Players that are only interested about their characters

[Jon_Dahl]

Recently I've noticed that my players only talk about their characters' game mechanical abilities. They talk about how much damage they can inflict per round and how powerful they will be and what sort of builds do they want. I've noticed that they never talk about the game-world or any developments in the story or their relations with NPCs or anything not relating to numbers.

Usually when I DM, I try to create an arching story with lot of written dialogue and in-depth NPC personalities. I've noticed that my players don't care about all that, at least not in the way that I want.

I'm afraid to talk to my players about this, because I don't want to sound as if I'm disappointed with them. Instead I'd like to ask you guys that have you noticed this with your players and what would be the best way to approach the situation?

What I've been considering is to put on a full hack 'n slash -mode. That I'd send them all to a mine full of monsters which live their without any apparent reason or source of food. I don't know...

 

[Stormonu]

It waxes and wanes. I have a couple of players who are all about kicking butt and what their characters are mechanically capable of. I have a couple who couldn't care less about the mechanics - and sometimes I wish they would.

I don't try to force NPCs or the world on them. I have the information available and the NPCs can be there to help or harm them. But it comes down to the fact that if they don't care about the world around them, it doesn't care about them either.

If they want to go just hack'n'slash, I can handle that - and there are times it hurts them; an NPC could have helped them if they took the time to pay attention to him/her. Sometimes if they'd investigated things in the world instead of rushing to kill the bad guy they get creamed; if they'd investigated the BBEG's past, they might have found something that would have turned the battle in their favor - or perhaps avoided a direct confrontation at all.

I don't do these things out of spite; but I don't hold back either. The players reap what they wrought. If they don't pay attention to things other than their character they generally have a harder time of things; sometimes they enjoy this - when they don't I patiently explain to them that the info and help is out there - but it won't just fall into their lap.

 

[Ray_K]

When you set the stage for your players, you have to keep it short and sweet. Imagine a pitch black room and a flashlight. You can only really see what's within the beam of the flashlight, right? Same thing with D&D. Players have a very limited "cone of vision" within your campaign world, so there's no point in beating them over the head with excessive information. There's also no point in designing things that your players cone of vision will probably never fall upon. Drop knowledge on them as they actively look for it, as it falls within their cone of vision, or if it's vital to the particular quest/story they're embarked on.

If they don't care about the villains background, so be it. Save your ultra cool story telling skills for that NPC or villain that they do decide to take an interest in. Just get some of the important details in there. Kinda like writing a thesis statement. "This bad guy is doing X because of Y, and you should probably stop him". That's all players need to hear 95% of the time.

As for main story lines.. I always have one, but it takes a back seat to side quests. There are people out there who can explain this much better than I can. My players are usually more interested in running short and sweet adventures that can be wrapped up quickly. Sometimes they even do two really short adventures in one session. A really cool way to do this is to feed off of what your players are interested in and make short adventures focused around that, but that's a different rant.

In closing.. plan your campaign session by session, not longterm. Tailor each session to your players interests, and strategically drop the main story line on them. Let them burn themselves out on side quests.. then it's time for the big big baddie to do something that gets their attention.

That's how I roll anyway.



- edit for one more little point...

Think about some video games you play like Skyrim, Fallout, Dragon Age, any of the popular RPG titles. What are you doing 95% of the time? Running silly ass side missions, kicking ass, and taking names. The main story is still there. You're still aware of it because you're being exposed to it in the background of what you're currently doing. Eventually you move on from raping and pillaging short dungeons and you start knocking out storyline quests. When you DM.. be a video game. Some people will want to beat me to death for saying that, but I've found that it's a format that works well for myself and my current group.

 

[S'mon]

Recently I've noticed that my players only talk about their characters' game mechanical abilities. They talk about how much damage they can inflict per round and how powerful they will be and what sort of builds do they want. I've noticed that they never talk about the game-world or any developments in the story or their relations with NPCs or anything not relating to numbers.

I've only really seen this with 3e/PF, because it places so much emphasis on build optimisation and mechanical 'crunch', and because there is potentially such a wide disparity in character power - characters who are not at least slightly optimised cannot take on CR=Level encounters.

The solution if you don't like it might be to run a different game, either a less crunchy game or one with less power disparity between optimised and non-optimised PCs.
Another approach is to keep fights rare, and not to balance them to party level; if most encounters are either easy enough to be beaten by non-optimised PCs, or need to be fled from even by optimised PCs, then optimisation becomes much less of an issue.

 

[Yora]

A simple variant of playing a diferent game is using E6. You have all the same rules as 3.5e and PF and you still can make builds, but since it's limited to 6 levels and you can't get most of the magic stuff, you just have to overcome obstacles differently.

