Curious on the community's take: during last night's game I created a scenario where the party returned to a friendly, primitive village only to find that an Imprial squad was on its way to destroy the innocent tribe.

The encounter was designed to give the PCs time to evacuate the civilians and have time to plan their tactical defense.

The PCs are relatively powerful (lightsabers, a respectable ship) and probably would have been able handle the invasion and save the village.

Instead, they abandoned the village and made the villagers hide with them in some caves while the Empire destroyed the villager's homes and property.

So of course I want the PCs to have agency and not feel on rails, but man, how disappointing. As GMs where do you draw the line with respecting the players decisions and pushing the players to take some chances and pursue adventure?

Honestly they made the right choice.

I know its sounds odd, but they saved to villagers lives at the cost of stuff.

Of course the Empire will probably track them to the cave and well then you have your glorious battle.

Part of the whole Jedi way is avoiding conflict as much as possible and that means running away and hiding from that kind of fight when its pointless to engage and even harder to win.

Another thing to consider here is that many people aren't satisfied with just what they have - in this case, their lives. From their perspective, the PCs just forced them out of their homes and let the Empire raze their town. A great many people aren't likely to tolerate that - since if they'd had agency for themselves they might have fought back against the Empire where the PCs would not. To these people, a death fighting for their home is an honorable one.

The consequences of the PC's actions are just as relevant if they choose to stand and fight as if they choose to run and hide. The game world needs to seem dynamic. If you don't feel there's enough conflict then generate some. Caves usually house creatures. People have a set of beliefs they live by, to include religious and moral obligations to their homes and their family. Many species in the Outer Rim territories have a strong sense of honor. The Empire has scanning teams, and they're likely to notice that the town is conveniently empty of people.

A scheming Moff or Commander would lay a trap for these people when they tried to return to their lives. This is not atypical of the Empire - they're both heavy-handed and devious. They can be truly the worst that the galaxy has to offer in terms of villainy (surpassed maybe only by the Hutts).

I think I'll say this was a GM problem, not a player problem.

As the GM, your job is to provide motivation for the players to engage in the encounters you want them to engage in. You can't force them except in certain circumstances, but you can give them every reason to do what you want, and every reason to not do what you don't. That's the trick, don't railroad them, but make them want to follow the tracks, or at least parallel them.

In this case it sounds like the reason to evacuate the village was made, but not the reason to defend it. Did they have some critical resource the Empire destroyed? Even "primitive" societies can have something of value to obliterate. Mines and be demo'ed and closed cutting off a source of valuable tool making metals. Fertile fields salted. Even moving forward a little, a preindustrial village might be totally reliant on a large waterpowered mill for both milling grain and lumber. Or if you want to go stupid-simple, there's a colossus statue in the village square that represents the protection of some mighty god, local superstition has allowed the village to be safe from it's not-so-nice neighbors because of the statue and fear of the god, but if it's destroyed not only will the nasty neighbors be far more willing to attack the village, they may even start worshiping the Emperor for his mighty ability to slay said god.

Gotta agree with Ghostofaman. An uninspired party is an unadventurous party. A large portion of the responsibility of inspiring them to engage with the world in dynamic ways falls directly onto the GM. Even if they didn't take the steps you wanted, you need to take their choice and turn it into something interesting. Maybe the Empire collapsed the cave mouth, and they have to find a back way out? Maybe it's as simple as the cave is already occupied when they get there, and the residents don't like unexpected company?

Whatever you do, you need to shoulder a significant part of the "blame" here, and up your game.

Don't be afraid to give gentle nudges to get them back on track. In your example the village headbeing could very well have told the PCs that his people wouldn't leave without certain belongings, or that the evacuation timescale would take too long, etc. etc. The danger is that instead of suggesting alternatives you start giving orders and take away the PCs' choices, or that you "punish" them for making a choice you didn't like.

If you present them with an array of choices and they choose the one you didn't want, well, them's the breaks. It's up to you to reach into your magic top hat and pull out a suitably exciting and cinematic scene. I'd suggest that you do a little research into film noir tropes for plug-and-play encounter ideas.

Here is a list of how to fix it next time.

1, The Empire shows up early, because they do that kind of thing..

2. One of the villagers has sold the rest out for credits, the leadership position, etc and has a comlink/tracking beacon.

