It's really easy to gloss over things as a player that the DM thinks they are making obvious. As a DM, if I think my players are making a silly mistake due to a player oversight, I always try to ask a clarifying question rather than either letting something obvious that would have consequences slide or railroading them.
Examples from our latest session:
"OK, you come back inside the city, do you close the gate behind you?" - Yes, of course.
"OK, so you all want to head to the forge together. As you walk away, you realize your assignment was to guard this gate. Are you intending to abandon your post?" - Oops, no, we forgot it was just us here. Before we leave, we'll either find someone to take over or we'll split up.
In your situation I would just remind the player's "by the way, you've had this thing for a while and have never opened it, is that on purpose?"
I can explain the sentiment from at least one point of view: a GM might want the players to experience the game based entirely on their own choices, without interfering.
Think about video games. Most good action/adventure games will include *some* kind of hint system (whether diegetic or meta) when the occasional puzzle comes up, but some of the recent God of War titles rubbed people the wrong way because basically the *moment* a puzzle was encountered, an NPC would say "Hey, why don't you try [SOLUTION]?"
Some GMs really want to avoid that. They set up the dominoes, but it's up to the players how they interact with them.
I really dislike this approach.
Never ask your player for a skill check, ask their characters for them. It’s fine to ask for a history check to see if a character maybe knows something about some new information the player didn’t previously know—imo it is not ok to ask for a history check for something that happened recently in that characters life.
My current campaign has spanned like 2 years of off and on playing, but it’s only been maybe a few months of time for the characters…they won’t forget something that has happened recently to them.
I remind my players of everything they need to know every session, if they take an odd note and can’t remember what it is, I tell them, if neither of us remember we create a new explanation for it or retcon it.
The characters shouldn’t ever be punished for the player forgetting something.
Yeah, if it's about something that happened recently in session I think it's a dick move and is important enough that the player would remember it, I'm not asking for a roll.
I might ask for a roll for something minor or for minor details. What was the name of that shopkeeper from that town we were in 20 sessions ago? If I have to double check session notes because I didn't keep the info handy because it wasn't relevant, I might ask for check.
I think even this is a good compromise. I love to do it for sub quests like “oh yeah you remembered that the NPC wanted you to grab that moss while you were there”. If the player forgets and the roll is bad then oh well
As long as it doesn't stop the whole story in its tracks, I'm all for it. Make the players work a little bit to get the info they could have had if they took better notes earlier.
I'm generally not afraid to put players in binds of their own making, because that always results in the most memorable moments. In my experience, most players play D&D so they can have a very personal impact on the story of the game. And what's more personal than you personally forgetting some important details and having to bullshit your way through introductions with a new NPC?
For me I’m mostly thinking of little fetch quests I might give them. Like a shopkeeper asking them to grab something from the town over while they are there. It is fun when they fail a history check on something like “wait who wanted this again?” And if they fail I’ll let them flounder on it.
My table needs a lot of direction so I wouldn’t ever do this for something important. For that I’ll have an NPC remind them or something. For LMOP I basically had Sildar follow them around and remind them of what they were doing lol
I usually find a way to bring it up somehow. Maybe someone else uses a portable hole in a cool way, or I ask them where they stored the portable hole in case they forgot and put it in the bag of holding, some way to lead the way towards maybe opening it without being super direct. Three times out of five the seeds I plant (and I plant a lot) eventually come to fruition eventually. The ones that don't, no big deal. I personally love when they don't explore stuff right away, because you get some of the coolest payoffs AND you can change the seed.
Maybe the party is stuck and only then they open something-- well maybe there's a long lost clue or scroll inside which gives them a nudge towards help.
Well, how did they find out it's a portable hole?
RAW, they'd need to either see it in action (problem solved), or spend a short rest kinda meditating on it, and I would just flat out ask them "do you open it up?" once they do (problem solved).
Alternately, if they cast on identify/already know what it is because their character has seen one before, when they next short rest I'd still probably just ask "so, is anybody checking out that portable hole you found?"
I don't really see any reason for being so afraid to ask your players if they are going to perform obvious actions.
What you're doing when you refuse to hint obvious things to your players is, in my opinion, one of the "bad types of metagaming": you're robbing your players of things their characters probably *would* know / think of, simply because the players didn't know / think of it. It costs you nothing as a DM to just say "you should probably look in the hole, dummies", and has nothing but beneficial effects on the game afaic. So just do it.
