Stupid question, Gneech. Have you guys had a group meeting where you say, for the love of all that is holy, this is driving me nuts?
It wasn't as formal as that, but I did have one-on-one discussions with the players who I thought likely to be influenced by such a thing, and I think it's helped. Here's the context:
- Player One: Loves gaming more than life itself. Likes to bounce around like a pinball breaking things and get a lot of attention. Would be a good party leader, except totally fixated on self. Dream character is "rogue who could get away with anything including murder because he's gosh darn likeable" (except freezes up when asked "So what do you say to the NPC?"), but failing that will take whatever enable him to do huge piles of damage. Proactive, yes, but not a team player.
- Player Two: Super-shy, flinchy, fearful of everything. Absolutely hates being in the spotlight or being forced to do things like talk to NPCs. When asked what's his character's background, replies, "I don't know, coming up with that is your job." The opposite of proactive, but does still support the group when the chips are down.
- Player Three: Always wants to play outlier support characters or wacky sidekicks (a gnoll cleric, a kitsune alchemist, a human monk in a tuxedo and bowler hat who's the paladin's butler), but is generally good about making things happen. Very aware of tropes and latches on to them immediately, even if they're not really there. Is willing to lead if required, but prefers to be the right-hand man.
- Player Four: Is there for the social gathering. Used to enjoy playing rogues because they got to do interesting not-fighty things, but is largely tired of them now, too. Takes whichever is free of rogue or cleric in the party but has no real feelings about it either way. Has also been the leader occasionally (in a SF game was the ship captain), but would also prefer to be support. Or to play Ticket to Ride instead.
So part of the problem is that there's no natural leader (other than me– when the pinball is the DM, I am pretty much always the player who takes initiative). Pinball doesn't like to lead because he wants to be subverting authority, not be the authority. Flinchy will walk away from the table if put into any kind of a leadership position. Oddball can and does lead, but keeps trying to escape from it. Social will lead if put into that position as part of the game's premise, but is a manager IRL and doesn't care for it there, so I don't want to inflict it on her in the context of a game she's only lukewarm on playing to begin with.
In re: the proactivity problem, I spoke to Oddball and Social, who were sympathetic and who really were the ones I was most bothered by their blank stares when I received them before. Pinball's character for the new game is an arrogant "the rest of the party is my staff" type, which actually could work out well. Flinchy is never going to be a mover and shaker, it's just not in his nature, but he's taken the role of party scout in this game, which has the unexpected side-effect of giving him the spotlight fairly often– but only in the role of gathering and reporting intelligence, which doesn't require him to make any decisions and therefore suits him surprisingly well.
The previous game was set in Eberron, particularly Sharn, and I think some of the problem may have been that it was all just too big for them. Pinball's brute rogue wanted to go hang out with the thieves' guild and bust heads, Flinchy's summoner wanted to hide in the undercity and contemplate the multiverse, Oddball's alchemist wanted to pursue her alchemy and craft things, and Social's House Medani perception-specialist scout wanted to do whatever YOU want to do. After a few sessions of trying to get the characters to work together organically (giving them a shared past during the Last War, etc.), I finally gave up and moved to the "Here are the jobs at the Adventurer's Guild, pick one" model, and even that left them unable to make a decision.
In the last session of that game, I had decided "Okay, I'm running
Tears at Bitter Manor, they start the adventure talking to the retired adventuring party." And they happily hopped onto the plot railroad and followed it, but I was not enjoying it. Even though I had adventure prep for at least one more session ready to go, when it came to game night, I just didn't want to do it and bowed out two weeks in a row.
Over those two weeks I spoke about it to Social, who said, "It sounds to me like you just really don't want to play that game any more," which was certainly true, but I had no idea what else to try (and I didn't want to just "not game"). So I started looking into the 5E
Starter Set and reading up on sandbox gaming models, both successful and not so. Liking what I saw, I started running that, just for something to do.
When the first session of that was done, Oddball was like "Yeah, this was fun, but I have stuff I wanted my Eberron character to do." (My initial reaction to that was "Well why didn't you say that three weeks ago???" but I restrained the outburst.
) I spoke to him privately later to find out what sort of things those had been, but also about the whole being burned out and bummed out by needing to be conductor of the plot train all the time. Although there was no explicit conclusion to that discussion, I think he was making an effort to provide more input in the following session of the
Starter Set game.
Phew! More than I actually had in mind to post, but it was cathartic to write it down, anyway.
In re: the whole clicker-training thing, I'm going to look into awarding inspiration for such things. Although so far Flinchy has a point of inspiration and hasn't spent it yet...
-The Gneech
