How do you encourage players to interact with the environment?

Bawylie · Oct 26, 2018

jayoungr said:
This makes a lot of sense, thanks.

But that's telegraphing danger. How am I supposed to telegraph safety?

The same way we telegraph things you might want “Restaurant: Next exit,” “Last Gas for 100 miles,” “Garage Sale Saturday Morning.”

How about this one: “the room contains a fountain of clear, cool liquid. A silver cup rests on the fountain’s stone rim. The little bit of water that remains in the cup and the fingerprint smudges on the handles suggest someone has recently drunk from the fountain.”

Or this one: “the painted circle on the floor radiates an arcane energy - to the uninitiated, it feels benignly tingly in the stomach - like butterflies. To those who have studied the arcane arts, the sensation is similar to the featherfall spell.”

Or this: “The table before you has a variety of bottled liquids of various colors, all sealed tight. Someone has scratched ‘blue = safe’ into the wood surface.

Now you’ve got no idea what any of this stuff does. But you can get the sense that certain courses of action aren’t harmful to you. And as long as you trust me to be truthful here, you shouldn’t have a problem trying them out. As for me, I will never telegraph safety and then switcharoo to danger. That’s fundamentally unfair.

Ex: “The vampire recoils from your holy symbol in revulsion and fear. The church isn’t far from here - if you run you might just survive.” And then you get there and think you’re safe but the vampire strolls in anyway. That would be cheating as far as I’m concerned.

Here’s another good one: “as you’re brushing the cobwebs off the door frame you catch some movement in the corner. It’s nothing but a coil of rope, but you’re certain it moved!” That’s a good either-or. Could be a magic rope, could be a disguised snake, whatever, but it gives the adventurer an opportunity to interact before anything happens (good or bad).

Oofta · Oct 27, 2018

Bawylie said:
Here’s another good one: “as you’re brushing the cobwebs off the door frame you catch some movement in the corner. It’s nothing but a coil of rope, but you’re certain it moved!” That’s a good either-or. Could be a magic rope, could be a disguised snake, whatever, but it gives the adventurer an opportunity to interact before anything happens (good or bad).

Good suggestions, but I know some players that would fireball first and ask questions later. The dread gazebo is no match for the paranoid PC.

Jeremy E Grenemyer · Oct 27, 2018

jayoungr said:
Any suggestions on how I can encourage players to touch things and try stuff out?

I like filling dungeons and above ground encounters with examples of the unfortunate results of NPCs interacting with strange somethings the wrong way.

Throw in visible treasure, or introduce a clue or two at some point prior to the encounter about how to interact with the trap/monster/magical thing correctly, and players usually take the bait.

There's always that one player in the group who likes to figure out puzzles, or at least assumes they're good at it. If you can hook that person, the rest of the party may come along.

Oofta · Oct 27, 2018

In addition to the other great advice, you could do something radical. Talk to your players after the game and ask for feedback. Talk about what you had done, why, and if there is anything you could have done differently.

Different people look for different things and have different expectations. For example, would the players have any reason to believe that you're running a world where there would even be a reason to climb your ladder? If I were walking down the street and saw one, I'd just say "huh, that's weird" and move on.

Another thing is that you may be over-thinking and over-planning things. There's been plenty of times when I've thrown in stuff that I thought was super-awesome and the players just kind of shrugged. I had to learn (well, still learning) to design my games for my players. Maybe your group just isn't the type of group to enjoy these kind of things so you'll need to work with them to figure out what they will enjoy.

Good luck, and remember there's no such thing as a perfect DM the trick is to keep trying and to remember to not be too hard on yourself (or your players) and to have fun.

cmad1977 · Oct 27, 2018

Make certain they know that they’re failure to investigate cost them.

Draegn · Oct 27, 2018

Apply common sense to simply things. Not everyone is going to have a key that opens a door or object in their pockets.

Once when my players split the party the non-thieving portion came across a group of orcs. One had his hand down a hole, one who was standing muttered "Hurry up I'm hungry." The paladin, ranger and druid then laid low the orcs all the time thinking the one orc was trying to catch a rabbit. They never thought to look for a clumsily dropped key to the small masterful chest the orcs had.

jayoungr · Oct 27, 2018

Oofta said:
For example, would the players have any reason to believe that you're running a world where there would even be a reason to climb your ladder?

Yes, it was in a weird Escher-type house where there were lots of weird features. The floor of the room with the pole had a sort of cobblestone effect; when they stepped on a particular stone, it would light up, and so would the corresponding stone on the "ceiling." That was meant to suggest that the floor and the ceiling were the same, just reversed. But they noticed there were some magic runes on the pole (the enchantment that did the gravity reversal), and that seemed to scare them. I can't remember now whether they rolled arcana to figure out the runes or not. If they did, they rolled badly. Most of the party is not trained in arcana. There's no wizard in the group.

Quickleaf · Oct 27, 2018

[MENTION=6702445]jayoungr[/MENTION] Sounds like you may have a convergence of 3 issues at your table:

1. A group possibly pre-disposed to cautious play, further entrenched into risk-aversion after being "scarred" by Tomb of Horrors.
2. Imbalanced risk vs. reward ratio when it comes to exploration.
3. Insufficient clues coming from the DM to let players know there's something worth exploring here.

I've addressed these very issues in my own gaming groups over the years in a "silver buckshot" approach by:

Making it clear to players early on that exploration will be rewarded, either by overtly stating so, by demonstrating it through NPC stories of discovering fortunes/magic, or having a PC discover an un-trapped secret door with treasure early on.
Making an effort to design dungeons with beneficial secrets/tricks/treasures in the environment. When running modules, make an effort to insert such things into the module if they are lacking.
Giving the players a surplus of actionable clues (even when it seems I'm being "obvious" on my side of the screen, it rarely seems that way to the players).

For example, a pole that could be climbed, which would reverse gravity so that characters could walk on the ceiling. Most of the features didn't trigger combat, and the ones that did weren't anything the party couldn't handle.

Let's use this example.

1. Where is the reward in walking on the ceiling? Are there lots of floor-based traps like pits / tripwires / pressure plates in the dungeon which walking on the ceiling would avoid? If so, you'll want to telegraph those floor-based traps in advance somehow (see below).

2. Consider the player's perspective. Might other aspects of this dungeon make a player feel adverse to interacting with the pole? A trapped pole elsewhere would be particularly egregious, but a trapped lever or trapped stairs could similarly discourage interacting with the pole (which might be mistaken for a control mechanism or a way to move between dungeon levels).

3. Come up with at least three clues about the pole's magical nature and utility. To do that, you need to understand whether it's magic is limited to creature or if it exerts an effect on objects, and how long its magic lasts once a creature is affected. First, maybe there's a skeleton or corpse on the ceiling, or some other remains of a creature whose gravity was reversed but died before climbing back down; alternately, the corpse may be on the floor but appear to have fallen to its death from the ceiling. Second, maybe there are numerous fingerprints on the pole indicating it has been touched by humanoids repeatedly and recently. Third, maybe anyone coming close to the pole experiences a feeling of buoyancy and notices their hair "standing on end" and sweat/blood trickling upwards against gravity. And fourth, maybe there are geckos which avoid the dungeon floor in preference for climbing along the walls/ceiling; this clue means even if the players don't figure out the pole trick, they can still deduce that avoiding the floor is safer.