My players think there is a plot where there isn't one - should I create one?

Question

I am a very new DM, DMing a symbaroum game. It is my own world that is inspired by the symbaroum world, but there is a lot of differences lorewise.

My players just arrived in a town, it is known that many outcasts and people that got in trouble with the law moved here. It is in the deeper parts of a forest (The forest is similar to the Davokar in that it is dangerous). I wanted to introduce to them that this world is a harsh place, and surviving out here in the forest makes people even harsher. Outside of the town are creatures along the goblin variety but smarter.

Before the party arrived a couple in the city had taken pity on what they thought was a wounded younger "goblin" and smuggled it into the city to care for it. This was a plot by the goblins and the goblin snuck out in the night, murdered two guards and opened the gate. The party arrived in the middle of the attack and helped save the city. Several townsfolk died and more were wounded.

The leaders of the city then decided to execute the couple that brought the beastman in the very next day. Since a neighbor saw the goblin and sounded the alarm, they confessed. (Grim-dark world and extra harsh climate made sense to me and I tried to portray that.) My players stopped the execution saying it was too quickly judged and did really well on their rolls to get the people on their side (I probably made some bad choices here really) but now they are convinced it must be some sort of inside job or something else going on here because they don't believe a single "goblin" could have done it on their own and they don't think it makes sense. (I probably did a bad job planning it and the choices I made explaining it from the town's perspective.)

So now my players are leaving no stone unturned, wanting to see the corpses and investigate everything and I have no idea what to do. Do I just make it really "obvious" that there is nothing going on? (Which I kinda though I already did) or should I come up with some sort of hidden plot?

I do want to reward them for interacting with the world and questioning things, but I also don't want to introduce a sub-plot afterwards and potentially dig a million plot holes.

What should I do? Please give me some advice or just some points of view or really anything.

Answer 1

You don't have to do anything. But here's a few options.

1. Do nothing, let them spend time investigating around looking for clues where none exist and eventually give up and move on.

2. Give them a quick reward and resolution by setting up a baddie who hired and bribed the goblin for a personal vendetta against that family because they offended him somehow, convince the town to hang him as the mastermind.

3. Give them 2 but leave a few hints that while his reasons were simplistic, he might have been manipulated by an unknown force due to a far off faction, and you leave them hoping to pick that thread up later.

4. Give them 2 and then build out and play through that entire investigation to the conclusion right now because that is what their attention is on.

5. Do a modified 3 where the reason the mastermind did it somehow links the party to the main story you want to tell. See So You Want to be a Game Master by Justin Alexander for specific advice on how to link clues from one scenario (this town backdrop they are making important) to another (the scenario you have prepped to run) or skim the article Three Clue Rule to get you started.

Your players are having fun, If they are having fun then great. It doesn't mean you have to let them lead you to new stories, but it is nice when you can redirect the new stories that they come up with into somehow making them care more about the story and plot you have already worked on.

Answer 2

A situation like this is something I love as a DM, because proactive players who try to pick up a narrative instead of just following the one I lay out is something of a weakness of mine. Look at this as a chance to introduce themes, plots or messages you want to include in your game. Try to use it to convey the players what kind of world do you want to portray, you can always fund justifications later. Plot-holes can be paved over, but player motivation and interaction is always at a premium.

A few examples of where you could take it

It was not just "a" goblin

As you said, the whole thing arose from a goblin plot, and your players seem to underestimate the creatures. Well, they may be correct, but you don't send the worst on a mission like this, you send the best. Their investigation might find clues, that the infiltrator was special goblin assassin Poisondagger Throatbiter, thus getting a chance for a bossfight, an enemy to chase, or a bit of lore.

It was not a goblin

It was a shapeshifter, trying to destroy the goblins by fueling the fires of hate against them, and trying to rile up the townsfolk to leave the walls and start fighting in earnest. This gives you a chance to introduce lore, give the party the chance to either go for the war, or try to make peace, both of which are popular themes.

