Why Are My D&D Players Clueless?

Written by Luke Hart

Recently after one of my game sessions, I was thinking to myself that the game was kind of lackluster that evening. It just wasn’t a lot of fun. I was befuddled at first, but as I thought about it, I began to realize why the game wasn’t as fun as I would have liked. So, we’re going to talk about that game session, what happened, and the lessons I think we can learn from it.

By the way, if you're looking for a low level pre-made adventure module for your D&D 5e game, I highly recommend Into the Fey. It's designed for levels 1 to 5, features tricksy fey and their sly schemes, and contains everything you need to play!

Watch or listen to this article by clicking the video below.

Okay, so the game session. My players were investigating a Lamannia manifest zone known as the Wildgrowth. It’s an area overgrown with massive trees and vegetation, and filled with dinosaurs. Which is why they were there: they had been tasked with capturing a live T-Rex and bringing it back alive to the halflings in Frostmantle.

As they delve into the Wildgrowth they are ambushed by a large pack of deinonychuses—those are the ones from Jurassic Park that they erroneously called velociraptors. Hollywood. What can you say?

After they defeat the deinonychuses—murderizing them all and sending one fleeing—they encounter a massive herd of ankylosauruses. These things are basically twenty-five foot long armored tanks, and there were dozens of them. However, in the midst of the herd my players spotted several bodies—corpses. Now, my players couldn’t see this from their vantage point, but there was some decent loot on the bodies.

Now, I wasn’t expecting my players to fight dozens of these dinosaurs, of course. That would be silly, and a slog. You see, my intent here was for my players to be able to explore the Wildgrowth and encounter a variety of challenges and situations—basically, trying to hit all three pillars of gameplay. We had just had a combat, so it was time for something a bit different. In this scene, the dynamic question was, “Can the heroes investigate and/or loot the corpses, despite the presence of the herd of dinosaurs.”

Oh, I forgot to mention. One of those “corpses” was still alive. Heavily wounded, but alive, and could have given them useful information about the t-rexes they were hunting.

However, my players decided to just GO AROUND the herd of dinosaurs. Which is fair. They are in an open world; just going around an obstacle is almost always an option, and I’m not the sort of GM to say no and limit their agency in that respect. If they want to SKIP what is clearly a plot point or point of interest, I’m not going to get in the way.

After that, they entered a forested area where the t-rex nested. They ended up finding its nest along with seven eggs. At that point, their plan shifted to just stealing the eggs for the halflings, but—as you might expect—the t-rex was nearby and attacked; however, there was also a SECOND t-rex that joined the combat after a few rounds. So, they got to fight TWO t-rexes. It was a decent combat, but my dice rolled HORRIBLY so it was a bit underwhelming and my players’ path to victory was a bit easier than I would have liked. But, hey, that’s just the way it goes sometimes.

Then my players made off with the eggs and started to look for a place to rest. Now, technically, they probably didn’t even need a rest. This was actually a Pathfinder 2 game, and getting all healed up between combats is fairly trivial as long as the players build their characters for it. And mine absolutely did. So, they were all at full hit points after a ten-minute or so break to treat wounds; the spellcasters were just mostly out of spells.

Anyway, as they traveled they came upon a part of the forest where a green glow filtered through the overgrown ferns and trees. They identified it as NOT being a natural phenomenon and decided to go a different direction and continue to look for a suitable place to rest.

So, to put you into my game designer head at this point. We’ve now had two back-to-back combats in the game session, separated by a period of—in my opinion—uninteresting decision making and a few skill checks. That means we need something DIFFERENT and perhaps EXCITING. It was time for LORE.

You see, the source of that glow my players saw was the Verdant Nexus, a warped hardwood staff with a glowing crystal tip that was planted in the ground. This staff once belonged to Thalvian Greentide, a powerful druid from the Eldeen Reaches who fell in battle protecting this grove from aberrations of Kyber. And this staff now served as a powerful source of magic that in fact created this Lamannia manifest zone. Furthermore, my players might have also learned that the staff could be uprooted to cause the manifest zone to disappear, and then planted somewhere else to cause a manifest zone to appear there.

Now, I have no idea if this would have been useful at all to them, and they might have just left the staff there. However, the PURPOSE was to have an interesting point of interest for them to discover and learn about. This is the sort of thing that brings your world to life—and also breaks up the monotony of COMBAT AFTER COMBAT.

However, my players decided to skip it. I think they thought the green glow was threatening, and didn’t really want to fight anything at that point. But whatever, they moved on.

And they REALLY wanted to rest somewhere. So, as my players were searching for a place to rest, they found a ravine with a cave entrance. The rogue sneaked in and found three kobolds sitting around a table. I described very clearly that although kobolds often TRENDED toward bad behavior—EVIL shall we say—they were motivated much more by SHINY LOOT and SUBSERVIENCE to a greater power.

