How do YOU deal with passive players?

[Zappo]

For a sporadic problem...

My first step with a passive player is to create some combat action and make sure that he gets to act first.

My second stop is to separate him from the party and then create some combat action on him, making sure to use extra detail in descriptions.

For a long term problem...

My third step is to engineer a scene where he's forced to take an important decision and the rest of the party can't do much to help (because they are absent, biased or just don't know what to say).

My fourth step, if all else fails, is to carefully craft a story specially designed to hit the player's emotions. A hard and harsh trick to pull off, especially with a person I know little, but it works.

 

[Dungannon]

As a self-described "passive" player, I must say that most of the ideas in here are good ones. Keep in mind, though, that it may not always be the player who's passive, just the character. In my last adventuring group, I was a half-orc rogue who kept to himself out of self-preservation (frequent hostile encounters with humans taught him to limit social interaction), so he was a passive character in social situations. Throw in the fact that the rest of the party contained an alcoholic dwarven cleric, a bipolar elven wizard, an amnesiac human, and a halfling barbarian, and they were usually too busy trying to upstage each other to pay my character much attention outside of the dungeon.

 

[pavitra]

summary

It seems the basic idea is to "seed" the character, similar to seeding clouds to make rain. If the character is lacking that stimulated oomph, insert stimulation. Drop her a cursed sword, a rumor of intrigue, an heirloom swathed in legend... anything inherently interesting, to give her what she lacks. You might even ask her player to invent more personality traits. Whatever it may take to change a psyche fit for an NPC into the heart of a true adventurer, make it so.

Does my analysis seem correct?

 

[was]

Have an NPC address them directly or tailor an encounter/situation that addresses the skills of their pc.

 

[Ibram]

Unfortunatly sometimes players are just passive.

One player in my campaings has always been passive, he rarely ever pushes himself forward unless I force the issue (which I rarely do).

Unfortunatly his passivity seems to be infecting the rest of my group... they all seem extremely passive, which makes adventure creation extremely hard.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

I try to make sure during character creation (and after) that the player clearly knows they're empowered, and give them some suggestions of things they could do.

Not in-character hints, or plot hooks, but "Hey, here are some things you could try, if you'd like," to the guy at the table.

 

[Rel]

I know it can be tough in a small group but I think you should just let this guy be. I've told this story before several times but I used to play with a friend of mine who was very much the "Casual Gamer" but I didn't understand that term back then. Myself and the other GM's for our group would always push this guy to do more and build big plot hooks around him, trying to draw him into the game more. And we were always frustrated and disappointed when he refused to take the bait.

Finally I confronted him directly about it and he got pretty mad. He explained that he really just wanted to hang out with us (we were all very close friends) and enjoyed playing some small part in the game but didn't want to be in the spotlight or have the plot centered around him. He couldn't understand why we didn't respect his style of play and were constantly pestering him with these plot hooks and so forth when he was more than content to just hang in the background and enjoy the scenery.

I took a hard look at how I had been pushing him and always irritated with him for not playing the game the same way that I would have and realized that he may not be the most valued player in terms of driving the plot, but he was a very good friend of mine and I enjoyed hanging out with him too. I also read Robin Laws' book that described his behavior perfectly as a Casual Gamer. So I eased off and things were much better after that. He would step in and shine occasionally but more often he just did his Casual Gamer thing and everybody was a lot happier.

Unfortunately, several months after this big epiphany, he died at a horribly young age. One of my regrets is that I didn't come to the realization sooner that just because he didn't engage the game as fully as I would have didn't mean he wasn't having fun. I wish that we could have spent more of our years gaming together without all the frustration and irritation that came from me thinking of him as a passive player.

Make of that what you will.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I enjoy having an occasional passive player, my group is 6-8 people and if everyone is involved and self motivated then I have to deal with more chaos. I will occasionally use the seeding techiques described earlier, and the passive players can have moments of brilliance if they are encouraged. But I dont try for it every game.

One of my passive players turned out to be an excellent DM, but unfortunatly lacked the drive to run more than 5 sessions. With any luck we can convince her to run another short game/modual in the future. 'Casual gamer' sums her up pretty well.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

In 2e, one of my gaming groups had a player that invested very little time in roleplaying and was minimal when it came to combat. He played a ranger and would just make gestures to indicate that he was attacking with two weapons.

It was a large gaming group, so I tried running some smaller adventures where it was just a few players, and that had better results. But when we got back to the full group, he would start regressing into the background.

So, I had an assassin poison his character and the next adventure was a race to find the cure. The poison was magical and was slowly freezing his character, starting with one of his hands, so that he couldn't dual-wield and thus couldn't use the usual hand-signals to describe what his character was doing. I also made sure that when the adventure was done, his character received a good amount of treasure.

It worked, actually, and since this was right before the end of the campaign, boosted his involvement level for the final adventure. But I have a feeling that over time he would've drifted back to his old ways.

I think what bugged me was that to me, what he was doing wouldn't have been my idea of fun gaming. So, as the DM, I was never sure if he was enjoying the game. But who am I to say that he wasn't?

 

[Emirikol]

Passive Players Suck

Wondering how the DMs out there deal with players who are passive--? .

I've been involved with the RPG for about 15 years now, I've seen a LOT of different player styles. When I first started DMing for multiple tables, I felt it was MY JOB to try to get lazy players involved with the game. Then I WOKE UP and realized that if someone doesn't want to or try to participate, I wasn't going to take valuable DM attention away from the players who do want to participate just to give these folks warm-fuzzies and hold their hand.

It sounds harsh, but it's the truth. If you've got a player who doesn't contribute, don't bother. Tell the PLAYERS to get this player involved or he'll be kicked out. There's nothing worse than some jackass that comes and sleeps at your table, jacking-up the APL and then just sucks up magic items that should go to more deserving PC's (and x.p. too). They place all the other player characters in DANGER because they're jacking up the APL, but not contributing (meaning someone else has to step forwards more often to put their life in danger).

Passive players sometimes just WANT to sit there and watch other people play. That's fine. But they'd better not gripe when the DM doesn't waste valuable time to cater to their non-involvement.

BTW, anybody who get's stuck with a NON-fighter is doomed to be a somewhat passive player..

Now, if you want to waste lots of time because you don't want this wimp to feel bad, go ahead and pass them notes occasionally..but that's about as far as I'd bother.


jh



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