 

[pogre]

Recently I've noticed that my players only talk about their characters' game mechanical abilities. They talk about how much damage they can inflict per round and how powerful they will be and what sort of builds do they want. I've noticed that they never talk about the game-world or any developments in the story or their relations with NPCs or anything not relating to numbers.

Usually when I DM, I try to create an arching story with lot of written dialogue and in-depth NPC personalities. I've noticed that my players don't care about all that, at least not in the way that I want.

I'm afraid to talk to my players about this, because I don't want to sound as if I'm disappointed with them. Instead I'd like to ask you guys that have you noticed this with your players and what would be the best way to approach the situation?

What I've been considering is to put on a full hack 'n slash -mode. That I'd send them all to a mine full of monsters which live their without any apparent reason or source of food. I don't know...

It can be discouraging, but I think most players are like this - at least in my experience. Once I figured out that players were far less interested in campaign background and story it saved me a ton of prep time. I only work on the story in as much as I enjoy it. These days I am fortunate if a player remembers the name of a major NPC.

My solution was to create cool encounters and roll with it.

Don't just go all hack & slash, even though I completely understand the feeling. Create situations that will interest you too.

 

[Karak]

I think it IS best to talk to them and identify if that is the game they want to play. I know that some GM's can give off signals in the way they explain things that can make the mechanics feel far more important than the rest.

Nothing wrong with asking whats up and identifying how they want to play. Perhaps the overall world isn't interesting to them, or the locations they have seen.

I know that most groups I have maybe 1-2 players who are more interested in the mechanics but that usually falls away because I adjust the importance of things and how I describe them to the players. Over time even someone who just loves the math can also enjoy the overall game.

I also make sure that none combat skills, paying attention, and overall understanding of the world is vital.
The old saying, "Put a baker in a rowboat and see how he does." stands here. Someone may be a master with a sword but that doesn't matter at all if they are involved in something that doesn't allow them to use that weapon but requires past knowledge and an attention to detail that they neglected. I don't mean to punish them, just make sure that they know that other things are important.

 

[billd91]

Recently I've noticed that my players only talk about their characters' game mechanical abilities. They talk about how much damage they can inflict per round and how powerful they will be and what sort of builds do they want. I've noticed that they never talk about the game-world or any developments in the story or their relations with NPCs or anything not relating to numbers.

Usually when I DM, I try to create an arching story with lot of written dialogue and in-depth NPC personalities. I've noticed that my players don't care about all that, at least not in the way that I want.

I'm afraid to talk to my players about this, because I don't want to sound as if I'm disappointed with them. Instead I'd like to ask you guys that have you noticed this with your players and what would be the best way to approach the situation?

What I've been considering is to put on a full hack 'n slash -mode. That I'd send them all to a mine full of monsters which live their without any apparent reason or source of food. I don't know...

Sometimes you have to set aside your ambitions for a stronger story if that's not the kind of game your players are interested in - and yet sometimes you can bring them along too.

There are definitely groups who are more into the mechanics and damage spikes their characters can achieve. A notable example I'm familiar with is a friend's game - he ran for his teenage son and his son's buddies. They were definitely into builds and competing for alpha-geek status over them and their boasting. (he switched to 4e to reduce that dynamic, but the kids have since shifted over more to Pathfinder)

But sometimes you can also use those interests to shift them into thinking about events as well. They may come to associate their pride not just with the numbers but also the event in which they achieved those numbers. I came up with a prince's tournament for Brewfest in a game once so that the fighter character, who was invested in cavalry and lance feats, had a chance to put them to good use. She worked her way through her single-elimination draw until she made it to the final against a tough close match that I had been focusing on as a rival. She ultimately lost but had a good time running up some hefty lance damage totals (spirited charge and all that). As a player, she was already pretty much focused around events rather than mechanics. But had I a players jazzed about how sick his lance damage was, this might have been a great way to channel that into story event-based highlights rather than just the numbers.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

Don't forget that, rhetorically, the world and NPCs are a shared experience the players don't directly control--while their characters are individualized.

Many people, especially guys, like to talk competitively about mundane things as a form of an inclusive discussion.

So, this might just be an example of discussing the game with the only examples that exist that aren't shared as a group; using examples they can compare against each other in a friendly competitive fashion.

So, feel good that they are talking about the game! This is infinity better than if they never spoke of the game at all.

 

[DnD_Dad]

Welcome to game master-hood. You build the world and they get excited about damage modifiers. My suggestion is if they are boasting abilities scale up a step or two in what you throw at them, or if you really want them to get out if it, force an all story-role playing night and don't let them roll dice more than a few times period.