help with players being late, unprepared, etc

[thegrumpyyoungman]

ok so i can be pretty anal when it comes to being on time about anything in general...not just DnD. but as an extremely dedicated DM (i'm always looking for new things to excite my players...visual aids, minis, etc) i'm finding that my players arent necessarily allowing this dedication to be a two way street.

so first of all, know that i have a small group (3 guys) and they all have jobs, one is married and has a newborn (i am married and have a 3 year old) so i understand that there are other things more important than playing DnD. case in point, we can only manage to meet up to play every 6 weeks or so. anyway, here are the issues im having:

1. arriving on time - 1 or 2 will arrive AROUND the time i say be there, but more often than not we start 30 - 45 minutes later than when i say be there

2. looking at character sheet the night before or day of game - this drives me crazy as the players will have a problem or question with their character sheet or something and will wait until the last minute to figure it out. they cant, and then we have to figure it out when they arrive for the session.

3. i have to know EVERYTHING - im a relatively new DM, and my players are new as well. i had a conversation with one of my players about wanting them to be more assertive with their actions and try to think outside the box more instead of just attacking regularly. i gave them a handout that had every skill in a chart form and what was needed (skill) to do it. i told my player that this would allow them to read up on what skill does what so they know what to ask to do. his response was "oh i thought we just told you what we wanted to do, and you tell us how to do it". argh! in a way, yes he is right, but im wanting them to take just a little of the pressure off of me to know how to do every single thing in the book.

4. pre-game communication - i email asking if anyone can play on a certain day...no response. i email again...no response. i email some new handouts and stuff to make their game better...no response. worse, it goes back to problem #2 where they look at all the crap im giving them the night before or day of. like i said, its 6 weeks in between games! they have PLENTY of time to spend 15 minutes looking it over.


okay so obviously there are some issues. we have a great time when we play, i just feel like it could be so much better with a LITTLE effort on their part. any time i ask for effort, i get the standard "chill out dude". so i guess what im wanting to know is first...am i just being too anal about all of this? second, if not, how do i get my players to help me out here?

 

[Jacob Lewis]

You're not being too anal by your own standards, but it sounds like you're being too anal by your friends standards. If you guys are still having fun in the session, then you're gonna need to loosen up and come down to their level. Trust me, it'll save you a lot of stress and disappointment, as well as your friendships. My rule of thumb is only to put in as much as you can reasonably get back. If somewhere down the road they want to get more serious, or if they feel like you're slacking on them, then you can tell them you're only picking things up if they're willing to pick up with you.

On the tardiness issue, try this: schedule the game to start about an hour before you actually plan on playing and see how that works out. Just don't let them know you're not planning on starting until 1 when you tell them 12. Look upset when they show up at 12:30-12:45. Rejoice in private that your master plan has worked!

If they really can't be persuaded to take the game more seriously because of the complexity of the rules involved, might I suggest a board game?

 

[pogre]

I used to have the same frustrations. It drove me nuts that I seemed to be the only one who really cared about my campaign. Everyone else was just showing up, often late, and very rarily with updated character sheets. Here's some of the things I did:

1. Relax - You're not going to change them over night, if at all. If everyone is having a good time when you do get together - accept that. If you hold onto your frustrations it will ruin the game for you.

2. Recruit - Get a new player or two. Don't replace current players, but injecting a new player or two into your gaming mix can really bring life back to your campaign. It can be a painful process, and you always have to be willing to tell someone they are not fitting in - but the effort is worth it.

3. Start Close to on Time - So only one player makes it on time. Don't wait. Start the game. Let the other PCs integrate into the story as they show up. Let them update character sheets on the fly as need be. My late players started getting to the game closer on time when I just started when I said I was going to start. They were still late, but I was a lot less frustrated - it was their loss not mine.

4. Prepare Less - Prepare as much as you enjoy preparing. If you love making handouts, props, etc. continue doing them. If you feel underappreciated, scale back your efforts. Do what you need to prepare for a decent session, but don't go overboard. I used to worldbuild a lot and do lots of extras, I figured out my players don't really care - they cannot remember the name of prominent NPCs from one session to the next, and that's OK. Heck, they've made my job easier.

