The Perfect Campaign

[Awakened]

Soon I will be wrapping up my current D&D campaign and starting the final, two year-long campaign that I'll be able to definitely play with my group of high-school gaming buddies. I am going to try to outdo all of my previous DMing efforts, and was wondering if anyone has advice for the perfect game. It will be set in the Silver Marches of the Forgotten Realms. It will be standard to challenging in difficulty, and will be story-based.
Goals
1) I want to keep my current group of three players, who talk too much out of character and need to pay more attention (but they actually enjoy playing, they just can't seem to keep themselves from quoting movies until the end of the session) So how do I keep them on task, yet not seem like a dictator/teacher?
2) I'm adding one to two newbies.
3) I want to have a meeting to discuss the particulars of the campaign and how it will 'feel' and be played, without taking too much mystery out of the game. Any suggestions on how to do this?
4) This campaign must be 'the one'. I know that this is too broad of a question, but how do you maximize player interest and involvement, personally? What about encouraging roleplaying- how do you award your players for rping well?
Thanks for the help!

 

[Awakened]

Oh- and also- I've found that notetaking is integral to any game with even a tiny bit of investigation or plot. Unfortunately, my players don't like doing it and they take too long, so they often abandon taking them at all. I've offered extra xp in the past for doing it, but I'm not sure if that's a great idea. So what should I do? Get a player each session to do just an outline of events and remind my players of the rest, appoint a single willing member to take notes throughout and give them a slight xp bonus at every session, or go on having them pass the notebook from player to player during the game? I'm worrried that if I stop having them take notes all together they won't remember game details and they won't be into the plot.

 

[ichabod]

This campaign must be 'the one'.

Then question your assumptions. I recently finished my first Dome of Heaven campaign, which was the best campaign I have run in 25 years of DMing. The most important thing I did was ask the players what they wanted. I showed them my campaign world, and asked them what sort of campaign they wanted to play, which turned out to be the complete opposite of what I had planned. The second most important thing I did was keep it open-ended. There was no one true plot, there were several plots. The player choices determined which ones they went down and how they went down them. That is what kept the players interested and involved, because they knew that the choices they made had a big effect on what happened in the game.

As to your specific points, I'd be careful about pushing against the table talk. The best way to have a great campaign is to make sure everybody is having fun (including yourself). You might talk to them ahead of time, and let them know you want things to be more on track. Then gently remind them during play, by having the world act when they get too far off track. If they have just done five movie quotes, they arrive at their destination, or they all have to make spot checks, or the half-orcs at the next table complain about the noise. Let them have their table talk, but pull them back in gently.

Try to get the players to help out the newbies. This makes them a part of the group quicker, and frees you up for DMing tasks.

I'm not sure what you want to get across in the meeting, so I'm not sure how to do it. My first meeting introduces the players to the game world. Then they determine what sort of game they want to play, and what sort of group they want to be. Then they make their characters at the first meeting to fit into that group concept. Frex, my last campaign they decided to be members of the Inquisition. So they all made up characters who had a reason to be in the Inquisition, and who filled the required roles of an investigating group of the Inquisition.

Finally, your job is not to encourage roleplaying, your job is to encourage fun. Not everyone has fun roleplaying. Some people have fun solving puzzles, or dealing with tactical situations in combat, or just hanging out with their friends at the game table. You reward what people have fun doing by giving them opportunities to have fun. If a player has fun roleplaying, you reward them by throwing them into roleplaying situations. If they have fun solving puzzles, you reward them by blocking their path with puzzles that need to be solved. If they have fun in combat, you reward them by presenting them with interesting tactical situations in combat. If they just want to hang out, you reward them by letting them hang out and not harrassing them too much.

This is where group composition becomes so important. As DM, you have certain things you enjoy, be it roleplaying or combat or whatever. By getting players into your group that enjoy the same things you do, you get a chance to have fun yourself when you throw their favorite thing to do at them.

 

[Awakened]

That's some great advice there, ichabod You're right about the roleplaying thing- maybe I should be easier on my players and as long as they stay mostly on track and have fun without disrupting things too much they deserve the xp coming to them

 

[Seonaid]

I really like ichabod's suggestions, and don't know how much I can offer, but here's my thoughts.

It's been brought up many, many times that "table talk" is disruptive, etc. I've found that the sessions I've liked the least were the ones where the GM had to curb it. If the GM goes with the flow and lets the players have their talk, it's much more fun, and usually the players themselves bring it back when they're ready. Gaming, to me, is stress-relieving, and sometimes that is mostly non-gaming-related chit-chat. Some of the most fun sessions I've had were almost entirely table talk, and some of the most fun sessions I've had were almost entirely devoid of table talk. IME, it's best to let it run its course, especially since you said yourself that your players like to game. If it becomes too much of a problem, try to get together other times during the week, or before/after the gaming session to gossip or whatever it is you need to to.

To address some of your other questions, and to echo ichabod, some of the best GM's I've had asked the players for their input on the storyline and the world and everything else, and then actually put the answers into practice. If you can respectfully ask your players' opinions and then respectfully listen to them, both before and during the campaign, you'll have a better experience than if you run roughshod over them, or only do things when (at the very moment) they ask you.

My first response to your notetaking question was to say, "Make a very important plot piece connected to some detail they should remember, but possibly neglected to write down," but that's not very feasible. For some groups that would work well, but for some groups the players would just say, "Screw you," and do whatever they want. If you have the former, do that. If you have the latter, perhaps you could ask them to take notes, and stress how important it is to you/the characters/the plot. Or you could have an NPC "take notes," and remind them of things, but only of the things that NPC would really remember. That is, don't give them an encyclopedia's worth, just give them the abridged dictionary's worth, biased to the NPC's experiences and motives. Maybe if they have an information source that isn't complete they will be more interested in retaining information themselves.

Alternately, make your plot less detail-oriented. In all the campaigns I've been in where we had no notes and no one with an excellent memory, the PC's stumbled around and got back on track because both the players and the GM were flexible. Just because a character remembers something incorrectly doesn't mean the whole plot is derailed.

Hope that helps, and isn't too incoherent. Good luck with your campaign.