Yeah, well, hindsight is 20:20 and it's easy enough to say while armchair DMing.
At the time, I felt that the players displayed pretty much zero interest in the mini-game, since they came with mostly completed characters, and I felt that there was an expectation of, "Quit futzing around, we've got our characters, get the show on the road".
Like I said, multiple times. I'm not the right DM for this group. When faced with outright opposition to an idea, I tend to side with players. If they didn't want to do the mini-game, and it seemed that they didn't, I certainly wasn't going to force the issue. Maybe I should have been more forceful? I dunno. It's water under the bridge and I'm certainly not looking for advice on what I should have done differently. I'm saying what mistakes I made in the hopes that others don't make the same mistake.
Your solution is apparently to force the issue and over rule the players. I don't play like that. So, my solution should have been, at the time, to simply step back and let someone else run a game. Instead, I tried to triage the situation and it just didn't work.
I think you misunderstood me, or maybe I misunderstood you.
It seemed that one of the big reasons you felt the game failed was because you didn't run this mini-game that tied them to the setting. And yeah, I know that being in the moment things would be very different, but looking at this from where I am, if them being connected in the way you imagined was that important to the proper running of the story.. then yes, I would have pushed the issue a little.
But, I also have never run into a group of players who would feel like I was forcing them if I pointed out that this was part of my plan to run a better game. Again, be explicit and don't try and be mysterious and hold back information. "I have a plan to tie you guys into different plot hooks using these cards and the background we tie together, could you please give it a shot and let's try this? I think you'll find it a fun excersise and it will make getting into the adventures easier"
And yeah, if they explicitly tell me after that "No, not interested, we just want to get started" then sure, I'll back off. I'm not going to over rule them. But, I'm also not going to assume that they aren't interested. They need to tell me, because my assumptions are worth about as much as a hay penny.
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Naw. Sometimes its just that another character does something the first finds completely unacceptable. PC Glow doesn't paper over everything.
100,000% agree with you on this. It happened to a PC of mine multiple times. But, that was a specific group and a specific problem.
And I guess no PvP is a bad way to put it. One of my most successful sessions once involved quite a bit of player character conflict, but.. everyone knew and agreed to the stakes? I'm not sure how to phrase it.
It wasn't one player slitting the others throat, or a sudden betrayal, but a conflict where both parties agreed on the meta-level that a fight was likely and that they were both okay with that outcome.
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