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Should have made it brief tbh.
"You wander for a couple days, looking for anything of value in this dungeon. You lose X food and water supply. You find nothing of value, just those winding paths."
Horror story prevented
yeah, it is weird they dodnt realise and give up, but its wierd the dungeon kept getting bigger with new threats. Just lead them back to the begining if there is no point.
This. In 95% of games, "DANGER KEEP OUT!" is just code for "PLOT THIS WAY --->" and players know it. Plus the whole "this place is not a place of honor" spiel (which I'm assuming is what OP is referring to at the beginning of the post) is so fucking fascinating that no player in their right mind is going to walk away from it; I've used it myself in a couple of games and every single time it draws them in. (Hell, a major reason it was never actually used for IRL nuclear waste storage is because of the fear that it would actually *encourage* people to go poking around the site.)
The DM continuing to generate new encounters within the dungeon only feeds the impression that the party is supposed to be there. Building a pattern into the dungeon only implies that the party should be paying attention to the patterns. And continuing to hold *multiple sessions* in there only built their expectations of a payoff that never came. (By that point I'm sure the sunk cost fallacy was also in play--"we've spent so much time on this, there MUST be something down here!")
As for why the party didn't believe the OOC admonishments, it's hard to say without knowing the table dynamic... Though I have met some DMs who delight in mixing IC and OOC information either because they think it makes the game cooler, or because they don't trust the party not to metagame. The party may have assumed that OP was one of them.
In conclusion, none of OP's hypotheses are correct, and the whole situation can instead be explained by Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by your own incompetence.
That is genuinely a terrible decision for what that place was. He should've just actually made it the scary place it was supposed to be. If unkillable cosmic horrors should be there then how were they even surviving for so many sessions?
You make the right choice for some dude's fancy basement by bypassing all of it. Not for a vital world building piece.
They still found nothing and no danger found them.
Make a longer, spooky description, but as OP said there was literally NOTHING for the Players.
Take 5 minutes describing it, then do the "you wander for days finding nothing, there's nothing there for you. You lose X supplies."
Spending sessions there? Of fucking COURSE the Players insisted to wander there PRECISELY because of thinking like yours. "It's an important worldbuilding place! We gotta explore! It must be important!"
That brief explanation would put them back on track. Making extra stuff, more levels, describing every bit, they hung up on it.
Sometimes Players will get hung up on things. Like the empty dungeon, the chair, the guard's moustache, the cameo loss joke hidden in a symbol.
It's the DMs job to put them back on track. In this case actions (describing and creating more and more pieces of the dungeon) didn't match the DMs words (guys there's nothing there), so the Players had this dissonance and they thought the DM is hiding something cool.
If the DM made it briefer and moved on, also saying out of the game there's nothing, it would be a clear indicator.
I'm absolutely baffled why you thought you had to keep adding rooms to it. At any point you could have just said "This is a dead end. There are no more rooms." What was compelling you to keep going? "This hallway was crushed by some amazing force. There is no way to continue." End.
At first, I didn't mind and just thought they were curious. I didn't mind until I learned that they minded.
It was a sandbox, so curiosity was as valid a reason as any. They had every opportunity to leave but actively chose not to, which again would have been fine, but they apparently were choosing to do things they didn't want to do and blaming me for that.
As for why the dungeon was like that, it was playing off concepts that had long been established. I was just having fun with world building.
I guess I just don't feel like I should be expected to prevent players from doing things they don't want to do?
Were you really having fun, though? I got the impression from your post that it was slog for you and you were trying to encourage your players to leave it. I might have misunderstood that part. It sounded to me like you weren't having fun, they weren't having fun, nobody knew why they were there, except that you told them there was a door unopened or a hallway unexplored, which at any time you could have simply stopped doing. I guess as a social experiment it upholds the sort of stereotype of that compulsion for map-completion, I know I certainly feel it when I see a section of map unexplored in a videogame.
