I've managed to I think paint myself into a corner quite a bit. For those of you with a good dose of patience, thank you for reading this all, I know it's long.

The situation before last night:

After a few starter adventures, I had a Ratcatcher, Priestess of Morr, Dwarven Slayer & Elven Swordmaster as a party. The dwarven slayer was former bodyguard of the Priestess of Morr, that almost got killed in a previous adventure and was determined to bring her back home, and then go get himself properly killed. Home, in this case, was Brother Grabbe, her instructor. The priestess had been sent out by visions of Morr for the last 2 years.

The party have the expected trouble to get into the city, arriving by boat. They stay the night at the inn and the ratcatcher finds a paying job to locate Florian Wechsler since he is short on cash. He asks around and eventually hears of a band of beastmen that are led by a powerful wargor. He asks the party for help, giving full details of what he's learned. The dwarven slayer then decides he'll go duel this wargor to redeem himself.

Cue an improbable and headstrong trek up north, basically ignoring the Holz' and their neighbors completely where the ratcatcher tries to dissuade the dwarven slayer and even trip him up to stop the slayer from his suicide mission, until the latter knocks him out cold.

The swordmaster & priestess of Morr drag his body back to town, while the dwarven slayer manages to kill Izka solo & himself with it (Undieing ferocity is brutal)

Last night:

The swordmaster could not make it IRL, which is OK. He's got a deep wound and 3 Toughness. As a tank, he's somewhat out for the moment anyway, I gave him 3 heal-checks from the good doctor at Stromdorf during this session. The priestess of Morr left the party to go to Brother Grabbe as planned (player switched to another character -> Agent of the Von Jungfreud family, actually the son of Lord Von Jungfreud). The Slayer is effectively dead. Player changes to a bounty hunter with a passion for red smiles, that's recently worked for the Von Jungfreud's.

Prepared to run the 3rd episode with the Baumer farm. The priestess went alone, and basically got undeadified as well. Knowing the player, this would seriously horrify her. Since she's a fan of scary movies from time to time, I figured it a nice touch when you ditch a character.

Start of the session, the Ratcatcher is morose and drinks himself into a stupor, gets himself into trouble with local guards. Brought before the captain of the guard. The bountyhunter is witness of the incident, and tags along with the guards to provide a statement at the barracks.

The Agent is at the barracks, to get briefed by captain of the guard of the situation of impending food shortage and to be introduced to Ackerland. Agent recognises the bounty hunter from some days ago, Captain recognises Ratcatcher because of his attempt to retrieve Florian Wechsler only the day before. The agent & Ackerland agree to leave on the morning. Captain suggests looking for hired help after the briefing, and turns to the 2 players that are waiting for the statement.

The bountyhunter agrees to help for a significant sum of money (he overheard the briefing and flat-out asks a payment of 50% of the total sum that Ackerland can pay). The ratcatcher says he wants to think it over and will come back in an hour.

So far I'm thinking I managed to do an OK job of trying to tie these 2 totally new parties together storywise. Little do I know my night is about to start getting worse

The bountyhunter does not return. The Agent simply figures he will go out to the 3 inns in town and look for somebody to help. He finds the bountyhunter in the second Inn he enters, and approaches him. The bountyhunter is already getting drunk again, in a surly mood and gives no answers except the "leave me alone, I don't want to, not interested, ..."

So the agent moves on. I simply let this go, thinking OK, he's roleplaying his grief, great. I add a few fortune points to the party sheet (even though officially they don't have a party-sheet yet)

- After a lot of discussion, the ratcatcher finally agrees to help, but they don't decide on a specific date
- In the morning, he won't come down from his room after drinking alot again
- trying to rouse him from his bed, meets with a lot of grumbling and when opening his door, he sets his ratdog on them, or threatens people with his crossbow
- when the maid comes on to clean the room, he's eventually forced out of the room, and simply steps out and claims an unoccupied room
- the guard is called because this second room is not payed for and he refuses to pay the fee
- he finally gets sent back downstairs and starts complaining left and right
- when the agent reminds him of his promise, he starts in with the fact that a date was not set and eventually takes up his "don't want to, not interested, leave me alone, ..." again

At this point I'm considering leaving him to his own devices, but since that would leave him out of the action completely and spoil the rest of his evening, I ignore it and soldier on.

