Fellow dm’s, how would you react if you made a side quest for your players and throw in some clues and hints for the main plot, but your players act annoyed and do whatever they can to get to the next important place in the story even by stating that they are suddenly there?
For some context, my players are currently traveling to an npc’s house. They were sent a letter by one they really want to kill. That’s fair. He’s not a good person. They needed to get to his house though. However, they are on the opposite side of the kingdom. So, I made a side quest where they come across a cabin and meet the mayor of a town they’ve been at before. The session ended up falling around the same day that they met the mayor last year in real life time so I thought it would be a cute callback.
Anyways, the mayor claims her husband is acting strange and thinks he’s a changeling. After investigating, the players realize the twist: the mayor is the changeling. Once they kill the changeling, the husband who was made very ill asks the group to help him find his wife because she escaped into the woods. They of course huff and puff. To keep my players happy, I made this part short and simple. They then continue to a market in an open field.
When they travel, I like to ask if they do anything. They said they don’t want to and insist that we hurry up and continue. Luckily, they became a bit more interested during this section due to an npc that they watched die showing up alive. Well, two found it interesting. There’s one that never really does much. He makes comments about how he’s falling asleep, playing on his xbox, or doing something else. We voice chat on Discord, so I’m actually not sure if he’s joking or not. He also yells at me whenever he makes a bad roll.
They finish the market section. My plan was to have the nilbog show up again. They’ve met her a couple times now. She was going to drop another hint to an important plot point.
Basically, one of my players is the chosen of Lathander. She does not know this. They have met the chosen of Shar before. Plot twist, he was a priest of Lathander after losing his memory. At one point, the nilbog got on top of him to be at eye level with the others and said “The chosen of Shar is never far.” They later learned that he was the chosen of Shar a couple sessions later. I was going to have the nilbog do the same thing with that player and say Lathander instead and see if they catch it.
Anyways, instead they kept asking if they’re at the house yet. They kept complaining about stupid side quests. I had to stop for a moment and they continued to talk about this and that. Mostly stuff about the Lion King. I ended up telling them that they made it to the house and decided to stop the hints and any filler I had. I stopped the session there since I didn’t have anything else.
I’m not sure if I should be upset about it. I’m just going through a lot right now. Someone I’m close to is very sick and there’s other stuff.
TL;DR: I’m done with dnd. Time to speed run this campaign.
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