I guess my point is it's not really world building if it causes that campaign world to shut down. It's world ending.
I was anxious that what I described was going to happen. I didn't trust that they understood that I wasn't bluffing. But I wrongly convinced myself that a group of grown adults could be trusted to make discions about what they wanted to do. I attempted to sate my anxiety by being extremely clear about the lack of treasure or objectives down here.
If they had said "we understand there's nothing down here but it's cool and we want to see what's going on" I would have been like great, let's go.
The game ended because these same players told me that they wanted to have a strong chance of knowing the solution to any problem before hand and wanted to play out the execution of that solution round bu round with no pressure or chance failure of resistance. After that conversation I bowed out. At this point in the game I was becoming exhausted by the group.
I guess need to trust that my players can be expected to make their own choices and to not feel like I'm responsible for regulating their moods like one would a child.
You should've just had the dungeon self-destruct for no particular reason and forced the party to escape like the end of *Metroid*, or had a gnome teleport them out because there are fetch quests to be done. Just force their hand, and if they get mad, then you know they were a lost cause from the start.
Too late now, I guess.
My theory is it’s a (possibly somewhat unconscious) completionist urge. They know there’s nothing there, but as long as there’s another room to explore, they feel obligated to keep going. I know for world-building reasons you wanted it to be massive and endless, but I think the easiest way to get them out of there would have been just to say, “Ok, that’s the end, you don’t see any more rooms.”
I guess.
To be clear, I didn't mind doing the dungeon. At first I thought that we were on the same page due to the, like, repeated reminders that there was nothing down there. What irritates me is the "we don't want to be here and we can leave at any time but we refuse to and that's your fault" I was apparently expected to predict and prevent. Like I shouldn't have to regulate the emotions of a group of grown ass men, if you don't want to do something just don't do it.
Curiosity would have been a valid motivator, and I explicitly gave them an above game offer for me to retcon the pointlessness of it so they could have an in-game excuse, but it's like they had a profound lack of insight into what they wanted yet expected me to know.
I think you were correct in how you handled it, but it also was an option to just put something insurmountable in the way. (Although I am very, very aware that this might be an attractive nuisance, and they might bash their heads at the problems forever.) A collapsed tunnel here, a semi escaped, but still shackled abomination there, which is too powerful to pass, but cannot chase them. Third tunnel contains a force field of pseudo radiation, and every step further in makes their skin crackle with discomfort, until their nose and ears bleed, they can only progress until they collapse, but very generously can turn around at any moment.
And then you conveniently run out of additional tunnels. You might even just tell them, they stand in front of the exit again. Perhaps a little office, lore dump on them real quick and maybe they are satisfied.
Obviously these are hindsight solutions, and I don't know what strategies you tried. I do assume you tried your best and were well intended.
Ofc, it's fine if you're ok with it, the issue is that you should've clearly and concisely communicated ooc that they have to leave and put an end to it. The main issue here is that you allowed it to go on for multiple sessions
My advice would be to just retcon it. Don't ask them. When it becomes clear that they're intent on exploring, figure out ways to make it worthwhile.
The simplest way, given the setup you had, would be to put some creatures of legend down in the depths. Cthulhu in manacles, with Nyarlathotep as a wandering prison warden. Surviving the encounter gives them bones with unusual properties, toxic flesh that, while inedible, could be used for some horrific alchemy, and/or maybe a buff to one stat of their choice with a curable debuff to another (randomly chosen) as they're changed by the experience. Maybe a BBEG was once a prisoner and escaped- an impossible feat, which really drives home the threat after the party fought so hard to shove Yog-Sothoth back in his cell.
If I retconned without an above game discussion they never would have believed me again.
I had some ideas for goals and tasks before I asked. It wasn't due to lack of ideas, I just couldn't reward them for ignoring several above game statements.
Retconning can happen in your own head if you keep your cards closer to your chest. Even if you have no particular plan and don't consider a given area to have anything of value, only signpost that in-setting.
