Party Spends Entire Session In Tavern Despite Dungeon Being Right There

A tabletop RPG party spent an entire four-hour session inside a tavern that was intended as a two-minute narrative device to point them toward the dungeon located literally across the street, instead choosing to engage in exhaustive role-play interactions with every NPC present, including three the DM had to improvise on the spot. The session began with the DM's narration: "You enter the Rusty Flagon tavern. The bartender nods toward the old mine entrance across the road and says, 'Strange things been happening in there. Someone should look into it.' What do you do?" What the party did was not look into it. Rogue player Jessica Tangent asked the bartender his name. The DM, who had not named the bartender, said "Gerald." Jessica asked Gerald about his family. Gerald, who had not had a family thirty seconds earlier, now had a wife named Elspeth and a son studying magic in a distant city. The party's cleric asked Gerald about the local economy. The fighter asked about the ale selection. The wizard asked about the tavern's history. The bard attempted to seduce Gerald, rolled a natural 20, and the table spent forty-five minutes on the consequences. "I had a dungeon," said DM Oliver Railless. "Five rooms. Three puzzles. A boss fight with a custom stat block I spent eight hours designing. A magic item at the end that tied into the cleric's backstory. They were supposed to walk across the street." Instead, the party discovered that Gerald was behind on his tavern lease, agreed to help him negotiate with his landlord (an NPC the DM also had to improvise), rolled a series of Persuasion checks that resulted in Gerald receiving a reduced rent agreement, and then ordered another round of drinks to celebrate. At 10:47 p.m., thirteen minutes before the session's hard stop, the rogue looked out the tavern window and said, "What's that mine over there?" The DM said, "That's the dungeon." The rogue said, "We should check that out next time." Next time is in six weeks due to scheduling conflicts.