What to Do When Your Players DON'T GET IT | D&D | TTRPG | Web DM 

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Im honestly a big advocate of handouts, files, cards, pictures, they are great when you have information you want the players to retain

Sent this to my DM, because we're a party of idiots.

When my players were investigating a mystery they did not follow my pre-written notes. They found more clues than I had initially anticipated and found the same bad guy through a different route. Together we all told a better story than I had written for them. Plus, they felt smart for figuring it out, and they more than deserved it.

In one campaign we were super fixated on an abandoned chapel outside of town. After spending half the session asking townsfolk about it we visited the chapel itself and found some peculiar graffiti. A fish in fresh red paint.

As a DM i am constantly affraid of making clues and lore tidbits (tidbits) TOO explicit for my players. Then I get dissapointed when they dont pick up on it, lol. Need this video as a reminder. Great stuff! Cheers from Norway

So on the topic of did they get it or miss it, Have the players' themselves do the "Last time on..." recap and then you'll see what they thought of and felt happened last time.

I’m currently running a game where the party has encountered a layered mystery to be solved. The biggest help so far has been the Discord channel we made where we collect all the clues, facts, and theories pertinent to the investigation. It’s full of letters, crime scene details, names, and a map with pins marking key locations. Sometimes I “neglect” to include their senseless theories and connections, which has helped immensely.

This is more useful than any "how to run a mystery" videos I've seen

In the firt session I gave players a literal map with a big X on it that they got out of a PIRATE SHIP.... they never went there.

I feel like this is literally what i need right now. My players will constantly sit silently instead of doing literally anything & say things like "i guess i do nothing" in combat.

As always, picking a topic that hits me directly in the DM heart. Good stuff, guys!

I feel called-out by that thumbnail, but at least I'm not the only one!

Even after a couple of years of watching, you always manage to come up with a super engaging and helpful topic for me as a DM that i can also share with my players. Thank you so much for your work :)

I look forward to this every week! Thank you so much for helping me and so many others get through this trying time. I can't wait to start running games again and playing my favorite game. thank you Jim. thank you Pruitt. and thank you to everyone else behind the scenes who makes this show happen. words cannot describe how much it's meant to me.

I have to give you guys props for how you have adjusted to Covid. You guys make it seem like the original set up despite the distance (in my opinion).

I like having the backup plan or two for the "failure to find something" approach, but I try to remember that win, lose, or draw, the player's choices IS the movie that drives the plot forward. It's completely okay to lucidly change the motives of the BBEG if the players don't get your hints along the way. Good and evil are often perceptions. Maybe they fail to witness the war crime all together, and in that case, maybe the war crime never happened or didn't happen the way it did in my mind. Sometimes, pen and paper preparation be damned... the only canonical truth is what the audience witnesses.

This aligns perfectly with The Three Clue Rule over at The Alexandrian. It goes something like this, “For any conclusion you want your players to come to, leave at least three clues for them to find that point in the intended direction.” thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule

I do the "Previously..." every session! It was something I really enjoyed from TV shows and just as you mentioned, its a great way to recap, highlight a few key clues/discoveries/encounters and drop the players right back in the adventure.

From my experience, players coming up with wild speculation happens when they have forgotten or discounted one of the clues that they found earlier. eg If they found a clue that suggests the culprit is an elf, then they forget about that, they may start going after the innocent dwarf or halfling. At this point you need to remind them about the forgotten clue either OOC or as an NPC. This can also happen if they fail to "decode" the clue eg it shows that the culprit was immune to sleep spells, but the players don't understand that this suggests and elf. It's tough having to do this part of the brainwork for them, so try just giving them a nudge first.

I'm working on a homebrew that comes after two of my favorite modules in 5e and I find that I struggle with breadcrumbs and coming up with ways to reveal info without telling my players what to do. This video helps a lot in that regard and I thank you gentlemen for your help!

Top 10 most useful Web DM videos. Thank you SO much for all of the helpful advice on your channel!

Another great video. One method I use as a DM to alleviate this is by having a DMPC with the party at critical moment like this. They are a passive entity but if the players get stuck the pc can hint or give info in an in game method.