5. Play Some - Consider joining someone else's campaign - if for no other reason than to see the game from the other side of the screen. This has been a great tool for me.

Good luck!

 

[thejc]

gym, welcome to the realm of the underappreciated. We GM's are like poor civil servant volunteers. Mostly its a thankless job. Sorry to hear you are having some trouble. Pogre provides some great suggestions pay close attention to #4. Building an adventure/campaign/world or even modding existing ones can get extremely taxing especially if no one really notices.

I discovered this years ago. The PHB and DMG aren't actual rules. More like suggestions, much like the Pirates Code. They are no secret WotC police that will bust in to punish you for not doing it exactly right. As for the rules you can take a couple different approaches. Before 3e I had taken about a 1 1/2 break from D&D played the intro adventure in Dragon magazine. Then started a campaign on my own. I didn't know what all you could do. We learned as we went.

So you can do what I did. The PC's told me what they wanted to do. I told them to roll figured out what I thought was fair in my brain and then answered yay or nay. Other than basic combat. If their was a clear definitive statement THEY could find in the corebooks it overturned my ruling.

Or you could answer "Look on your sheet" refering them to the cool skill matrix thing you made. If they don't know, then I guess they can't. This might be harsh at first. But it may encourage them to gain a working knowledge of how the system works.

Happy Gaming....trust me theres a road through this. Keep plugging away.

 

[S'mon]

For 3e or 4e your friends really need to put some work in to it. If they won't, 1e-2e AD&D or a similar "We say what we do, you say what happens" system would be better.

 

[TarionzCousin]

3. Start Close to on Time - So only one player makes it on time. Don't wait. Start the game. Let the other PCs integrate into the story as they show up.

This, but don't integrate them the second they arrive. Make them wait for an appropriate place in the story for their characters to get involved.

This is basic negative reinforcement stimulus/response character behavior modification in practice. If they have to wait at least 2 or 5 minutes, they are being "punished" for not having the correct behavior (arriving on time).

 

[thegrumpyyoungman]

thanks for the tips guys, i really do appreciate it. here are my thoughts:

1. starting on time - we play at around 11 a.m. on saturday morning so telling them to show up at 10 a.m. just wont work. believe me, ive thought about it . i may tell them to show up at 11 and then plan on starting at 12 and see how that goes. i really do like the idea of starting when i say im going to start and just letting them lose out...then again, i only have 3 guys which is just barely enough to play a game. i dont want to piss off my players for fear of losing one.

2. DM work - i actually do enjoy preparing for the next game and having all kinds of handouts and stuff. my players do appreciate the time and effort i put in so it's not that i think they dont appreciate what i do. i guess i just wish they would show more effort in being prepared.

i think at this point im just going to have to deal with it and just enjoy playing. when i get more players, then i can be a little more strict with how i want to run the game.

 

[Goonalan]

I have much the same problem (although nowhere near as bad) with both the campaigns I DM, the thing I have to keep telling myself is that because I enjoy modding scenarios, prep et al then I do more of it- that's my choice, I shouldn't blame my players when they don't put in as much work.

However I am also of the opinion (based on my last 12 or so years of gaming (I've been gaming for 30 years in total please note)) that the obsessive players are all gone, I used to DM for guys who would turn up to session 2 having bought a new mini, rewritten their characters sheets over, drawn a portrait of their character and made up a six page character bio. Rose tinted spectacles I thought, then I went through my boxes in storage and files of players character sheets, annotated, with stories and strange equipment they had made in town for their characters- love poems they wrote the female dwarf in the party, their battle song et al.

For me the nutters (I mean obsessive) players are gone, perhaps its my age, or the age (2011), but back then when there was three good things on TV and all the computer games were down the arcade then my players would invest a whole lot more in their fantasy adventures, and my players weren't nerds either, they didn't read fantasy fiction (or many books at all), they did however seem to live at time vicariously through their PCs.