It was just a goblin, but the real monsters are humans

Well, this may have been a goblin plot, but it was a stupid one. However, the town leadership has been consistently underfunded the militia, the guards are tired and more often than not slept at their posts, their armour paper thin while somebody built a nice mansion for themselves. If you want to introduce corruption, fallible humans and such themes, this is a good opportunity for that.

It was just a goblin, but something was missing

It doesn't have to be a plot, sometimes coincidences happen. It may have been a guard taking his shift to woo his heart's desire, thus leaving a hole in the defences, it may have been somebody forgetting to reload the lighter fuel, making the guard unable to light a signal, or any hundred of minor things. If you want to drive home, that small things could cost lives, and vigilance is paramount, this could serve as a lesson . Or if you want some low-stakes investigations, finding it out could be a fun session.

It was just a goblin, but also a plot The wounded goblin died silently under the assassins blades, before it could do anything. But those, who aimed to weaken the town for their owns reasons jumped at the opportunity to do just that. It was the goblin's blades who killed the guard, but not in human/elf/whatever hands. It was those same hands who opened the gate. If you want an overreaching antagonist or organization who can fit here, this might be a good chance to introduce them into the plot.

It was just a goblin

The world is a dangerous place. If you want to hammer this home, let them investigate, and let it turn up nothing. Let them see, that even those who are always vigilant need to be prepared, and mercy is a luxury or foolishness. Make sure, that they find evidence, hard evidence that everything happened, as it seems.

Answer 3

Your players don't live in your world

To me this looks like a prime example of situation where your players don't really understand a world that theirs characters are living in. Single goblin can be very lethal depending on the system and setting you play and the easiest action in this situation is to tell this to players. Maybe they think otherwise after being in battle with one or more of goblins, then explain that they were ready to fight and not on the outpost like every other day and were not expecting an attack from behind.

Also remember that if you run the numbers and there is really no chance under the sun that single goblin could do that according to system you are playing in then just tell your players that you messed things up or create a story that will make that thing possible (ofc it is best to tell the players anyway in my opinion).

Answer 4

Keeping the campaign consistent

You mention you are a inexperienced GM. When you want to keep the campaign on track because you fear messing the whole story up, you could simply confess to your players out of game. "Ok guys you did a really good job investigating it but it really was just this one goblin. Sorry there is no secret for you to find and I don't think I can come up with one that doesn't mess the whole cmpaign. Let's get on with the story. Oh and ofcourse you all get 50xp/+1 to investigation/whatever for your effort. Also you now have a good reputation with the town guard, except for this one officer who thought you wasted everyones time, he is mad at you".

There is no shame in admitting to your players that you can't do something as the GM or that you did a mistake. However you should still honor their efforts so they don't feel like they wasted a whole gaming session looking for nothing.

Making the world feel alive

Roll with it. Build a small conspiracy into the campaign. Maybe there are still some goblins hiding in some abandoned building or there is a guardsmen who was blackmailed by the goblins. They have his daughter and did everything they asked for.
Now you have additional story-hooks for a small side adventure (free the daughter) and additional morality choices that are excellent frames for roleplay (Do they report the guard? Do they speak up in his defense like they did for the couple?).

This however has the risk of derailing your campaign even further. That can, depending on your groups playstyle, be a good or a bad thing.
Also you need to watch out with inconsistencies with your planned campaign. Not only future events might be affected but you also need to keep an eye on the things the players already found out as to not retroactively change them and end in utter confusion.

Answer 5

RPGs are improv

TTRPGs are a game of improvisational theatre, played between the GM and players, mixed with some math rocks.

As the GM, your job is to portray the world. To do this, creating a consistent world that doesn't look like it is being made up on the spot is one common and great way to handle it. To this extent, you do world building "behind the scenes" and have things connected that the player's don't experience.

However, anything you haven't said to the players isn't part of the world portrait yet!

You are free to revise stuff the players haven't seen. (You are even free to revise some of the stuff the players have seen, in that everyone makes mistakes). And if you do it with art, the players need never know.

