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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 5450766" data-attributes="member: 85870">Well, I can't say as I'm surprised, but I just got off the phone with one of my players. The gist of the conversation: "I'm just not getting much out of the game right now." To put some of this into perspective: This player has been a part of my same general gaming group for close to 6 years. He and I were both players under a different GM for three or four years, but when the old GM sort of fell off the deep end we started getting our own group together. I could sort of see this coming, and I don't think I can totally disagree with him on his assessment. Two of the better players in our current Pathfinder group have been completely MIA since the first week of December. Prior to that, they were generally there for at least 2 out of every 3 sessions, usually more. But since then, they've been just.....gone. As a result, the other three players (besides my friend Jared) consist of my wife, my wife's sister, and the sister's boyfriend. As much as a I love my wife, she roleplays with us because she knows I enjoy it--not because she has a particular passion for it. She enjoys the aspects of playing the game, and with the right coaching her characters are always effective, but she never really makes any decisions for the group collectively. Her characters have no agenda, they're just there. The sister is a little better; she at least puts some personality in her characters--but not much else. Her idea of a character concept rarely goes much beyond some superficial mechanical or personality aspect that she essentially pushes the "repeat" button on throughout the sessions. And the boyfriend supposedly is an experienced WoD player, but I have yet to see in two months of play where that experience has manifest itself at the table.  None of the three of them ever do anything unexpected, nor rise to any sort of interaction at the table beyond "mildly amusing" or "semi-interesting." And my friend Jared feels like he's pulling dead weight to get things to happen. They're the epitome of "Smells Like Teen Spirit": Here we are now, entertain us!And now I'm left wondering: How much can/should/do I realistically expect a player to bring to the table to add to the group's fun? Some GM's would probably say, "If they want to be there, can manage to shower 3 times a week, and are literate enough to work their character,  they should have a place in a group." But if that's really all a player is bringing, are they doing enough? When I'm on the other side of the aisle as a player, I'm constantly looking for ways to keep game interaction going. I talk to NPCs. I want to explore surroundings. I generally play a character with motivations, because I assume the GM is creating a world consistent with that outlook. I'm not saying every player has to be hardcore into it. But I'm beginning to think that every group needs a player who shows up and tries to be a little bit more than a pawn for the encounters. Someone who wants to interact with the milieu of the world. And say what you will about power gamers--but their motivations are transparent, and they're generally easy to please, and they're certainly proactive. In that regard I'd rather have a table of raging power gamers than a table of passive dice-rollers. But as C.S. Lewis once said comparing a whore to a self-righteous prig, "Of course it is better to be neither." At this point I feel about roleplaying the same way I do about volleyball. When I discovered what "real" volleyball was like--meaning players knew how to play, were skilled at it, and understood the game--I could never go back to playing "hack" volleyball. It bored me. And now I'm the same way with my RPG experiences. I'd rather not play at all than to play at a sub-par level.So do we abandon the group and start over? Go our separate ways and say it was fun while it lasted? Should I talk to the players about it? And is it unreasonable to expect players to bring something other than their dice and a smile when they sit down to play?</blockquote>

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