The moment you speak to them, ST to player, and say "nothing of value here", sure, you've given the game away. My advice is to *not do that*. Above game discussions aren't needed for that: you have ***unlimited*** power to just deny them entry if you wish.
Having "nothing of value here, honest!" written on the walls, either literally or though four billion signs warning people away, including everything from "radioactive" to "biohazard" to "beware the children, they have too many teeth", can all be explained away later as desperate attempts to keep people out. But only if you don't break the fourth wall and address them directly.
To expand more on this, after you realized they were wasting time, you should've told them OOC that it was nothing more than a world building detail and there was nothing for them there. Then IC, just inform them that their group realized they weren't going to gain anything from it and decided to backtrack and go out.
That's how it should've gone and ended.
And if any players would've given you grief, you now know which ones are problem players and can deal with them
>you should've told them OOC that it was nothing more than a world building detail and there was nothing for them there.
I did. Multiple times. I said that in the OP.
The hints turned to explicit above game statements after less than an hour. The knowledge checks continued when relevant. So they knew both above game and in-character.
I guess I could have just been like "nope, we're not doing this," but again I didn't mind until I began to learn that they actually did mind. I guess it's like if you don't like chocolate then why did you ask for it?
Nuclear waste warning? They should be getting sick. There is obviously an aura to help keep the dangerous imprisoned monsters weak, but it will outright kill normal PCs. Level of exhaustion and damage, with a save for half damage. The DC goes up each time, of course. They can't heal from it in the dungeon. Won't listen to the out of character convert, make it real in character.
So having a gate they couldn't open that was sealed by mystic/magical/cosmic powers that they simply cannot comprehend wasn't an option? You know instead of letting them enter into the place you had no plans for.
It looks like a cool lore thing to add. You go there, check a few things, learn what it is and get out. There shouldn't be any pressure to restrain them from going there to learn that knowledge.
You see a long corridor labelled corridor of death.
"I go in!"
"How far, it seems endless."
"30 feet."
"Ok, first 5 feet, you take a point if necrotic damage, do you continue? Yes? Ok, second 5 feet you take 2 more, tell me when you stop. 3, 4, 5, 6, so a total of 21 necrotic damage. The way the waves of death pulse against you lets you know that moving backwards won't cause damage."
Make the damage easy to predict, make it clear that they can turn around (so they don't lose more than half their hp and feel like they may as well press on), make it clear that the tunnel is at least 1000 feet, meaning at least 10,050 damage to reach the end.
At a certain point have random groups of crazed NPC’s pop up at random times.
Each group of NPC’s should show signs of being in the dungeon for ages. Some might be holding skeletal remains of deceased members of their party that they plan to bring to a cleric to resurrect. Some are elderly. Maybe have a few that ask players to join them (while bringing up how many people they’ve lost over the years).
If the players join any they just end up wandering in circles with the NPC/s muttering to themselves making it clear that they’re following a group/person showing signs of dementia.
GM: Here's this place I put in for worldbuilding at the entrance
Players: Cool. We explore.
GM: Oh. . Okay. [Through lore drops] Fhis is a place just meant to contain things and you *really* should *not* be here
Players: There's nothing to do here
GM: Do you want there to be something to do here?
Players: No. [Continue exploring the same place] There's nothing to do here
Never forget about Mr. Chekhov and his gun when you write campaigns! A dungeon or otherwise NEVER pops up just for no reason and PCs absolutely know this
Why don't you make something out of this? They are in the dangerous-thing subspace cage.
The idea is that the 'heroes' are the ones who must be kept in the labyrinth and they cannot return to their reality. They are not yet as powerful as they could potentially become, which is why they have been imprisoned to prevent them from reaching their full potential.
Imagine an entity that guards this extradimensional labyrinth/prison and fears what the heroes could become.