Now, I REALLY wanted to have something besides combat in this game session, because I know it makes for a better game when there is some variety. So, here I was trying for a SOCIAL INTERACTION, some good old talky talky. These kobolds were predisposed to be friendly—yes, I’m the game master, I can do that—and would have invited them to rest in their cave complex.

Furthermore, these kobolds were WORSHIPPERS of the Verdant Nexus—that druid’s staff—and could have told the players about it. Yep, I was still trying to slip that lore in because I know it makes the world a more vibrant and interesting place.

However, the rogue sneaked back out of the cave, and the group decided to JUST MOVE ON. Now, to be fair, I did describe there as being more tunnels and told them that kobolds breed like rabbits and there were usually quite a few of them.

So, I think I was shooting myself in the foot with that, but you need to understand, my players were level 6, and kobolds are like a level 1 monster. That sort of level discrepancy in a Pathfinder 2 game means the kobolds probably wouldn’t even be able to hit the characters, much less do any sort of meaningful damage.

Another thing I think I screwed up is that I should have just given them a SAFE PLACE TO REST before presenting the green glow or the kobold cave. Then they would have had all their resources back and may have been more inclined to investigate and talk. But, you know, 20/20 hindsight. What are you gonna do?

At any rate, at this point my players decided to FORCE MARCH back to town. I think they thought I was trying to prevent them from resting or something and were just saying screw it. But I wasn’t, I really wasn’t.

BUT I WASN’T DONE WITH THEM YET. I had stuck out THREE TIMES, but I was determined—DETERMINED—to have something besides combat in the game session.

So, I had them come across the same clearing where the herd of ankylosauruses had been, only they were gone. I was hoping—HOPING—that my players would decide to check out the corpses I had described earlier, and THANKFULLY they did!

Only, my benevolence had evaporated at this point. So, as they searched the bodies, I described them as having been heavily trampled. They then found a bunch of gold coins—many of them bent—an iron cube all twisted out of shape, and a coffer full of broken vials. Those were literally magic items that they could have obtained and used had they investigated the corpses earlier. However, the battle with the t-rexes—whose battle cries echoed for miles around—had caused the dinosaurs to stampede and destroy them.

Maybe this was me being a bit of a jerk, but I felt it necessary to inject some consequences. They still got the gold—a decent amount, in fact—but the magic items had been destroyed. That was their loot, lost, because they decided to skip the scene. Which is fair, as I said, I had no problem with that, but there were ramifications.

At the end of the day, the adventure they went on had consisted almost entirely of combat, and I think adventures like that suck. So, after the game session was over, I was disappointed. I think it could have been way more interesting and exciting than it turned out. But as a game master, what can I do when my players are skipping the content? As I said, I’m not willing to take player agency away and force them to do a thing. In my games, the players have quite a bit of freedom, and that freedom includes skipping stuff.

The problem, though, is that SKIPPING STUFF can easily turn what might have been an awesome adventure into a lame one. And to be clear, I don’t BLAME my players for this. When I put myself into their shoes, I think their decisions made sense in character. Why confront a herd of tank-like dinosaurs? Why investigate a green glow when we already have the t-rex eggs and the wizard has no spell slots? Why interact with the kobolds when we can just move on and find somewhere else to rest?

Interestingly enough, I’m pretty sure one of my players recognized the content skipping during the game session. He’s both an experienced game master and experienced player, and by the look on his face, I’m pretty sure he knew that I was trying to present game elements, only to have the group insist on skipping them. There were a couple times I think he was biting his tongue to not say something. But I’m sure he had his motivations and reasons for keeping silent.

And I don’t blame him, nor anyone else at the table. THERE’S NO BLAME HERE. If anyone is to blame, I would accept that blame as I could have structured the adventure better, I think. This is just me talking through the game session, what happened, and how the content skipping made for an inferior game session. An unfortunate fact can be stated without assigning blame. And, as I said, I made some missteps, too.

SO WHAT IS MY POINT THEN?!?

Believe it or not, I actually have a point. As I was thinking about the game session and analyzing what happened and what may have gone wrong, something occurred to me: the content skipping was largely made possible because the adventure took place in a large, wide-open area: rolling grasslands and a small forest.

If the adventure had taken place in an enclosed area such as a castle, or a townhouse, or a sewer system, it would have been much harder to bypass these scenes. I’m sure that I’ve talked about this before, but there are lots of advantages of running adventures in enclosed locations which we generally just refer to as “dungeons.”

However, now that I go through my back catalog of videos, I’m not sure I have done one on that. So, if you want a video on why dungeons are amazing and solve 90% of every game master problem, let me know in the comments.

The question though remains: how do you run an adventure in an open area and not have players just skip everything that doesn’t directly relate to their quest objective? And I don’t know if I have the answer to that right now.

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• Player handouts
• Hag potion system
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