's wookie asshat bounty hunter may turn a blind eye to a civilian ship in distress but would want to help a wookie captain.

A male dominated party would be more willing to help a captain with a female name, which can be funny when they rescue a man called Jane.

Ship names can be random but players will see connections where none exist, give the ship a name that could relate to a PC or part of the larger plot. The captain can later admit he named the ship when he was drunk.

A more stick like approach would be to tell them to help instead of asking them.

For example, "this is corsec corvette ...... hailing vessel ......, we were responding to an automated distress beacon at coordinates X, Y, Z when we suffered a hyperdrive malfunction. ETA on repairs is 3 hours. As the closest vessel we request that you fulfil your obligation to spacefarers law and respond to the distress beacon, we will join you as soon as we are able."

It's the same situation, and could still be a trap, but you've reminded the players of the law and pointed out that they will be judged for their actions.

If that was one of my distress calls the corsec vessel would be fine and the captain would be using the PC's as bait to smoke out the pirates. Let the pirates start boarding and then jump in the corvette to capture them.

Still this does not mean that my characters have to follow every dumb adventure hook, even when obviously retarded

And then we're wrapping up the game early and playing Settlers of Catan then because I spent my week working on this (hypothetical) story arc and not planning for "What happens if the characters ignore the adventure seed because they deemed it stupid".

Sorry, that's being a world class jerk and ridiculously disrespectful. "But that's not what my character would do" is no defense for being an asshat.

Still this does not mean that my characters have to follow every dumb adventure hook, even when obviously retarded

And then we're wrapping up the game early and playing Settlers of Catan then because I spent my week working on this (hypothetical) story arc and not planning for "What happens if the characters ignore the adventure seed because they deemed it stupid".

Sorry, that's being a world class jerk and ridiculously disrespectful. "But that's not what my character would do" is no defense for being an asshat.

I think the real answer lies somewhere between the two extremes, but seriously, you expect players to continue to do things they don't find fun or entertaining (which being obligated to play their characters in a certain way is) just because that's what you're telling them to do?

You're right back to the question of if you're going to tell them that they need to do X or the game is over, why not just write out the whole story for them and let them know how it all works out without asking for their input? If, as a GM, your players aren't interested in what you're delivering, but they're still showing up to play, that's on you, not them.

Well, yeah - both sides have to come to accord. I promise to deliver the best game I can and come up with something that will be ine5tresting for the players and in line with what the characters want to do. If they have Obligation: Owes money to Black Sun, then I'll explore that story.

But they have to jump too. If they just blow off my (hypothetical) game that I just pissed away a (hypothetical) week working on because "You know, reasons", that's kind of a Richard move. And, more importantly, it wont get anyone anywhere because if I don't have a game designed around them going shopping instead of going up to the Spooky Castle, then there is no game. The outline simply does not exist.

Some GMs can improvise, some can't - but the hard fact is, they're going off the map and the final result will suffer.