So I've been letting my players run free with a bunch of

>>48431891
It's not the worst thing that you could do, but there are some ways you could dress it up or twist it to make it a little more palatable. What you should do, first and foremost, is give the party a reason to WANT to be in the know. Maybe some of the major players fuck with the party's tobacco farm, or some strange disease/ magical trend suddenly causes a huge plummet in the price of tobacco. Get the party asking "What? Who? Why?" then remind them that the quasi-omnicient Exposition Ex Machina might be a good source for them to ask.

Even better if said EEM doesn't just slip them a nifty dossier with all the answers, but rather gives them some good details and general ideas, but also points them in the direction of the real meat of the information they will want.

Once you show the party that their inaction DOES have negative consequences that affect them, that should help spurn them to action. Just make sure you provide tools and sources for them to learn what they need to, and to attempt to save the day.

>>48431891
Copy Pasta tells me the only correct response is to have the Lich usher in a thousand years of darkness because they were busy fucking around making gay marriage legal

>>48431928

This is good advice, thank you.

>>48432603
Also sometimes distant events coalesce in a issue than needs to be taken care of here and now, and just happens to explain things in the process. It's hard to give exact suggestions without knowing what mess you actually have, though.

>>48433072

Well, recent events may be summarized as follows:

1. The party caught word of a recent attack and occupation on a stronghold where they know some people. They delayed reacting to this until the occupation had been dealt with by other forces, and now they don't know why the attack happened or who carried it out. They also don't know how many of their personal allies made it out alive.

2. A coup took place in their homeland, severing their lines of communication with their original allies. Their foremost ally has been arrested and incarcerated.

3. When they finally attempted to teleport to one of these locations to follow up on what happened, they had a magic mishap and the teleporter sent them halfway across the world instead. They are now stranded in the wilderness with no idea of who is doing what out in the world, or what the stakes are at this point.

>>48431932
That is the correct response ONLY when the players are being complete retards.

>>48431891
>My question is, how cheap of a panic button would it be if a character simply dropped a summary in their lap with handy notes about who the big players are, what they're doing, and what the stuff that's been happening to the party actually means?

In terms of cheapness, I think, based solely on the information provided, it would be very cheap. If these characters have been faffing about the campaign world for ages, not worrying about the BBEG, then why would anyone care about them in terms of stopping the threat? I think that's the most important aspect that you need to answer first.

"Why would someone look at the recent actions of this group of murder hobos and go out of their way to give them detailed info about the threats of this world aside from the fact that they are the player characters?"

Personally, yeah, take the side of the Lich and the Gay Marriage problem. Unless there is a reason for them to actively think/notice the problem, there's no reason you would just tell them about it. Let their faffing about get properly punished.

>>48431891

If they have no idea whats going on then by keeping them in the dark you're only pranking yourself. Because as soon as you start having it all crumble down the PCs will be annoyed that they don't know what's going on and it will just make you look like a shitty DM to them.

You have to remember that as clear as it is in your head, even if you explained shit to the party theres only so much you can remember without notes in an RPG.

>>48435322

Thing is, they started out by going the full-on hero route, rescuing people and thwarting baddies and eventually getting mixed up with the BBEG and company, which is how they made an acquaintance out of this extra-dimensional being who could possibly drop the information on them. I feel like they've proven themselves sufficiently that someone who opposes the baddies (and knows that they did at one point as well) would be interested in steering them into the conflict. But, yeah, it does feel like their faffing would sort of glossed over if I pulled this.

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>>48435469

You're right, and that's why I'm considering this cop-out in the first place. I have this entire timeline for the villain's plans all sketched out, but they don't get to see that, so they'll probably think a gigantic failure on their part is akin to "rocks fall".

>>48435532
Here's the thing to counter that guys post
>Thing is, they started out by going the full-on hero route, rescuing people and thwarting baddies and eventually getting mixed up with the BBEG and company,
It would be a "Rocks fall" if they didn't even know of the BBEG's plan to begin with at all. THAT would be bad. But they clearly know about it and are choosing to not deal with it, or have even just out right forgotten about it because they think they're playing a JRPG where the meteor up in the sky coming to crash into Midguard will patiently wait for the players to hit up the casino and breed Chocobos.

I think that, given all the info we have no, especially from >>48435478
is that you should remind them, but do so in the form of some incredibly angry people that were expecting the heroes to do something about it. Maybe a benefactor tells them that he's cutting them off and going to hire a new group? Maybe the king who sent them out on the quest is taking their faffing as betrayal and wants them hanged for treason? Maybe one of the accomplished plans of the BBEG comes back and bites them hard in the ass, such as the successfully summoned demon wipes out a village close to them?

At this point, not telling them is okay, but there is a chance that they might not realize that D&D is an active world, not a reactive world, and sending them a violent reminder of such would do them good.

After that though, all bets are off. If they don't catch it after that, then fuck em.

>>48435532

Just give them refresher notes on stuff you've told them already, or stuff they should know just by virtue of being characters that exist in your world. Doesn't have to be much detail, just enough to go "don't say I didn't tell you"

>>48433502
if they are half across the world have them become absorbed in a quest involving wizards and a dimensional pocket paradise gone wrong, with all sort of beastly abominations esque jurassic park that until they got out(week or two) a 100 years went by in their world, invent some new conflict and try to make the fuckers involved this time around, maybe have some old favorite npc grandson become a king or something I dunno OP, that's what I would have done.

>>48433502

Let me save you some time and trouble. What you're actually communicating to your party is that you don't want to follow up on those threads so they should ignore them. Any time a DM responds to "I go to X to see about Y" with "uhm, a teleporter accident sends you to A instead. Oh look, B." sane, kind players are going to think "Oh, he must have prepared B for tonight instead. I guess Y wasn't really that important after all."

If you did not intend for them to feel this way, go apologize, spill your guts, stop expecting them to play 20 questions with the DMPC, and try to get your game back on track before it completely blows up.

Alternatively, keep doing what you've been doing and then act surprised when you keep getting what you've been getting.

>>48438116

This. Very much. If you are sending them across the whole damned world, it sends a pretty strong message that they were on the wrong track.

>>48438116

Well, they were actually responsible for their own teleporter mishap through a critical failure on the mage's part, and then I rolled on a table to see where they came out. They could just as well have ended up two streets over, or in the king's parlor. But you have a point, regardless.