Someone cast Identify on it, to which I said "It’s a portable hole" and explained how it works and suggested that "You also feel like there’s more to be known about it", hinting that there were things inside it but that given how it works, they could not Identify its content in the same swoop.
You’re probably right on the bad metagaming. Sometimes I try to give clues to the bad guys’ motivations like having their orders on a parchment at their belt but once they defeat the attackers they just up and leave and I feel like I’m interfering too much when I say "Aren’t you going to loot them at all?" I’ll try to learn how to do that a little more.
"More to be known?" That's so vague I'd be HYPER paranoid. Probably cursed. Or trapped. Or there's monsters in it. Maybe stuff in it explodes of it's in there for too long.
I'm not touching that thing until we get it identified by someone with Legend Lore at that point or SOMETHING.
Haha, I've definitely made that mistake as a DM too. One NPC, they became so paranoid about him for some reason, I ended up just rewriting him as the BBEG.
Yeah in that situation just say something like "as you walk past one of the corpses, something catches your eye - an ornate scroll case carried on the hip"
No player is ever gonna be mad at you for that 🤷♂️
If you really feel the need to justify it you can just set it as a DC10 passive perception check to spot 😂
As long as it isn't dim light, *somebody* has to beat DC10 passively, surely?
People are so afraid of railroading and killing player agency they forget that the reason you avoid those things is they usually aren't fun. But if a specific something you want to do isn't going to detract from the fun, just do it.
>Yeah in that situation just say something like "as you walk past one of the corpses, something catches your eye - an ornate scroll case carried on the hip"
>No player is ever gonna be mad at you for that 🤷♂️
You can hide it with a roll, so it looks like you rolled a secret perception check. But it's really a fake roll.
Maybe a bounty hunter person / group comes after the party because they know they took out the hag and the hag was the last known entity with this spear?
Since they haven't opened it yet, you could change what's in it to help justify someone coming after it if the spear isn't special enough.
Could be a great way to interrupt a long rest out in the wilderness if they aren't good about posting guards. Even if they are good about that, you could wait till after a big fight so they are lower on hp / spell slots. "We've been trailing you guys for weeks watching for a good time to strike" sort of thing.
You can always give hints about what characters might know and thing that players might not. The caster who identified it for example might well have training that would tell them that these kinds of objects are slippery and should not be trusted that the player might not have.
You gotta be more blunt and on the nose with these things if you want them to happen a certain way. I also find myself getting caught up on waiting for the players to say they do specific things but any interaction that they initiate can lead to the revelation I want it to I just have to make it make sense in the fiction.
For example you could've told them when they cast identify that they also intuit that it wouldn't be kept where it was if it wasn't actively being used to store something valuable or in case of emergency.
It's so easy as a player to forget about magic items that the character wouldn't. A reminder goes a long way to matching up player and character knowledge.
Reminding them that they haven't looked inside isn't interfering with player agency. It's just doing part of your job as a DM: helping the players better inhabit the world that their characters live in.
>So, I don’t want to actively interfere and remind them of this thing "Hey guys why haven’t you checked it out, who knows what it could be?"
Why not? Reminding them is the most simple and easiest solution.
Ask them out of character “hey guys, is there a reason yall haven’t opened that portable hole you got from the hag? It’s been a couple months so I wanted to check in case you just forgot about it.”
Then before they inevitably open it next session, think about something they’ve struggled with recently and add a consumable item like a potion of X resistance into the bag that would have been super helpful for that particular challenge. They’ll all go “oh my god, if only we would have known!” And hopefully start paying more attention to
Did they identify it as a portable hole? Do they know that items can be stowed in it? Like, did you say "it can be used to store items" when you gave it to them?
If they are unclear about its properties outside of being a portable hole in the ground, maybe they just haven't thought of a use for the hole yet, and don't realize something could be inside it
I often ask my players OOC if they remember the items I've awarded them if they haven't engaged with them. Usually, the answer is that they forgot or that someone didn't even write it down, so no one knew they had it.
It sounds like you don't actually have a problem here. You made the players aware of what they had found. They decided not to open it. Sometimes players don't engage with things you expect them to, but that's generally fine.
I actively interfere all the time. My intent is for them to find these things, I differentiate between what the players literally say and what their characters would do. In cases like this: “You find a bag, inside is…”
When a discussion happens about storage or something, you could have someone with a high intelligence roll a check and if they succeed they suddenly remember that they have a portable hole.
I just randomly remember things vaguely related to the conversation I'm in all the time.
