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 am deeply sorry to say that, but if that is what a GM I am playing with is getting out of such a reaction then it is time to get another GM for me. Which happened in over 20 years of pen & paper exactly one time for me.

Furthermore:

You make it sound like a week's worth of work was in vain just because a single adventure hook was ignored. That adventure will still be played in one form or another, just with something more more fitting for the group or down the road in 12 months with the same players, but different characters which might react to the same hook different. Whatever goes here depends on how wrong the judgment of the GM about his group was.

Furthermore:

You completely ignore as well that not a single player, but the freaking whole group refuses to act on the adventure hook. Yet all of them are silly disrespectful world-class jerks. If it is just one guy then in 9 out of 10 cases they will drag the one grumpy guy with them anyway, because that is how group interactions work.

Furthermore:

A GM who is betting all his money on one horse and literally has no backup plan … well, sounds super inexperienced to me. As I said in other posts already, a quick ooc talk might be in order, helping him with character motivations of the group and other stuff, and then either indeed playing something else if everyone is fine with that or moving along with the bad plot hook. If the GM is experienced not biting on a plot-hook is never really a big issue, as there is always a plan B) and improvising a session is no big deal either, which allows usually to introduce another plothook as well. Such things happen all the time and most professional adventures have multiple angles to bring in the group or use the classic authoritarian orders which literally force a group into an adventure because their superiors said so.

Lasty: Before some player reading this takes it as a free licence to oppose all adventure hooks. Having a bumpy ride is better than not having a ride at all. And a single enthusiastic party member can persuade a whole group to follow her lead into adventure. I have mentioned this several times already, cutting your GM some slack is usually a good idea as well and if at least some PCs are interested then following them in one way or another should usually work out just fine. Even if following means literally shadowing them and being the backup force for the moment when it turns out that the adventure hook was indeed a trap.

Remember when Han refused to attack the deathstar because that would be suicide? Well, guess who waited for the right moment to save the day while actually indeed staying out most of the trouble? Yeah, Solo was. And it worked perfectly fine for the story.

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...But they have to jump too.

I think by definition if the players overall don't want to go for the thing you've prepared then you've failed to make it interesting for them, though, which is kind of the point.

If the players find a given hook interesting, they'll jump at it, and there's no problem. It's when they're not interested that it's time to take a hard look at what's going on.

Coming from someone who usually ends up in the GM position at least 80% of the time, players shouldn't be obligated to play a game or make choices in that game that aren't interesting to them simply because that's what the GM has decided they're going to get, like it or not.

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.

So...again..."if you (the players) don't do exactly what I want you to do, we're done here". And if you require your players to stay in lockstep, with the unsaid threat of pulling the plug on the whole deal if they don't do exactly what you want them to do...why not just skip the unnecessary variable of even asking your players for their input, and just write a fanfic and be done with it?

The main thing that separates an RPG from a piece of written fiction is the agency of the players to take the story in whatever direction they like. Take that away, and it's mostly reduced to getting the players trained to deliver the answers you want to hear.

For me, while it's ideal if I can anticipate the players (and their characters) ahead of time, and draw something up that they jump at immediately, that's the low-hanging fruit. The real challenge for me is when they go wildly off the rails and I find a way to either steer them back seamlessly, or re-work what I've got in a way that accommodates them. If I've got to invoke the out-of-character, "Look guys, I need you to do this, or we're done.", which is really, essentially a threat ("Do this or else"), I definitely feel that I've dropped the ball.

This all being said, however, one thing that I believe has been missed in the whole discussion is proper preparation. I'm *highly* selective of both players and characters on the front end, which really helps avoid and prevent these issues in play. First and foremost, I absolutely require that every character in the group have compelling and plausible reasons to be a part of said group, and make good in-character sense in their position. Running a military campaign and a player draws up an antisocial, frequently violent hothead who plays by their own rules and flaunts authority? That character is getting bounced before I even check the numbers. There's simply no plausible way such a character would end up in that position. Mysterious loner that never speaks and mistrusts everyone, the group included? Sorry pal, a character that truly has that personality wouldn't throw in with a ragtag group of heroes. Ninja assassin that "works alone"? If they work alone, they're not part of the group.

Beyond that, I do ask that every player, even when they've already got a character that can work with the group, justify their character's presence in and commitment to said group as an element of their backstory. They don't have to be best buds, but for a game based on working together as a group, the character needs an IC reason to want to work together as a group that will inform the rest of their decisions.

Once we have characters that work together and fit within the scope of the campaign, any issues regarding group cohesion and game direction can be boiled down to one of three things: legitimate player issues of incompatibility on the interpersonal as opposed to character level (which are best handled by an adult conversation), legitimate differences in IC views at the character level, which are best handled in stride and embraced as part of the game, or a shortcoming of my GMing decisions/skill/style, where I'm not meeting a functioning group of PCs with challenges and hooks that are well-tailored to their personas.

"if you (the players) don't do exactly what I want you to do, we're done here".

Yes. That is exactly what I said.

Whatever. I'm out. Enjoy selfishly dodging every single hook the GM offer up because Reasons.

(See, I can put hyperbole in the mouth of another too).

Not going to lie - this thread has kind of gotten away from where I intended it to go (which, for the record, was asking for advice about how to deal with players disagreeing with each other). Not sure it's ended up in a particularly productive place. Why don't we all agree that different GMs have different styles, and move on, eh?

Not going to lie - this thread has kind of gotten away from where I intended it to go (which, for the record, was asking for advice about how to deal with players disagreeing with each other). Not sure it's ended up in a particularly productive place. Why don't we all agree that different GMs have different styles, and move on, eh?

This thread has become ironically meta — GMs/PCs disagreeing with each other about how to deal with PCs that disagree with each other, which ends up derailing the whole shebang.

Next thing you know, this guy named “edwardavern” will start violently disagreeing with this guy named “edwardavern” and then the whole snake starts eating it’s tail and we all disappear in a puff of smoke.

;)

Mmm-mm! I do so love me some tasty snake tail!

Next thing you know, this guy named “edwardavern” will start violently disagreeing with this guy named “edwardavern” and then the whole snake starts eating it’s tail and we all disappear in a puff of smoke.

I disagree.