Nobody can prepare for everything

GMs who try to prepare for everything a player could do are doomed. The style of play known as "railroading" sometimes results from a GM who doesn't know what to do when PCs don't follow the path the GM has prepared; honestly, it is often less work to force the players down a railroad than it is to handle PCs doing what they actually do.

Improv isn't anything goes

The fact it is improv doesn't mean that you make up everything as you go along. It means you figure out what the other members of your improv group are interested in and you either run with it, or you sit back out of game and you talk about it not being where you want the game to go.

You may have heard about session 0 and red cards. This is about framing the kind of game you want to play - will there be explicit unaliving of pre-adults? Other kinds of mature content? Will it be a silly game, a serious game, a mixture, or something else? Is it combat-as-sport or combat-as-war? How rigid is the plot?

Those are examples of talking about the game outside of the game. But this can and should happen after the game starts as well!

So, you can decide you don't want to explore the plotline they want to explore, and you can nip it in the bud. There are good and bad ways to do this.

However, in this case, I think it is a waste.

Preparation is key to Improv

The preparation you can do in an improv game isn't "here is everything that is going on". You can create NPCs and relationships, you can create locations, you can even have an idea of what is going on behind the scenes. You can have pre-planned "clues" for what is going on behind the scenes to show to the players when opportunity strikes.

If you keep track of what the players actually do and see, and what they are interested in, you can change the behind the scenes details to be consistent with what they see and highlight the parts that they seem to find interesting.

Like, there might be a potion seller who you planned has a minor clue about the necromancer. The PCs might get obsessed with the potion seller, taking a minor statement the make as indicating they are more important to the story than they seem.

In response, you could ignore the PCs obsession and cut it off -- but players being interested in the world is a resource for GMs to use. Simply saying "nope, wrong guess" wastes that valuable resource.

So you can either improvise that "yes, this potion seller is more than they seem" - maybe keep it vague initially, then between games work out a way to change the plot to make the potion seller more important - or you could "nope, wrong guess" them by dead-ending their investigations and then later on reveal they where right all along (in a way consistent with everything they experienced!) for an extra cruel twist of the knife.

Specific advice

You have players invested in the story. This is a resource you should exploit.

It is true that the story of "a single enemy got in, and somehow caused a huge problem" is over-used in fiction and not really all that plausible. Making a plan like that is frankly stupid because of all the things that can go wrong - why would the villagers not just kill the sick goblin, for example? Why would the sick goblin not be watched as a hostile?

The goblins planning to find a sympathetic idiot, bypassing security, then being able to coordinate an attack with that goblin escaping within the town, is seriously implausible. The number of things that would have to go right in a row for that plan to work is huge, and if things go wrong the goblin doing the acting dies (and possibly also the team breaking into the town).

It is the kind of thing you get in a heist movie, but heist movies only work if the writer of the movie is on your side, or if you are willing to have a 10% chance of success because there is no alternative but death.

So "yes, and..." your players!

They are looking for something bigger. You can now get them invested in details of your town (which you can invent!) They can meet with one or more NPCs who will betray them later, generating valuable resource of "player hatred". They can meet with NPCs who are friendly and who both need help and are helpful, generating the valuable resource of "player attachment".

You found a gold mine. Don't bury it.

Create a new plot around what is actually going on. The couple are scapegoats, framed by whomever is the real mastermind. The real mastermind might have used the goblin as an event of opportunity, to their plans to let the goblins in on and deflect blame. Possibly the goblin was actually killed, or was freed/chased out by the mastermind.

Why the goblins where let in? Maybe the mastermind needed the chaos for some other crime to be covered up. Maybe the mastermind needed a place burned down so they could acquire it cheap. Maybe the mastermind needed to steal something well guarded, and the goblins got it for the mastermind. Maybe the mastermind wanted revenge on someone and the goblins killed them.

However, I do like the idea that the goblins raiding was just a distraction for what the mastermind really did.