My suggestion then is to do enough to make the game work (if you want or enjoy doing more then that is its own reward).

Try to get the PCs to arrive 10-20 minutes early by making a snack, coffee etc. go through character sheets and any pre-game Q&A then.

Ask at the end of every session if there's anything need doing before the next game and chivvy between times.

Of my five face-to-face players then only one has the PH (the first one), they don't have any other books, any of them- or a DDI subscription... Admittedly my guys are between 35 and 52 years old, Iain (the oldest) is Grey Morlock, War Wizard for approx. 5 hours every other Sunday, and at no other time inbetween. The same pretty much goes for the other players, there's only one of them outside of game time I can actually have a conversation with (via any medium), they play because they enjoy the game- not to do maths or be available at other times etc.

I've learned to live with this, although I have at times wanted to kill at least one of them...

Good luck

Goonalan

 

[Umbran]

1. starting on time - we play at around 11 a.m. on saturday morning so telling them to show up at 10 a.m. just wont work.

I used to run a game that was supposed to start at noon on Sunday, and had a problem with late players. My solution - fresh baked goods. If you are present at the given time, you get to eat the fresh coffee cake or whatever the offering for the week was. If you were late, you could still play, but the baked goods were not for you.

One time of watching everyone else eat was enough to get the players in question to show up on time.

 

[thegrumpyyoungman]

I have much the same problem (although nowhere near as bad) with both the campaigns I DM, the thing I have to keep telling myself is that because I enjoy modding scenarios, prep et al then I do more of it- that's my choice, I shouldn't blame my players when they don't put in as much work.

However I am also of the opinion (based on my last 12 or so years of gaming (I've been gaming for 30 years in total please note)) that the obsessive players are all gone, I used to DM for guys who would turn up to session 2 having bought a new mini, rewritten their characters sheets over, drawn a portrait of their character and made up a six page character bio. Rose tinted spectacles I thought, then I went through my boxes in storage and files of players character sheets, annotated, with stories and strange equipment they had made in town for their characters- love poems they wrote the female dwarf in the party, their battle song et al.

For me the nutters (I mean obsessive) players are gone, perhaps its my age, or the age (2011), but back then when there was three good things on TV and all the computer games were down the arcade then my players would invest a whole lot more in their fantasy adventures, and my players weren't nerds either, they didn't read fantasy fiction (or many books at all), they did however seem to live at time vicariously through their PCs.

My suggestion then is to do enough to make the game work (if you want or enjoy doing more then that is its own reward).

Try to get the PCs to arrive 10-20 minutes early by making a snack, coffee etc. go through character sheets and any pre-game Q&A then.

Ask at the end of every session if there's anything need doing before the next game and chivvy between times.

Of my five face-to-face players then only one has the PH (the first one), they don't have any other books, any of them- or a DDI subscription... Admittedly my guys are between 35 and 52 years old, Iain (the oldest) is Grey Morlock, War Wizard for approx. 5 hours every other Sunday, and at no other time inbetween. The same pretty much goes for the other players, there's only one of them outside of game time I can actually have a conversation with (via any medium), they play because they enjoy the game- not to do maths or be available at other times etc.

I've learned to live with this, although I have at times wanted to kill at least one of them...

Good luck

Goonalan

fantastic response goonalan....exactly what i needed to hear. i dont think i have any "nutters" in my group other than me of course, and after hearing your story i dont think i want one. the love poem and battle song and what not are kinda over the top for the game that i run. i do require any new player that joins our fray to write up a back story for their character. this can be as extensive or as short as they like, but it does force them to invest a little time into their character.

anyway, i think im investing all this time into my game because i CHOOSE to like you said, but then i get a little miffed when my players dont want to invest the same amount of time. im not sure how to fix this other than for me just to chill. it will be tough but i'll figure it out. maybe my players will want to invest more as they continue to play (they are new to the game after all). im hoping thats the case.