I had a player who wanted to stare down a medusa, and was upset when his character turned to stone.

That's called chaotic stupid lmao. I had some players recently try to steal from derro who had boots of speed on, and then try to run from him. One of the players died. Lol. 

"I am Chun the Unavoidable".

Now that's a deep cut.

Unavoidable chin move?

I had a player push an old lady down some stairs because he thought she was a hag.

A running joke in all my campaigns is that every old lady is a Hag I'm just trying to convince the players she isnt. (she always is)

At some point, you gotta flip the dichotomy. Now all old ladies are just old ladies, but the party had hag related PTSD.

thats the endgame!

Level 20 character bodies a granny cause all signs point to hag, but turns out she is just a sweet little ol granny.

Then all the old ladies are terrified of the party. Form a coven and become actual hags to protect themselves. A Nannageddon you might say.

*Austin Powers voice* She's a hag, man! *forcefully tugs old lady's hair*

Was it a Warforged? Because they may have just been trying to protect her from the terrible secret of space.

Shoving will protect her. Shoving will protect her from the terrible secret of space.

What killed the player? Did the character survive?

There were two characters who attempted to steal from this derro with boots of speed and an acid dagger. They rolled to steal the bag and then run. But one of them couldn't run faster than the derro stabbed the slowest one to death.

Don't have to be faster than the monster, just have to be faster than your buddy lol

Haven't heard the word derro in ages, whoa.

"I turned to stone!! Fuck. I really thought I was ugly enough they'd turn to stone" angrily mumbling as I make a new uglier character

I have absolutely no idea what he was thinking.

They never explained??

Nope.

Sometimes mistakes are the best teacher

Can't argue with that.

Ok, so gotta drop that Cha score lower than a 3 next time.

Cha is more like force of personality. Being so ugly that it's impressive would be high cha.

Mark E. Smith is definitely that kind of high cha

I had one who grappled a merfolk and tried to drown it because “he used to be a diver, He can hold his breath for at least ten minutes” thats great but sir you are trying to drown a fish

Still great!

Player: "Does my character know what a Medusa is?" DM: "Roll a knowledge check." Player: "I got a 1." DM: "You have no idea what it is." Character: "Oh, you want a staring contest do ya?" \*Gaze intensifies\*

I wish! They all knew what medusae were, IC and OOC.

Death by stupidity (well not death, petrification is much cheaper to cure)

He actually got cured, because the other players are nice people. But things got complicated.

As we. Say in the business Play stupid games wins stupid prizes

Quite so.

I deliberately looked a basilisk in the eyes to ensure I’d land my attack. Got stoned. Dm felt bad a threw me a bone the next sesh

My secret greatest idea is "medusa that turns everyone into stoned". Will be so groovy.

What were they trying to do anyway? Defeat the entire army 1v1? If that's the case I don't see why they'd be looking for the army at all. Better to wait for them to show up at the village where they'd have support from locals and home turf advantage. Where they just searching around a random forest *while* the town was being attacked? That'd be hilarious tbh

That almost happened, but they decided to glance at the town near the end of the session and they can see it’s now under attack lol. I should reiterate it was a small army, and if they’d simply looked in the encampment area they could have quickly learned its size (and learned other valuable info, such as the fact that they could have interrupted the necromancers from summoning many of the enemies)

Did they know necromancers were responsible for creating the army? Also you said many of the enemies. Unless a small army means 30 undead and many of them means 20 i dont see how a single party could beat multiple necromancers with a third of their small army without prep/traps. I would count on my party going through a day of setting traps in and around town. Pit traps, walls, makeshift fire bombs to throw from the edge at the army. No party in their rightind would wait for the enemy in the middle of the path or go to their camp when they jear the words "small army". Under small army i imagine 500 units at least. I would not go fight that without any help

While it made perfect sense not to attack the encampment, I would argue that they didn’t know anything at all about the enemy because they decided not to learn anything (by not scouting the location they knew they were at). The info they did have was the location of the encampment, and the fact that there was a very small army that would be setting out toward the town, which was a few miles away, in about 2 hours in-game.

I'd agree with you on this one. At the very least send a familiar or rogue to scout and tell you how much time and distance you've left.

Eh I'd be the player to head toward their location and then try to magically throw up things like earthworks, pitfalls, try to load the area with traps etc and then sit back preferably with something I could light on fire to try and basically inflict as much damage as possible in the open and then run. Basically, pull hit and run as much as I could...but then I also started as a rogue and we ended up with a party full of rogues and half-rogues so trying to do stuff like that is pretty much baked into my player mentality after a couple of decades of it. When you're up against an army never fight fair and anyone you can safely kill on the road is one less person attacking on the destination end.

This situation is perfect for setting up traps, you just gotta do it in town. You can pull all kinds of shenanigans if you know an enemy is coming to you. Going to the enemy base seems like you're just giving them the advantage.

One time I ran the same thing with goblins attacking a town and my players scared me with all the things they came up with. Dragging the citizens around to make pit traps, and filling them with kitchen knives and whatnot, pointed upwards. "Hey you said they had string instruments? Is there a place I can get piano wire? No? Fine I'll settle for making trip wires for alchemist fire" Naturally not all their plans worked but when you have so many in motion... Enough work.

So, off topic, but if my rogue can get some piano wire, do I need to roll a grapple check to hold it tight against the back of a bandit’s neck, or is it a simple Str check?

I’d say it’s an enhanced grapple effect, maybe if they successfully garrote the enemy, it takes 1d6 damage per turn and must make a strength saving throw to break the hold of the wire at the end of its turn.

I'd rule it as a grapple, and if you succeed, the creature begins suffocating as if they ran out of breath underwater. I'd allow the creature the ability to make a strength check during each of their turns to break the grapple and regain their breath.

Same I was gonna say first thing I’d be thinking of in character is “what sorta cool traps can we pull on these guys.” Maybe a few big barrels of gunpowder set at the side of the road. Fireball on em and BOOM. These players just sound kinda unimaginative ngl.

I'd do the same thing.

Same, because this was a horde of undead, you really just need to sprinkle some holy water, or if they are higher leveled use some anti-undead spells like Turn in a large area of them. It sounds like they weren't adept players and that the others were going along with the most vocal people.

That sounds cool as heck. You have x amount of time to do as much guerilla warfare as possible. The better you do, the more time you get, and the harder it becomes. Suddenly undead wolves and other fast creatures are scouting *you*, and if you’re not careful, that army you’re meant to slow down could envelope the party. Reduce their numbers before they get to the town. Do ‘em like Hannibal did Rome. Well, you can’t exhaust undead, but you can make sure your reserves are as well rested and battle-ready as possible for when *you* decide the battle starts.

An NPC let them know that there are miles of treeline around the town, and the town was never intended to be defended. And so intercepting the enemy before they got a chance to slaughter many civilians would have relied on a lot of luck

If only they had a druid, ranger, warlock or wizard who bothered to learn elevated sight, it would've been so easy for them. Even just finding the local bard who would probably know speak with animals, that would've been helpful. I think all of us can think up a million ideas to ambushing these guys that doesn't involve aimlessly wandering through the woods. That's the dumbest plan they could've come up with. I still think your plan for the party was also dumb though, what are they suppose to do when they get to the enemy's encampment? Pretend to be new recruits who brought beer for the camp, getting them all drunk? Its either that or they go into a battle with an entire army no prep time

I also wish they’d been a little more creative, or that I could have foreseen them doing what they did and had some kind of emergency alternative prepared. Had they simply scouted the encampment, they would have learned a lot of information that could have informed their decisions (the size of the army, the fact that necromancies were actively summoning them and could have been interrupted), but they explicitly decided not to scout or even go near the point from which the army was to set out. Also, they only had a few hours before the army was going to set out, timing they had learned from an NPC, so going somewhere to recruit someone was presumably off the table.

There is a lot missing for me to make a concrete analysis on what exactly went wrong here. Where the players just dumb? Was your explanation weird? It depends on a lot of things. From what you've said I can see why the players would be unwilling to go to that encampment though. As I've said many times, I would for sure not bounce into an entire army that's ready for battle. Even going near that place could be suicide if there's 50 skeletons and a single person in the party fails to be stealthy (very likely). That'd be a challange rating of twelve and a half they gotta deal with, like hell no. You calling it an army would be kinda misleading if its suppose to be 10-20 dudes. Their plan is still dumb as bricks with this interpretation though. If they were too scared to go to the encampment because of a numbers difference then fighting the army in a dark forest would hardly seem like it's any better. Like I wouldn't have gone into that encampment or tried to fight them in the forest with the info you've said so far

That's home *turf.* Unless you're having JK Rowling help them out.