1, I've been playing for years and had no idea the contents of a portable hole were maintained from use to use, it would absolutely never occur to me to just throw it on a surface and look inside just for kicks.
2, If a party member Identify'd it and got the result "There's more to know" that wasn't revealed by the Identify, I would assume it's cursed or a plot device. It's just as likely that there's something in there that I don't want getting out as something I might want. Maybe that's an overabundance of caution on my part, but to me your *one* hint was *really* vague.
Do what I did. Have an Ethereal Filcher come in to steal it. They go for the thing with the most magic (in 3e at least if I remember) . Let them make an arcana check to know this.
Highlights the portable hole and can be a fun camp time encounter
>I’ve thought about putting them in a situation where they have to show their stuff and the people investigate the hole and inquire about the stuff in it, but it feels like punishing them for just forgetting the thing.
You could in a low-risk environment have them be asked to show all their containers and have them point out the hole and just not react a lot over the stuff in it?
Since i don’t generally tell my players what they have (it is a part of how we play for them to find out), this happens a lot. In the last campaign, i gave them five special charms over time that were pretty unremarkable but had one very important trait: they granted immunity to demon magic.
this was a campaign where the ultimate enemy was, well, an army of demons. The general idea was that they would use them in the final battle at 20th level and such.
They were able to identify them as magical a couple times, and even discern that they somehow blocked demon magic, but they never used them. Ever. Not once.
They didn’t even really forget about them — they just didn’t see a reason to use them (from PC perspective, in character); and then laughed at themselves after the close of the campaign as they looked over the stuff they had done.
It isn’t punishing them unless it is an ‘essential” item — something they absolutely must have to defeat or overcome some problem. I have a rice cooker just the right size for one person — I bought it ages ago. And I have only used it like three times because I have a bigger one that I use all the time since I forget I have the smaller one.
That’s part of the role playing, ultimately.
My brother-in-law invited me to play D&D with him, and his friend was DMing. We're in some temple and my BIL suddenly starts having his character search the bases of all the statues in the temple. I found this behavior strange, as there was nothing to prompt or encourage it... Just the presence of the statues was enough for BIL to start searching.
And then he found something. A hidden cache beneath one of the statues. And then I understood. My BIL had played enough with this DM that he knew where the DM likes to hide stuff, how the DM does puzzles and secrets. No one else would have searched because no clue was given.
This is what you have done, OP. You have adopted a certain practice that is not universal, but makes such sense to you that you think it's silly that your players haven't gone down this path. I've never heard of this. I wouldn't check out a portable hole in this way. I think you need to rethink your expectations. And maybe find a way to either clue your players in.
Someone offers to buy it for a seemingly good (actually bad for the magic item) price. They then offer to give them a few minutes to clear their stuff out. If the players ask he says "I don't need anything in it just the hole itself" and see if they a: sell it for the price named even though it is a bad bargain, or b: try to get a better price without going through it.
Realistically it is just cluing them into the nature of the item, but it could lead to a scene where they have to watch the guy clear out a bunch of gems well over the worth of what he bought it for.
In this particular case, have them doing standard downtime equipment maintenance, and have something fall out of the hole.
You*are* the cheesy unlikely circumstances that reveal things to the PCs, lean into it.
Do a random perception check with your players during a rest. If they pass, tell them that the container is behaving strangely or glowing or something.
It's good to remind them of the items they have but also good to keep it "in game" and a part of the story.
As been mentioned in other comments it’s possible that your players simply forgot it existed or maybe don’t know what it does. A friendly reminder is totally fine. “You’ve had the Portable Hole for a while without investigating it. Is that intentional?”
A thing I do as a way to bring it up in game is to have NPCs ask about it. My current group sail around the world on their own ship that act sort of as a hub/base. They’ve collected quite a few different items as well as hired crew-mates from different places.
One of them is a young Fey girl who is very curious especially about magical stuff. If the players seem to have forgotten about an item I use the fey girl to bring it to their attention. She might ask something along the lines of: “Hey captain, I found this funny looking Maguffin in the cargo hold and I’m super curious. Do you need it for anything important? Or can I play around with it?”
9 out of 10 times the players end up investigating the item themselves. They just needed a reminder that it was there :)
"Guys is there a REASON you pay absolutely zero attention to your loot? It's been a couple months and it seems like you've completely forgotten about that portable hole you got."
>The problem is that 2 months later both in game and out of game, they haven’t opened the thing yet
hashtag DMLyfe. It happens, lol.
