The "B" Campaign

[CraigR]

You always hear about campaigns where the PCs ignore the GM's carefully laid plotline and go off to do their own things. Has anyone run a game where the planned plot continued even though the PCs didn't take the bait? Where the events of that continued in the background of the current game, with NPCs fulfilling the important plot points that the players would occasionally cross paths with?

I just have this scene running through my head where the PCs encounter the NPCs, who have been of a similar level to the party through the whole campaign, and are now the heroes of the realm, while the players are relatively obscure minor actors on the world stage. And asking the GM why, only to have him respond that he gave them the chance to go down that path at the beginning, but they chose not to take it.

Has anything even close to that ever happened in your games?