1st session of my new gaming group!

[sithramir]

Well. We just had our first game in my campaign today. It was pretty fun, however some of the group seemed a bit reluctant to role play. I played with most of them as the DM last year but it was a bit more battle intensive as it was during a large scale war. Now I want to add some more role playing into it and I find them a bit reluctant. I'm scared that perhaps they won't enjoy it. I have no problem with them being bad at it as it takes time to learn but I have a question.

What can I do to make it more exciting? I have a lot of plots and a lot of extremely unique NPC's already rolled up but I fear that the time will be wasted. I created a character after the FR Elaith "The Serpent" Craulnober and introduced him. He will be involved in the PC's lives a lot more than they expect. But only the good role player seemed to work with me in actual conversation and interraction. Yeah box you know who you are. He's the only new person to the group and i'm definitely glad he is participating.

Now out of the 5 characters only 4 made it and the fifth I know LOVES to roleplay a lot more and so I expect it to be a lot more fun with him helping to add excitement to the game when he's back in town next week. Any clue what I can do to get them a bit more into it? I think part of it might be the first session too, but I really see 2 of the characters as kind of unsocial characters. Please let me know how to get this part going because I like it but if they dont' want to do it i'd hate to to just make it more battlelike again and deprive the 2-3 players who do it well and (I assume) enjoy it.

 

[Thanee]

Try to get their characters involved directly. Try to find something of interest for each of them and incorporate that into your plot hooks.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Lareit]

i'm my experiances. Albeit limited in direct table top roleplaying.
People don't roleplay often, and those who do are often not too keen on it.
It's unfortunate, but hopefully if you have 1 person who plays out his chr, then eventually it'll rub off the others. Mostly in effect they'll get jealous of him having all the spot time and they'll want a peice of the action.

Unless of course, his Roleplay is the only time he's the center. Then he might be doomed for obscurity, as would be the Roleplay.

 

[Glyfair]

In my experience, players who don't roleplay often enjoy roleplaying. However, they almost never do if they feel forced into it.

I think gradually increasing the roleplaying helps a lot. It's best to have at least two players who enjoy roleplaying (plus the game master). That way a little bit of roleplaying goes on in small bits and pieces. Often the other players start picking it up.

Another thing that works well is when the combats are roleplaying experiences. Encourage the roleplayer to interact with his opponents and teammates. Have the NPCs interact with the characters. Make sure their personalities come out in the combats.

Have opponents surrender. Make sure those opponents have useful information that they will give out. Have them become allies in future combats and reward the players for interacting with them.

Give them mostly what they want, but gradually shift the focus away from combat by using the combats. Reward them for good roleplaying. Not in a "you get X experience points if you roleplay well," but in a roleplaying sense ("I remember what you did for me, let me help you").

 

[kengar]

Don't push them into roleplaying or they'll balk. One thing you can do is try to RP the NPCs. Speak in character to the party and they'll likely respond.

Some players simply don't enjoy roleplaying. It happens, it's not the end of world. As long as the non-RPers don't interfere with others' enjoyment of that aspect of the game, then it shouldn't be a huge problem. Just be sure there are other things to do in the game (combat, etc.) for the non-RPers.

 

[sithramir]

See that is kind of the problem. I did role play out the important characters and one or two were kind of reluctant as if surprised (even though I did this last year when we played just not as often).

They also had a big confrontation within the group because of a secret one player was keeping. They seemed very uncomfortable but I understand that because they didn't want their characters to end up fighting but if he didn't answer to his bluffs they couldn't do much but either leave or fight which obviously would ruin the party.

I definitely am going to involve them directly and it will happen a lot next session with the 5th player arriving.

 

[Glyfair]

See that is kind of the problem. I did role play out the important characters and one or two were kind of reluctant as if surprised (even though I did this last year when we played just not as often).

Expecting non-roleplayers to start roleplaying in a single session is a bit much. You need to gradually move them in that direction.

How long will it take? It depends on the players. Some will never be comfortable roleplaying (that's a rare bird, though, in my experience).

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

What character types to you have? Try to work their character backgrounds into the story - and if they don't have any, make some up for them! Usually, the players won't mind if that added background works out more or less positively for them...

Create a few NPCs that know different PCs or might have heard of them for various reasons. Make the PC in question interact with the NPC one-on-one - force them to role-play it. It would be best to take the relevant player out of the room for the conversation - in this way he will have to explain it to the others in his own word.

And if he doesn't... well, then he might now have secret motivations of his own that he will act on. In other words, he will have something to role-play...

 

[sithramir]

What character types to you have? Try to work their character backgrounds into the story - and if they don't have any, make some up for them! Usually, the players won't mind if that added background works out more or less positively for them...

Create a few NPCs that know different PCs or might have heard of them for various reasons. Make the PC in question interact with the NPC one-on-one - force them to role-play it. It would be best to take the relevant player out of the room for the conversation - in this way he will have to explain it to the others in his own word.

And if he doesn't... well, then he might now have secret motivations of his own that he will act on. In other words, he will have something to role-play...

I have a mystic theurge/true necromancer a trumpet archon a giant kensai (fighter type from dragon ) and a drow fighter/rog. Theres a wiz/mage of arcane order who wasn't there.

They all have a page write up on background of their characters. I also had 3 of them meet up and discuss how they might know each other or ideas of why some of them would be together as its an odd group.

Thats exactly what I did do. Two of them had private meetings with Elaith. One of them was great cause its the one that likes to role play and the other kind of said nothing and just nodded mostly. Then the trumpet archon had a meeting with the lead cleric and he had a lot of trouble. He did it though and I could tell he was usually the quite fighter type but he's getting into it. The necromancer guy didn't do much role playing but admitted he's not that well at it.

I'l keep it up and i'm sure it might get better hopefully.

 

[boxstop7]

Awwww...I'm touched.

BTW, am I even supposed to be reading this thread?

If they don't play, they don't play. The necromancer was a decent role-player, even if he didn't realize or think he was. The archon just needs time to adjust to his character. My Drow was designed with non-combat interaction in mind, and I'm comfortable doing it, so that's that. It's the giant that concerns me (as you're well-aware). Hopefully you're right, and the arrival of the 5th player will have a positive impact on him. But don't sweat it too much just yet. First session. New characters. New players to adjust to. It'll come together. Worst case, you've got me and the wizard to role-play, so your hard work isn't all for naught.

~J