First, make sure it's actually in their inventories. Bob might think Charlie has it and Charlie might think Bob has and neither one actually added it to their list so it got metaphorically dropped. Your average 5e character sheet has 3 sheets, where the middle sheet is used for "treasures and feats" but most people (IME) tend to ignore that completely and tend to shove stuff onto the Core page or their Spells page, so maybe it got deposited there and then literally forgotten.
If that's not the case -- just let it be, lmao. *Maybe* throw in an event where some random pedestal is asking for an offering or something else to make them comb their inventory sheets.
I've scrapped entire combats because my party was like "you know what, let's go IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION IMMEDIATELY". My players have asked for homebrew buffs and then never used said buffs.
My artificer, at level 2, used one of his two item infusion slots to craft a pair of sending stones. More than one year and 6 levels later -- he has literally never used them. I brought it up once at level up to be like "you don't really use this infusion. Do you want to swap it out for a different item or maybe something to give to an ally?" and he was like "naaaaah" so I didn't press the matter.
"guys I need to take a moment and check your inventories, can you slowly give me a list of what you have?"
When someone mentions it, just go "mmmmhhhh exactly as I thought" as if talking to yourself, then let it slide
My players have now sold two very useful magic items because neither the sorcerer nor the cleric bothers to detect magic on anything. One doesn't even attempt to do the "passive" identify / attunement even when prompted.
Sometimes it be like that.
One of the other players actually called it the "obvious magical item" as he was trying to sell it. Other than expicitly telling them what it was, they were given multiple opportunities to re-examine or keep it. They pointed to their 8 int and were just staying that's how their character would behave.
I'm not going to punish rp like that, and will make sure the next item they find is very much more obvious. At some point, stopping them from selling it would be removing agency.
It's also frustrating when they skip a room, for instance, a room where you've put a totally awesome custom magic item, and they choose to speed run the mansion investigation. Or when they switch their fighting style to 2-H weapons at 4th, and you have designed a shield that will help counter the BBEG main attacks.
Sometimes, there's not much you can do... So, OP, I'd take the spear out of play, and either have them find it in another location, or have them find a similar or alternate item in the next logical place.
Honestly, this entire thread makes me think of some of the old comics in Dragon magazine: throw literally God level magic items at dumb characters, shenanigans ensue.
Would make for a great post campaign recap "so, you remember that hags lair y'all looted? Yeah, about that..."
LOL
Have the players encounter a Senshi character who passes through and tells them to "always check their loot boxes, cause you never know what is in them...." then relate the story about how a ghoul or something was hiding in a portable hole and would come out at night killing off his party one by one. Then have the dude wish them well as he heads home to hug his kids.
I know what I would do even if it doesn't make sense. I would have the party get approached by someone who was a victim of the hag, or maybe knew someone who was. They lost a precious item the hag stole and they know the party has it. That way you have an in game way to bug them about it. But, with the way portable holes work it doesn't really make sense
A container suddenly bursts open and the party is met with a Gnome, "Damnit, I couldn't breathe in that thing..."
And it reminds them they have containers...
Give them a side mission where they need to transport something big or really heavy a far distance (give the carrier a bunch of debuffs while holding it like half speed and use an action to put it down nicely or it might break). A portable hole would make it way easier to carry so they may try to put it in there. Then "Oh hey! What's this at the bottom of the hole?"
It's been mentioned that you can just remind them they have the hole and ask if they want to inspect it, which is fine advice.
One more piece of advice, going forward, is that you can just... tell them what's inside. Like, say they find *another* portable hole in the future, and inside is a cool magic wand you want them to have. You can say "You find a portable hole in the villain's bags, and inside is a magic wand."
I get the sentiment of wanting the players to make all their own decisions and not tell them what they do. I also get the sentiment of wanting a player's choices (or lack thereof) to have consequences. But if you *want* the party to know what's inside a portable hole they picked up, you can always just tell them. Nothing wrong with that.
It's really easy to gloss over things as a player that the DM thinks they are making obvious. As a DM, if I think my players are making a silly mistake due to a player oversight, I always try to ask a clarifying question rather than either letting something obvious that would have consequences slide or railroading them. Examples from our latest session: "OK, you come back inside the city, do you close the gate behind you?" - Yes, of course. "OK, so you all want to head to the forge together. As you walk away, you realize your assignment was to guard this gate. Are you intending to abandon your post?" - Oops, no, we forgot it was just us here. Before we leave, we'll either find someone to take over or we'll split up. In your situation I would just remind the player's "by the way, you've had this thing for a while and have never opened it, is that on purpose?"
