Oh, savage irony. Believe it or not, the story isn’t fully formed at the start and this was invisibly taking place the whole time. I had a few major arcs and splits sketched and was open to having players nudge them in different directions. @bizmail_public hinted toward the ‘mutiny against the ship itself’ arc but by then the Bogey arc was starting the next round. If the crew had repaired the engines instead of the repair bay, another arc was waiting for the Coleridge escaping the clutches of the Bogey and running into a different sort of trouble, and so on. Is it more exciting to have that choice explicitly available? I chose to keep it hidden for the sake of immersion.
This was another potential arc along the mutiny arc where different corporate interests broadcast sweet deals to anyone who joins their faction and delivers the Coleridge to them. Your instincts were correct and in some alternate universe, this happened.
Much to my surprise! I was really hoping that the players would breath life into what the heck the dangerous salvage turned out to be this time, why certain types of loot were being found, and so on. I’d intended these to be hooks for role playing, but with a few notable exceptions they were largely untouched so I tossed them back to the NPCs for comment. This observation is spot on and something I could have been more clear from the beginning.
It’s the eternal tension between a GM wanting the players to follow a specific course of action and the players finding their own path in spite of that. For my money, the best campaigns allow for this sort of ad libbing (within reason!) and I try hard to leave room for that in the way the story unfolds. I try to listen to the story the players are telling and feed that back into what comes next. I certainly could have been more open about this at the start of the game or more encouraging within the game via the NPCs. I’ll keep that in mind.
As a wise man once said:
I’ve found that to be a most excellent observation.
