Hi, I've played a number of DH and DW roleplay scenarios and I decided to try my hand at GMing one as well.

Try as I might to prepare solutions to foreseeable problems, every now and then I find my players leading themselves down a route that I haven't prepared. Trying to steer them away from it by leading clues to routes I have prepared and all but one time I have gotten them to lead themselves back on the scenario I have prepared.

Last session however they didn't pick up on these clues and continued going down a route I wasn't prepared for so I basically tried stonewalling them with some seriously equipped guards they would not have been able to beat. However this this caused a problem in itself, as they were trying to gather evidence of a crime, they were not dealing with a criminal organisation so they started waving "we are inquisition you will help us". Now because it had gone so far from my playbook I had no idea what to do as official imperium organisations can't exactly say no to the inquisition. Any tips on how to avoid this situation in the future? Or to deal with it when it pops up?

Waving their Inquisition badges is a viable tactic for PCs, assuming they are not currently undercover. I try to play most NPCs as being in awe of anyone associated with the Inquisition; the fact that the average citizen will be too terrified to lie to them can be a good way to impress on your PCs that they are on the wrong path. If you feel your PCs are abusing their badges, you can have them run into high-level bureaucrats who know all the tricks to circumventing the authority of (comparitively) low-level Acloytes, i.e. "fill out a formal request form in triplicate and have it notorized and delievered by bonded courier, and after we have verified your credintials you can expect a reply in 2-3 months"...

Adapt, Improvise, Overcome.

More seriously, the best thing you can do is let them. Chances are one of four things will happen:

1) They find the clues through their helping hands. Great. Story rolls.

2) Their helping hands don't know/only know a wee tiny touch. they return to your pre-planned plot. Story Rolls.

3) They start requesting assiatnce and such that intrigues the biggies, who promtply ignore/circumvent/lie to/accidentally expose/make a stink about said acolytes, with Consequences. Consequences being defined as Story Rolls.

4) The people they are suborning are the bad guys. Story Rolls.

You can always use politics.

If they go into a Noble lords premisses without cause they're screwed cause he got friends with friends and so on.

The Badge only grants them the power of their Inquisitor if he's politicly weak (have no real supporters) his badge isn't worth much.

Example: Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor captures traitor Inquisitor and wants to torch him, Traitor got friends in Ordo Malleus who helps him. Traitor walks away (legally anyway)

Or better yet, allow them to go in and find nothing of interrest, if they find nothing they will eventually get back on track because they got nothing else to go for but the evidence you made for them.

Ebonfire said:

If there's one thing I've learned in all my years of GMing various systems, it's that the players will always, ALWAYS do things you don't expect during the course of the game. They'll ignore clues that you thought were blatantly obvious and seize on some insignificant detail you threw in off-handedly and run with it.

You can try to railroad your players back on track, but that won't always work. If you ask me, you're lucky your players are going the "help us, we are your superiors" route. More than a few gaming groups I've known would have labeled these well-armed guards a heretical threat for daring to even question the PCs' motives, and then begun shooting. Either failing to realize how much of a threat these well-armed guards were, or assuming that their status as Player Characters will see them through.

Forcing your players to turn around usually only makes them try harder to push forward.

There are two things you can do.

First, you can drop a huge, very obvious clue that yells out "hey look at me!" (perhaps literally) and then points them back towards your story with absolutely no room for interpretation. To use the situation you describe as an example, you could have the guards take the PCs to their captain, and the captain says "Welcome heroes, we'd be more than happy to help you in your investigation. What did you say you were looking for again?" No matter what answer they give, he continues with "Yes, I've heard a report about something like that over at <location of the next major plot point in your plan.> Would you like me to send some men with you as backup?"

The important thing to note about this technique is there are NO DICE ROLLS. The players have absolutely no chance of missing or misunderstanding the hook leading them back to the "correct" path. They don't need to figure anything out themselves or succeed at any kind of adversity. That sort of methodology is probably what got them so far off track in the first place. Oh, and if they say "yes" to the backup, send a few NPCs along and make sure they killed early in whatever fight starts next. If the next major plot point doesn't involve fighting, make sure one of the backup men notices whatever it is you wanted the PCs to notice (in case they start going off track again.)