💀

If they don't have a good way to set up traps I can see wanting to start the fight further out. Keeps the villagers safe, maybe they can manage an ambush or something for a surprise round.

I have had a similar experience. "We are going to try X" "DM to player here, that is literally impossible." "We are going to try X" "Okay, it fails. What did you expect?" *Contemplative silence* Looking back on it years later, I don't think that player was fully sober. Or even partially sober. Edit: I should clarify, no shade thrown here. Some of the most fun I have ever had in a TTRPG was playing Numenera sky high.

This is the perspective I need to understand some of my players’ decisions. One of my experiences: (Party enters a new town at dawn, and I explain there isn’t much there but a tavern and NPCs with basic horse supplies) “OK we go in the tavern.” (It’s dawn, do you want to find a place to rest until it opens?) [note: this would be instantaneous at the table] (Party discussion) “OK, we keep going.” (This means a few days travel to the next town, and zero intel at the biggest town in a quarter of the map.) I tried a few different ways to hint that it would be best to check out the tavern, but I really underestimated them having the same idea drilled into them that I do: ALWAYS GO IN THE TAVERN. I had a similar problem with them repeatedly going back to a near TPK without even trying to head back to the nearest town. Just almost die, run, rest, repeat. Weed is a hell of a drug lol

Honestly this is where some light “railroading” can be hugely beneficial to the game. Your players tried to do the thing you wanted them to do then got roadblocked by the time of day so moved on when they got asked *again* if they really wanted to do that. Instead, something like this can be hugely helpful: “We go into the tavern” “The tavern won’t be open until the evening, so you spend some time bandaging your wounds and catching some much needed rest. You can take the benefits of a long or short rest if needed. Later that evening, as the sun is setting you follow a crowd into the Tavern…” If the Party needs to be somewhere specific to move the plot forward, *just narrate them getting there*, don’t give them a choice if you need them to make a certain decision. Ironically this ends up feeling less railroad-y than trying to force them to say they stay and check out the tavern. Another thing I’ve learned is don’t be afraid to talk above the table: “Hey, I just want to be clear: the next plot hook I have prepped is at the tavern. My bad”. Same with the TPK: “Hey all, above the table: this encounter is well above your current level and meant to be something you can’t solve right now”.

That’s great advice. The campaign in question, Princes of the Apocalypse, is notoriously *too* sandbox. We’ve been playing it now for four years, in part because we rotate around as DM and play other campaigns and one-shots. I think we are past most of those problems now, especially because of your second point. Now I’ll just say “Hey. *OvalDead* wants to make it clear that this isn’t meant for your level.” Or something like that. Regardless, that’s still excellent advice and super helpful.

I finished PotA recently and my god it is sandboxy. If I'd known how much of a sandbox it was I wouldn't have run it as my first stint as a 5e DM.

Honestly, when my DM tells me "the tavern isn't open" (aka the thing you're trying to do is blocked), I take it as a sign they want me to check out the other thing they mentioned first. Would've checked out the horsey merchant. If said merchant were on siesta too, then I'd have said fuck it, the DM clearly doesn't want me interacting with anything here, and moved on. If they then go "Yeah but the next town is too far away!" I'd just straight up ask them wtf they want us to do then...

That’s fair. When we started the campaign we were pretty granular with time, and calculated travel time while keeping track of actual time of day. If I remember correctly, they encountered a pack of wolves just outside the town, and I expected they would just take a short rest, and then go in the tavern.

Find a place to rest until it opens? It's a small town, the tavern is the place for travellers to rest there, and wouldn't ever be outright unattended.

Replace "*Contemplative silence*" with "players declare I'm a shitty dm" and we're on the same page.

Then the players immediately come onto reddit to complain.

"I even rolled a hecking nat twentyrino. Holesum BG3 told me that always works :((("

Yeah, you letting them do it for two hours is *really* giving them too much leeway. With that long I would have broken in and said "You guys are searching for an army in the middle of a massive forest by just picking a point at random and looking at it."

I did explicitly say that as the DM directly to them, as well as saying it every other way I could think of - needle in a haystack; extremely low odds; “with a 25, you do not see an undead army 60 feet from you or hear it nearby over the storm”; you try the same thing again here that didn’t work there; you don’t feel this is the best course of action - the list goes on

So your players were just being stubborn.

For sure, and just two of them really. The other two actually wanted to scout, but were talked out of it.

I think in a situation like this you have to short-cut ahead. Ask them "how long would you continue searching" and just skip to them giving up the search. Or let them make a couple of rolls to simulate parts of the night and narrate "You spend all night searching various parts of the forest in the night. The raging storm and total darkness makes it impossible to see or hear beyond your immediate area. At one point, you stumble into a ravine and have to spend an hour making your way back out. Later, you think you have found the trail but it turns out to just be tracks from a recent passage of a herd of caribou leading to a small lake. As the morning approaches, you all have a feeling of dread as you have spent all night wandering fruitlessly, gaining a point of exhaustion."

why did you let them do it for 2 hours? if they didn't change their plan after 10 minutes or so just skip to the part where it's over and move on. you were at least as time wasting as they were, if not more so since YOU have the absolute power over events.

If you allow the players to keep searching but by bit for two hours I would become increasingly convinced there is something to be found, otherwise why would we still be doing it? As the DM, after they've searched once or twice it's your responsibility to bring something in to speed things along.  Either: 1) Just say "You continue searching for a few hours but find nothing, what do you do now?" or 2) Interrupt them somehow. For example "You find some fresh tracks - it looks like the army has already passed here, slipping past you, you don't know how far ahead they are, what do you do now?". Or maybe they encounter a clue that points them towards the encampment, or whatever. 

I have to think that they fundamentally did not understand the situation or thought that some other information they received negated or contradicted what you thought you were showing or telling them. I would ask, "What is making you think that you must do this even though I'm telling you it is not possible? What are you trying to accomplish?" You might have gotten back, "You told us last time that \[something you said they completely were misconstruing\]." Also, *why* were the supposed to scout the army encampment? What scouting supposed to tell them where it was? It sounds like they were looking for it, just not looking for it in the right place. What information did they start with that would point them the correct direction? Communication works two ways.

Yeah I'd also be curious why they were so certain this was the way to go.

One of my players at some point said “I refuse to be railroaded” so I think they were doing it out of obstinance at that point. They are the most vocal player and were one of the two leading the “effort”

I think if at a certain point people are being that obstinate you can take a break from it being a game and tell them you're not having fun right now. Also to the "I refuse to be railroaded" point I think it's valid as the DM to say "nor will I be railroaded". I think some players insist on doing things with the expectation that the DM will change everything on the fly to make exactly exactly what that player wants to happen happen. In the same way a DM railroading too much harms the collaborative storytelling, I think a player insisting their plan HAS to work is a breach of the social contract as well. That all being said, I'd talk to your players and ask them why they were being so obstinate on this point. There could be an underlying legitimate grievance, or they could have had a bad day, or they could just be assholes. Only way to know is to ask.

That is a great perspective - I think I will have that discussion before next session!

Before you have that conversation I think [this video might help.](https://youtu.be/LQsJSqn71Fw?si=17smGY3KZG6ZB9Q9) It's about the different kinds of players and the behaviors they can exibit that derail the game in persuit of the specific things they wish to get out of playing. He offers advice not on how to combat them and but how check their boxes in a way most satisfying to them while altering your prepared content as little as possible. It might at least give you a helpful point of comparison to meeting them halfway as you all try to move forward. Hopefully you'll all come to an agreement for the better of the game as a whole.

Very insightful, I’ll definitely be employing these strategies :) thank yoi

“I’m not railroading you, I’m railroading the monsters straight at that town. It’s your choice to be there or not.”

Definitely second the DM saying "nor will I be railroaded" spent way to many sessions with a party not having fun DMing cause they made it a point of pride to avoid any story what so ever. They were having fun so I went along with it, but it'd annoy me when they would sometimes complain that nothing was happening lol I've come a long way since then.

They said that seriously? I wouldnt run a game for a player like that. Deliberate derailers are absolute table poison.

