Pushing the storyline

It happens. You carefully construct your story, drop a ton of hints, and your players don't get it. Sometimes this can lead to a lot of fun; at other times, it's detrimental to your adventure. Even more so when you have only player. As a dungeon master, you sometimes need to spell it out.

Missing hints

If there's one thing players are very good at, it's missing hints or misinterpreting them. This is seldom a problem. For example. the entire session we played last weekend was caused by my player taking action on a misinterpreted hint. It was fun.

Never worry about players missing hints, just make sure you've got plenty lying around.

Missing the storyline

But sometimes it gets worse. Your players are not just missing hints, they are missing the entire storyline. When playing with multiple players, this can still be fun, because group dynamics usually ensure that the players will make up their own storyline. This in turn will make it easier to guide them back into the original story.

When playing with a single player, you are almost by definition engaged in cooperative storytelling. And this requires two people to have at least an inkling of the story that's being told.

I made this mistake in my latest adventure, and for one reason or another I did not realize my player had missed the storyline. Her response was to just trudge along and hope for the best, turning the adventure into a slightly boring railroad. It was during a short intermission that I realized she had no idea about my cherished story-arc.


Pushing it

To solve this problem, I've so far seen two possible solutions. The first solution is to step out of the game and explicily point out what your players missed. The second solution is to turn an NPC into some kind of vending machine for hints. Neither solution feels perfect, so I'm open for suggestions.