So the mastermind:

1. Saw the injured goblin being cared for. Aha!

2. Made a deal with goblins outside to raid.

3. Let the goblins in, freed the injured goblin in order to attach blame to someone else.

4. While the goblins are raiding, used the distraction of the raid to advance their foul plot elsewhere.

5. Faked an alibi for 4 by somehow being seen defending against the goblins (illusion? someone else in a disguise?)

So the players can find evidence of (4), and maybe evidence that (5) was faked, plus the fact that (3) wasn't the injured goblin (maybe a timeline problem - the injured goblin was freed after the gate was opened?!)

That provides a line pointing at the mastermind - motive (4), opportunity (5), and eliminating other suspects (3).

I never thought you'd figure it out

After they figure out the plot that they actually invented for you.

Answer 6

Here are my top 3 rules for good GMing that can be applied to any game system that follows the standard "GM vs. players" dynamic:

1. As the GM, your main job is to provide your players with a good game experience.
2. Remember the golden rule of improv: When someone else has an idea you didn't expect, don't say "No", say "Yes, and...."
3. Nothing that's behind the GM screen is part of the game until you told the players about it. Any future plans, any unspoken world details, anything you decided happened without the players knowing, can be changed spontaneously, and nobody will ever know.

So when someone at the table sees a plot where you didn't plan one, and the players seem to be really interested in exploring this concept further, consider if you really need to say "no", but if you can't just say "yes, and..." roll with it. It's a very satisfying moment for a player when they have a theory about what goes on, and it turns out they were right about it all along.

In order to avoid creating too much of a tangled yarn of unrelated plot threads, it is usually a good idea to try to somehow tie the "and..." part of your "yes" somehow back to the main plot you had planned. If players see a conspiracy, consider if you can somehow make it part of the plan of your big-bad.

However, the rule 2 can be at odds with the rule 1. You can't just "Yes, and..." everything the players come up with, because sometimes players have ideas that just aren't going to lead to a good game experience. You might not be properly prepared to deal with this new story thread. Or it might lead too far away from what you had prepared. Or the rules of the game might be ill-equipped to handle the situations this is going to lead to. Or it might just not be a very good plot direction in general. That's when you as a GM have to say "No". When exactly is that the case? Well, that's a matter of experience and of how comfortable you feel with going "off-script".

But if you decide to say "No", then it's usually a good idea to make sure your "No" is clear and unambiguous. If your players get too obsessed with some completely uninteresting world detail because you gave it a bit too much flavor, then it's usually better to clearly tell the players "listen, this rock is just a rock" instead of wasting an hour of playtime with them trying everything in their might to find out more about it when there isn't anything interesting.

Additionally, there is a third way between "No" and "Yes, and...". And that's "No, but...". The "No, but..." means that when the players pursue a plot threat you don't want them to pursue, you don't simply tell them that they don't find anything. You have them "accidently" stuble upon clues that are unrelated to the plot they imagined but divert their attention back to the actual plot you had planned. For example: You want the players to go dungeon raiding, but they are playing detective. Have all the people they interview mention something about this dungeon. The authorities they ask for assistance tell them they will help them if they investigate that dungeon first. The material clues they find while searching locations related to the unwanted plot all point to that dungeon.

Answer 7

At the end of the day, it is a shared experience where everyone has a part they are playing in the story making up your sessions. You can plan all you want, build an entire world with lots of plot hooks and maps and riddles and traps and all sorts of wonderful things only to start them off with a big flashing neon sign that none of the players pay attention to the way you want.

Avoid the frustration. I found it far better is it to roll with the players, let them write the narrative and be there for support. Toss them a bone or two from their back story. Build environments, not rails. Be willing to adjust anything you come up with to match the overall flow.

For instance, I once spent months designing a very specific world, with maps and a path I wanted the players to take. I gave them a riddle that said basically "to the north goes the seeker..." and the players did everything but.

Answer 8

Frame challenge: you did have a plot, you just didn't notice

... and therefore didn't prepare to resolve it. But that's fine - it's part of the process.