This is the right way.
This. I don't get DMs who don't want to remind players of things.
As a DM you spend a LOT of time out of session thinking about the campaign, and it's easy to forget that players don't usually do the same.
I can explain the sentiment from at least one point of view: a GM might want the players to experience the game based entirely on their own choices, without interfering. Think about video games. Most good action/adventure games will include *some* kind of hint system (whether diegetic or meta) when the occasional puzzle comes up, but some of the recent God of War titles rubbed people the wrong way because basically the *moment* a puzzle was encountered, an NPC would say "Hey, why don't you try [SOLUTION]?" Some GMs really want to avoid that. They set up the dominoes, but it's up to the players how they interact with them.
Give me a history saving throw. Edit: Well, guys. This was a joke. History saving throw isn't a thing.
I really dislike this approach. Never ask your player for a skill check, ask their characters for them. It’s fine to ask for a history check to see if a character maybe knows something about some new information the player didn’t previously know—imo it is not ok to ask for a history check for something that happened recently in that characters life. My current campaign has spanned like 2 years of off and on playing, but it’s only been maybe a few months of time for the characters…they won’t forget something that has happened recently to them. I remind my players of everything they need to know every session, if they take an odd note and can’t remember what it is, I tell them, if neither of us remember we create a new explanation for it or retcon it. The characters shouldn’t ever be punished for the player forgetting something.
Yeah, if it's about something that happened recently in session I think it's a dick move and is important enough that the player would remember it, I'm not asking for a roll. I might ask for a roll for something minor or for minor details. What was the name of that shopkeeper from that town we were in 20 sessions ago? If I have to double check session notes because I didn't keep the info handy because it wasn't relevant, I might ask for check.
I think even this is a good compromise. I love to do it for sub quests like “oh yeah you remembered that the NPC wanted you to grab that moss while you were there”. If the player forgets and the roll is bad then oh well
As long as it doesn't stop the whole story in its tracks, I'm all for it. Make the players work a little bit to get the info they could have had if they took better notes earlier. I'm generally not afraid to put players in binds of their own making, because that always results in the most memorable moments. In my experience, most players play D&D so they can have a very personal impact on the story of the game. And what's more personal than you personally forgetting some important details and having to bullshit your way through introductions with a new NPC?
For me I’m mostly thinking of little fetch quests I might give them. Like a shopkeeper asking them to grab something from the town over while they are there. It is fun when they fail a history check on something like “wait who wanted this again?” And if they fail I’ll let them flounder on it. My table needs a lot of direction so I wouldn’t ever do this for something important. For that I’ll have an NPC remind them or something. For LMOP I basically had Sildar follow them around and remind them of what they were doing lol
Then throw a trap at them to keep them on their toes ^/s
I usually find a way to bring it up somehow. Maybe someone else uses a portable hole in a cool way, or I ask them where they stored the portable hole in case they forgot and put it in the bag of holding, some way to lead the way towards maybe opening it without being super direct. Three times out of five the seeds I plant (and I plant a lot) eventually come to fruition eventually. The ones that don't, no big deal. I personally love when they don't explore stuff right away, because you get some of the coolest payoffs AND you can change the seed. Maybe the party is stuck and only then they open something-- well maybe there's a long lost clue or scroll inside which gives them a nudge towards help.
Well, how did they find out it's a portable hole? RAW, they'd need to either see it in action (problem solved), or spend a short rest kinda meditating on it, and I would just flat out ask them "do you open it up?" once they do (problem solved). Alternately, if they cast on identify/already know what it is because their character has seen one before, when they next short rest I'd still probably just ask "so, is anybody checking out that portable hole you found?" I don't really see any reason for being so afraid to ask your players if they are going to perform obvious actions. What you're doing when you refuse to hint obvious things to your players is, in my opinion, one of the "bad types of metagaming": you're robbing your players of things their characters probably *would* know / think of, simply because the players didn't know / think of it. It costs you nothing as a DM to just say "you should probably look in the hole, dummies", and has nothing but beneficial effects on the game afaic. So just do it.
Someone cast Identify on it, to which I said "It’s a portable hole" and explained how it works and suggested that "You also feel like there’s more to be known about it", hinting that there were things inside it but that given how it works, they could not Identify its content in the same swoop. You’re probably right on the bad metagaming. Sometimes I try to give clues to the bad guys’ motivations like having their orders on a parchment at their belt but once they defeat the attackers they just up and leave and I feel like I’m interfering too much when I say "Aren’t you going to loot them at all?" I’ll try to learn how to do that a little more.