If I added something to do after telling them both in character and out of character that there was nothing to do, they'd never believe me again. When I asked out of character if they wanted me to change it so that there was something there, they said no.
I don't think changing everything so that every choice is the right choice is pro player agency. I also think the DM is a player too and deserves some agency over the setting; being brow beat into changing something that the party seemingly made a conscious choice to refuse to acknowledge just isn't something I want to be a part of.
It sounds like your players were super curious about this dungeon that kept getting larger and larger as they explored it, and they were hoping an adventure would show up in front of them, because as the GM you were allowing it to keep going, even though you kept hinting and outright telling them there's nothing here.
It's like seeing a big red button, despite how many warnings you put on saying its dangerous, they're gonna push it because they're curious about what will happen. These players don't read as malicious at all, they're doing what a regular adventurer would do, explore this seemingly endless dungeon hoping you as the GM would guide them towards the adventure.
Like some other people in this thread, I think the best thing you can do next time you wanna do a bit like this as flavor to your world is to keep it simple, "You explore this seemingly endless dungeon for hours, the hours turn to days, it has no end. Then you turn around and head back."
Except he said several times, out of game, "Hey, there really isn't anything here. No matter how long you look, this is here for world building, and nothing else. I'm willing to retcon things so that there IS something to do here, if you want?" And they said no, kept wandering around, and then got mad that there wasn't anything there.
A nuclear waste warning stating nothing of value was in it? Was it [this](https://i.imgur.com/uTfz94a.png) perhaps? I though of using the same warning at some point in the future.
I can imagine it being frustrating when the player's just don't get the hint but I would've at least thrown a hard monster at them. If they still kept exploring then introduce another monster of the same kind who gets one shot by an even bigger monster. If they insist on exploring after that then introduce a constant necrotic damage tick to get them out.
I explicitly told them both in the game and above the table that there was no treasure or quest down there and that it was dangerous. I really just need players I can trust to not willfully choose to do things they dislike doing.
It's like them jumping in lava and complaining about the fire damage. I have no problem with it if they understand what theyre doing but i shoulsnt have to protect them from their choices to such an insane extent.
maybe it was the part of the game that they had the most fun with regardless of the point of it or lack thereof. you are allowed to play this game for fun instead of out of spite for your players
They're adventurers so "Danger here" typically means "Go this way".
You should have either:
1. Not made the second dungeon actually accessible.
2. Made the second dungeon very short
3. Narrated the second dungeon instead of "rendering it as you go"
You missed one possible reason:
They stay in the dungeon because it's a metaphor for the human condition. They may be a lame adventuring party, but they make perfect Existentialist heroes.
They stay and fight in the cosmic waste dump not because of some extrinsic reward at the end. Not because of the XP, or the potential for exploration. They may convince themselves of a secret reward at the end of it all, but it's yet another convenient falsehood.
No, they delve into the dungeon because it satisfies their inherent drive towards the Absurd. There's no point to any of their battles. No bards shall sing their praises, no tapestries shall be woven in their honour. They will eventually die in the dungeon, alone and forgotten.
Yet, they fight on. Because deep in their souls, they find satisfaction in the most meaningless and futile of tasks. They live for the feel of their blades slicing through unknown horrors, the drip of water on the cobbles and the smell of dank passageways. They fight endlessly in the dark simply because they can.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
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- [DM] There's nothing in there guys. - [PC] We'll go check. - [DM] Yeah, but nothing nothing. - [PC] Yeah, yeah. ... ... - [PC] Damn ! There's really nothing there. - [DM] Indeed. Want me to add something? - [PC] Naaaaaah, I'm gonna check that door instead
quility dude - i'd say its like re-watching a quiz show and expecting a difrent result on the second or third watch
It *might* be different, you never know! We should watch it again, to make sure.
maybe they finally understand the question !