Really solid & relevant conversation! Thank you! :)

I’m loving the layout you guys got for these videos really creative use of the green screen, you guys are awesome, stay safe out there.

I love all your content, but episodes like this with more free-style discussion are the best.

11:20 in my party we don’t have a cleric. So the good cop is my wizard with detect thoughts. The bad cop is the Minotaur Barbarian.

I love this green screen setup. I can see the time it took to make it all work

All GMs need to watch this. Well done, sharing this with my entire group!

entertaining and helpful content as always. thanks homies, i appreciate it

real problem and glad to hear somebody else's answer to it

Another major reason for the "Previously on...." segment at the start of a lot of serialized TV is that if you didn't see last week's episode when it aired, you didn't get a chance to see it again until the show was in its off-season and they filled air-time with old episodes. By having a short recap at the start of each episode, it was easier to get caught back up instead of being left behind and so not watching later episodes.

Good on you guys for distancing! Loving your channel as a new DM deciding to homebrew a setting and campaign like some kind of story driven maniac. Always great food for thought

Good job on the socially distanced orientation of zoom windows! Much better

you mentioned using npc's to help out - one way I've found is to have the NPC(s) break off and go look independently in another direction than the one the party is going in. And then if when push comes to shove, the party comes up short info-wise or is having trouble putting things together, the NPC can check back in - having "discovered" the bit of info they were missing, or by linking together bits of info the party failed to do. Conversely, if the party is successful the NPC can return having found nothing additional of use or come back having come to the same conclusion as the party and serving as a means of reinforcing to them that they are on the right track. This way, as you referred to, you can create your own serendipity if you need to, and if you don't need to then you don't. So by planning ahead you give yourself an "out" to aid the party without it necessarily coming across too heavy-handed to the players. They knew ahead of time the NPC was out trying to dig up info, and so the NPC returning with helpful information doesn't look like its just randomly coming out of the blue - which again could come across as appearing a little too serendipitous.

Gotta say, I like this new green screen setup, way better than in the beginning of lockdown. Congrats guys!

Figuring out the right amount of clues is so hard for me! I gave my players a few hints as to where to search for the lost grave of a necromancer. I was affraid they wouldn't find it. They knew it was somewhere around a certain town. They went there and pretty much immediatly went "Yeah the grave is under the temple. Lets break in at night.". Same adventure a little down the road even after multiple big hints they never ever ask themselfs what the motive of the villain is. I had NPCs literally ask them the question "What do you guys think? Why is he doing all this? What is his goal?" all I got was a "We don't know. And now lets steal some stuff.". I literally made them pay for it in the end: introduced a spy/Information-dealer-NPC that sold the answers to the party.

I think the nice thing about dnd is if the players come up with a really clever way to join the dots even if that's not what you planned you can just change the reality to make them right. Especially if a player who doesn't normally volunteer a lot of theories within the party suddenly has a brainwave they're going to become right if I can possibly help it. Similarly if I misjudge and make it too easy then maybe it becomes a clever ruse with the real villain still at large.

I'm so excited for this! :)

This reply is a lil long, so sorry for that, but if it helps anyone get some ideas ima say worth. But something I've found is that, general information to progress the plot should be fairly easy to get compared to specific information intended to arm the party with an advantage in the present or future. It prevents the party from floundering super hard, but gives an in-world DM nod of approval for their excellent investigation skills that's way more subtle and arguably more useful than just "you gain a use of inspiration". The more important a piece of information is to the plot the more ways there should be for it to be discovered. So if a corrupt politician is the center of the arc you have, players should be able to uncover various aspects of his dirty ways - anything from laundering money in legitimate businesses, funding buildings to dump off cash and improve his image, hobgoblin mercenaries arriving for payment at the edge of town for god knows what, etc. It makes them feel good for discovering something, contributes to the overall picture, and feeds the party's attitude toward the plot depending on what they find. These general, important clues should give the players ideas or pointers about where they should look next. Even if they don't find *everything* it should be enough to pin the guy for a weasel, but maybe they don't know that he has friends or the exact depth of his indiscretion, which only further feeds the adventure as the world reacts to the party's actions *regardless of if the party is aware of it*. Allow the world you've crafted to breathe, but remember that unless they screw up majorly the consequences it should never appear that you are directly punishing the players for not going about things your way. Get in your NPC's shoes. How do they react to the party's actions? How much do they know of the party and what they've done? What are their resources (if any) and how do they choose to spend them? If the party is a bunch of sneaks and the NPC's don't know that, allow the party to do their thing and flee their pursuit under the radar. It lets them play how they want to play, but it lets them feel under pressure and encourages them to regroup to figure out what's going on. All of this, most importantly, gives you more exposition opportunities without another "search or suck" roll that a lot of players get frustrated by.

