iwatt
First Post
I'm currently playing in an FR campaign, were we've reached 11th Level. We're finally reaching the levels were you have an impact in the world around you, and get the chance to interact and further your own plots. But my GM and I have a small problem. About 80% of the party members don't want to interact with the world, and don't react in character to the quests provided for them.
As an example, the last important quest we had involved us finding our mage's 12 year old younger brother 400 miles from his home. The kid had lost his memory, and my cleric's healing attempts indicated "something" was happening to his soul. We start investigating, and figure out that the mage's family had dissapeared one night, together with a whole town. All that's left is a large hole in the ground. As we're travelling towards this town, we're ambushed and the boy is kidnapped. So we set out to find him (after resurecting the mage
). We end up standing infront of a 100' tall obsidian spire, trapped between an Ogre army and an evil Archmage holding the hand of the boy. We had just defeated the last of the 6 Golem defenders arround the spire, so we were around 25% hps, out of spells, facing a TPK scenario even at full resources. So we decide to capitulate. The mage finally aproaches the spire alone, gets stabbed by his brother with a bone dagger (losing 8 points of Con he can only regain through alot of rest). Ah, we also brought in to the prime material plane some fiend an Avatar of Ilmater had locked away eons ago.
The above story was packed chock full of incredibly challenging combats (EL>=PL+ 4 all of them ), which led to very entertaining evenings of gaming. But through all of this, the mage's player had to be prodded into even reacting to the story. We had to resort to a lot of out of campaign chatter to get him to follow the plot. By the way, this story was a result of the players background story (required by DM law in our campaigns) and the fact the mage took the most broken feat ever to be published: Spellcasting prodigy . The DM decided that the character's natural affinity attracted the attention of someone who had the need of high powered blood. (I really liked this, although after losing 8 points of Con that for about three session looked to be only "wish-recoverable", the mage didn't think the same)
The thing is the game started as a group of veteran gamers introducing RPGing to a new generation. But this was 2 1/2 years ago. The newbies are hardcore gamers in their own right (some of them even DMing their own camapigns). So how do we get them to get more involved with their characters. Another of the former newbies plays "the silent-but-deadly elven ranger", so we don't get much play out of him either. It takes him forever to choose favored enmies, and naming his animal companions also is a trial. The last "newbie" has a half-elven rogue with a "mysterious past he never speaks of" (read as he never bothered to develop a background story). This player actually interacts alot though, so I should probably leave him out of the rant.
Actually what kinda a bugs me is that I had to give up part of my character concept in order for the party to even achieve any tasks. Initially my character was an ill-tempered (Cha 7) cleric of Tempus. Before we converted to 3.0 (played 2e with the S&P), he came across a deck of many things, and ended up with an 18 Cha. We decided his acne had magically cleared, and his halitosis had gone away ). I wanted to play him as ill-tempered, rude, and ignorant as before, except that now he had a natural knack for "military" command. To make a long story a little shorter, I discovered a whole new set of cool bennies when converting to 3.0 (can you say Divine Might ), particularly that if we wanted to get anything done, I would have to be the party spokesman. Well what happened is that every time we meet an NPC, all the other players shut down, giving zero input.
So after a very long and rambling rant, what I basically want is advice in how to get my fellow players (and very goood friends by the way) to get more involved in the role playing aspects of the game. My interests are manyfold:
1) Were doing a disservice to very hard-working GM who's making an effort in adding breadth and width to his game. I'm afraid he might get frustrated and go back to the full hack'n'slash mode of before (and I like to keep it mixed).
2) I want to get back to playing the ill-tempered brute of before.
3) Get the other player to realize that roleplaying can be much more than just a combat simulation (which is a lot of fun, but mixing it with more PC-NPC interaction makes it even more so).
If anybody has reached this point, I thank them, and please feel free to give any advice. By the way, I don't think it's a conflict in player style's (roll v/s role), as much as "stage fright".
As an example, the last important quest we had involved us finding our mage's 12 year old younger brother 400 miles from his home. The kid had lost his memory, and my cleric's healing attempts indicated "something" was happening to his soul. We start investigating, and figure out that the mage's family had dissapeared one night, together with a whole town. All that's left is a large hole in the ground. As we're travelling towards this town, we're ambushed and the boy is kidnapped. So we set out to find him (after resurecting the mage
). We end up standing infront of a 100' tall obsidian spire, trapped between an Ogre army and an evil Archmage holding the hand of the boy. We had just defeated the last of the 6 Golem defenders arround the spire, so we were around 25% hps, out of spells, facing a TPK scenario even at full resources. So we decide to capitulate. The mage finally aproaches the spire alone, gets stabbed by his brother with a bone dagger (losing 8 points of Con he can only regain through alot of rest). Ah, we also brought in to the prime material plane some fiend an Avatar of Ilmater had locked away eons ago.The above story was packed chock full of incredibly challenging combats (EL>=PL+ 4 all of them
), which led to very entertaining evenings of gaming. But through all of this, the mage's player had to be prodded into even reacting to the story. We had to resort to a lot of out of campaign chatter to get him to follow the plot. By the way, this story was a result of the players background story (required by DM law in our campaigns) and the fact the mage took the most broken feat ever to be published: Spellcasting prodigy . The DM decided that the character's natural affinity attracted the attention of someone who had the need of high powered blood. (I really liked this, although after losing 8 points of Con that for about three session looked to be only "wish-recoverable", the mage didn't think the same)The thing is the game started as a group of veteran gamers introducing RPGing to a new generation. But this was 2 1/2 years ago. The newbies are hardcore gamers in their own right (some of them even DMing their own camapigns). So how do we get them to get more involved with their characters. Another of the former newbies plays "the silent-but-deadly elven ranger", so we don't get much play out of him either. It takes him forever to choose favored enmies, and naming his animal companions also is a trial. The last "newbie" has a half-elven rogue with a "mysterious past he never speaks of" (read as he never bothered to develop a background story). This player actually interacts alot though, so I should probably leave him out of the rant.
Actually what kinda a bugs me is that I had to give up part of my character concept in order for the party to even achieve any tasks. Initially my character was an ill-tempered (Cha 7) cleric of Tempus. Before we converted to 3.0 (played 2e with the S&P), he came across a deck of many things, and ended up with an 18 Cha. We decided his acne had magically cleared, and his halitosis had gone away
). I wanted to play him as ill-tempered, rude, and ignorant as before, except that now he had a natural knack for "military" command. To make a long story a little shorter, I discovered a whole new set of cool bennies when converting to 3.0 (can you say Divine Might ), particularly that if we wanted to get anything done, I would have to be the party spokesman. Well what happened is that every time we meet an NPC, all the other players shut down, giving zero input.So after a very long and rambling rant, what I basically want is advice in how to get my fellow players (and very goood friends by the way) to get more involved in the role playing aspects of the game. My interests are manyfold:
1) Were doing a disservice to very hard-working GM who's making an effort in adding breadth and width to his game. I'm afraid he might get frustrated and go back to the full hack'n'slash mode of before (and I like to keep it mixed).
2) I want to get back to playing the ill-tempered brute of before.
3) Get the other player to realize that roleplaying can be much more than just a combat simulation (which is a lot of fun, but mixing it with more PC-NPC interaction makes it even more so).
If anybody has reached this point, I thank them, and please feel free to give any advice. By the way, I don't think it's a conflict in player style's (roll v/s role), as much as "stage fright".