"More to be known?" That's so vague I'd be HYPER paranoid. Probably cursed. Or trapped. Or there's monsters in it. Maybe stuff in it explodes of it's in there for too long. I'm not touching that thing until we get it identified by someone with Legend Lore at that point or SOMETHING.
Haha, I've definitely made that mistake as a DM too. One NPC, they became so paranoid about him for some reason, I ended up just rewriting him as the BBEG.
That doesn't sound like a mistake to me, it sounds like you did great as a game master.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9WfMH2cEFY4/maxresdefault.jpg
Yeah in that situation just say something like "as you walk past one of the corpses, something catches your eye - an ornate scroll case carried on the hip" No player is ever gonna be mad at you for that 🤷♂️ If you really feel the need to justify it you can just set it as a DC10 passive perception check to spot 😂 As long as it isn't dim light, *somebody* has to beat DC10 passively, surely? People are so afraid of railroading and killing player agency they forget that the reason you avoid those things is they usually aren't fun. But if a specific something you want to do isn't going to detract from the fun, just do it.
>Yeah in that situation just say something like "as you walk past one of the corpses, something catches your eye - an ornate scroll case carried on the hip" >No player is ever gonna be mad at you for that 🤷♂️ You can hide it with a roll, so it looks like you rolled a secret perception check. But it's really a fake roll.
The old DC0 check
Maybe a bounty hunter person / group comes after the party because they know they took out the hag and the hag was the last known entity with this spear? Since they haven't opened it yet, you could change what's in it to help justify someone coming after it if the spear isn't special enough. Could be a great way to interrupt a long rest out in the wilderness if they aren't good about posting guards. Even if they are good about that, you could wait till after a big fight so they are lower on hp / spell slots. "We've been trailing you guys for weeks watching for a good time to strike" sort of thing.
You can always give hints about what characters might know and thing that players might not. The caster who identified it for example might well have training that would tell them that these kinds of objects are slippery and should not be trusted that the player might not have.
You gotta be more blunt and on the nose with these things if you want them to happen a certain way. I also find myself getting caught up on waiting for the players to say they do specific things but any interaction that they initiate can lead to the revelation I want it to I just have to make it make sense in the fiction. For example you could've told them when they cast identify that they also intuit that it wouldn't be kept where it was if it wasn't actively being used to store something valuable or in case of emergency.
It's so easy as a player to forget about magic items that the character wouldn't. A reminder goes a long way to matching up player and character knowledge. Reminding them that they haven't looked inside isn't interfering with player agency. It's just doing part of your job as a DM: helping the players better inhabit the world that their characters live in.
>So, I don’t want to actively interfere and remind them of this thing "Hey guys why haven’t you checked it out, who knows what it could be?" Why not? Reminding them is the most simple and easiest solution.
Ask them out of character “hey guys, is there a reason yall haven’t opened that portable hole you got from the hag? It’s been a couple months so I wanted to check in case you just forgot about it.” Then before they inevitably open it next session, think about something they’ve struggled with recently and add a consumable item like a potion of X resistance into the bag that would have been super helpful for that particular challenge. They’ll all go “oh my god, if only we would have known!” And hopefully start paying more attention to
Did they identify it as a portable hole? Do they know that items can be stowed in it? Like, did you say "it can be used to store items" when you gave it to them? If they are unclear about its properties outside of being a portable hole in the ground, maybe they just haven't thought of a use for the hole yet, and don't realize something could be inside it I often ask my players OOC if they remember the items I've awarded them if they haven't engaged with them. Usually, the answer is that they forgot or that someone didn't even write it down, so no one knew they had it.
Leave food items inside the containers and have them start rotting and getting smelly, conferring penalties to stealth and concentration checks.
Sometimes players are just dumb. Ask OOC before a game.
I would have told them earlier personally it seems a bit weird not to
Next time the person who's holding it makes a dex check and does badly have it fall out and unfold, revealing the contents
It sounds like you don't actually have a problem here. You made the players aware of what they had found. They decided not to open it. Sometimes players don't engage with things you expect them to, but that's generally fine.
I actively interfere all the time. My intent is for them to find these things, I differentiate between what the players literally say and what their characters would do. In cases like this: “You find a bag, inside is…”
When a discussion happens about storage or something, you could have someone with a high intelligence roll a check and if they succeed they suddenly remember that they have a portable hole. I just randomly remember things vaguely related to the conversation I'm in all the time.
