Liven Up My Game

[Nikroecyst]

Among the many minor problems I have with my games, I find that there is always one common problem that takes place during every game.

Wishy Washy Players. Inactivity on the part of the characters. Too often have I asked "So what do you think you guys would like to do next?" only to be answered by 2 "I don't knows" and 3 "I don't cares". I would like to think that my plot lines and storys involve the characters to such a degree that they would be on the edge of thier seat, or at least asking questions. Apparently I am not as good as I thought.

In short, I find that my players are bored, or don't care enough about the game to make up thier own minds. Every one in the group is looking for some one else to make the big decisions so that they can just get on with the combat.

I have tried reoccuring NPC's to make the encounters more appealing. I have written reactive enviroments to flesh out the world. I have tried player opinion polls at the end of games giving them questions like "What would you like to see more of in this game?" or "What don't you like about this campaign?" I have various interesting props, spell cards, character sheet addons. Minis, Huge Color Laminate Maps, Class Variants, resources from outside game books (Dante's Inferno), all kinds of stimuli to excite any player.

I have even tried getting with each player to involve them in side events that appeal to the personality of the player. For example: A fellow samauri named Kibakichi had a note delivered to "Felix" the samauri of the group to meet in secret at midnight to dicuss the corruption of thier master Lord Masumoto. The player playing "Felix the Samauri" has lived in Japan for 3 years, loves anime, and even thought the culture interesting enough to play a samauri in a DnD game. So I figured this side hook would appeal to him. Yet to no avil they continue to act bored and uncaring.

I have to belive that this is a problem with my DM style due to the fact that it usually happens to every game I ever run, no matter who the players are or where I am.
What can I do to liven up my games? How do I better appeal to the players?

 

[SiderisAnon]

Give Them The Bridge

I don't know if this will help you, but it was something I did with some apathetic players I had.

I created a mystery adventure. I started the adventure with an encounter where the party got a number of pieces of the puzzle and where they had hooks/clues that would very obviously lead them to specific locations or people. (i.e. The smith Jacobs on High Street was seen in the area. The item XX has been moved to YY for safe keeping.)

Make sure that there are plenty of obvious clues. Nothing wrong with a few subtle ones, but we're looking for hook-in-mouth-and-pulling-string kind of stuff.

You want lots of handouts with the details, so they can't forget anything.

Then just sit there and watch. If they stare at each other, give them 15 minutes and ask, "What do you want to do?" Try that a few times.

If after an hour, they're still sitting around twiddling their thumbs, then you stop the game and explain to them that you've offered up an adventure and no one is doing anything. So, what do they want to happen? What should the adventure be like? What do THEY want?


Since you made the comment about people waiting for others to make the decision so they can get to the fight scene, you may find you have a group that just wants an old fashioned dungeon and that's it. You know, "room-monster-kill-treasure-is that all?", repeat until you run out of hit points of monsters.


Another option is to have someone else run, and if people are having fun, watch what that DM does differently from you. Being in a friend's game gave me some insight into how another friend of ours preferred to play.


Good luck.

 

[DragonLancer]

3 "I don't cares".

If these players don't care why are they turning up?

 

[Oryan77]

I agree, they may just want a more dungeon crawl type of adventure. It doesn't have to be simply hack-n-slash and move to the next room. They might like the puzzle solving, exotic, "crazy-weird" type of dungeon...with lots of strange monsters living in it.

Your game sounds a lot like my old DM's style of campaigning. Does it involve a lot of town/city scenarios with a few trecks to the forest every once in awhile, rather than dungeon crawls or trips to strange locations (like an underwater city or a castle in a volcano)?

He was a good DM, but the campaign tends to be pretty vanilla & repetative. Just a lot of politics & "police/detective" work. Every so often there'd be a strange creature to fight...but it'll be in someones basement, or an encounter in the forest. I got the feeling your campaign is pretty similiar to that.

