Proactive Players in a Reactive Campaign

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

My wife and I recently moved to another state, and found a new gaming group. Previously we had played with the same group for five years. Everything from Rifts to Shadowrun to Traveller to 2E to d20 Modern to 3.0 and finally 3.5.

Everyone had taken turns GMing, if nothing else so they could see the amount of work and frustration that goes on behind the screen.

As players, my wife and I are proactive. We don't like waiting for the forces of evil to knock us down and kick us in the teeth, we like bringing the fight to them. We like doing heroic deeds, and rarely do the battle > Rest > Battle > Rest thing, resting after every single battle or two. Our heroes were always different.

As a GM, my world lived and breathed. The villians plots advanced and wove thier terrible webs even if the PC's were frolicking in a brothel. Sup-villians that had escaped built thier own organizations and began hunting the PC's.

Everything moved, sometimes seemingly of it's own accord.

We moved to a new city, and got a new group.

The game we're in feels like the old 1E/2E modules, where you are told what you're going to do, magically teleported in, and have to do the mission, with a shadowy organization of great power pulling your strings.

My wife and I found ourselves limited in our character's, as she plays "Move in and blow them up" mages, usually sorcerer/monk, wizard/rogue, cleric/fighter, paladin/druid, well, you get the idea. Mine are usually close combat specialists, hitting and pinning and putting them down. We accidently trounced all over the bad guys the first time we played, and our characters got overwhelmed and died the next game.

We shrugged and drove on.

Now, we noticed something.

Most of the other players are reactive. They wait for things to happen, or what to be told. The campaign moves when the character's move. It's been mentioned several times that my wife and I are "too eager" at times. The rest of the party wants to rest, as they've taken damage (nobody lower than 75%) and a few spells tossed off, and my wife and I want to press on and reach the objective, unwilling to let the villian get a breather, believing that the more time he has without us on his ass, the more recovered and tougher he'll be.

Then, I GM'd. I run a proactive, like I said. The actions and adventures are pretty wide open, and I can handle any class/background. They started out doing jobs for a patron, then discovered that thier patron was a dyed in the wool evil man, who was misrepresenting what was occurring to the PC's so they'd commit evil deeds in his name.

Then the other players began floundering. They had no idea what to do. They knew that there were cities, assassin guilds, bardic colleges, wizard guilds, druidic circles, ancient highways that led to the unknown, ruined cities half covered by the sands, etc.

My wife got tired of them looking to her for guidance, so she signed up with a large Wizard's Guild, and suddenly everyone was happy getting assigned jobs.

To me, that feels like railroading.

Finding maps, they don't know what to do with them. Finding an ancient sewer opening where there's not even apparent ruins, they continue on to the job given to them.



It's EXTREMELY frustrating. I'm a proactive player and GM a dynamic campaign world, and I feel.... dissatisfied at times with the two campaigns. I LIKE the players, and have fun as a player paying attention to the story unfolding.

But does my playing/GMing style really make it into a game breaker?

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Here's a perfect example:

In the campaign I'm running, they're all 8-9th level. They bought an old church that was rumored to be haunted, cleared it, got building permits, and hired laborers from a different ward of the city to do the construction work. Pretty soon they started getting thier workers fined for BS stuff, and then a wagon confiscated for not having the proper permits.

They go to get the wagon back, and have to speak to HUGE Jabba-like human, who complains of his people needing work, and how the PC's took food out of the mouths of those people's families by hiring "scabs" to do the work, rather than go to the guilds (Which the mage had warned about, but was ingnored) for thier workers.

So the party agrees to pay 10gp a day to "support those who should have been hired" as well as some bribes for thier carts and laborers.

There's six other ward bosses between the quarry/mills and thier property, and the mage suggests that they go speak to the other ward bosses, intimidating them if necessary, into leaving thier workers alone.

Over half of the party doesn't want to deal with it, calling it boring, etc.

