You’re running a scenario. The PCs have a fistful of leads telling them where they’re supposed to go next. (If you’re using node-based scenario design, they might have a fistful of clues pointing them towards multiple places they could choose to go next.) But instead of doing that, they head off in a completely different direction.
And there’s nothing there.
Maybe they’ve made a mistake. Maybe they’ve made a brilliant leap of deduction which turns out not to be so brilliant after all. Maybe they have good reason to look for more information in the local library or the newspaper morgue or the records of the local school district, but there’s nothing to be found there.
It’s a dead end.
And dead ends like this can be quite problematic because, once they have the bit in their teeth, players can be relentless: Convinced that there must be something there, they will try every angle they can think of to find the thing that doesn’t exist. In fact, I’ve seen any number of groups convince themselves that the fact they can’t find anything is proof that they must be on the right track!
Not only can this self-inflicted quagmire chew up huge quantities of time at the table to little effect, but once the players have invested all of this mental effort into unraveling an illusory puzzle, their ultimate “failure” can be a demoralizing blow to the entire session. The effort can also blot out the group’s collective memory of all the other leads they had before the wild goose chase began, completely derailing the scenario.
Fortunately, there are some simple techniques for quickly working past this challenge.
IS IT REALLY A DEAD END?
First things first: Is it really a dead end?
Just because they’re doing something you didn’t explicitly prep, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. In fact, the principle of permissive clue-finding means that you should actually assume that there is something to be found there.
So, start by checking yourself. Is it really a dead end, or is it just a path you didn’t know was there?
Maybe the players thought of some aspect of the scenario that you didn’t while you were prepping it. (That can be very exciting!) And even if something is a wild goose chase, there can be interesting things to be found there even if they don’t immediately tie into the scenario the PCs are currently engaged with.
(This is also why I’ll tend to give my players more rope in exploring these “dead ends” during campaigns than I will during one-shots: The consequences of doing something completely unexpected can develop in really interesting ways in the long-term play of the campaign, but don’t really have time to go anywhere in a one-shot, and are therefore usually better pruned. Also, if the scenario runs long because you had a really cool roleplaying interaction with Old Ma Ferguson that everyone enjoyed — even though she has nothing to do with the current scenario — it’s fine to hang out the To Be Continued shingle in a campaign and wrap things up in the next session, which is, once again, not an option in a one-shot.)
If it’s not really a dead end, then you should obviously roll with it and see where it takes you. If you don’t feel confident in your ability to improvise the unexpected curveball, that’s okay: Call for a ten minute break and spend the time throwing together some quick prep notes.
Although you don’t need to announce the reason for the break, it’s generally okay for the players to know that they’ve gone diving off the edge of your prep. Most players, in fact, love it. The fact you’re rolling with it shows that you creatively trust them, and they will return that trust. It also deepens the sense of the game world as a “real” place that the players are free to explore however they choose to, and that’s exciting.
FRAME PAST IT
But what if it really is a dead end? There’s nothing interesting where the PCs are heading and, therefore, nothing to be gained by playing through those events.
Well, if there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there.
At its root, this is a problem of pacing. And, therefore, we’re going to turn to The Art of Pacing for our solution. In short, you’re going to frame hard into abstract time, quickly sum up the nothing that they find, and then move on.
For example:
- “You spend the afternoon asking around the Docks for anyone who’s seen Jessica, but you can’t find anyone who saw her down here.”
- “You roll up on Jefferson Sienna, haul him down the precinct, and grill him for four hours. But you come up dry: He doesn’t know anything.”
- “You drive over to Mayfair to see if the library has the book you’re looking for, but their selection of occult books is pretty sparse.”
The most straightforward, all-purpose version of this is to simply tell the players, “You’re barking up the wrong tree. This isn’t the solution, there’s nothing to be found here, and the scenario is in a different direction.” But this direct approach is usually a bad idea: You know all that stuff I said about how much the players love knowing the game world exists beyond the boundaries of your prep and that they’re truly free to do anything and go anywhere? Well, this is basically the opposite of that. Even if you don’t strictly mean it that way, the players are going to interpret this as, “You can only go where you’re allowed to go.”
The distinction between “this isn’t the right way, try something else” and “you did it and didn’t find anything, now what?” might seem rather small. But in my experience the difference in actual play is very large.
