How to hook a player onto a plot without being forceful?

Let the player's choice of action lead their PCs to the plot.

For example, I had a brand new player who I wanted to do several things:

  • Find a job.
  • Go to a cave.
  • Get in a fight.
  • Search for loot.
  • Get home in one piece.

She decided that her character was a highborn noble on the verge of being a married off to someone in another noble house, but wanted to be an adventurer. I gave her a city to roam, details about her parents that she'd know that she didn't already come up with herself, and let her loose in the city "for the first time in the character's life without guards".

She asked me how adventurer's find stuff to do and I gave her a little run-down, including the traditional "check out the local taverns for rumors" and "look for jobs posted around town". She opted for the jobs board and of the several jobs posted there, she opted to go collect mushrooms for a local alchemist who was working on a new and improved healing potion. What do you ya know?! The mushrooms are in the cave I had planned. If she had chosen to help guard a caravan, it'd have been attacked and the loot dragged off to the cave I had planned. If she had decided to help a rancher with his missing sheep problem— again —wolves that are eating the sheep live in the cave I had planned.

Your players shouldn't know what you would like them to do, so it should be relatively easy for you to have them end up where you want them to end up.

Without knowing the specific destination you had planned for them, this is the best I can advise at the moment.

/r/DnD Thread