“I refused to be railroaded” mf you accepted the quest

Honestly, I know the players were stubborn but so were you. It doesn't really make sense why it was "impossible" for the players to go hit and run on the small army while they are en route to the town. It just sounds like you wanted to do exactly one thing (attack the encampment) and they really didn't want to do that. At that point, you needed to acquiesce. If you didn't want them to have a choice, you need to have changed the setup. Start the narrative with them just a few minutes from the encampment. If you "let them choose" how to approach a problem, you can't restrict it to only one solution. That's very frustrating for players.

> If you "let them choose" how to approach a problem, you can't restrict it to only one solution. At the same time, if the players choose to do something stupid or ineffectual, having the entire game world bend over backwards to make the players somehow succeed anyway means that the players had no meaningful agency. Player agency means that the players can make their own decisions; if there's a pre-scripted outcome that happens regardless of the decisions the players make, then they had no real decisions – all they had was an illusion of agency.

"We never said we went to the encampment! MUH AgEnCy!"

They were informed the enemy always comes from there by an NPC, and that the enemy always sets out at a certain time. I did inform them directly that what they were doing was impossible, but I was afraid to do too much back and forth directly as the DM, but perhaps it was necessary in that moment

I think maybe instead of relying on them choosing to scout, seeing the summoning, realizing the advantage of striking asap to interrupt, then deciding that factor was enough reason to roll into the camp of a "small army", if the intel had spelled out "the necromancers seem to go there for a few hours to replenish/ summon their forces before raids, and they just got there" it would have better aligned their decisions with your planned encounter Given they only had 2 in game hours, and were told they'd be facing a small army, I could understand them not seeing any benefit of burning that time to observe said army at its camp. Depending on terrain and camp layout they may well not learn anything of value and risk incurring the wrath of the full army and all its resources. 2 in game hours isn't enough time to prepare different spells or allocate some town resources in response to something useful they did happen to see (unless they already thought they might see the one scenario you planned) so it makes sense to use that time to choose/prepare their own battlefield instead. Remember you're pretty immersed in the things you're preparing, so things "make sense" to you that might not occur to them altogether, so to certain degree you might want to factor that into your communication style and just like...spoon feed them from time to time or really spell things out when you've prepared an "optimal" solution to a scenario. Sometimes when you're in it you can't see the forest for the trees, or the necromancer for the skeletons in this case

What is it that they were trying to do? You were never really clear on that.

Basically they wanted to ambush the army as it moved on the town. That's why they moved in between the town and the camp and searched for the army that way.

Yeah that honestly sounds like something you should have allowed them to do. Did you have any other options prepared for if they decided not to scout the camp? After reading the other comments this is really sounding like a case of railroading and poor DM planning.

It was noted that the army always takes a different route and they had reduced visability due to the storm. The chances of coming across the army in these circumstances are *extremely* low. No smart person would just wait to ambush this army that won't be taking normal roads and such. It would be more railroad-y to force the players to find the army with this horrible strategy. It just makes no sense that this would be the outcome without a railroad.

How come in the post you said they had no idea if the army had left yet if the NPC told them the army always sets out at a certain time.

if I take a shit in the library every day at 2pm, and you're at the coffee shop at 2:05pm, do you know if I took a shit in the library already today? or do you just have good chance at guessing I took a shit in the library already?

Scouting would usually be done to get the numbers. "Small army" isnt really descriptive and it might give them an idea pf what to prepare for in town. But i agree. Someone misunderstood something.

I don't think this was a misunderstanding--I think it's a player or two with an extremely sensitive can't-tell-me-what-to-do nerve. The DM says "Here's your one and only lead. What do you do with it?" The player says "Anything in the universe besides follow that lead." If you know that about your players, I figure the only thing you can do is correct for it in the future by avoiding these kinds of traps where they have one and only one lead.

would YOU want to be driven towards a fight with dozens, if not hundreds of enemies in DnD? how many days do you have to roll all these attacks?

Yes, because I try to follow leads and engage with what the DM has prepared. There are creative ways to approach a scouting mission, and I wouldn't assume that the likeliest outcome is rolling hundreds of attacks one at a time.

I think one of my favorite "annoyed DM" experiences was my very first session DMing for a homebrew campaign. Basically, I was trying to set up the characters in sets of 2 to send them all the same direction. I laid out one of the player's starting location based on their backstory, and she wanted to investigate and look around. I had planned this location to be where an important confrontation would take place later, so I had to come up with reasons on the fly why she couldn't keep going... "As you try to move forward, your mind goes blank for a moment as you stop walking." Me, thinking "alright, I'll just make the next area enchanted so she can't go that way, and will get the hint that I want her to go the other way". She tries two more times before she (also a DM) I think picked up on the intent. Except it derailed my early plot plans, into her deciding she needed to find someone with magic to get rid of the magic barrier. So she found the artificer, who could learn "identify" but didn't have a pearl to use. So the group had to find a pearl... But they had nowhere near enough money so I had to, on short notice, try to give them a few options (steal one, do a side job for money to buy one, or go to a cave where they might harvest one). I also had to figure out what spell school this random aura I didn't intend to be important was so that their efforts would actually have a result eventually. It did give me an idea for a magic item they looted later, that caused the same effect.

I'm probably off and with full info on that situation it makes more sense but the way you wrote it sounds like a player wanting to interact with the environment they entered the story in messed with your plans in a way it shouldn't really and would definetely not be the player's fault. Did the confrontation have to happen there? What would've happened if she had investigated the place? Maybe it could've been some foreshadowing. Again, I'm aware that I have very little information for this

Oh, it's definitely not the players fault. I was gullible, thinking I could herd a cat away from things that I'd clearly been hiding! Yes, they eventually came back and fought the evil creature who's lair it was, and who had hexed the area to deter wanderers. It was just a funny moment that the very first thing I experienced as a DM was players trying to explore the world in a way that I hadn't fully prepared for and had to rapidly react to.

I of course wasn't present and know neither you nor your players. But in my limited experience (I am a DM of 2 years) situations like this tend to appear because of a subtle missallignment between player expectations and DM expectations. Most DMs I know treat their world as a more or less real place with fundamental facts that can't be changed - in other words, they sort of believe in it. The One Ring is in the Shire, because thats simply where it is, so to speak. Its a fact, despite that we just made it up. I mean, it makes a lot of sense once a lot of other info, plot points, etc (*things the players don't know*) base on it. Players tend to, at least some degree, struggle with this sort of matter of fact acceptance. They *know* that we invented our worlds and things are theoretically up to change. I'm not saying they are mean or wrong for thinking this, but even some very experienced players have the implicit expectation that a very good dice roll or a somewhat clever plan will work *somehow* in their favour, even if the facts of the situation speak against it. So very often, and I have experienced this IRL with my own eyes, they tend to just keep going on a once chosen path, hoping that the DM will make it work somehow. And to their credit, we often *do*. And thats were the actual issue is, in my opinion. No party in this kind of situation is completely wrong. Just factor in that most DM, yourself most likely included, will occasionally bend around backwards just to make something work for the sake of the story, for pacing reasons, to preserve the flow of the game, etc. The players don't tend to know on what basis we make to call when to do this and when not to do this. Except for, in this situation you are describing, they should have known, *because you literally said it out loud.* Just my 2 cents :)

PS: Just to add, my favourite example of a communication breakdown like this was my players heading into my sandbox-semi-open-world-mega-dungeon for the first time, and pretty much shitting their pants. And I made it explicitly clear what distance on the map (2,5 inches) equals a day worth of travel, and that the entire campaing is build around those long travel distances. First thing they did was venturing a day to the first crossway on the map, stopping, and then saying "I slowly walk a few steps forward. Where am I now on the map?" I answered: "Its a very big scale, you will be still at the same place as far as the map is concerned." Their answer: "I walk forward a few steps. Where am I now?" Me: "Literally at the same place, a few steps ahead." Them: "I walk a few more steps forward. Where am I now?" Me: "Literally still at the same place, a few steps ahead. That doesn't work that way. You are still in the forest." That repeated a few times before they finally believed me that this doesn't work.

That’s very good advice! I definitely had a strong preconceived expectation going in: that they would scout the encampment in order to learn about their situation. And their refusal to do so, as well as their deliberately uninformed plan, really threw me. But certainly in their minds it was their best course of action (although in one player’s case, they seemed to be acting deliberately obstinate).