Before the party arrived a couple in the city had taken pity on what they thought was a wounded younger "goblin" and smuggled it into the city to care for it. This was a plot by the goblins and the goblin snuck out in the night, murdered two guards and opened the gate. The party arrived in the middle of the attack and helped save the city. Several townsfolk died and more were wounded.

None of this had to happen, especially if you didn't have any particular reason in mind for it happening. You gave the goblins of your world the ability to at least set a rudimentary trap - one which rhymes with the classics in a way that many players would immediately notice. Given free choice, you had this happen at the moment that the players arrived. (If you simply wanted to establish something about the nature of your crafty goblins, it would have sufficed to have well-known stories in town of past incidents. On the other hand, you could have had more intrigue by making the attack more subtle and having had it finished just before the party arrived.)

And you even use the p-word to describe what they were doing ;)

In good storytelling - at least, following standard conventions - pure coincidences basically don't exist. Because you get to choose what elements are present, every explicitly identified element should have a raison d'être.

The leaders of the city then decided to execute the couple that brought the beastman in the very next day. Since a neighbor saw the goblin and sounded the alarm, they confessed. (Grim-dark world and extra harsh climate made sense to me and I tried to portray that.)

So, you deliberately staged the show trial in front of your players, one which revolved around something the players had experienced first-hand but didn't have complete knowledge of. If you've spent any time on Internet discussion forums, you should know that this is basically a recipe for a) soliciting opinions; b) motivating people (especially ones who want to see themselves as superior to the mere opinion-givers) to get more information about what happened.

and did really well on their rolls to get the people on their side (I probably made some bad choices here really)

Persuasion is not mind control - whether it's a major villain talking to your PCs or your PCs talking to random townsfolk. You're the GM; they're your dice, and outside of some very specific player expectations like combat, you don't have to roll them if you don't want to. Dice are for when it should be possible for an action to succeed within the planned narrative, and also possible for it to fail. Many GMs (and players) seem to treat dice as the tool that gets removed from those few weird diceless systems (really, frameworks for structured RP) to give them their unique character, but really it's the other way around: dice are what get added to an RP session because introducing random chance would improve the experience.

... I actually meant that last point as a side note; but having written it out, it seems like a rather good segue.

Improvisation is the soul of RP

but now they are convinced it must be some sort of inside job or something else going on here because they don't believe a single "goblin" could have done it on their own

No plan survives first contact with the enemy, as they say. It turns out that even if you're on good terms with your players, your plans still won't survive first contact ;)

By setting up this story about the goblins, you gave your players several ideas, not all intended, about what might be going on within your world. They've taken one (i.e., maybe things aren't exactly as they seem), and thereby presented you with possible consequences.

The future is never fully predestined. GMing involves storytelling, but it isn't just telling a story. Players have agency - and so do you; you aren't beholden to what you wrote in your session notes. And, crucially, your players haven't rejected your story outright. They didn't respond to the description of the attack by assuming that it must all be an illusion crafted by a powerful mage. They didn't see the ongoing violence and decide to march onward and look for a more peaceful resting spot. They're clearly sympathetic to the characters you've created - the dead guards, the scrappy humanoid guy who seems too weak to be responsible, and the villagers who brought that guy in.

When I was in high school, I briefly took part at an after-school improv club. I can remember a time when my partner for a sketch made some trivial in-character observation, and I simply said something like "What? No, it isn't." And then I got a lecture from the organizers about "blocking". As it happens, I had actually wanted to roleplay a subsequent argument in which we both developed in-character reasons for our different perspectives - but it was unreasonable to expect the other party to pick up on that, or be able to work with it. The point is, it's important to be able to go with the flow.

The players are disputing an assumed fact about the scenario, because they reason that they have in-character reasons to doubt it. In other words, they did fundamentally the same thing as you: implicitly present options for what happens next.

Now the ball's in your court again.

It's okay to resolve things quickly

You can choose the scope of the mystery from here. It's legitimate to decide that the players are simply mistaken, and things indeed played out exactly as you originally imagined to be the logical consequences of your premise.