The agent thinks that perhaps asking the assistance of his former friend, the priestess might help. He heads over to the Garden of Morr, but is stranded at the river, with the ferry on the other side. He returns to the town alone.

The agent has no other option than to promise Ackerland he will join him as soon as possible, and that he will arrange his own transportation. Ackerland agrees and leaves town alone. The agent feels cheated and figures he might try a little blackmail. He orders the bountyhunter (again, money is involved) to kidnap the dog, and plans to use this as a bargaining chip with the ratcatcher.

After a good half day of tailing him, eventually the bountyhunter manages to capture the dog at night by luring him away with food. (The drunk ratcatcher's not been paying his dog any attention at all, nor feeding him). The agent has a servant take the dog to a far edge of town in an abandoned house, and awaits morning.

At this time, around the table, the player IRL is starting to grumble about his dog as well, so I decide to switch it over to the Lazarus scenario without the formal briefing by Adler, (so the undead attack at night). The bountyhunter knows of the ratcatcher's earlier connection to the priestess and decides this would make a better argument to have the ratcatcher cooperate. (Good that he picked up on that himself, I didn't need to use any intuition checks or anything )

The dog is retrieved and placed in the ratcatcher's room without waking him up.

When the ratcatcher eventually wakes and comes downstairs, even this situation does nothing to persuade the player or his character to help. Apparently grieving about one character's death makes you immune to other plights...

I finally give up and have him sit it out in the bar while the others are sent out to retrieve Brother Grabbe. Wanting to speed things up (the Agent knows about the issue with the ferry), I have Waltrout accompany them and he actually swims over, doing wonders for his body odour.

They eventually manage to get inside the garden through the opening that Waltrout would use, and spot the priestess of Morr entering the mausoleum.

When they try to run for her, the agent is tripped by a hand bursting from the soil beneath and grabbing her leg. As she yells out, the bountyhunter turns around and watches zombies rise. He sees several others rise as well, and figures he likes his own skin too much to stick around.

4 zombies are blocking the way out, but he manages to pull of a stunt to do a running flip onto the shoulders of the middle one and from there dive right into the foxhole entrance. Seeing this, the agent runs after him, and bullrushes the already severely unbalanced zombie to the side. With only a minor scratch , some fatigue and alot of stress, they both bolt, leaving poor Waltrout in hysteria. They don't look back as his wailing screams are cut short. The agent earns the "Yellow Streak" insanity.

The both of them arrive in town, explain the situation to Captain Kessler and tell him they're leaving town. He begs them to wait a few hours while he consults with mayor Adler.

Current situation:

- Foaldeath is trying to reunite the horde again, and keep the sacrifices going

- Ackerland has made it clear that they are losing alot of produce & cattle. Within a week they'll be ruined, and food will start to run dangerously low in town within the next couple of days if nothing is done

- The undead have risen in the garden, and both active party-members are scared to death of even setting foot inside again

- I've got a player in the gropu that I would like to strangle with a cordless mouse, that's managed to cost me an entire evening with pointless stubbornness. (I've got no problem with a scenario going off track, if there's a point to it, but he's not even mentioned the death of the slayer as the reason for his behaviour)

Now I'm asking myself if I should simply let them suffer the consequences of their actions, or not. At the start of the session, the death of the slayer was actually somewhat productive, since it meant that Izka was taken out, severely delaying the threat of the warband. This makes 2 players that actively contributed to the scenario.

After the session however, they've now got 3 deadlines/timers against them, and 1 partymember that seems content to sit on the sidelines and do nothing.

I know that a good GM will allow players to have a sandbox, but they've turned it into quicksand with not a vine or branch in sight. Does anybody see a good way to get this on the right track?

PS. I realise the Agent in this summary gets called he/she frequently, but the character is cross-dressing as a male, seems Lord Von Jungfreud couldn't bear the idea that his only child be a girl. You can imagine the number of times we get it wrong at the table...

personally i think you have one main problem to solve. i'd ask the rat catcher player what the deal is.

New Zombie,

Thanks, I was taking a long drive today to see a friend, and sort of came to the same conclusion.
I'm going to simply first ask him what the deal is as you put it, and afterwards try to work with him/have him come up with ways to engage his character into the story again. He got himself into it, he'll have to get himself out as well.

I've also come to the following conclusion. I'll have Kessler take charge somewhat of setting up a "battleplan".