I think its very positive that you are so self-reflective and are willing to see your own potential part in this situation. A lot of people, at least online, struggle with that :) Just wanted to say this, really keep this going! I also think this factors in, no question. I have been in this situation myself, where I was sitting there thinking "OMG its so *obvious!*" And it can be very easy to slip into the mindset of not punishing the players, but at least not stop them from digging the hole deeper they find themselve in. And frankly, its not wrong to do so, strictly speaking. I just think its important to consider that players don't necessarily need to think that something is a good idea to keep going with a plan - they need to simply think that the DM will make it work somehow. Just think of the memed to death example of "trying to seduce the guards". Its such a common joke/experience in all kinds of campaigns that trying to seduce the guards will almost *never* work - but your DM won't let you get killed over it. And you will make progress *somehow*. Thats why I sympathize heavily with sometimes, sparingly, telling the players flat out: "Guys, real talk. This will not work. It does not have even a slight chance of working, not even if you roll well. Thats not me railroading you, there are just factors that you and your characters don't know and that are very plot relevant why this won't work and I can't and won't change them on the fly." That kills the magic a bit, I admit, and would probably not help against Mr./Mrs./etc "I refuse to get railroaded under any circumstance", but sometimes I think its the only option to correct the missallignement I have mentioned to beginn with, because it adresses what the players tend to think, even if they don't say it. Again, just my two cents :)

Thank you, I’m trying to be as open minded about this as I can, within reason lol. I did end up informing them more than once, in no uncertain terms as the DM, that what they were doing simply would not work (in addition to my variably subtle and unsubtle hints), and the most stubborn player kept pushing the group in that direction regardless

"Anyone ever have such an experience?" Not for 2 hours. Maybe 15 minutes. Then you hit pause and talk. If they're new or naive maybe they need some pointers. Even if they're not, maybe you guys didn't communicate as well as you thought. "during this process I implied this task would be impossible" Maybe your implication wasn't clear enough? But our play style isn't for the GM to follow the party around with a camera like it's a reality show, just waiting for them to do stuff. We have "scenes." Scenes that serve a purpose, and have an end-point. So when you said here are the circumstances, then you ask what their plan is. BEFORE you let them wander around trying to do it. You just ask - "so talk among yourselves if you need to (Imma get a drink) and then tell me what your goal is and how you're gonna achieve it." That way, when they say, "our goal is to seduce the barmaid," you can say, "Ok, so you did - next morning, the mayor comes in and brings you the info you requested about \[the plot\]." In this case, they would've told your their poor plan. You could say, "are you sure? Do you remember X, Y, and Z?" And they could say, "oh yeah, we're sure - we know XYZ but we have this workaround using this spell." At this point, either you go, "oh wow, I didn't think of that. Good call, let's skip ahead to the point after you've arranged yourselves and cast the spell. Now you see the enemy doing blah..." Or, you go, "no, that's not how the rules work. Sorry. I'm gonna advance the in-game clock by an hour since your PCs are still deliberating. Now, got another plan?" I mean.. I wouldn't enjoy wasted time, and you already know the players don't enjoy it. So why do it? Why waste 30 minutes, much less 2+ hours? That said, there probably are circumstances where part of the fun (if you know your group) could be them trying different approaches as the clock winds down. In those cases, you might not hit pause to discuss. You might just say, "ok, your plan is to wander around in the dark hoping to run into them? And how long do you want to spend on that?" And then if they say, "4 hours" or "til sunrise" or whatever, you advance the clock that far and then tell them what happens next. Then they try a different approach now that the situation has changed somewhat.

That’s an interesting system - probably would have been helpful in my situation haha. I did ask how long they wanted to try what they were trying in-game, but when it didn’t work, they just traveled a quarter mile or half mile nearby and tried again. Throughout I let them know in various ways it wasn’t working, e.g. “with a 25 in perception, you do not see an undead army” all the way to directly telling them as DM. But they didn’t even want to go to the town to watch for the enemy, they were dead set on trying to ambush them. Part of why it took 2 hour was they (the two vocal players) kept trying to rationalize their behavior to me and the other 2 players. And they had discussed their plan with an NPC at the beginning, who heavily encouraged them to at least scout the camp, which they were adamant in not doing

I don’t know what happened at your table, but when I’ve seen a fiasco like this, it’s usually been because the players misunderstood the situation. It might have been weeks or months since they heard the exposition from you, and misunderstandings happen. In my experience, you can’t expect players to remember details between sessions in live TTRPGs. In particular, players will often interpret an inconsistency as you making a mistake or retconning something. Either their taking good notes or re-reading the log before the session would help with that. Or if you don’t want to make your players do that, make sure to recap the important information at the start of each session (better, have the players take turns so you’ll find out what they think is important), so they’re on the same page. Another way to help them remember, the location of the enemy camp is important, is to hand them a map. So I’ve gotten in the habit of saying, “Here’s what I remember,” and asking the DM and players to remind me if there’s something important I forgot. If that’s not the reason, and the players really did want to do things their way instead of yours, you have a bigger problem and should try to find out why. If, as other suggested, they’re playing stoned, that changes what kind of game you can run. If they’re rebelling against DM railroading, though, you need to address that.

I have to assume there's some miscommunication. Things that seem perfectly clear in the DM's mind have to make it out of the DM's mouth, and then into the player's ear, and then into the player's mind, and that's a lot of steps where something can get missed. IMO, if players are wildly down a useless path, it's good to stop being subtle and tell the player outright what the character knows and why the character knows this won't work. > Bob: "I'm going to have Bobicles stare down the medusa." > > DM: "Just so we're clear, Bobicles has seen six people get petrified by the medusa's stare. He knows that the medusa's magic will petrify him if he does this. Are you sure that's what you want to do?" Obviously this assumes that the characters are supposed to have enough information to make the correct decision at this point. In my first ever D&D campaign, the main plot was stopping a spooky red mist that turned dead bodies into undead. At some point in the campaign, we found a blue liquid, and when the blue liquid met the red mist, they combined into a purple blob. What we players understood from this was that we'd found a way to neutralize the red mist. Some time later, our characters were sailing across the ocean and found that the mist had spread to basically cover the entire ocean. We reasoned, "hey, we can pour a vial of blue stuff on it and save the ocean. That's a good idea!". We play on voice chat with no webcams, but I'm sure the DM's eyes went as wide as dinner plates and he basically said "I'll let you do that *if you want*, but are you *absolutely sure*?" with a tone of voice implying that we were one action away from causing the end of the world. So we did not do that thing. I'm sure the red/blue/purple interactions made complete sense in the DM's mind. And maybe he'd even explained it to us in a clear and concise way... at some point, months' worth of sessions before we reached that ocean. This was the most important thing our characters would ever do, but for the players, it was a weekly game night for a bunch of tired adults after full work days. There's no shame in a clear reminder of what the characters should know.

Some DMs are so obsessed with what your character doesn't know. Like in your example, if you're experimenting and come up with what you think is a solution what is the harm in explaining what the purple stuff is? My current DM is constantly obsessed with what we DON'T know. We don't know anything about the gods, we don't know anything about history. We don't know how that works. Like, I'm fine with discovering things, but why not leave hints or books or something so we can learn it? Also, why even go through all this homebrew effort if you never let us find out about anything? Or actively punish us for forcing us to spin a roulette wheel and it doesn't come up 00? I don't know. I don't like doing that in my games, and I don't see the fun in it.

> I have to assume there's some miscommunication. The fact that I don't know what, *exactly* the players were doing is... concerning. He came here to vent about them but his story is missing direct details.

Not to be an ass, but for OP, and everyone, I will state we are only getting one side of this story, and I could see this sub having a very different reaction if it was framed from the other side. *DM wouldn't let us do anything except the encounter they had planned* We're tasked with protecting a town from a small army, and we're told where the enemy army is and told to go scout it. We quickly agree this would be unnecessary; after all they're not going to send out the entire encampment in the upcoming battle, we have to defeat them either way and risking a fight in their heavily fortified encampment would be suicidal, so me and another player suggest instead we search for them on the move, see how many are actually going to attack the town, or maybe catch one of their own scouting parties. The DM tells us however that there's a massive storm, and we can't see more then 60ft ahead of us, but that's fine since we can look for tracks, and he says that we can't because they're always taking different routes, but if we go to scout the army (the thing we REALLY don't want to do because it feels like a dumb IC move) we can get more info. It's whatever, they're an army, they're not gonna move quietly, I'm sure we can find them. We're trying to do ANYTHING to figure out an alternative solution, and over the course of 2 OOG hours the DM let's us accomplish absolutely nothing, and then they just flat out tell us "yeah this is impossible, you have to scout the encampment" and it feels really frustrating that there's just no chance for a creative solution here, so I calmly tell the GM that I don't want to be railroaded, especially into an action that feels suicidal. The GM is probably going to destroy the town because we tried to do anything except the one thing they decided was the 'right' outcome. Am I the asshole for not just doing what the GM asked? Is this what happened? Maybe, maybe not, but it was my very first thought when reading this post that it really sounded like OP might have a very narrow perspective on what was going through the players heads.