But if you do this, the players should leave satisfied. If you let them engage for as long as they want on a fruitless search for evidence of the truth (because it isn't actually true), they will, of course, eventually get bored and giving up. But getting bored takes time and is not fun. Much better to let the players find evidence which makes it clear that the goblin was responsible. (And if, for example, there's just one player who still wants to believe in the goblin's innocence, Ace Attorney style - that might become more a matter of inter-PC social conflict, rather than PC-GM.)

Ideally, too, this experience should teach them something new about the goblins. Maybe your players didn't previously realize how intelligent they are? Or how strong? This will require some investigation into why they don't believe a priori that mere goblins could have pulled off the caper. For example, if they don't think that a goblin should have been able to take out two of the city guards...

Consistency is key

Take what your players are saying into consideration. Does their argument hold water? How combat-ready are your goblins? Or would this attack have to have been more of an assassination than a siege?

If your goblins are strong and your players don't know it yet, show them. If they're as evil and crafty as you make it sound, and they're still lurking in the area, maybe they attack the party. Maybe they even somehow arrange events such that the players are unable to stay overnight in an inn.

You said originally that this was a plot "by the goblins", plural. If your players are looking for a mastermind, what if there is one, who turns out to be another goblin? What if there are several of them, and this attack was a test run of their tactics? Alternately: maybe your goblin could have duped the villagers and opened the gates, but needed help from other goblins to overwhelm the guards. You know, that rhymes with the classics more strongly, except perhaps inside-out.

Answer 9

Is it a better story?

I’ll answer from my personal experience here. When my players come up with theories of what is going on, I always ask myself this question: "is this better than what I had in mind"?

And if it is, and it is not impossible or impractical to go with it, I integrate it into my world.

Players often have amazing ideas that are cooler than what you thought of, or that reveal plot holes or contradictions in your story. If they do, that is an opportunity to integrate it into your story. This has several benefits

• The players feel great, because they are none the wiser you did that, and are happy they figured it out and had the right idea. Probably the most important one.
• You get rid of contradictions or stories that strain belief in the game world.
• You now have a whole table full of creative ideas, instead of just your own.
• The game can be more interesting for you - how the story develops is more of a dynamic between you and your players, than you knowing everything beforehand.
• To avoid wasting hours of them chasing phantoms and failing to make progress, which can be boring for everyone.
• You don’t need to break out of the game and tell your players "Guys, there's nothing there, let’s move on" to avoid that.
• You have much less risk of “railroading” i.e. forcing a preconceived story on your players, no matter what they do.
• Going with it can create amazing ideas, like in this answer, where one idea was that it wasn't just a normal goblin but a legendary goblin assassin that on purpose let itself be captured by the PCs.

There are however also a few downsides:

• It is more work than just sticking to what you have.
• It may require you to be able and improvise if it happens mid-session.
• It may come with its own logical flaws, which you might not realize at first, and then later have to find solutions there.
• You may need to be creative to make their idea work.

You probably can tell that for me, the benefits often outweigh the drawbacks. But there is no right or wrong answer here, it really depends on what you are comfortable with when DMing. If you are not afraid to improvise and adjust your story, and you think what the characters came up with can make for a better story and play experience than what you originally had, I recommend giving it a try.

Answer 10

From a player’s perspective:

It does happen that for some reason the whole group is convinced that an NPC is hiding something or that there is some other secret/conspiracy to uncover.

You then spend hours following NPCs around, forcing your GM to make up things half-assed on the spot instead of playing the great adventure they actually had prepared. I know that railroading is disliked and improvisation is great, but in lots of those cases I wish the GM would simply say “Guys, there really is nothing to discover here.”

In my experience it gets worse the more the GM has to make up things because players often interpret the vagueness as another suspicious clue to investigate. When you ask “Do I recognize the symbol on the door?” and your GM replies “You are not sure” the group who is already full with confirmation bias and suspicion is all “It’s a clue! Let’s kick in the door and ask the owner a few hard questions!”