there’s two answers to this question, one is mechanical and one is social. you as the DM can tell the players no not now, and they can’t do anything about it, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try to do something about it, which depending on the group could be an issue.
so in this scenario a good DM could whip up some misdirection, for example set up a traveling artificer who just passed through town a couple weeks back and who the players could track down as a lead - conveniently in the direction of the main quest objective.
IMO this is kinda one of the problems with DnD 5e, at least if you want to do certain kinds of stories.
The players just have so many tools at their disposal to do anything and everything that its hard to put them into a challenging situation that:
A) Doesn’t involve combat
and
B) Isn’t a completely artificial-feeling scenario that’s been engineered specifically to negate all of the “I don’t have to care about this” buttons that players have on their sheets.
there’s two answers to this question, one is mechanical and one is social. you as the DM can tell the players no not now, and they can’t do anything about it, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try to do something about it, which depending on the group could be an issue.
so in this scenario a good DM could whip up some misdirection, for example set up a traveling artificer who just passed through town a couple weeks back and who the players could track down as a lead - conveniently in the direction of the main quest objective.
this is hard to do on the spot.
IMO this is kinda one of the problems with DnD 5e, at least if you want to do certain kinds of stories.
The players just have so many tools at their disposal to do anything and everything that its hard to put them into a challenging situation that:
A) Doesn’t involve combat
and
B) Isn’t a completely artificial-feeling scenario that’s been engineered specifically to negate all of the “I don’t have to care about this” buttons that players have on their sheets.