3. An entire village worth of people is going to leave a trail a blind bantha could follow.

4. The village is only going to move as fast as the slowest person and some people will be really hard to move like the sick and the injured. Bonus points for trying to move people who are only being kept a live by really large machines.

5. Food and water are going to be a problem as trying to carry more then a day or two worth of food is going to be an adventure.

6. The Empire has these things called TIE Fighters and TIE Bombers that they can send ahead have you ever tried to evacuate a village while being strafed and bombed?

7. The Empire has that one guy who is the best scout/hunter in the area working for them and can get ahead of you, because vehicles are awesome.

8 The Empire's leading elements on speeder bikes, with TIE Fighter/Bomber support can harrass you all the way there and lets not forget a few artillery strikes for threats and despairs on both sides:)

9 lets not forget the kid who left his teddy bear or whose favorite pet Kath Hound ran off and ditches the villagers to go get his favorite stuff back.

10 Or those idiot teenage kids who have never been in a war who sneak off at night with half the villages weapons to go fight the Imperials, because they are going to be Big **** Heroes!!!

Respect your players decision. That is all, even if it doesn't please you. They are the characters. They make the story. If you remove their agency and always push them in the railroad you prepared, you are not doing your GM job right.

Running an RPG game involves a lot of flow charts. Its less about planning what you want to happen, and more about planning for all those things the players will inevitably do to derail things. So its about 10% planning for the adventure and 90% trying to plan for all the different things that can make it go sideways in unique and interesting ways.

Screw "blame." Run with what you've got. The PCs are now in a new, difficult situation. Maybe the Empire is satisfied, and have left pretty much for good. Great, they still have a hundred or so people that no longer have homes, and their crops are destroyed. Many of them are likely grateful for their lives, while many others are angry at the loss of their livelihood and a chance to fight a glorious battle. Split your refugees into factions, loose at first, but that become more polarized as time passes. Some want to rebuild, some want to relocate and start over, some want to raid another village for what they need. How much food do they have stored up? After a couple weeks of going hungry, good people become desperate.

The PCs have saved these people from the Empire, now can they save them from themselves?

This is not a failure of your players to engage in the scenario, it's a dire failure of encounter design.

The scene itself lacks motivation. Why is the Empire attacking this poor, low tech, "innocent" village? What is the purpose? Are they raiding it for supplies? Are they here to conquer the planet and enslave the people? Do they simply want the land because it's rich in minerals? This question is extremely important to the encounter.

This is important because when the PCs break the game (as they are prone to do), it allows us bring up consequences and follow up action.nIf the Empire is here to take the land for resources, then clearly they'll just hold position and await the survey team. If they're here to conquer the planet and enslave the people then surely detachments will be sent out to find every single being on the planet. Keep this in mind when you design encounters. What is the motivation of the enemy?

On the point of player motivation, don't forget that in Force and Destiny conflict can be a powerful motivator. Surely, non-conflict is the way of the Jedi and to some extent the players might be applauded for a non-violent solution. However, one thing you mentioned was the the PCs "forced" the villagers to hide in the cave. This gives you a great opportunity to exploit that. Like Decorus said, perhaps there's a complication to keeping the group in the cave. A group of young men want to fight for their homes. Did the PC's "force" that group to stay in the cave? 2 conflict per PC. Did they allow the group to go off and fight the Empire alone, dying to save their home? 2 conflict per PC.

Ditto on wondering why the Empire was so interested in wiping out that village.

Are they planning on building an installation and all you've done is made it easier for them to start building albeit you now have all those refugees with no home to return to?

They can't stay in that cave forever so where will they go if it becomes clear the Empire has assigned a large force to protect their new staging area?

What kind of background story have you come up with to explain why they learn about this plan and how does it relate to them?

What ship do the players have and what if the more belligerent villagers decide to steal your ship to attack the imperial interlopers unaware just how outclassed they are or the fact that's the players only means of escaping off world if this all goes pear shaped?

Are the Imperials tracking the PCs?

Did they rescue all of the villagers and what if one or more of them were behind the Imperials decision to raze their village?

Has someone in the village been attacking the imperials and this attack is them getting their own back on them?

Could they have found something the Imperials are interested in like Kyber Crystals and they want to know where they were found so they can mass excavate them rendering the area badly polluted and barren?