As much as people try to sound cool and talk about how railroading is bad and they don't railroad...I've DM'ed a lot of players, and almost all of them needed to be railroaded most of the time or they get bored. I don't mean railroaded as in: forcing them to not do something they want to do. I mean railroaded in the sense that they need their hand held & led down a path so they can get to the end of an adventure. When player's don't have a set goal, they usually get bored trying to find their own goals.

So maybe you need to run a less "open ended" adventure. Something that requires the PC's to go from point A, directly to point B, and then directly to point C. Rather than a mystery-type adventure that allows them to go check points A, B, C, D, or E in any order they want, whenever they want. The difference with adventures that are less open ended is that instead of the players choosing their own path throughout the adventure, you are making them think they are choosing their own path throughout the adventure. They'll come up with the idea to go from point A to B on their own, when that's exactly what you convinced them to do in the first place.

 

[Nikroecyst]

To Dragon Lancer: I have no idea. It seems to me that if you don't like a game, you stop showing up to it. Its not like im forcing em, yet every week they come back for more. Maybe my games aren't as bad as I think they are.

To Oryan: I do very little within a city and the story has varied quite a bit. However, you made me take a look at the mosters they've been fighting and I think that could be varied a little more. Like you said it has been a little "vanilla" in the combat compartment.

As for the railroading, the problem im having is that I have been leading them around by the hand and its getting old. I tried to make it simple at first by changing it from open ended to "point a to point b" but its been goin on a while and they haven't really caught on yet. Im just gettin worried that this is goning to continue.

I think I am going to try the mystery idea that Sideris came up with and if that don't work take it back to Dungeon Crawling as much as possible. See if they like either of those scenerios.

I appriciate the advice everyone has dished out. This really got me thinkin about some of the things im doing as a DM.

Im hoppin more people will continue to post.

 

[Heathansson]

If it was me, I'd either:
1) scare the bejeezus out of them. Goblins with necklaces of ears, led by a psycho bugbear that wants them alive for skinning, chasing them for days in the wilderness, toying with them before they move in for the kill.
Or something even more jacked up.

or

2) make it personal. Have some npc's hose them over really bad somehow, and make them want revenge. Nothing beats catching the jackhole that stole your +2 long sword and making him pay.

 

[Shadowslayer]

I would like to think that my plot lines and storys involve the characters to such a degree that they would be on the edge of thier seat, or at least asking questions.

The first place I would look is their options. It may sound funny, but too many options might be what is stalemating them. I don't know your game. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's where I'd look. Be direct. Have a townswoman just walk up and ask them to rescue her husband from the nasty bandits in the caves noth of town. Sounds corny, but it might work.

 

[Monkey Boy]

Sounds like they just want to fight. Why not keep it simple. Scale everything back and run a hack and slash.

'Roll initiative'

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Stick a kitchen timer on the table. Every decision has to be made within a minute, or they get sneak attacked/get crushed by a trap.

 

[Merkuri]

2) make it personal. Have some npc's hose them over really bad somehow, and make them want revenge. Nothing beats catching the jackhole that stole your +2 long sword and making him pay.

Our DM did something similar in the last campaign I was in, but in reverse. Our PCs had found some emeralds nailed into the floor of the cart we were riding in, so we took them and sold some of them. Our mistake was selling too many in one place and time, because these emeralds were owned by an orc crime boss of sorts, who found out we had his property. We were taken into an inn run by orcs and half-orcs, sat at a table surrounded by orcs with crossbows in the shadows, and told that we had to hand over the emeralds we still had and make restitution for those we had stolen by breaking into this mage's house. At one point a PC who was mouthing off (he threw a sock at the orc boss) got hit with a crossbow bolt that rolled a natural 20 and put him a few hit points from unconscious. Knocked him right out of his chair. Oh, we were also shown a pair of boots during that meeting that were made from the skin of a missing PC (player had left).

It actually was a little of "point a to point b", but we had more choices than we realized (we didn't have to do what he wanted, we could've gone to our patron or the authorities) and it certainly got us interested in the game. That meeting permanently changed the personality of my character, who could no longer progress as a cleric (my choice). It was a shame the game ended not too long after that, because I think she was one of my most interesting characters, partially because of that life-changing moment for her.