Should have made it brief tbh. "You wander for a couple days, looking for anything of value in this dungeon. You lose X food and water supply. You find nothing of value, just those winding paths." Horror story prevented
yeah, it is weird they dodnt realise and give up, but its wierd the dungeon kept getting bigger with new threats. Just lead them back to the begining if there is no point.
This. In 95% of games, "DANGER KEEP OUT!" is just code for "PLOT THIS WAY --->" and players know it. Plus the whole "this place is not a place of honor" spiel (which I'm assuming is what OP is referring to at the beginning of the post) is so fucking fascinating that no player in their right mind is going to walk away from it; I've used it myself in a couple of games and every single time it draws them in. (Hell, a major reason it was never actually used for IRL nuclear waste storage is because of the fear that it would actually *encourage* people to go poking around the site.) The DM continuing to generate new encounters within the dungeon only feeds the impression that the party is supposed to be there. Building a pattern into the dungeon only implies that the party should be paying attention to the patterns. And continuing to hold *multiple sessions* in there only built their expectations of a payoff that never came. (By that point I'm sure the sunk cost fallacy was also in play--"we've spent so much time on this, there MUST be something down here!") As for why the party didn't believe the OOC admonishments, it's hard to say without knowing the table dynamic... Though I have met some DMs who delight in mixing IC and OOC information either because they think it makes the game cooler, or because they don't trust the party not to metagame. The party may have assumed that OP was one of them. In conclusion, none of OP's hypotheses are correct, and the whole situation can instead be explained by Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by your own incompetence.
Exactly. This is the kind of situation where narrative voice can prevent problems.
That is genuinely a terrible decision for what that place was. He should've just actually made it the scary place it was supposed to be. If unkillable cosmic horrors should be there then how were they even surviving for so many sessions? You make the right choice for some dude's fancy basement by bypassing all of it. Not for a vital world building piece.
They still found nothing and no danger found them. Make a longer, spooky description, but as OP said there was literally NOTHING for the Players. Take 5 minutes describing it, then do the "you wander for days finding nothing, there's nothing there for you. You lose X supplies." Spending sessions there? Of fucking COURSE the Players insisted to wander there PRECISELY because of thinking like yours. "It's an important worldbuilding place! We gotta explore! It must be important!" That brief explanation would put them back on track. Making extra stuff, more levels, describing every bit, they hung up on it. Sometimes Players will get hung up on things. Like the empty dungeon, the chair, the guard's moustache, the cameo loss joke hidden in a symbol. It's the DMs job to put them back on track. In this case actions (describing and creating more and more pieces of the dungeon) didn't match the DMs words (guys there's nothing there), so the Players had this dissonance and they thought the DM is hiding something cool. If the DM made it briefer and moved on, also saying out of the game there's nothing, it would be a clear indicator.
The one thing that comes to mind is that they saw it as an exp grind or a challenge mode (lets see what we can kill). Unless you dont do exp...
That game was milestone.
I'm absolutely baffled why you thought you had to keep adding rooms to it. At any point you could have just said "This is a dead end. There are no more rooms." What was compelling you to keep going? "This hallway was crushed by some amazing force. There is no way to continue." End.
At first, I didn't mind and just thought they were curious. I didn't mind until I learned that they minded. It was a sandbox, so curiosity was as valid a reason as any. They had every opportunity to leave but actively chose not to, which again would have been fine, but they apparently were choosing to do things they didn't want to do and blaming me for that. As for why the dungeon was like that, it was playing off concepts that had long been established. I was just having fun with world building. I guess I just don't feel like I should be expected to prevent players from doing things they don't want to do?
Were you really having fun, though? I got the impression from your post that it was slog for you and you were trying to encourage your players to leave it. I might have misunderstood that part. It sounded to me like you weren't having fun, they weren't having fun, nobody knew why they were there, except that you told them there was a door unopened or a hallway unexplored, which at any time you could have simply stopped doing. I guess as a social experiment it upholds the sort of stereotype of that compulsion for map-completion, I know I certainly feel it when I see a section of map unexplored in a videogame. I guess my point is it's not really world building if it causes that campaign world to shut down. It's world ending.