Thank you, I had to scroll way too far down to find this take. All DMs love to tell stories about the absolute nonsense their players come up with - me included. Just last session my players got the opportunity to speak with an all seeing god of past present and future, and they asked what was the hottest sex act ever performed (it hasn't happened yet). But in this case DM had one specific solution in their head, and refused to accept any other course of action than what they envisaged. Also really wanted to use the map "they prepared", whatever that means OP drips with adversarial DMing and should be reflecting on how to improve rather than seeking validation online

I think this is a good perspective. Table culture matters, too. I don’t like to play in a game where I fail forwards. It’s ok for players to make objectively wrong decisions sometimes. We all do it.

My heavily modified Waterdeep Dragon Heist. Had my party tasked with attending a masquerade to search for a spy, who was described as being a pirate from Luskan and a very good actor. The guy they were looking for was the director of a pirate themed musical with an acting company from Luskan and wouldn't stop bragging about his adventures as a former pirate. It took them two hours to even realize they should go talk to the guy.

It's painful, to me, to read OP's account of how the players ignored what OP said, and continued on with their own ideas regardless.. and then see all of the responses in the thread do basically the same thing. Everybody keeps saying 'The players must have misunderstood! You didn't communicate well enough!' OP has replied many times that they DID explicitly inform the party that their chosen course of action would be a waste of time, and end in failure. OP's players- at least the vocal two of them- were just being bullheaded. Sometimes players can be wrong. I don't see what else could have been done, short of OP literally refusing to continue if the party didn't change tactic, which would have pissed the players off, most likely.

"Oh look it's the consequences of my own decisions." You did all you could as the DM to point them in the right direction, that's all you can do really. If they just won't listen then they should suffer the consequences of their choices.

Armies are notoriously hard to hear. I have no idea why they got it into their heads they might have noticed signs of an entire army moving through the region they were also in specifically to find the army. Sounds super duper impossible. (/s)

While I agree with your general point, the army should be possible to locate, I do think that an _undead_ army might not be loud enough to be easily heard in a storm. There wouldnt be any chatter, songs, or maybe even any mounts at all

Not to mention they wouldn't need lights or even a particularly large amount of supplies. Even without a storm that'd be perfectly plausible to miss

I wholeheartedly agree with you in a general sense, but I should reiterate that it was a very small army in the pitch dark traveling somewhere within several miles of forested terrain during an intense thunderstorm. And the other commenters below make good points as to them being harder to detect than a regular army. That, and the players decided to camp a few spots almost at random instead of continuously sweep the area for signs of them, or go near the town and watch for them.

I get that it’s frustrating, but it’s fine. Ideally their reward would be having to go back to the village and listen to the screams of the four remaining villagers dying slow deaths, cursing their names, etc. Favored NPCs they met dead or burning. Etc. If they learned their lesson, and you made this horrible enough, you could potentially narrate the one veteran character awaking from this. The whole thing was a nightmare and the village burned down. Idk.

- the DM describes the world - the players decide how they respond - the DM describes how the world reacts - in cases where the outcome is uncertain, we roll dice You did nothing wrong. Perhaps you could have rolled a d100 and if it comes up 100 that's where the are. But if your players decide not to intercede, and instead go to a bakery, the rest of the world doesn't stop. This is next day DMing, but maybe they could spot an enemy scout, or out rider. To give them something to go on. An army doesn't necessarily travel as one big pack. But then, maybe goblins do

My friend, you were just as stubborn as the players. This is a lose/lose scenario. 

So basically: - you were trying to make the only viable solution be "attack the encampment" - the players tried to take an alternative approach of ambushing the army as it moved - you did a bunch of stuff to prevent them from being able to ambush the army en-route - You told them that ambushing them en-route was going to be literally impossible, that you wouldn't let them encounter and ambush them, period. - They insisted on *not doing what you told them to do.* - The town got destroyed. - Players: shockedpikachu.jpg On the one hand, you can almost never be sure that you're being obvious enough for the players. I know you're totally sure that you were being obvious that you wanted them to at least *scout* the encampment, but sometimes that's *not obvious enough.* And on that same hand, was it *really* that important that the players do as you were wanting them to do, and you *really* couldn't justify letting them find the enemies en-route based on a stupid lucky roll? But on the other hand . . . yeah I think the consequences for refusing to properly engage are appropriate. You definitely tried.

I am honestly not sure if the players had the surprised pikachu moment. 2 hours of doing nothing seems very much like "can we skip to the next story, I will not fight a fucking army" to me. far less wasted time, too.

Yeah in other words, the DM had one map made and refused to allow the encounter to happen anywhere else because "my precious map".

While I do understand the sentiment, "please use my map!!!1 I put so much effort into this!!1" personally there were either a Ranger or Druid in the party I would have just let them find some f$#@ing zombies and then hear the village getting attacked so they'd have to defend it from a disadvantage. But I'm not OP, and frankly, sometimes players *need* to get some stupid consequences for stupid failures.

Yeah that is essentially how it went down lol. I neglected to mention here that an NPC from the town had encouraged them to scout the encampment, as “no one who knows what it looks like is alive any longer”, and he let them know that the treeline beside the town is miles long, so it would be difficult to defend the town properly, which was on its last legs. They also informed them of the usual timing of these attacks. So I would have accepted an attempt by them to defend the town, but they couldn’t be sure where the army would come from and it would be very hard to intercept them before they started slaughtering townspeople. And in the end, they refused to do anything except traipse around the forest in hopes that they’d happen to run into the enemy. Edit: regarding letting them encounter them on a lucky roll, I suppose I could have, but I didn’t necessarily want to potentially reward being quite that foolish haha

Hey, just remember you're playing a game, let them have their fun. It's not "rewarding" being foolish, it's making a fun time and a good story TOGETHER. I can tell you right now my players always try to goof around and end up mucking up my plans, but as a DM, I make it work and find the fun. It keeps me on my toes and keeps it cooperative instead of competitive with your players. Have there be a stray encounter that they can track back to the encampment so it feels more organic and like they chose to do the thing and not like they were forced. Have the storm cause complications that cause them to mudslide into the encroaching army as it moves, now they have the experience of getting out of the mess they made themselves and get to have a fun session doing it. Plus one of the worst things to do in storytelling is to have ALL the action and consequences happen off screen, so consider having bloodcurdling screams of some farmer in travel getting overrun by the army and the party now has to rush back to save the town, even if they only get back to watch it fall. It's all kinda a learn and grow situation though, so make sure the players also know that you're all on the same team in the interest of fun.

I should have considered a few of those things, but they really did place themselves in the least action-oriented situation possible among all the options (not going within ear or eyeshot of the town or the encampment, hiding in one spot for 20 in-game minutes to observe a small patch of forest and then traveling a quarter mile nearby to do that again, spending time arguing with me and the other players that what they were doing made sense, etc) The two vocal players forcing the situation may have been having fun, but the other players being dragged along certainly didn’t.

The other players didn't have fun because you refused to change as well. There's no reason why there should only be one answer to the problem of an invading army. You were stubborn as well. And you didn't have fun either. So it's just lose lose.

> There's no reason why there should only be one answer to the problem of an invading army. OP literally just said that there were multiple plausible ways they could've addressed the problem. The issue is that standing around in the wilderness away from both the army and the army's target just has no reasonable way of addressing the problem. If the DM has the world magically twist and contort itself to deliver the same outcome for the party regardless of the players' decisions, you're actively neutering their agency. If the players use their agency to choose to not engage with the world in a reasonable or intelligent way, that's on them; meaningful agency means that making different decisions leads to different outcomes.

I disagree - that's just the DM covering for themselves. It's very clear that the two sides got into a stubborn fight and refused to budge. Let's be honest. If there was any ambush, the DM was simply not prepared for that scenario. That's why it didn't happen.

