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<blockquote data-quote="Herpes Cineplex" data-source="post: 1773257" data-attributes="member: 16936"><p>I'd say the odds are good that the "less involved" players would, if you asked, point out that they don't have enough free time to spend on keeping you informed about what their characters want, to call you several times during the week to ask questions, and so on. And also pretty good odds that even if they <em>did</em> have ample free time, some of them might not want to spend quite that much effort on it.</p><p></p><p>It might be a good idea to bring it up with everyone, like Piratecat suggests, but personally, I'd say not to bother yourself about it unless you know that the other players are getting miffed that Miss Superinvolved is getting so much attention. Obviously, she's getting what she wants out of the game; if everyone else is getting what they want out of the game, too, then there's no reason to try to screw up a system that's working for all of you, right?</p><p></p><p>'Cause honestly, I don't think there's really a good fix for this. You can't force everyone else to spend more time thinking about your game (if they could do it or if they wanted to do it, they'd actually be doing it, right?), and by the same token you can't really ask the player who is gung-ho about the game to back off.</p><p></p><p>Well, I suppose you could ask her to back off. Or ask her to try to structure her character's goals and plans to include at least one or two other characters, or let her know that you'll only be using one or two ideas at most from all of the ones she's shotgunning you with on a weekly basis, so that the game as a whole is less centered on her PC. If she's a nice, patient, understanding kind of person, she might be okay with trading in a little of her own enjoyment to enhance the game experience for everyone else...but even if she IS that nice, I'd still want to be sure that the status quo is cheesing off the other players before I'd ask her to do something like that.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Or (and this is kind of a weird idea) you could try and take up the "slack" of the other players, if you have a lot of free time. You know, make up some plot hooks and background information and plans FOR them.</p><p></p><p>For example, a friend of mine was telling me tonight about a clever idea he pinched from rpg.net: the GM puts together a bunch of index cards, each with some piece of semi-generic background information, like "your Uncle George is involved in a criminal organization but has always treated you like his own child," or "you lost something valuable a while back, and have recently learned that it was in fact stolen from you," or whatever. Just a bunch of ideas that are specific to the setting and the game, but not necessarily to any particular character. Then you lay 'em all out face up in front of the players and tell them to pick two to six of the cards, whichever ones they think are interesting.</p><p></p><p>Then throughout the course of the game, you can hit them with plots that hook into various index cards. The players can bring them up, too, like when they're investigating some kind of shady dealings and whoever grabbed the Uncle George card holds it up at you and says "Yeah, so I figure it's time to visit my uncle to see if he can shed any light on what's going on here." That way, if a player doesn't have the time or the inclination to come up with a detailed character background or lots of goals, they can still have some background details and some goal-oriented plot hooks, and the bonus is that the GM can prepare it all in advance; Uncle George and who stole the valuable object and all that other stuff can all be written up before you even know who's picking what card. You can just plug the appropriate PC in and go.</p><p></p><p>--</p><p>sounds like kind of a fun idea, if you don't mind the prep work</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Herpes Cineplex, post: 1773257, member: 16936"] I'd say the odds are good that the "less involved" players would, if you asked, point out that they don't have enough free time to spend on keeping you informed about what their characters want, to call you several times during the week to ask questions, and so on. And also pretty good odds that even if they [i]did[/i] have ample free time, some of them might not want to spend quite that much effort on it. It might be a good idea to bring it up with everyone, like Piratecat suggests, but personally, I'd say not to bother yourself about it unless you know that the other players are getting miffed that Miss Superinvolved is getting so much attention. Obviously, she's getting what she wants out of the game; if everyone else is getting what they want out of the game, too, then there's no reason to try to screw up a system that's working for all of you, right? 'Cause honestly, I don't think there's really a good fix for this. You can't force everyone else to spend more time thinking about your game (if they could do it or if they wanted to do it, they'd actually be doing it, right?), and by the same token you can't really ask the player who is gung-ho about the game to back off. Well, I suppose you could ask her to back off. Or ask her to try to structure her character's goals and plans to include at least one or two other characters, or let her know that you'll only be using one or two ideas at most from all of the ones she's shotgunning you with on a weekly basis, so that the game as a whole is less centered on her PC. If she's a nice, patient, understanding kind of person, she might be okay with trading in a little of her own enjoyment to enhance the game experience for everyone else...but even if she IS that nice, I'd still want to be sure that the status quo is cheesing off the other players before I'd ask her to do something like that. Or (and this is kind of a weird idea) you could try and take up the "slack" of the other players, if you have a lot of free time. You know, make up some plot hooks and background information and plans FOR them. For example, a friend of mine was telling me tonight about a clever idea he pinched from rpg.net: the GM puts together a bunch of index cards, each with some piece of semi-generic background information, like "your Uncle George is involved in a criminal organization but has always treated you like his own child," or "you lost something valuable a while back, and have recently learned that it was in fact stolen from you," or whatever. Just a bunch of ideas that are specific to the setting and the game, but not necessarily to any particular character. Then you lay 'em all out face up in front of the players and tell them to pick two to six of the cards, whichever ones they think are interesting. Then throughout the course of the game, you can hit them with plots that hook into various index cards. The players can bring them up, too, like when they're investigating some kind of shady dealings and whoever grabbed the Uncle George card holds it up at you and says "Yeah, so I figure it's time to visit my uncle to see if he can shed any light on what's going on here." That way, if a player doesn't have the time or the inclination to come up with a detailed character background or lots of goals, they can still have some background details and some goal-oriented plot hooks, and the bonus is that the GM can prepare it all in advance; Uncle George and who stole the valuable object and all that other stuff can all be written up before you even know who's picking what card. You can just plug the appropriate PC in and go. -- sounds like kind of a fun idea, if you don't mind the prep work [/QUOTE]
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