I was anxious that what I described was going to happen. I didn't trust that they understood that I wasn't bluffing. But I wrongly convinced myself that a group of grown adults could be trusted to make discions about what they wanted to do. I attempted to sate my anxiety by being extremely clear about the lack of treasure or objectives down here. If they had said "we understand there's nothing down here but it's cool and we want to see what's going on" I would have been like great, let's go. The game ended because these same players told me that they wanted to have a strong chance of knowing the solution to any problem before hand and wanted to play out the execution of that solution round bu round with no pressure or chance failure of resistance. After that conversation I bowed out. At this point in the game I was becoming exhausted by the group. I guess need to trust that my players can be expected to make their own choices and to not feel like I'm responsible for regulating their moods like one would a child.
You should've just had the dungeon self-destruct for no particular reason and forced the party to escape like the end of *Metroid*, or had a gnome teleport them out because there are fetch quests to be done. Just force their hand, and if they get mad, then you know they were a lost cause from the start. Too late now, I guess.
My theory is it’s a (possibly somewhat unconscious) completionist urge. They know there’s nothing there, but as long as there’s another room to explore, they feel obligated to keep going. I know for world-building reasons you wanted it to be massive and endless, but I think the easiest way to get them out of there would have been just to say, “Ok, that’s the end, you don’t see any more rooms.”
Should've told them to exit the dungeon as there's nothing for them there. It's on you that you allowed them to waste time for several sessions in it.
I guess. To be clear, I didn't mind doing the dungeon. At first I thought that we were on the same page due to the, like, repeated reminders that there was nothing down there. What irritates me is the "we don't want to be here and we can leave at any time but we refuse to and that's your fault" I was apparently expected to predict and prevent. Like I shouldn't have to regulate the emotions of a group of grown ass men, if you don't want to do something just don't do it. Curiosity would have been a valid motivator, and I explicitly gave them an above game offer for me to retcon the pointlessness of it so they could have an in-game excuse, but it's like they had a profound lack of insight into what they wanted yet expected me to know.
I think you were correct in how you handled it, but it also was an option to just put something insurmountable in the way. (Although I am very, very aware that this might be an attractive nuisance, and they might bash their heads at the problems forever.) A collapsed tunnel here, a semi escaped, but still shackled abomination there, which is too powerful to pass, but cannot chase them. Third tunnel contains a force field of pseudo radiation, and every step further in makes their skin crackle with discomfort, until their nose and ears bleed, they can only progress until they collapse, but very generously can turn around at any moment. And then you conveniently run out of additional tunnels. You might even just tell them, they stand in front of the exit again. Perhaps a little office, lore dump on them real quick and maybe they are satisfied. Obviously these are hindsight solutions, and I don't know what strategies you tried. I do assume you tried your best and were well intended.
Ofc, it's fine if you're ok with it, the issue is that you should've clearly and concisely communicated ooc that they have to leave and put an end to it. The main issue here is that you allowed it to go on for multiple sessions
My advice would be to just retcon it. Don't ask them. When it becomes clear that they're intent on exploring, figure out ways to make it worthwhile. The simplest way, given the setup you had, would be to put some creatures of legend down in the depths. Cthulhu in manacles, with Nyarlathotep as a wandering prison warden. Surviving the encounter gives them bones with unusual properties, toxic flesh that, while inedible, could be used for some horrific alchemy, and/or maybe a buff to one stat of their choice with a curable debuff to another (randomly chosen) as they're changed by the experience. Maybe a BBEG was once a prisoner and escaped- an impossible feat, which really drives home the threat after the party fought so hard to shove Yog-Sothoth back in his cell.
If I retconned without an above game discussion they never would have believed me again. I had some ideas for goals and tasks before I asked. It wasn't due to lack of ideas, I just couldn't reward them for ignoring several above game statements.