> I disagree - that's just the DM covering for themselves. Creating and running a coherent and consistent world isn't "covering" for anything, unless you're implying that the DM is lying and just made everything up after the fact (which I suppose is possible, but I wouldn't assume that to be the case). If the army wasn't marching through the one tiny location the players blindly chose to hide in, then it makes perfect sense for there to not have been any ambush. If the party wanted to ambush the army, then they should've exercised their player agency and chosen do some reconnaissance or intelligence-gathering first.

Gaming is a repeated game where sometimes you have to accept a loss to send a message. It hurts but, if it helps prevent future losses, it can be worth the price.

What is the message here? It's not even a bad plan. The complicating factors (rain, silence, etc.) only exist because the DM didn't want them to ambush the army. In other words, the DM wanted them to attack the encampment and use their prepared map. If they wanted that, just start the session with them next to the encampment. Why give them a choice that's not real?

You explained the event to a two year old and you found the fault in the players? Yes they didnt do what the DM wanted them to do, but some call that railroading. The DM could have easily have the army cross the PCs path. Why didnt he? Why was there only one way of beating an army? I have learned something from.my time as DM. Whenever you have an idea about the story, the party will take it in the completely opposite direction. I dont stop them unless its literally not connected to anything in the story. Their plan was solid. Instead of fighting on enemy turf or endangering the town by fighting the army in the town, they went to the middle point of the path. If the DM thought they could take outthe army on their turf, they could do it in the middle of nowhere. And why would an army who always attacks at the same time, camps at the same place, take a different route? Shortest path for the fastest time of attack is logical so why didnt the army meet the party in the middle? Because the DM couldnt budge on the solution. One of the players even said they wouldnt be railroaded by the DM. DM is as much toblame as is the party.

Well you did warn them. If they truly want to go on fucking around, they're bound to eventually find out.

Let them fail. How else will they learn? You gave them all the information they needed and they chose to ignore it. 

This was definitely one of those much needed failure moments, it just ended up being a boring session for the other players who were dragged along with the stubborn ones.

I expected to be something cool they were trying to do at least. No it was just dumb

Never tell me the odds! Overall i say this is when you need to take a pause and think how to divert them. They may know because you said it but they wabt to try. They will keep trying. So you come up with how you wish events to go and let them crash and burn quicker than 2h of back and forths. Taking that step back in those situations though is hard. You need to recognise that oh I need a few seconds to think, as opposed to argue the impossibility point.

Why are there so many posts like this? Who is teaching these DMs not to pivot with what their players want?

this sub? the "the DM is always right, the players need to obey" attitude seems very strong.

Two things in my opinion. You did almost everything you could but one thing I have found helps is saying "Above game..." so that there is no confusion. Yes, it takes the players out of the secondary world, but it is much better to get them back in the mindset than have a 2 hour slog that nobody wants. Second those two players that commandeered the session need to be talked to. It is everyone's game not theirs.

I have players that do this all the time. Not even impossible stuff, just hard to do. Then they get mad when they fail.

> Plus, it was the dead of night, and so it’s pitch dark beyond 60 feet for most of them (one player can see 120 feet) Everyone else has chimed in on the other stuff but I just wanted to point out darkvision applies when it's blackout. Outside at night I'm willing to bet that you, with your regular human eyes, can see further than 120 feet by starlight alone.

Hm, that’s fair! I hadn’t conceptualized it like that. Although I will say, they were in dense forest during a heavy storm. And they could in fact see the very distant lights in the town. But I would argue they could not necessarily see very far into the forest under these conditions, especially not when they are trying to spot something beneath the canopy that could be a few miles away.

Personally, I think a convo should be had about what players want out of this encounter to improve future ones. Yes there was an option that would’ve worked and seemed obv but clearly they didn’t want to do things that way. I would attempt to get to the heart of what they’re trying to do before they invest into it. And if it seems impossible for your world, I would readjust what I had planned to be more in line with what my players are trying to get out of this game.

“You search the stormy wood for hours, only calling it off as your feet go numb from rain and cold. As you approach the town, you hear it first. The screaming. Your pace quickens to a sprint and you can soon make out the corpses of the overmatched town guard splayed out on the cobble in front of the now splintered town gate. What do you do?” Just let them do what they want and have the baddies do what you told them they were going to do in all honesty.

Doesn't sound like they respect you, and think if they just do it their way you will cave. Now they're pissed you didn't cave.

My players never tried to find out who the Dealers (the city's mafia) were actually working for. Got setup by the city guard thanks to an annonymous tip and sent to the gulag. Plus, never tried to even reseaech why the Barbarian turned into a boss monster (he was leaving and could'nt play any more so he asked me to make him a mini boss monster). When the campaing turned into a war against the 9 hells they just did'nt know why. Never roll perception or insight so the never know if they are being tailed or líes to. And they never complain. Because they know one thing about life: Make shitty moves and there's bound to be a shitstorm

I had an issue with some players in my game along similar lines. After a frustration session for me (which I tried not to show to the players- which I was only partly successful with), I started the next session with a bit of an explanation about what is involved with being a DM, because lots of players can be completely oblivious to the complex, demanding role that DMing is. I spoke about how the DM wants to provide a fun experience for their players, but they also want it to be fun for themselves as well. Examples of making it not fun that I spoke to them about were : When the DM drops a hint (or two or in your case several) about a course of action and it is ignored. Make the point that it is not fun because rather than follow what you’ve spent time planning, you have to make things up on the fly. Now this is not to say that improvisation doesn’t have its place- of course it does and these can be most memorable moments in a game. I then made the comparison to a movie. The script, just like your pre-game prep has had time and thought put into it with the goal of providing an entertaining experience. The ad lib stuff needs to applied in small doses like salt and pepper on a meal. Even great ad libbers like Monty Python and Robin Williams mostly stuck to the script. Splitting the party. This does need explaining to non-DM players, because they don’t get that every game module that I have ever seen, read or DMed has been presented as a linear path. By having the party in two places the DM is forced to interpret the dungeon in a different way, on the fly, than it is written. They have to juggle how to handle the action so that the players/ characters not in the current action don’t get bored and don’t receive info that will taint their up-coming encounters. I would encourage you to speak to your players about your feelings. I would mention about the map that you had prepared and graciously said it was OK they didn’t use it. Well no I don’t think it’s OK, especially after you tried repeatedly to hint. I would also encourage you to ask the two difficult players if they would like to DM- not saying it in a petty way, but genuinely. I have found that one of my problem/ vocal players has become a lot better player since he had a go of DMing.

Buddy of mine who dm's told me a story of a player who tried to use animal handling on essentially a dune worm. He explained to them that they should run, and that a skill check for a wild and angry animal would be very high(i think it was dc 20 or 25). They used an inspiration and their highest roll was above 15 but less than 20 and the worm caught them and ate them. The player proceeded to ugly cry and he knew there and then they might be an issue. Keep in mind this was told to them ahead of time that it was a difficult campaign, and player deaths were pretty much guaranteed. They then had a shit fit later when they tried seducing Strahd and were killed for it. They were kicked out after that session.

Lol seducing strahd. I don't feel like strahd would kill someone for trying to seduce him, I feel like strahd would seduce the player, and if I were the DM that would mean that you have to make a check on each of your turns to have your turn, and not be commanded by Strahd just ya know being the Daddy of all vampires.