As a new DM who is wrangling in 3 first time players and myself only having watched 1 million hours of Web DM, this is suddenly the most important information I needed. Especially considering they are all video games players who are used to structure with a few choices

Perfect timing, as this week's session will focus around a Whodunnit I'm sure the players will have trouble solving.

Knowing that Jim is a fan of The Alexandrian, I'm a bit surpised he never mentioned Justin Alexander's "Three Clue Rule". It basically says that you always put at least 3 clues into a scene, so if they miss one or two they can still progress in the investigation.

I have yet to use this as of yet but I quite like the mysterious letter tipping the players off to something they wouldn't find out about otherwise.

The TLDR of my point is less to do with the characters missing plot points or clues about stuff going on with the plot. And more to do with my players missing an aspect of the game I want them to engage with (and I know they aren't opposed to engaging with them) and how a change in structure helped with that. I've been trying to do an alternative style to my normal dming strats with my starfinder campaign. Normally I'm very here's the stuff I've set up if you want to do something else I'm totally up for it. This has lead to some personal disappointment as I really want my players to be like hey I want to buy a keep or start an adventuring guild or create this crazy magic item I made. And they never do, I make sure there's plenty of gold time and opportunity to do these things. So I've changed things up for how I've run starfinder. I started the game normally I made the bb someone the players have ample reason to personally hate and ran normally until level 4. At level 4 they lost contact with their contact in law enforcement their home disappeared and they are set wild in space on a ship they are gonna owe payments on in a year. The structure I've settled on is a mission phase which they tell me the job they're looking to do downtime phase and then factional progress. They've done a manhunt mission and a ship recovery mission. And I think they're finally starting to understand that if they want to get in the bad guys way they have to make the choice to go do so. Making a downtime phase makes them think about the things and long term goals they want to achieve and makes them go for it. And factional progress gives them an idea of what the enemy is upto

LOVE the virtual set :)

Thank you for the great content guys

My players got fixated on a random safety placard on a machine. When they translated it, it was still out of context, and they just kept poking around looking for whatever machine part the sign referred to. They had zero knowledge of what the machine actually did, but were determined to heed this warning label.

Don't be afraid to just tell your players when you forget to give them information they were supposed to have. I ran a one shot where the PCs had to search mausoleums for The Fang of Dendar before the cultists could find it. They were doing research about the cult and Dendar, etc., and I forgot to tell them that the Fang is magic dagger. They get to the graveyard and have no idea what they are looking for. When I realized the problem I just said "oh by the way the Fang of Dendar is a magic dagger, you found that out in your research." I was disappointed as a DM that it didn't go how I had planned, but it was still a great session and the players had fun.

I haven't even finished this video, but I feel like there is a lot of connection to the video about player roles. Check it out. 👍🏻

This year I had a campaign begin and end on what was meant to be a preliminary investigation. Turns out sometimes the players are more willing to tear down an unrelated location and exhaust themselves than to revise their initial assumptions. And THEN when I had a guy show up with missing information, they antagonized him and escalated the situation into murder. I'm not saying I'm not to blame for some (like maybe being too hands off with their plans) or even most of it (like making the clue NPC be more unlikeable than I meant), but I also think sometimes it's just not meant to be.

When it comes to finding clues I often let my players roll (perception, investigation, insight, etc...) and the best result finds the clue (or the best two or three). A really high roll will uncover something additional (another clue or just something they can use otherwise).

I love this topic!

Hey, this is Jim Davis!

when you give you players all the clues over time and it gets to the point you tell them it's in the inn here at this location and they still chase red herrings and we forget that quest path...