- The threat of the beastmen warband will be assessed with one or two scouts that will be sent out to check up. The situation is that Foaldeath managed to keep 60% under control, with 30% of the warband split off, and 10% killed. How much of this info reaches the party, remains to be seen. The smallest group left the area, but the larger still controls the herdstone.

- The Ackerland issue will be stalled by providing about 10 city-guards to patrol the farms in the hills. With the Night Goblins notoriously cowardly, this will slow down their pillage a little. All the party will need is maybe 2 days to deal with Lazarus (provided they live through it)

- I will need to give them a full background on the history of Stromdorf with undead through the mayor. Knowledge will likely take away a little of their fears. Since they don't know what became of the Priestess or Brother Grabbe, I will need to work it in that one of them is actively trying to contain the undead from escaping the garden. Which would explain why only a few made it to the city this far. I may try to make a commando mission of it, with them making a break for the rite of St. Cyril mentioned in the book. It would level the playing field quite effectively for several hours if performed correctly.

I guess I've got a way out now, but it's a shaky one at best. Tomorrow I'll be dealing with my dear ratcatcher friend. I've never had to directly intervene in sessions before, managing to work around issues without stopping the game. I guess I would have saved myself a lot of stress had I simply called him out on this yesterday.

Dum vivis, discis I suppose

I think it really comes down to a couple of issues: what sort of players you have and what sort of game you want.

If they (and you) are enjoying being scumbags only in it for themselves, and they are all aware that this is the type of roleplaying they're doing, then that's fine. They should also be aware that they're messing up the scenario as written, but that's also fine if they're taking the story in a different direction. Even if it's the 'wrong' one.

What I would do is let them (and Stromdorf) suffer the consequences, but 'stand down' the other threats. In practice, this means:

• Turn the 'storm dial/tracking' off. Don't tell the players you're doing this, but just make sure that although the storms get a bit worse, they are not getting worse at such a rate that you'll run out of time. Imagine that the process will take a few weeks or months rather than a few days to get to the end.
• The beastmen (as you've pointed out) can be in disarray for as long as you need. The threat from them is effectively removed for as long as you need. If or when the story gets back on track, you have the beastmen just about getting sorted out at the same time. (I still wouldn't simply replace the wargor with another - it would diminish the accomplishments of the slayer character - but the beastmen's civil war could be over, their numbers reduced and a new (although weaker) leader is just about in place, even if he doesn't have the full loyalty of his warband.)
• As the players aren't aware of the goblins yet, keep them completely out of the way for now.
• The food might be running low, but somehow people manage to survive in disaster zones long after the food has run out. They might all be starving in a week, but it doesn't mean they'll all be dead. You can drag this out for at least a few weeks as people eat all of their domestic animals, start eating spoiled food, roots, leaves, worms etc. And some people will leave Stromdorf and head for another settlement to look for work and food. This is actually really helpful, as it will allow you to 'rescue' a big chunk of the population from death, if your player characters don't.
• I'm not familiar with the agenda of the undead, but it seems like they're the most immediate problem (for the players and the town) unless there is some reason for the undead to stay in the garden of Morr unless disturbed again.

So, now you're down to one threat, you've got two possibilities. The self-preservation instinct will force the players to work together to survive long enough to a) survive and b) come to trust and like each other enough to form a party that will decide to stick together (and take on the other plot hooks), even if they will still bicker a lot.

The second possibility is that your player characters flee Stromdorf. In which case you have two options:

1) Either you forget about running TGS (for the moment), and the characters go crazy doing their selfish and unheroic things somewhere else. You can make them aware of the flood of refugees from Stromdorf as the food runs out and the undead attack and as far as everyone knows, Stromdorf is destroyed / abandoned. But you and the players are having fun playing scoundrels, so it doesn't matter. If they become more principled and heroic at a later date, see below...

2) The players don't like the direction the campaign has gone in - even if it was unavoidable given the characters they were playing - in which case they all agree to create new characters - in consultation with each other, to ensure that they will either all have reasons to know and help each other before the game begins OR will be the types of characters that will 'just happen to get along with each other' when they meet up, looking for adventure/employment.

Now, whether the players have fled, but get their act together and decide that they would like to return, OR you've had to make up a new set of characters, you ideally don't want to just ignore what has happened.