(I suspect the difference is partly diegetic: One is a statement about the game world, the other is a directive from the GM to the players. But I think it’s also because the formulation of “you did it” still inherently values the players’ contribution: I didn’t tell you that you couldn’t do the thing you wanted to do; I was open to trying it, you did it, and it just didn’t pan out. It’s a fine line to walk, but an important one.)
The key here, once again, is to quickly sum up the totality of their intended course of action, rapidly resolve it, and then prompt them for the next action: “What do you do next?”
A good transition here can be, “What are you trying to do here?”
This pops the players out of action-by-action declarations and prompts them to sum up the totality of their intention. You then take their statement, rephrase it as a description of them doing exactly that, and then move on.
Player: Okay, I’m going to drive over to Mayfair.
GM: What are you planning to do?
Player: I want to check out the library there, see if they have a copy of My Name is Dirk A that hasn’t been stolen yet.
GM: Okay, you drive over to the Mayfair library to see if they have a copy of the book. But their selection of occult books is pretty sparse. It doesn’t look like they ever had a copy for circulation. It’s about 6 p.m. by the time you pull out. The sun’s getting low. Now what?
It’s a little like judo: You just take what they give you and redirect it straight back at them.
ADVANCED TECHNIQUES
Where appropriate, further empower the players’ intention by calling for an appropriate skill check: Streetwise to ask questions around the Docks. Detective to interrogate Jefferson Sienna. Library Use to scour the stacks at Mayfair Library.
The check can’t succeed, obviously, since you already know that there’s nothing to find here: Jessica wasn’t at the Docks. Jefferson Sienna isn’t involved in this. Mayfair Library doesn’t own the book.
Calling for the check, however, is part and parcel of allowing the player to truly pursue the action they want to pursue and resolving it truthfully within the context of the game world, while also letting the player know that this is what you’re doing.
If the group is currently split up, you can also “disguise” the simple judo of this interaction by cutting away once they’ve declared their intention and then cutting back for the resolution.
GM: Bruce, you find Jefferson Sienna smoking outside of his club. What are you planning to do here, exactly?
Player: I want to haul him down to the precinct and grill him about the missing diamonds.
GM: Great. Give me a Detective check. Tammy, what are you doing?
[run stuff with Tammy for a bit]
GM: Okay, Bruce, you spent the afternoon grilling Jefferson Sienna in Interrogation Room #1. What did you get on your Detective check?
Player: 18.
GM: Hmm. Okay. Unfortunately, you come up dry: He really doesn’t know anything. What are you doing after you cut him loose?
SCENES THAT DRIVE INTO A DEAD END
Sometimes it’s not the whole scene that’s a dead end (whether you planned it ahead of time or not): Jefferson Sienna wasn’t involved in the heist, but he’s heard word on the street that Joe O’Connell was the one fencing the diamonds. That’s an important clue!
… but then the PCs just keep asking questions. They’re convinced Sienna must know something else, or they’re just paranoid that they’ll miss some essential clue if they don’t squeeze blood from this stone. The scene has turned into a dead end.
Now what?
First, you can give yourself permission to just do a sharp cut: If the scene is over, the scene is over. Frame up the next scene and move on.
However, if the PCs are actively engaged with the scene and trying to accomplish something (even if it’s impossible because, for example, Sienna doesn’t actually know anything else), this can end up being very disruptive and feel very frustrating for the players.
You can soften the blow using some of the techniques we discussed above. (For example, you might cut to a different PC during a lull in the interrogation and then cut back to the PCs who were doing the interrogation while framing them into a new scene. You can also just ask, “What’s your goal here?” And when they say something like, “I want to make sure we know everything Sienna has to tell us,” you can judo straight off of that to wrap up the scene.) But we can also borrow a technique that Kenneth Hite uses for investigative games:
When the characters have gained all the information they’re going to get from a scene, hold up a sign that says “SCENE OVER” or “DONE” or something like that. The statement cues the players to let them know that there’s no reward to be gained by continuing to question the prisoner or ransack the apartment or whatever, while using a sign is less intrusive on the natural flow of the scene (so if there’s something they still want to accomplish of a non-investigative nature, the scene can continue without the GM unduly harshing the vibe).
You can adapt this pretty easily to other types of scenes, too. You’re basically signaling that the essential question the scene was framed around has, in fact, been answered, and you’re inviting the players to collaborate with you to quickly bring the scene to a satisfactory conclusion and wrap things up.
Then you can all drive out of the dead end together.