Help me save my game

[greywulf]

Off the top of my head.........

- Talk to the players and find out what they want. Maybe the problem you think isn't the problem there is. Perhaps they're just not enjoying Savage Tides. That's cool, and easy to fix.
- Change the game for one session. Play Microlite20 (link in my sig) or a random dungeon. Make it fast paced, seat of your pants stuff with different characters to their usual. Run a modern spy game, anything.
- Come prepared. Know the adventure well and throw yourself into it. Players respond so if you stand and start waving your arms about, they'll do the same. Over act
- Handouts. Lots of them. Give them pictures, cuttings, scrawled notes, a leg bone (butchers are a great source of props for horror games, btw), anything. It keeps their mind on the game.
- Give the players enough of an XP bonus to advance a level. Nothing boosts a player's interest in a game like Cool New Stuff their characters can do

Hope that helps, and good luck!

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I'd speak to the players you get on with easiest and find out what's bugging people... Helped me out no end after an old campaign imploded.

Possibly run something light and made up as you go. Less thinking involved that way.

One of things I found out is that long boxed text ruins 'my flow' - everything goes all stilted and it never says the right stuff. Nowadays I put it into my own words and keep it brief. Quick questions and answers so the PCs can learn the things they're interested in.

 

[Dremmen]

Have something naked. Random NPC, maybe weird humanoid - just streaking by, buck nakkid.




Wha? Who doesn't perk up at the word "naked"? Then comes - why is he/she naked? where is he/she going, naked? is there more nakedness in this dungeon? how does my PC benefit, if he/she was naked? and so on and so forth.

No?

 

[Rothe]

In your first post you mentioned that you usually slow down play as you stop to look stuff up. I would bet that this is the largest problem. If you're stopping to look things up then it looks as if you are not prepared for the session. If the players percieve the DM as unprepared you cannot expect them to prepare. I sit down about three hours before the game and freshen up on the things the PCs are likely to encounter in that session and the shops and stuff the PCs constantly interact with. If the players do something outside of this I wing it.



All five senses should be used in description, but you also need to use them in the order they would become important in the scene. Also involve the players in the description.
(smell/Sound) "You push open the center hinged, pivot style door and your nostrils are assaulted by the stench of deadfish and salt water, you hear water dripping." Stop talking and call for a fortitude save (DC 10 or so). Anyone who fails steps 10 feet away or throws up
"As you place a torch into the whole the sound of water dripping subsides and is replaced by the sizzling of water dripping onto the torch. Looking into the whole reveals all sorts of small sea-creatures stuck to the walls and floor." Stop talking and call for a wisdom check (DC 10 or so)
(If the wisdom check is passed) "You surmise that this crevace must be filled with water when the tide, which just receeded, comes in."
(Not dependent on the wisdom check) "As you gaze down the whole you see a pool of water sloshing about approximately 20 feet below."

I find that dispersing a couple of rolls into long winded descriptions really keeps the players attention. When you first start using this you'll often have to repeat the last section of text as the PCs were not all listenting, so keep the sections short to facilitate this.

Good stuff, I agree 100%. I tend to make rolls for noticing things secretly (so as not to tip players off) but throwing in a roll is a great way to maintian attention.

 

[Slife]

Game saving optimization

Oh, not what you wanted? Here's some advice more to the point.

Switch things up a little. Get to a transition point in the module, then cut into something different. Read through the boxed text right before the game, and don't worry about getting it word-for-word perfect when you say it.

 

[werk]

Know the adventure

Stop looking things up and make your own adventure. When you make it yourself, you know it.

Published adventures often have a lack of DM investment which translates into a lack of player engagement in my experience. If you insist on running published materials or don't have the ablity to make your own, then at least know the adventure before you play it...not read it, know it. I'm not talking about every little stat and DC, but at least be able to walk through the major challenges in your head with the book closed. Get the gist. Know where it starts, climaxes, and ends...the rest is just details. As long as you have that base knowledge, you can wing it and skip the slow parts or segments that may not appeal to your players...you can modify as appropriate to save your game.

.02

 

[mara]

Stop looking things up and make your own adventure. When you make it yourself, you know it.

Published adventures often have a lack of DM investment which translates into a lack of player engagement in my experience. If you insist on running published materials or don't have the ablity to make your own, then at least know the adventure before you play it...not read it, know it. I'm not talking about every little stat and DC, but at least be able to walk through the major challenges in your head with the book closed. Get the gist. Know where it starts, climaxes, and ends...the rest is just details. As long as you have that base knowledge, you can wing it and skip the slow parts or segments that may not appeal to your players...you can modify as appropriate to save your game.

.02

Try physically rewriting a part of the published adventure. I've found that my Savage Tide sessions run much smoother when I've drawn copies of the maps on a pad of graph paper. It gives me a better sense of how all the parts fit together, rather than thinking of them on a room-by-room basis. This means the dungeon is a little more active, such as backup arriving in response to noise.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Did you hit F5? That's usually what I bind to quicksave.

 

[Chupacabra]

Take a survey of the players. Heck, let 'em reply secretly / anonomously (sp?) so that you get the real unvarnished truth. Find out what they like and stick to that, at least for a while.

Wing it. Learn to wing it. Wing it but don't look like you are winging it. Its a skill that requires practice. Make up descriptions of rooms, of NPC, of events on the fly. If you write down every last detail or rely too heavily on the published notes the game can bog down bigtime.

Lastly: SHAKE 'EM UP! When I experienced a bad "lull" in my campaign about 18 months ago (PC's were more interested in surfing the net on their open laptops than truly contributing to the game) I abandoned the current storyline (without telling them first) and said at the beginning of the next session: "You don't remember how or why but you all blacked out last night and you all wake up in a strange dark cave and you notice that you are inhabiting someone else's body!!!" I had taken all the character sheets and each PC swap bodies with another PC. A player retained his or her INT WIS and CHA (and spells) but "inherited" the new body's STR DEX and CON. I re-caluclated skills accordingly. My players instantly "woke up" big time! For the next few weeks they were rapt with trying to figure out:
1) what the heck happened?
2) who did this to us?
3) how do we get back to our own selves?
4) will the player who is borrowing my body place "me" in too much peril?

The players were quite animated with each other: who was endangering who, etc. The big human barbarian who is now in the gnome bard's body gets mad at the elf wizard who is inhabiting her original big, buff frame and is too reckless about opening doors without checking for traps first, etc.

I let that storyline play out for a few sessions before the party learned how to undo the curse that had been laid on them. It definitely breathed new life into the campaign.

Good luck!

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Have something naked. Random NPC, maybe weird humanoid - just streaking by, buck nakkid.




Wha? Who doesn't perk up at the word "naked"? Then comes - why is he/she naked? where is he/she going, naked? is there more nakedness in this dungeon? how does my PC benefit, if he/she was naked? and so on and so forth.

No?

How would they see him/her. He/she would be invisible because of the negative armour check penalty.

Make sure they'll see the benefit of a naked rogue making tumble checks