There's something about the slight pause due to being online, and the timbre of their voice that makes this episode feel really... intimate

This is exactly the right length for a Wednesday episode. Thanks for what all of you do!

If the players get it wrong, being sure about someone that isn't the actual culprit and all that.. As a GM you may be able to change the story around and do it like the players are actually correct. And just go with that. OR... You could have them imprison the wrong person, have that person be punished somehow (jailed, exiled, even killed...) and then, sometime later, find out that they were wrong. Memorable campaigns are made out of both good and bad moments. It may be good for the story for them to fail miserably.

I love it when my players get sidetracked!Some of our best stories happened while down in a random part of a country that i didn't even plan them to visit. The clues and riddles can get annoying, but if it is needed for the greater story we solve it but with a ramification. Maybe they trigger a trap or something else.. We tend to lean to the "Is this fun? If yes, go with it!".

Bless those players who are willing to take on the role of party historian or party note-taker. As I GM I have forgotten exactly what info I gave out because I was busy improving a scene or making a mid-story adjustment. I'm way more comfortable running mystery storylines when the group has a good player like this.

this was made for my group! LOL!

Super-relevant to my current campaign in the Tomb of Annihilation's Port Nyanzaru. I am using the Adventurers League City on the edge module which introduces a macguffin called The Dreamers Amulet and sets up the Yuan-ti as early antagonists. I decided that they would target the Merchant Prince Jessamine and try to subvert her will. And so in one of their earlier missions her name duly was mentioned. As events unfolded (including walking into the main bad guys HQ after following the *other* clue at the crime scene to the other side of the city in a time-critical Manhunt!) the conspiracy has now started to unravel save for one central misunderstanding: they had long ago concluded Jessamine was *orchestrating* the plot! I had NPCs mention "she didn't seem the type" , being minister for justice and sanctions as well as the swing vote on the council (i.e the reason why she is the target.) Fortunately one of my players is an acolyte at the temple of Savras and bagged them a free divination. I let them prepare one question to ask Grandfather Zitembe which was marvellous as they crafted the question they most wanted answering. So score 1 for divine corrections - I was then able to describe a vision of Jessamine being subdued by a visiting "Ambassador" (a GOO Warlock of Dendar) and finally they realised she was the target and needed protecting! I had set up alternate routes for access to the building / event she is at (a charity ball in the state rooms of The Temple of Waukeen) boiling down to a heist, a hit or an infiltration - instead they blagged a favour from a different merchant prince and rolled a nat 20 on the perssusion roll. Which will mean I basically end up running the infiltration version but now they have a man on the inside opening the doors for them. (Ironically directly mirroring the yuan-ti strategy as it happens, they too have a man on the inside being supplied by Ifan Talroa!) - but they don't know that!! :-P

Look, your players want to chase the story, that's where the adventure is. They're going to go towards your cool monster lair if they can find it. Give them time. Don't let your frustration show and don't bait your players frustration. That's going to magnify the problem. Smile enigmatically if they don't pick up the connection or understand it's a clue. If they don't bite find another hook, and have a dozen adventure hooks in behind the screen ready to go. If enough people they talk to and strange scraps of paper point them towards the old windmill on the marsh they're going to get going that way. If they jump on the wrong path, that's ok. They're run down that road and find the dead end they need or if you're clever that road will lead them back to where you want them. Be patient and let them get there on their own time.

Theres plenty of spells in older editions that help. Like after life, I believe its called. In 2nd edition it would allow you to see what happened in a place. Sorta like that one scene in earthsea? I think that was the show. Chubby mage used it to determine who murdered someons in his town.

There's this location in the Icewind Dale module where a character could stumble into an underground river and do a DC10 check to either live or get swept underwater and certainly killed, barring immediate magical intervention. I feel like that's a good test of the DM's ability or willingness to make it clear to players that "your character knows wading into this river is a really effing bad idea." IMO a DM should not refrain from voicing a character's instincts if the player seems to not understand them.

Hey there, thanks for another great video! I’m wondering how you guys choose which (audios of) videos go on the podcast feed. I’d love to be able to listen to this instead of having to keep RU-vid open.

Worth thinking about different types of failure. Maybe failure means "an added complication" or "it takes you a long time to do this" rather than just "you can't do this".