Second, and this is the method I generally prefer after getting a few years GMing experience under my belt, is change the story to suit what THEY want to do. The heroes are the main characters, central to the plot. If the player decide (for whatever silly reason) that they think the enemy is over this way, make the enemy be over this way. Let them be "right" about their idea, no matter how wrong it is compared to what you had planned. This technique involves more than a little improv on your part, unless you can find a way to blend what you had prepared with whatever they're gunning for.

Not only will this method makes things go more smoothly (since the PCs are now, intentionally or not, driving the plot "forward") but it will also reward your players for their critical thinking (even though the conclusions they drew were inaccurate.) More likely than not, your players put 2 and 2 together and got 5 by trying to think "in character." Even if they made the wrong connection, allowing them to be right will reward them for getting involved in the game universe, and that in turn will get them more involved in the future.

It's also surprising how often your players will credit YOU for coming up with "such cool ideas" for the game, when really you were tweaking or outright stealing ideas THEY suggested in table talk. Role-playing is a collaborative effort. The players are just as much a part of determining how this story unfolds as you are, so try not to get too caught up in the idea they "they're ruining MY story!"

The general rule of thumb I follow is to try to be flexible on all things.

Have your plot planned out, encounters, clues, etc., but nothing should be static or revolve around players doing a specific thing. Players will make leaps of logic and connect the most trivial things that meant nothing to you. They will latch on to these ideas and not let go. This shouldn't be a problem, adapt your story and relocate the bad guys operation from the farm house to the warehouse, or from the space port to the low hive manufactorum. That ambush you planned for that clearing on the way to the farm house, should easily become an ambush in a back alley a block from the warehouse. If you want the players to go somewhere specific you have to tell them specifically where to go.

My general guidelines:

Be flexible.
Be ready to relocate and modify things on the fly.
Don't get bogged down in deep reasoning and overly complex plots.
Bad guys generally have one of three motivations.1. Money, 2. Power, or 3. Money & Power.
Players will fill in lots of gaps and come up with sub plots you never dreamed of. Let them tell you the story that you have only seen the synopsis of. That's what the players are for.
If the players need to know something, tell them specifically. Don't hint at it info.
Hints come from you telling them to roll a test.
Specific info comes from players requesting to roll a test.

The age old rule always applies: Say yes, or make the players roll.

Ah yes, the old players running sideways to the plot.

In Edge of Darkness: The acolytes showed their badges to the enforcers (who were essentially the bad guys of the whole adventure) and ironically those were the only people in that area who would have even believed they were from the inquisition. Needless to say it didn't go well for them and the bad guys bugged out basically.

My line to them if they tell someone they are from the inquisition is that the NPC replies "Yeah, and I'm the Emperor."

Now if they want to put a hand cannon in an NPCs face and tell them they are from the inquisition, still the part about the inquisition is irrelevant to the situation.

Another part is that the acolytes are supposed to be undercover, generally. Why are they showing their badges, why, why, why??? If the bad guys get wind of actual inquisition looking for them, they generally go to ground, split up, hide, lay low, etc. Good luck finding the bad guys then.

Adeptus-B said:

As it turns out I had used that line to save it before I posted but hadn't thought of a lot of those ideas, thanks guys,very helpful

This is one situation I've run into a few times, and have always been happy with my habit of having an NPC with the party who can 'stupid-check' things in a way that doesn't say 'GM says no' and doesn't require me to out-of-game spoonfeed the party everything they're missing.

That, and sometimes I let them go off and do their own thing. Let them run off the tracks, and afterwards when they're bitching that they hit a dead end or that they all got killed because they thought taking on a dozen Ork Nobs at the same time couldn't be all that bad... well, then you can tell them where they went wrong and outline why everything past that point happened the way it did. Helps if you keep everything internally consistent so there's very little counter-argument available to them.

Storm6436 said:

Ah, the good ol' GMPC. Not my personal favourite tactic, but it does have its advantages, especially for a newbie GM.

Adeptus-B said:

Wait, what badge? You mean the Inquisitorial Rosette? Acolytes rarely get their hands on it. Only when they are upper echelon Acolytes (Interrogator) or on a mission on great importance do they get bestowed their honour. In other cases they have to work with people who know that they are from the =][= (see Purge The Unclean) or they have to work undercover which means they have no means to prove that they are from the Inquisition .