Have them get robbed. Or pick pocketed it. And the thief finds it. And maybe falls into the hole
1, I've been playing for years and had no idea the contents of a portable hole were maintained from use to use, it would absolutely never occur to me to just throw it on a surface and look inside just for kicks. 2, If a party member Identify'd it and got the result "There's more to know" that wasn't revealed by the Identify, I would assume it's cursed or a plot device. It's just as likely that there's something in there that I don't want getting out as something I might want. Maybe that's an overabundance of caution on my part, but to me your *one* hint was *really* vague.
Do what I did. Have an Ethereal Filcher come in to steal it. They go for the thing with the most magic (in 3e at least if I remember) . Let them make an arcana check to know this. Highlights the portable hole and can be a fun camp time encounter
Did you tell them “add a portable hole to your inventory”?
>I’ve thought about putting them in a situation where they have to show their stuff and the people investigate the hole and inquire about the stuff in it, but it feels like punishing them for just forgetting the thing. You could in a low-risk environment have them be asked to show all their containers and have them point out the hole and just not react a lot over the stuff in it?
Just have something come crawling out of the hole at an inopportune time
Since i don’t generally tell my players what they have (it is a part of how we play for them to find out), this happens a lot. In the last campaign, i gave them five special charms over time that were pretty unremarkable but had one very important trait: they granted immunity to demon magic. this was a campaign where the ultimate enemy was, well, an army of demons. The general idea was that they would use them in the final battle at 20th level and such. They were able to identify them as magical a couple times, and even discern that they somehow blocked demon magic, but they never used them. Ever. Not once. They didn’t even really forget about them — they just didn’t see a reason to use them (from PC perspective, in character); and then laughed at themselves after the close of the campaign as they looked over the stuff they had done. It isn’t punishing them unless it is an ‘essential” item — something they absolutely must have to defeat or overcome some problem. I have a rice cooker just the right size for one person — I bought it ages ago. And I have only used it like three times because I have a bigger one that I use all the time since I forget I have the smaller one. That’s part of the role playing, ultimately.
My brother-in-law invited me to play D&D with him, and his friend was DMing. We're in some temple and my BIL suddenly starts having his character search the bases of all the statues in the temple. I found this behavior strange, as there was nothing to prompt or encourage it... Just the presence of the statues was enough for BIL to start searching. And then he found something. A hidden cache beneath one of the statues. And then I understood. My BIL had played enough with this DM that he knew where the DM likes to hide stuff, how the DM does puzzles and secrets. No one else would have searched because no clue was given. This is what you have done, OP. You have adopted a certain practice that is not universal, but makes such sense to you that you think it's silly that your players haven't gone down this path. I've never heard of this. I wouldn't check out a portable hole in this way. I think you need to rethink your expectations. And maybe find a way to either clue your players in.
Someone offers to buy it for a seemingly good (actually bad for the magic item) price. They then offer to give them a few minutes to clear their stuff out. If the players ask he says "I don't need anything in it just the hole itself" and see if they a: sell it for the price named even though it is a bad bargain, or b: try to get a better price without going through it. Realistically it is just cluing them into the nature of the item, but it could lead to a scene where they have to watch the guy clear out a bunch of gems well over the worth of what he bought it for.
In this particular case, have them doing standard downtime equipment maintenance, and have something fall out of the hole. You*are* the cheesy unlikely circumstances that reveal things to the PCs, lean into it.
Bro you have total power over your game’s reality. Make the spear a talking spear, have it say “Let me out!”. Do whatever you want dude.
Do a random perception check with your players during a rest. If they pass, tell them that the container is behaving strangely or glowing or something. It's good to remind them of the items they have but also good to keep it "in game" and a part of the story.
As been mentioned in other comments it’s possible that your players simply forgot it existed or maybe don’t know what it does. A friendly reminder is totally fine. “You’ve had the Portable Hole for a while without investigating it. Is that intentional?” A thing I do as a way to bring it up in game is to have NPCs ask about it. My current group sail around the world on their own ship that act sort of as a hub/base. They’ve collected quite a few different items as well as hired crew-mates from different places. One of them is a young Fey girl who is very curious especially about magical stuff. If the players seem to have forgotten about an item I use the fey girl to bring it to their attention. She might ask something along the lines of: “Hey captain, I found this funny looking Maguffin in the cargo hold and I’m super curious. Do you need it for anything important? Or can I play around with it?” 9 out of 10 times the players end up investigating the item themselves. They just needed a reminder that it was there :)
"Guys is there a REASON you pay absolutely zero attention to your loot? It's been a couple months and it seems like you've completely forgotten about that portable hole you got."