Still early in the video but typing cause comments help videos. lol But short version, what I've started doing for times the players "don't get it" is I've stolen the "idea roll" from Call of Cthulhu. The short version is, I'll give a player a wisdom or intelligence roll to see how much their character would have put together from a situation, basically helping the players understand what their character would understand of a given situation or trail of clues/info. I actually did this a few weeks ago for some long time experienced players who were getting kinda..... stuck in overplanning (Basically waiting for me to try and trip them up or reading way too much into things), and while I didn't give them any direct answers, I just used it to knock out some of the variables they were going over that, to their characters, wouldn't have been anything they'd worry about. This majorly streamlined the game and was something they all enjoyed. Funny enough, the biggest thing this helped with was characters overthinking magic items and such, cause they came up with literally dozens of "what if's" for anything magic they ran into, and this gave me a chance to give them the direct character info their casters would have about certain things without just butting in and cutting them off mid-think. I know this is a bit different than what you're after, but I feel like this could be connected and used as a solution here too.

When this comes up, I usually remind my players they can avoid some of this pain by taking detailed notes on what's happening in the sessions. I'll allow Int checks to recall information that is helpful, though notetaking is seriously underrated

Just started running waterdeep for my players and worried I won’t give out a good amount of clues

someone buy that dude a good microphone. dem headphones is popy. Great content thou. Long time viewer.

Fuuuuuuu...those dice are gorgeous

I am currently running a group though castle amber, and I realize this is one of the module's greatest weaknesses--it's a funhouse with no plot points. My group is just sort of flopping in different rooms night after night with no direction and no purpose, slaughtering just about everything that they come across including the Ambers, so they're really not getting anywhere. My solution: I started a fire in the west wing and it is quickly burning the whole chateau down. They are now on a timer, and have surged ahead suddenly. They've even tried to save an Amber from death's icy embrace. I mean...light a fire under 'em. I laugh thinking about it.

Can y'all make a video about Compromise? I DM for a group of players who have a variety of preferences and styles, but some are more vocal than others. They're sort of new, so they're not really very good at even expressing or knowing what it is they like and don't like and for me it's very confusing when I'm trying to run a game. And there's also the aspect of how I prefer to run my game as well - I like to use rules for consistency and I love world lore and stuff but frankly my players are murderhobos. Even beyond ensuring tactical choices for murderhoboing or not, they just don't see games as a place for legitimate story telling. How do you deal with this kind of thing?

Sometimes when I have important information that the players would roll for, that roll determines how long it takes to find it. They still get the info, maybe a little incomplete, but now they’ve been delayed and I can think about consequences to that.

This me some time win I play ty for the help

A good idea for a new video would be a how to RP artificers.

With investigation i give them the information but depending on the roll the window of time shrinks

If they fail a die roll that doesnt mean the bad guys know. Maybe they know you went somewhere and they know your looking for someone (them) even if you dont find the clue your on their list now so maybe a failed die roll leads to more combat?

I miss the old foreground overlay and the chaos/life of Castle Jim

DMing a star wars game, my players were sent on an imperial corvet manned by droids to take it over and, if possible, find the rebel spy droid that had been sent. They find out that some droid had received maintenance and it lad a technician to find out that it had spy softwares. They ask if the droid had a specific identification/name and I said "Sure, it was, errr, RA-07-14" Right away they grab onto that and ask every other RA-07 droid their identification number like they think the spy droid is going to let them know it's a spy droid. (they failed to find the information that its programming had been messed up and it turned rogue) I finally let them find one RA-07-14 and they find nothing strange or out of the normal in its programming. I had to tell them, after they finally met and took down the rogue droid. "Yeah, there's enough droids in this ship that look the same, the imperial technicians didn't notice there were two with a similar code."

Question: does it irk you guys to sandbox your way through the lower levels in preparation for the 'real' objective or the campaign? I know the trajectory of current D&D modules keeps the players at least somewhat focused on the main goal, where all the low level stuff kinda reinforces what they're doing later, but my homebrew I've been running for the past 6 months has been... not that at all.

Having just written a 846 word "What I Learned Today" recap + handout set for my group I know what you mean about the "Previously On..." part. :-(

Jim I hope you feel better. Secondly I hope it's NOT Covid-19.