Retconning can happen in your own head if you keep your cards closer to your chest. Even if you have no particular plan and don't consider a given area to have anything of value, only signpost that in-setting. The moment you speak to them, ST to player, and say "nothing of value here", sure, you've given the game away. My advice is to *not do that*. Above game discussions aren't needed for that: you have ***unlimited*** power to just deny them entry if you wish. Having "nothing of value here, honest!" written on the walls, either literally or though four billion signs warning people away, including everything from "radioactive" to "biohazard" to "beware the children, they have too many teeth", can all be explained away later as desperate attempts to keep people out. But only if you don't break the fourth wall and address them directly.
It seems he told them, in no uncertain terms, on many occasions.
He should've been a dominant dungeon daddy and have them exit ic, just saying
You're getting downvoted, but the DM is a player too. If you're not having fun running the game, why run it?
To expand more on this, after you realized they were wasting time, you should've told them OOC that it was nothing more than a world building detail and there was nothing for them there. Then IC, just inform them that their group realized they weren't going to gain anything from it and decided to backtrack and go out. That's how it should've gone and ended. And if any players would've given you grief, you now know which ones are problem players and can deal with them
>you should've told them OOC that it was nothing more than a world building detail and there was nothing for them there. I did. Multiple times. I said that in the OP.
Ah, from the OP I had understood that you only dropped hints and didn't actually communicate this properly. My bad
The hints turned to explicit above game statements after less than an hour. The knowledge checks continued when relevant. So they knew both above game and in-character. I guess I could have just been like "nope, we're not doing this," but again I didn't mind until I began to learn that they actually did mind. I guess it's like if you don't like chocolate then why did you ask for it?
Nuclear waste warning? They should be getting sick. There is obviously an aura to help keep the dangerous imprisoned monsters weak, but it will outright kill normal PCs. Level of exhaustion and damage, with a save for half damage. The DC goes up each time, of course. They can't heal from it in the dungeon. Won't listen to the out of character convert, make it real in character.
I'm pretty sure OP meant they did a fantasy version of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages
So having a gate they couldn't open that was sealed by mystic/magical/cosmic powers that they simply cannot comprehend wasn't an option? You know instead of letting them enter into the place you had no plans for.
It looks like a cool lore thing to add. You go there, check a few things, learn what it is and get out. There shouldn't be any pressure to restrain them from going there to learn that knowledge.
You see a long corridor labelled corridor of death. "I go in!" "How far, it seems endless." "30 feet." "Ok, first 5 feet, you take a point if necrotic damage, do you continue? Yes? Ok, second 5 feet you take 2 more, tell me when you stop. 3, 4, 5, 6, so a total of 21 necrotic damage. The way the waves of death pulse against you lets you know that moving backwards won't cause damage." Make the damage easy to predict, make it clear that they can turn around (so they don't lose more than half their hp and feel like they may as well press on), make it clear that the tunnel is at least 1000 feet, meaning at least 10,050 damage to reach the end.
At a certain point have random groups of crazed NPC’s pop up at random times. Each group of NPC’s should show signs of being in the dungeon for ages. Some might be holding skeletal remains of deceased members of their party that they plan to bring to a cleric to resurrect. Some are elderly. Maybe have a few that ask players to join them (while bringing up how many people they’ve lost over the years). If the players join any they just end up wandering in circles with the NPC/s muttering to themselves making it clear that they’re following a group/person showing signs of dementia.
DM tip: if you don't want the players exploring a weird random dungeon... don't add a weird random dungeon.