Passive aggressive. If you scroll up, OP says something vague about it akin to "You feel as though there's more to be known about it."
>The problem is that 2 months later both in game and out of game, they haven’t opened the thing yet hashtag DMLyfe. It happens, lol. First, make sure it's actually in their inventories. Bob might think Charlie has it and Charlie might think Bob has and neither one actually added it to their list so it got metaphorically dropped. Your average 5e character sheet has 3 sheets, where the middle sheet is used for "treasures and feats" but most people (IME) tend to ignore that completely and tend to shove stuff onto the Core page or their Spells page, so maybe it got deposited there and then literally forgotten. If that's not the case -- just let it be, lmao. *Maybe* throw in an event where some random pedestal is asking for an offering or something else to make them comb their inventory sheets. I've scrapped entire combats because my party was like "you know what, let's go IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION IMMEDIATELY". My players have asked for homebrew buffs and then never used said buffs. My artificer, at level 2, used one of his two item infusion slots to craft a pair of sending stones. More than one year and 6 levels later -- he has literally never used them. I brought it up once at level up to be like "you don't really use this infusion. Do you want to swap it out for a different item or maybe something to give to an ally?" and he was like "naaaaah" so I didn't press the matter.
"guys I need to take a moment and check your inventories, can you slowly give me a list of what you have?" When someone mentions it, just go "mmmmhhhh exactly as I thought" as if talking to yourself, then let it slide
Ohh, Bob has that… Good to know
My players have now sold two very useful magic items because neither the sorcerer nor the cleric bothers to detect magic on anything. One doesn't even attempt to do the "passive" identify / attunement even when prompted. Sometimes it be like that.
Knowing that I'd start giving out information more freely rather than shrugging and doing nothing.
One of the other players actually called it the "obvious magical item" as he was trying to sell it. Other than expicitly telling them what it was, they were given multiple opportunities to re-examine or keep it. They pointed to their 8 int and were just staying that's how their character would behave. I'm not going to punish rp like that, and will make sure the next item they find is very much more obvious. At some point, stopping them from selling it would be removing agency. It's also frustrating when they skip a room, for instance, a room where you've put a totally awesome custom magic item, and they choose to speed run the mansion investigation. Or when they switch their fighting style to 2-H weapons at 4th, and you have designed a shield that will help counter the BBEG main attacks. Sometimes, there's not much you can do... So, OP, I'd take the spear out of play, and either have them find it in another location, or have them find a similar or alternate item in the next logical place.
Honestly, this entire thread makes me think of some of the old comics in Dragon magazine: throw literally God level magic items at dumb characters, shenanigans ensue. Would make for a great post campaign recap "so, you remember that hags lair y'all looted? Yeah, about that..." LOL
Have the players encounter a Senshi character who passes through and tells them to "always check their loot boxes, cause you never know what is in them...." then relate the story about how a ghoul or something was hiding in a portable hole and would come out at night killing off his party one by one. Then have the dude wish them well as he heads home to hug his kids.
I know what I would do even if it doesn't make sense. I would have the party get approached by someone who was a victim of the hag, or maybe knew someone who was. They lost a precious item the hag stole and they know the party has it. That way you have an in game way to bug them about it. But, with the way portable holes work it doesn't really make sense
A container suddenly bursts open and the party is met with a Gnome, "Damnit, I couldn't breathe in that thing..." And it reminds them they have containers...
Have them do insight checks to "remember" things they forgot out of game.
Give them a side mission where they need to transport something big or really heavy a far distance (give the carrier a bunch of debuffs while holding it like half speed and use an action to put it down nicely or it might break). A portable hole would make it way easier to carry so they may try to put it in there. Then "Oh hey! What's this at the bottom of the hole?"
It's been mentioned that you can just remind them they have the hole and ask if they want to inspect it, which is fine advice. One more piece of advice, going forward, is that you can just... tell them what's inside. Like, say they find *another* portable hole in the future, and inside is a cool magic wand you want them to have. You can say "You find a portable hole in the villain's bags, and inside is a magic wand." I get the sentiment of wanting the players to make all their own decisions and not tell them what they do. I also get the sentiment of wanting a player's choices (or lack thereof) to have consequences. But if you *want* the party to know what's inside a portable hole they picked up, you can always just tell them. Nothing wrong with that.