I am here

My players tend to have the problem of being too genre savvy. Their characters are smart enough to learn from past mistakes so now they are cautious to the point of inaction. Or they try something one way and it doesn't work, they shut down because 'hey that worked before'...yes it did, but now it doesn't puzzle it out...'but I don't know how to because it didn't work the way I know how to work it.' Or they were told by an npc about how invulnerable an enemy is so they take that as gospel truth.

I prefer when you just were in your own windows. It is a strange unreal feeling when you are in different places and trying to meld the video, Uncanny valley stuff.

I feel like you guys are watching my twitch stream of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. In my experience, you should assume that whatever level of obviousness you are presenting, is a level less. If you think you are beating the players over the head with the info, it's probably obvious, if you think it's obvious, it's probably not so obvious. I actually had the Raven Queen show up and explain the entire plot and say who the main bad guys are, and my players were still unsure what to do. What I think is a good way to give the "serendipitous" moments is to have an unimportant NPC always pop up to become the "regular". When the group is lost, have said NPC show up and say, "um, well, I actually know someone...". In the end, it won't really matter, 'cause your group is going to blow up 3 houses and then be confused as to why the City Watch is arresting them. Or is that just me?

As a rule, I never leave it to chance that a character will find a major plot point. They will definitely be told by an npc that Lord X is the evil necromancer. Creative plays who investigate may or may not find out that Lord X is also working with Judge Snoopy, who "surprise " is also a vampire. Give the players everything they need to get from A to B, let them do their own investigation to figure out how to be best prepared for that trip.

I once ran a Vampire: the Masquerade game for my longtime group (man, that was 11-12 years ago) that was so steeped in lore that I took it upon myself to write up a post-session synopsis specifically for the players, including any and all "clues of importance" (regardless of if they discussed the clue's importance or not) that they may have come across. At the time, I lived 3 hours from the group, so we would have 14+ hour long marathon sessions to make up for the fact that I could only come down once or twice a month to play. Do you think the players utilized the session synopsis? Half of them admitted to not reading them each time, one player admitting to "skimming" it a mere 30-60 minutes before the next session started (and this was also a habit of his), and only one player who would read it when I shared it, then reread it again before the next session. Even then, they went way off the clue-laden path, which eventually led to the Sabbat taking over the once Camarilla-led NYC, among other things. Eventually, I felt like they weren't enjoying the game and ended the campaign because they kept avoiding the real story, but when I ended it, they claimed they were having lots of fun and really didn't know that the story was in another direction. Despite my short novel of synopsis notes hinting otherwise. :/ By the way: each synopsis was Times New Roman 10 pt, single-spaced, and at least a page long for the "quieter" sessions; some of the more lore-packed sessions would easily reach 3 pages. Yeah, now I just tell players in Session Zero that they are responsible for their own notes, and if some important clue is missed due to negligence/forgetfulness, then the consequences will be as they are. I'll instead offer multiple routes to then preventing or undoing unwanted consequences (which are, in their own way, self-made plot hooks), but those routes will always be more challenging and, in some cases, deadlier than following the original clue would have been. TL;DR: Players don't always listen to/read recaps and will still derail the game even if clues are made semi-obvious by such recaps.

I learned from this video that I was unknowingly assuming players and characters will have equal knowledge on various topics that to me seem obvious; definitely something to work on. My problem is all but one of my players don't take any notes much less copious notes; so I make them do the recap and if they don't remember something I am not inclined to tell them again because I already mentioned said thing multiple times during the previous session(s). Am I being the douche here? Do other DM's out there just repeat things session after session?

Wow, what a great topic. Obvious in hindsight.

those tabletop loot d4s are straight up caltrops

okay dumb question here, but how do i make my clues more obvious without being overt? or in other words, when i give my table clues, they are either super obvious, or nobody picks up on them.

Yoo I'm early How are you guys doing?

Pruitt. You keep your yeti tumbler inside Jim?

Jim Davies like the garfield guy?

But what if your players speculate an even more devious plot than one you planned?

Word of the day: Serendipitous

Uploaded 3 minutes ago and already lost firsties. Damn.