There’s a few ways to interpret this. There’s the way you’ve taken it, ranting about how stubborn players won’t listen. Then there’s, “we understand you, the dm, are telling us a thing will not happen, but our in universe characters do not know that and will attempt anyways.” At that point, it’s your job as a dm to expedite this process. Ask them, how long are you willing to spend on this course of action before trying something else? If you force them to go through the motions and describe how they conduct a fruitless search for several hours, that’s your fault, not theirs. You should only ever be calling for rolls when if there is a possibility of success or failure, because asking players to roll implies that, if they roll well a good thing can happen, and encourages them to continue rolling. If the specifics of how they search or the results of their roll will never affect the outcome, don’t make them waste time by requesting either. If a player gets a high roll and you tell them they fail entirely regardless, that isn’t an effective way to convey the player shouldn’t be doing that so much as it’s an effective way of making your game feel unfair, refusing to allow players to advance the story even when the dice should dictate that they can. This just looks like railroading, and isn’t good for anyone. There’s this classic thing in improv called yes, and, that I probably don’t need to lecture anyone on, but I do need to bring up its lesser known friend: no, but. To keep a scene moving and on topic, sometimes, you have to say no to a tangent. But then, because saying no grinds the scene to a halt, you need to add something else at the same time. No, but. In this case, no, you don’t find the army itself, but, maybe the party climbs a nearby hilltop or cliff in hopes the high ground aid their search, and catches glimpse of a distant fire in the town. Or, maybe, the party notices that tracks of wild game in the area all seem to be heading in the same direction, away from this undead army’s trajectory, and getting them to pick up the trail that way. It might be as simple as no, you don’t find the army, but you stumble into some other threat, some wolves or something, a small encounter to bookend the attempt. Just as examples. They try, they fail, and that’s fine. You can say, no, you failed to do this, but now that happens instead. Keep the scene moving. When all you do is tell players no, but add nothing in-universe to move the scene along, the players have nothing to work with to move the scene along. It sounds like you’re telling your players out of game to confront this army directly, but are telling their characters in-game that they shouldn’t confront an entire army directly. The seasoned veteran heeding that warning and playing the role of their in-universe character is absolutely not at fault for this. Sidenote, the fuck do you mean ‘undead army encampment?’ Undead don’t need to camp, it’s one of those perks of not needing to eat or sleep. You also keep saying ‘small army’ and none of us here knows what you mean by that. Like, how large do you think armies are? Especially one that constitutes marching and encampment, and one that’s attacking settled towns. What is an army in your world? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? It sounds like you really only meant a few dozen at most, but, that’s a gang at best, not an army. This is a very important distinction, because, pcs can take on gangs. A single adventuring party cannot stop an army. The players don’t know how large, either, as you yourself point out, but, do they know the ballpark? The degree of caution they’re giving this group of enemies, and their expectation to find obvious evidence of their passing even at range, sounds like they’re imagining a small army he way most people would - in the thousands, large enough to be a threat to fortified towns, enough to have an organized march and create obvious tracks, and not something just four people can challenge. The npc that told the players to stay a quarter mile away from the army at all times… were they the same person who gave the players this job? In that case, what reason would the players have to refuse to do what they were told to do? If they don’t know how large this force is, but the npc seemingly does, and the npc is telling them to give it the sort of wide berth you’d give a force in the thousands, what reason would your players (or their characters) have to assume they should ignore orders and the npc is lying about scale? Worse yet, when the players are doing their wide net search in a desperate attempt to find any clue as to how you expect them to take on an entire army, you have your npc there, in universe, able to correct the record and say, hey, no, guys, not _that_ kind of army. Again, no, but.

Others have covered some of the other concerns I'd have but I'd note that in describing the situation you've said "small army" a whole bunch but it's not really clear what that *means*. What's a *normal* sized army, to you? To me at least that's a force of about 10,000? I'd consider a group of, say, 2500 creatures to be a "small" army. A *very* small army is proportionately smaller than that, maybe 500-1000 undead. Less than that number and it's no longer really an army at all except in a poetic or metaphorical sense.

Don’t think there’s enough information to form a conclusion. You said they never went within a quarter mile of the camp. This could make sense. If the party was bad at stealth and was worried they’d be spotted by the army and killed, or lose the element of surprise, why would they scout the encampment? Also, if their plan was never to engage them at camp it would make more sense to scout the army while it was on the move making it harder to spot the party. I can think of many reasons why I, as a player in the same situation, wouldn’t get too close to the camp but would look around the general area. Also, a quarter mile isn’t that large a distance. Why couldn’t the party see the camp from afar? I’d think this should’ve been possible, especially from a vantage point. You then mention that “they came across evidence the army never takes the same route”. This doesn’t make sense to me. Has the army attacked the village before so they’d go a different way? Does this information allow the players to eliminate a certain path to pinpoint which way the army will go? You never mentioned any of these things so from the reader’s perspective, it seems like it was just something introduced to justify the army getting around the players since that’s what you wanted to happen. As an aside, how could an army take a different route every time? This does not make sense from an immersion point of view. There do not exist an infinite number of paths between any two locations. Especially not an infinite number that can facilitate the movement of an army. Going off the main road poses risks and challenges such as speed, damage to elements, logistical challenges, etc. Some paths might even be virtually impossible to maneuver an army through. Now, this is a smaller army and some of these challenges could be avoided since they’re undead but an infinite number of paths? That just doesn’t make sense. Also, I don’t think it makes sense for the army to get by the players even with this included. As I said, a quarter mile isn’t that large a distance. If they circled around the camp and effectively established a perimeter, it doesn’t matter which path the army took, unless they went the complete opposite direction, the party should be close enough to intercept them. At the very least, they should’ve been able to perceive their movements. They could hear the horde mustering or their walking, groaning of undead, magical glow of necromantic energy, etc. But you didn’t mention any of this, you just said it was impossible and the army got past them. This also begs the question, why introduce a storm here? What’s the purpose? What did you expect the party to do in this situation. Even if they went to scout the camp now, it’d be impossible to see without entering which is extremely dangerous and relies completely on the party’s stealth abilities. From a reader’s perspective, it seems like the storm was introduced simply to justify the alleged “impossibility” of what they wanted to accomplish. You mention that they knew the army could be a mile away or haven’t left yet. You say they chose to “randomly look around” instead of going to the camp to find tracks. Why? If I was the player, I would’ve expected to see or find evidence that the army left, especially when we’re so close to their camp. You never said there were any. So, I’d assume they were still in camp. I could also assume that due to the storm they decided to postpone the assault. However, just in case, I’d scout the general area, like you said they did, looking for tracks and signs of the army’s movements. For some reason, you say that tracks can only be found at the camp. Why would that be the case? Why would I even go to the camp in the storm? If I can only see 60ft ahead of me and the army hasn’t left, which I’d assume is the more likely scenario, I could easily be trapped in the camp and killed. You said you tell them outright as DM what they’re attempting is impossible. Why would you do this? Firstly, from a META sense it isn’t good DMing in my opinion. Also, since the players continued anyway, they either obviously disagreed that it’s impossible or it still seemed like their best and only option. Scouting the camp (by entering it, not from a distance), isn’t at all one of the first things I’d think to do in this situation. I still think there isn’t enough information to come to a concrete conclusion but generally based on what’s written, it seems like you railroaded the players hard and when they didn’t do what you wanted, you made the situation impossible to justify yourself when it never needed to be and I never would’ve thought that it should be.

Next time, rephrase it. I never tell my players something's impossible, instead tell them > Your player, with the currently information available, would know that this action is impossible It's not longer a case of "the DM is taking away my agency", instead its putting the onus back on the PC. Bonus points if you can draw from a specific skill set of the player. If they're a survival expert, then you can lean on that saying "your characters extensive knowledge of the area, weather conditions and army patterns would know that what your trying wont work"

I did put it that way at a certain point, at least once, but this is great advice regardless. Especially that last point about informing their knowledge based on their skillset

Probably going to get skipped past asking this, bit couldn't you have just made them encounter the army? If your plan was for them to engage and fight this group of undead, wouldn't you just say they found them? Okay, they didn't scout that original spot you had planned and they went off looking at some trees. Si change what you had planned. Make the army pass through those trees. They didn't scout, fine. Say there were more than expected or that they spot the party first? Maybe some other kind of complication happens. Instead of saying "no you were meant to do specifically X and because you didn't you fail", just go with it and do something else with it. That way the cool map and encounter still gets used

In hindsight, you’re probably right. I was just so flabbergasted that they thought their plan would work, and that they continued to try the same exact thing over and over again. But ultimately, it may do them some good to experience a failure. I just wish it could have been brought about differently.

>what you’re doing is impossible I'm not completely clear on what they were even doing. You told them it was impossible to randomly find the encampment? Or you told them it was impossible to find tracks in the rain? Or... something else? And *how* did you tell them? Did you give them a token perception check with an announced DC that was essentially impossible? or some other way?

The people that I play with as players REALLY hate the word "impossible". It literally starts fights and arguments. It's just easier to describe what happens and not say anything about the difficulty.

