How do you get the players involved in the story?

[Da Man]

I think barsoomcore had a lot of good comments on resolving this.

In my opinion, the key is in how you describe the NPC/Foe and his actions and, then, how you describe the emotions of his victims.

Add to this some 'meta knowledge' about your players and create a big old, emotional stew foe 'em!

For example, after describing the sick things that this evil foe has done to the women and children of the village (let them find a victim or two), then have them find old grandma. She is designed to tug at their heartstrings, bemoaning the fact that she only just played with little Johnny this morning! How could my little boy be dead?!

This might work even better if you first introduce little Johnny to the PC's in a prior adventure, where he does some minor errand work for them, fawning over the big heroes of the town. Give him a personality (one that is both serious and funny, making him memorable....perhaps he begins to dress up like one of the PC's and mimicing him/her).

If the PC's simply will not move on this, resort to metagame knowledge. Does one of your Players own a cat? A dog? Some kind of pet? Have your villain perform many obscene acts on these types of animals. Maybe they find a partially deformed dog, dragging itself through the wilds, whimpering because of the things that were done to it. Again, this only works if you can really ham it up, role-playing the heck out of it.

Finally, as a last resort, try to create a dangerous encounter and see if the NPC might be able to off a pc. That will probably get at least ONE of your players pissed at him=)

In my opinion, if none of the above work, you are out of luck.

 

[Carnifex]

I'm fortunate in that in my current campaign (my sig has the story hour link) I have eight excellent roleplayers.

One way of getting the players to care more is to put lots of effort into detailed campaign background, and exploring character background as well. The way I'm doing it, with all the PC's starting off separately and not in a party, they'll all have their original background plus some 'in-game' background by the time the party does come together. Hopefully this will activate more of an interest in the roleplaying side of things, and besides my campaign is story-driven rather than hack'n'slash driven, which I've already made clear to the players.

 

[Errant]

I too have players that are not terribly character/story/roleplaying oriented. Most of the time, all they want is something to bash.

But, I have found that small steps have helped them get involved in the story progression based around one principle: make it in their own best interests for them to listen to the story.

Firstly, make them think of their characters as more than numbers. Unlike Echoes, I don't think a 3-page background is necessary. Before they can create their characters, I ask them to detail five things: one or two personality traits/quirks (naive/fears spiders/likes to wear blue, anything); where they come from (eg birthplace/home-town); how they learned their skills (army veteran/taught by father etc); why they left home; & why they risk their lives adventuring. I use the point-buy character generation method & give them 28 points plus one point per background detail generated (maximum total 33).

Then I give them bonus experience for playmanship & roleplaying. Every session give each player 1 point for: showing up; bringing munchies; making everyone laugh; good roleplaying; good ideas/tactics in character. At the end of the session, every point they gained gives them +1% to the experience they earned during that session. I use a PDA to track points during the night but you could just as easily do so on a scrap of paper or index card. Its a little extra bookkeeping, and the extra experience doesn't make a lot of difference, but it lets the players know their characters will benefit from their efforts.

Add these steps to the story/campaign development suggestions already mentioned and, like me, you might see some improvement in your characters attention to story details. In fact, typing this I've decided on a new category for bonus points: demonstrating storyline awareness (when a player remembers a relevant NPC/clue from a previous session).

I hope that helps.

 

[Altalazar]

I think it is more than just 'tell good stories'. You need to get stories out of the characters themselves.

They need backgrounds. But even that isn't enough.

You need to sit down with them and thoroughly discuss their backgrounds, both privately for that which the other players wouldn't know, and publicly - for all the the characters to tightly knit together their backgrounds into a cohesive whole.

Then you need to take details from those backgrounds and make them come up in the game. If you have a PC who is searching for stolen armor from his clan, then you need to occasionally find clues or pieces of the armor, and perhaps it can even lead to a full blown adventure.

That's the very best way to get player's involved - when the 'adventure' isn't something they are hired to do or forced to do by circumstances, but is something that they are deeply, personally motivated to do. It starts with the backgrounds, but it can be built from there as the game progresses.

 

[JoeGKushner]

What type of characters are the players using?

What type of campaign setting are you using?

What type of backgrounds do the characters come from?

In many instances, nothing happens in a vacum. Wizards originate from schools. Paladins often from specialized training. Clerics from the church.

Depending on the character's levels, they might be asked to help instigate further peace with kingdoms that are on local wars or raiding status right now and realize that the bad guy there has something really drastic up his sleeve and if they screw up, it's all over.

 

[DanMcS]

A lot of good suggestions here, but I especially support the "violent treatment of close NPCs." Heh. I think it's perhaps a cheap way to get them interested, but hey, if it works, you can make the players interested, which will lead to a deeper story, which will lead to more interest.

Lame. Bad DMs always do this; any NPC mentioned, even peripherally, in a character background is siezed, hauled away, bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated, in a cheap attempt to get a rise out of the player. This doesn't lead to deeper stories, it leads to players creating backgrounds saying they are orphans with no pre-existing close relationships.