This is where we come back to it being useful that alot of the town will have fled. Assume two thirds of the population fled and a third died or were killed by the undead. A bunch of which hunters/clerics/soldiers could launch an expedition to reclaim the town from the undead, and the players could go back as scouts/mercenaries/hangers-on. Some of the townsfolk/refugees could go back at the same time.

This expedition results in the undead being beaten back to the point where the players can take a significant part in defeating them. The clerics/soldiers disperse/go back to the barracks, and the rest of the townsfolk come back. The players are not 'heroes' even if they did help out (as they will just be a few among the many who fought to get the town back), so you can now continue the story - more or less. There will still be all sorts of tensions in town, and the other threats (that you put on hold) can gradually begin to come back into the story: the storms get even worse than they were before, the beastmen become bolder and more threatening, and eventually the goblins move into the area too.

Angelic Despot,

Thanks, that's a good way to go as well. I'm first going to get some motivation & reasoning from the one party-member, but if it comes to this, I will try a similar approach as you describe.

Nisses said:

I like your sandbox quicksand analogy.

The GS format, istm, is quite compatible with sandbox style games to a certain extent, but just sitting in an inn and sulking isn't. There's no style of game where that is good play. I've had a couple of players in the past who have done that sort of thing, but it turned out both times that they really didn't want to play. I have sympathy for the sort of character that wants a during-play hook to be thrown at them, but they should really give hints about what it is that might hook them, or the player needs to simply explain it, 'my character is sulking because of X but if you do Y...'

Istm that you need to have an ooc chat with your whole group and say something like: you want to run through GS, which is semi-linear sort of adventure where the PCs go out of their way to help the community and you need all the motivations to be geared towards pursuing that sort of game. If everyone wants to run through GS, then they need to go with the flow, if they don't all want to do it, then you need to come up with something else to do, or someone might need to drop out.

I think in an adventure like GS you can afford to have PCs pursuing their own agendas to a certain degree, though a more urban game where there are a lot more potential sidetracks and NPCs would work better for that, but someone actively avoiding all hooks just undermines the goodwill of players who are going out of their way to try to accommodate the recalcitrant player. Istm you keep going out of your way for this guy, but everytime you do it, it undermines the prepared adventure, slightly, and soon you're not going to have much adventure left.

I allways explain to my players, that while they have free will to do what they want, and while I will work hard to make the campaign seem as openended as possible, they also have to understand that a campaign is only fun if the characters grab the plot hooks and follow them.

It's a fine balance between not rail-roading pc's as a GM, but the players also have a responsibility to stick close to the railroad...

So yes, I would have a chat with the players, explaining that while being a player is only fun if you're given choices, being a GM is only fun if the players try to solve whatever mysteries/plot you give them.

As with Spivo and Monkeylite, everyone at table needs to be "responsible in their use of creative power", to "play into a story, play into the stories others show interest in, play into being a group, play into being together when needed etc." The more sandboxy play is the more players need to often think the way a GM is supposed to about respecting character integrity of others etc. etc.

If a GM sets out some "signposts" such as "this about finding out what happened to Florian Wechsler", players need to create reasons to "play into that" etc., just as much as a GM should definitely play into a priestess of Morr and the situation at Morr's Garden, even if the GM also needs to give them a reason to care whether it's reward for finding him, his widow being winsome and interested but wanting to know her husband is not coming back first or "Florian saved the life of a dwarven traveller two years ago you know, and made a very nice donation to the Garden of Morr in his home town when his father passed."

It does seem to me that there is a problem if instead of linear one goes all the way over to "it's all happening at once" feel (it is really but the call to action part of each phase doesn't happen at same time as written). That does naturally pull people in different directions.

Rob

I take a pretty strong stance on this kind of crap from a player. My job as GM is to provide a good story and exciting adventure, it's not my job to cater to one selfish and lazy player. Likewise all of the players in my group understand that it is their job to "connect" to the adventure/campaign. I do a lot to make those connections easy and enjoyable but I've got a bunch of other things to do other than babysit an idiot. In the past when someone has done this to our group I simply let their character "wander off on their own". Then I turn my attention to the group that is interested in playing the game. I do not give any energy or "screen time" to the problem child nor do I encourage the others to go drag that player into the game. I've had more than one character of this sort turn up dead in my campaigns and I've also asked more than one player to leave who wasn't here to enjoy a group experience.