At that point it comes down to intimidating the others into not being willing to take that extraordinarily slim (but in the case of the PCs actual) risk that these guys ain't trying to sell you s**t.

So these tough guys that the OP mentioned could have also went "The Inquisition? Yeah right, ho ho ho, and I am a Marneus Calgar. Here, eat this!"

Not only that, some Inquisitors might even get mad if they can't finish a job without revealing their identities.

Alex

I think the "badge" comment might just have been a figure of speach.

The main thing about using the pull of the Inquisition is imo that it usualy isn't all that sneaky. Sometimes stealth is not an issue, but for Acolytes it often is. In the Edge of Darkness scenario you pretty much instantly fail the mission if you tell people you are from the Inquisition, since the baddies can't know you are coming or they will just flee. Same thing in the first Purge adventure I think. Some people can be trusted with information like that, but if you tell enough people it will get out.

And even if they can't or wont just flee, it is still not a good idea to let the enemy know who you are. People fear the Inquisition, and extreme force becomes so much more appealing when you fear your opponent. If they think they are under attack from some random mercenaries they might underestimate you, if they think you are from the Inquisition they might nuke from orbit.

Some of the best games I have run have come from PC's popping of the beaten track and going places I never thought my story would go. It can be a little scary from a gming point of view, especially if you have spent hours and hours on building a kicker of a story, but ... the story always stays there in the background. You know what is going to happen and where, sometimes the "when" can be moved or tweaked.

I have to add that one of the most frustrating things as a player is the ol "lead by the nose" routine. It makes players feel utterly powerless. They may as well be meat puppets or wall paper. I played at a convention many moons ago, with 4 other Gm mates. Normally we would have been running, but we decided to play for once. We were playing in another state, and our gm for the session was someone who mainly ran his games at home. He had no idea who we were (all of us had a wee rep in our local rp circles). So all good. We were all looking forward to being able to play for once, and get a chance at building some stories together, along with the Gm who seemed like a pretty decent bloke.

It was bloody awful.

And a monumental waste of time. Everything we wanted to do, we were blocked. Everywhere we wanted to go we couldn't. The GM decided he needed to whack us around the head with the plot so badly, that in the end he would ask us what we wanted to do and one of my mates would ask him what the module was said we were supposed to do. The Gm would check, and then tell us what we needed to do and then he would visibly relax. He had uber tight control on everything we did, we knew it so we did we did as were told.

That isn't roleplaying.

If you have created kick butt atmosphere and a location of great colour, its no wonder your players will want to have a look around. Let them, and who knows what can happen from there. Its tempting as a GM to want to keep close hold on the reins, I know, I still do it sometimes and I have to make sure I stop or the wheels will inevitably come of ... and your game is in an irretrievable heap on the floor.

Oh, and see if you can find any copies of a comic called "Knights of the Dinner Table", it will make you laugh. Always keep your sense of humor, it is after all, only a game

I'm looking to start my first DH game soon, but I have GM'ed many games of other systems, Star Wars (West End Games Version) and anything you care to mention from Whitewolf, D&D (many different editions) and Stargate (which has the greatest planet maker in it). So I have come across this probably many many times. So I've come up with a method for planning stories that many GM probably use.

To prepare you for the players wondering off your script (which all players will do, no matter how obvious the clues) I find that I write the start of the plot, how I get my PC's going where I want them to go. Good description but open ended of what I want them to do (the mission), then for myself what's going on, and who know's what, where the major clues are and how i would like the Pc's to find them, and a conclusion, my story as a whole. then I write notes about the area/s that the PC's will be in, detailing likely NPC's, a list of Character Names and Jobs, so that when the playeres inevetably wander off course and start questioning a random NPC i have a name from my list/job which leads me to what he may know from my list of notes. Stick in a few encounters on your notes sheet to give the PC's some action job done.

Next time you start a story read it back through and think to yourself "If I was playing this how could I mess this plot up? How can I stumble as far away from the many story as I can possibly get?"

players will always do the strangest things, just remember that somewhere a GM is having a harder time than you trying to tell his story.

Hopes this helps somewhat