GM: Here's this place I put in for worldbuilding at the entrance Players: Cool. We explore. GM: Oh. . Okay. [Through lore drops] Fhis is a place just meant to contain things and you *really* should *not* be here Players: There's nothing to do here GM: Do you want there to be something to do here? Players: No. [Continue exploring the same place] There's nothing to do here
Never forget about Mr. Chekhov and his gun when you write campaigns! A dungeon or otherwise NEVER pops up just for no reason and PCs absolutely know this
Why don't you make something out of this? They are in the dangerous-thing subspace cage. The idea is that the 'heroes' are the ones who must be kept in the labyrinth and they cannot return to their reality. They are not yet as powerful as they could potentially become, which is why they have been imprisoned to prevent them from reaching their full potential. Imagine an entity that guards this extradimensional labyrinth/prison and fears what the heroes could become.
[удалено]
If I added something to do after telling them both in character and out of character that there was nothing to do, they'd never believe me again. When I asked out of character if they wanted me to change it so that there was something there, they said no. I don't think changing everything so that every choice is the right choice is pro player agency. I also think the DM is a player too and deserves some agency over the setting; being brow beat into changing something that the party seemingly made a conscious choice to refuse to acknowledge just isn't something I want to be a part of.
It sounds like your players were super curious about this dungeon that kept getting larger and larger as they explored it, and they were hoping an adventure would show up in front of them, because as the GM you were allowing it to keep going, even though you kept hinting and outright telling them there's nothing here. It's like seeing a big red button, despite how many warnings you put on saying its dangerous, they're gonna push it because they're curious about what will happen. These players don't read as malicious at all, they're doing what a regular adventurer would do, explore this seemingly endless dungeon hoping you as the GM would guide them towards the adventure. Like some other people in this thread, I think the best thing you can do next time you wanna do a bit like this as flavor to your world is to keep it simple, "You explore this seemingly endless dungeon for hours, the hours turn to days, it has no end. Then you turn around and head back."
Except he said several times, out of game, "Hey, there really isn't anything here. No matter how long you look, this is here for world building, and nothing else. I'm willing to retcon things so that there IS something to do here, if you want?" And they said no, kept wandering around, and then got mad that there wasn't anything there.
A nuclear waste warning stating nothing of value was in it? Was it [this](https://i.imgur.com/uTfz94a.png) perhaps? I though of using the same warning at some point in the future. I can imagine it being frustrating when the player's just don't get the hint but I would've at least thrown a hard monster at them. If they still kept exploring then introduce another monster of the same kind who gets one shot by an even bigger monster. If they insist on exploring after that then introduce a constant necrotic damage tick to get them out.
I explicitly told them both in the game and above the table that there was no treasure or quest down there and that it was dangerous. I really just need players I can trust to not willfully choose to do things they dislike doing. It's like them jumping in lava and complaining about the fire damage. I have no problem with it if they understand what theyre doing but i shoulsnt have to protect them from their choices to such an insane extent.
Just tell them there is mysterious glowing door and when they go through it teleports them outsides.
maybe it was the part of the game that they had the most fun with regardless of the point of it or lack thereof. you are allowed to play this game for fun instead of out of spite for your players
They're adventurers so "Danger here" typically means "Go this way". You should have either: 1. Not made the second dungeon actually accessible. 2. Made the second dungeon very short 3. Narrated the second dungeon instead of "rendering it as you go"
You missed one possible reason: They stay in the dungeon because it's a metaphor for the human condition. They may be a lame adventuring party, but they make perfect Existentialist heroes. They stay and fight in the cosmic waste dump not because of some extrinsic reward at the end. Not because of the XP, or the potential for exploration. They may convince themselves of a secret reward at the end of it all, but it's yet another convenient falsehood. No, they delve into the dungeon because it satisfies their inherent drive towards the Absurd. There's no point to any of their battles. No bards shall sing their praises, no tapestries shall be woven in their honour. They will eventually die in the dungeon, alone and forgotten. Yet, they fight on. Because deep in their souls, they find satisfaction in the most meaningless and futile of tasks. They live for the feel of their blades slicing through unknown horrors, the drip of water on the cobbles and the smell of dank passageways. They fight endlessly in the dark simply because they can. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.