The other half goes and gets involved in several duels, including a magical duel, the rogue is "requested" to eliminate an troublesome mill foreman, etc.

The half that didn't go then complains that the others got XP and "gifts" from some of the grateful ward bosses, and influence from the others. They state that the RP was boring, and they want to do such things as explore, search out forgotten areas, etc.

I reminded them that they wanted a safe place, someplace to put thier trophies, etc.

"But the RP part is booooring."

To me, the RP is ways to get hints at more quests, more jobs.

The other GM does the: "The organization has a job for you to do in XXXXX, and they tell you that [whatever the mission is] and teleport you there."

So, when I'm GMing, I'm kind of bored because there's no use in intricate plots and dynamic bad guys, when I'm playing, I kind of feel like I'm on a train that is heading straight for a wall, with no way to steer it.


The problem is, I don't know what to do.

 

[Corsair]

Not everyone likes the same things you do. Some people play RPGs to smash monsters and take their phat lewt. Nothing wrong with that. Either one side has to adapt to the other, or find a common ground. No other real options. Neither side is wrong, just looking for different things.

 

[Chimera]

I sympathize, really I do. Been there, experienced that.

Don't know what to tell you. The other players like a different style of game and you are unlikely to be able to change their gaming style.

Adding players who like your style may bring one or two out of their shells. Talking to them individually about what they like/want and what would be cool for their character might help, might not.

But as a whole, as I said, you won't change the mob. They've got inertia and mutual support to maintain their current pattern.

 

[el-remmen]

Yeah, some people just like a different style of game and nothing is going to change that - just like there are players that start zoning out once combat starts but want to talk and scheme with every NPC or investigate every small detail until it gets annoying.

But I hear you, I try to provide a breathing detailed world and let the characters have at it within the certain reasonable confines (basically that always expect the consequences of your actions to be followed through on and don't expect special treatment from NPCs just b/c you are the PCs).

Have you tried making those plot points more closely tied to the PCs' backgrounds and goals? Rein in the need for proactive at first,a nd introduce various elements you think might interest them and then give them more and more slack as they get used to it - maybe not everyone will - but somewhere in there may be the medium you can all be happy with.

 

[Tewligan]

The problem is, I don't know what to do.

Really? It seems pretty obvious to me - quit the group. You don't like their style of play, and they don't like yours. That isn't going to change. Good luck finding a group that fits your style, though - your game sounds like one that I would enjoy, at any rate.

 

[shilsen]

The problem is, I don't know what to do.

Have you tried just sitting down with them and talking about what you want in a game, what you think they want, seeing what their opinions are, and trying to reach a compromise?

 

[The_Universe]

Have you tried just sitting down with them and talking about what you want in a game, what you think they want, seeing what their opinions are, and trying to reach a compromise?

Long term, I'd predict that no one is going to happy with the ensuing compromise, since no one will be getting what they really want. You're better of attempting to persuade reactive players that they'd have more fun being proactive, and that they really want a proactive game.

 

[Crothian]

I want proactive players.....

 

[Hadrian]

I think it’s important for you to find out why the characters are reactive over proactive. Is it just how they’ve always played? Are they used to videogames where the options just come to them? Are they just naturally reticent people? Or are they simply not interested in that level of game involvement?

If it’s something like the first two, you might be able to slowly get them more involved, maybe by slowly giving their characters more and more choices (ones specifically directed to their character’s interests) rather than just heaping an entire world of choice on them at once.

If the players are just a bit shy, than you should try to work with them, and the group to help bring them out of their shell (it’s hard, but if all the players are supportive, it can work).

If they’re just more interested in hanging out with their friends and having their characters smash monsters and grab their stuff, you may never be able to reconcile your way of playing with theirs. One of the better options is to make sure that they know that you are trying to make a fun game for everyone, so sometimes they’ll have to let others roleplay things out which they might not find fun, just like others will have to go through combat, and taking loot, which might be less fun for them.