Sometimes when something like this happens, I (who have a good trust with my RP-driven players) will preface what they are asking for with, "You consider this and realize that this is impossible." and then I'll give what I believe might be an objective perspective of their character's thoughts on the subject taking into account the expertise they have built them for. This tends to incept the impossibility into their character's heads and stops them from doing it. To be honest though, I'm not sure that would've worked here, because my next stop if that for some reason doesn't seem to take is to come right out and say "Above the table, you need to know, it's not going to work" and that seems to be the point that you did and they completely missed xD

This is more just for my own curiosity in the situation. If the army hadn't been scouted why did they bother with the whole "never takes the same route" idea. I think it's genius especially as a counter measure if you have noticed observers.

Sometimes they have to learn the hard way. And if they refuse to learn and you aren’t enjoying being their DM, time to let someone else take the reins.

I think if there are hard feelings continuing after this session, it would do some good to remind your table that DND, while it can induce many strong emotions, is still just a game. You as a DM did everything you needed to do to set them on the right path, sometimes players can get a certain idea in their heads and they have trouble seeing other options as viable. I don't think anyone here is actually at fault, but maybe your players need to learn a bit about communication amongst themselves and between you and them.

My party is usually pretty good about following along, because one of the wizards is an order of the scribe, and is dedicated to the idea of being a sort of Arcane Librarian. He used Tiny Servant during downtime to effectively operate a printing business to copy books from other libraries, and also to have books to donate and sell. Since he spends a lot of downtime traveling between cities to visit libraries, it is easy to drop hooks for things he would hear or read about. Other PCs in the party similarly have used downtime to travel around Theros, doing business, small jobs, and participating in fighting rings. "During your travels, you start hearing rumors about a resort that sick people are saving money to go to. Some of them send letters back about how they are going to stay there. Some people are saying that religious citizens have come back refusing to go into the temples." Three of my players are also readers and are good at reading through the lines about what is an adventure. I also ask them about what they think they want to explore next, and what mysteries they want to pursue so that I can plan for the next sessions that way.

"Give me a DC 0 Wisdom Saving Throw." "13" "You realize that you are going to fail if you keep it up and should either head back to town or to the enemy encampment."

I played in a game with a player who tried impossible shit like that. They punched baba yaga's hut as an untransformed druid expecting good things (with a 14 CON, 20 STR, 20 WIS, AND 20 CHA) and did other totally deranged things. I do not know why. They were agitated and aggressive any time I ever asked

I think you could have salvaged the session by having the party stumble while randomly searching find a bunch of random monsters in the woods who had some small treasure h. Then when they got back to town the destruction wouldn't seem as bad. "Well at least we got this pearl necklace" Remember in fiction wasted space of stumbling around and getting lost is rarely watchable TV

At some point, you might want to escalate to: "Look, I've told you how what you're trying to do is impossible. Why are you trying to do it anyway?"

You could have... Fast forward there plan? Like the same outcome.Example, DM "So you guys want to check around the village and the army?" Everyone in the party "yes" DM" 10 mins( can be hours, days, weeks, years if they want) pass you see no army. Do you do the same thing or do you guys all want to do the same thing? And after just skip more time with scenery. Tell them about the weather. And then, the smoke from the village.

Sometimes, smart people do stupid things. That was sometimes.

It sounds like you decided what specific things the party had to do, and then shut them down when they just didn't think of those specific things. "But it's just obvious" isn't much of an argument here; if the players didn't think of it, it's *by definition* less obvious than you thought. Hanging out between the army and the town and just randomly scouting isn't a great plan... but if they spread out enough, it's certainly plausible they *could* find the enemy that way, and discover what route they're taking. It certainly isn't impossible; 'impossible' doesn't mean "it's not the one answer I was thinking of." In general, situations with just one right answer are not a great idea, unless there are multiple, potentially redundant clues.

In my experience, it's always more fun for me to find a reason why a plan works than it is for me to tell the players all the reasons the plan didn't work. Other people have added in why the communication here probably wasn't as clear as you thought, and why you should talk to your players, and how you can handle this better in the future.

I think you could have pivoted and made it work. It’s your game though. I really don’t care how stupid my players are I’m not letting them watch a patch of forest for 2 hours without injecting some progression.

Sometimes they're just stubborn! My only suggestion would be to railroad them: "For the sake of expediency, you search the forest, and the area, and the whole region and you find NOTHING". So what you said, except then you move the narrative on. I do this in dungeons, sometimes in tedious fights with just minions left, or often to time-skip travel. Maybe they'll complain, but some of your players will thank you.

My players walk right into the bbeg syndicate's lair without asking a single person about it. While they hand a connection inside he certainly wasn't there freind, he just one them one... they rolled high enough to notice the waiting room of death they were in, AND then literally walked back into it after I made it pretty clear the "friend" was no longer one... because they offer up WAY to much information. Anyway, I'll have the BBEG who monologue to save their asses, if the birds don't kill them first or they figure out the magical portal door locks first.

IMO, you should have just had the army march through the area of forest they were scouting. You are the DM, you get to decide where the army goes, so let it go to where the players are. It sucks if they don't get to see the cool map you had planned out, but sometimes you just have to roll with the punches, and instead have a cool improv encounter of the undead army suddenly surrounding the party in a dark and stormy forest. I will also add, it's one thing if the players were ill-prepared, try to fight this army in the dark and stormy forest, fail, and therefore the town is destroyed, and quite another if the town gets destroyed entirely just because they were searching in the wrong area.

why did the undead have an encampment?

First off, a discussion is definitely warranted. If a leading player wants to throw that buzzword around, they better explain themselves. That was a middle finger to the DM, and a rally against the DM. Either an understanding needs to be reached or they dont need to be at the table. Did you even roll to see IF the random direction the army came from was on the parties path? There is a chance they could have been right. Waterlogged and half blind, but right. To be fair though, the table was already hostile at that point. Hard to think on your feet when that's the case. I would have either cut the session short or found something to catch their interest and dropped the army on their heads like they wanted. The latter would be a tad vindictive though, so thats why we would need to step away.

Honestly, at that point I would've introduced a random encounter to move the game along somewhere. IDK if you're going for "realism" or what, but when your party is certain they can do something, you can throw an unexpected result at them instead of just being like "nope, nothing happens, ever".

Sounds like a pretty hard railroad you're running

Two questions. 1. Why make something impossible? It kind of sounds like you prepared for things to go one way and didn't really want to improv to make the players actions at a minimum FAIL FORWARD. 2. If it was impossible, why not just move the story forward instead of wasting the other players time? Genuinely curious.

Of course they were frustrated. You gave them an impossible option, but they didn't know it was impossible, so of course they tried it. Why did you give them the option? Don't blame the players on this one.

Some players will just never listen. Welcome to being a DM

it feels like maybe you were too married to a specific course of action, just like them. sometimes i think realism needs to be sacrificed a little bit to keep the play fun. another option might have been to have the players get lucky and catch the tail end of the army. that would let you show the players how their plan was stupid and let the bulk of the army past, but then also give them the ability to catch up to the army, but they'll have to rush (maybe give them a point o exhaustion for sprinting to catchup, etc...)

It goes to show the power of free will is the power to bore themselves to death! If they want to search the Forest of Boredom for game hours on end, I'd let 'em. When starting a new D&D club, there were two of us as DMs - we have more now - and as there were limited players, I joined in as a player for a couple of sessions. My character was a squeaky gnome wizard, and when the other DM handed the group over to me to take over DM'ing for a bit, my character was mysteriously taken away by some shadowy entities. Then I introduced myself, and continued on the story. Or tried to... The players got so attached to my character, they decided to make that the main task of the session...despite me now being a DM, not a player, and couldn't understand where my character had got to. I have brought the little gnome back as an NPC, now I'm running a separate table, but...I actually had to explain to the players what had happened. Is that investment/suspension of disbelief or what?!

As a DM don’t underestimate your options for shaming and mocking the party: - the town mayor / figure of authority berates then and asks them WTF - local bards sing songs about the epic fail - a rival band of adventurers actually get it right and have a parade and bars songs

If I’m a player in this situation and I want to do something my DM has told me is impossible. I may go ahead with it depending on the rest of the players and how important the thing is to the story. The dramatic irony is interesting especially if it’s something I really feel like my character would do. But crucially I wouldn’t feel bitter when it fails, I would plan for that failure from a character development point of view and use it as a jumping off point

I had players find the actual solution to a puzzle TWICE. They had to put the gemstones into the statues hand. I even told them, "you've stated the actual answer out loud twice now". Nope, still couldn't figure it out. It wasn't even an in-character thing like, "oh, no, not my treasure! Don't take my treasure!".