Unengaged Players

[Lwaxy]

Yeah, players used to railroads/unflexible modules can be stressful in any sort of sandbox, almost as bad as sandbox players wanting to play an AP

Are those experienced RPGers? Which could mean they always had a railroad in front of them.

It looks like you should talk to them outside the game about decision making. I have a few players like this as well, who are usually swept up by what the rest of the group does, though, so it is not as noticeable. A few of them are just worried they would derail the story, not getting that I don't really have much planned and mostly react to them.

 

[bloodtide]

Basically I can't get them to roleplay anything that might have consequences. They have no issues with roleplaying their characters' interactions with each other, but once they might have an effect on anything they shut down. Basically they wait for me to shuffle their characters between each piece of action that they expect me to have prepared for them.

Ah, this is a common problem. What often happens is that this type of player only thinks about ''playing the cool part of the game'' and they don't really get why would they want to ''play the boring parts of the game.'' (And it's not too shocking that many of this type of player is a video gamer too).

There is a simple trick:just don't have any parts of your game boring......to the players. This is a common DM/player disconnect. The DM thinks it's great to interact with with some gnome miners, but to the players it's a huge waste of time. And the best way to do this, is to simply increase the fantasy of your game.

Take a simple shop: A normal shop would be made of wood, and full of shelves of items with a little old dwarven shopkeeper that tells stories of long, long ago. This type of player is already asleep just reading that. But try Dalgoth's Shop: The shop is made from red dragon bones and floats some 100 feet above the town on a massive pillar of fire. Dal is a half silver/half dwarf and only sells to 'tough folk'. And the way to prove to him that your tough is by fighting and killing one of his pet dragons.

So the trick is to read your players and then give them what they want.

 

[S'mon]

It turned out the players didn't know what to do in a sandbox. (It was in the 4E post-spellplague Forgotten Realms). So they just went around Waterdeep getting into barfights and beating up random NPCs on the street. The game became rudderless.

I always include plenty of rumours and other hooks in my sandboxes. You can have NPCs looking to hire the PCs in a sandbox. Of course the PCs are free to reject the offer. It's also good to have a timeline of events that occur without PC input and can spur more adventures.

 

[mazzoli]

There is a simple trick:just don't have any parts of your game boring......to the players. This is a common DM/player disconnect. The DM thinks it's great to interact with with some gnome miners, but to the players it's a huge waste of time. And the best way to do this, is to simply increase the fantasy of your game.

Take a simple shop: A normal shop would be made of wood, and full of shelves of items with a little old dwarven shopkeeper that tells stories of long, long ago. This type of player is already asleep just reading that. But try Dalgoth's Shop: The shop is made from red dragon bones and floats some 100 feet above the town on a massive pillar of fire. Dal is a half silver/half dwarf and only sells to 'tough folk'. And the way to prove to him that your tough is by fighting and killing one of his pet dragons.

So the trick is to read your players and then give them what they want.

I'll second it that this is great advice. I'll admit, that kind of stuff would bore me to tears as well, so I don't expect anything like this. I try my hardest to run my game on rule of cool alone.

I would think that they were more into just a dungeon crawl style game, but every time I ask them about that they say that they like the story and want me to keep doing what I'm doing.

I suppose they could be lying to me to try to spare my feelings or something (which is weird because most of them know me well enough to know that that shouldn't be a concern). In any case, the next couple sessions are going to be dungeon crawl type stuff and I'll see what their reaction is to that type of play. If it's positive, I'll just try to push the story along via dungeons. If not, I'll have to see if they take to something else I guess.

 

[bloodtide]

I suppose they could be lying to me to try to spare my feelings or something (which is weird because most of them know me well enough to know that that shouldn't be a concern). In any case, the next couple sessions are going to be dungeon crawl type stuff and I'll see what their reaction is to that type of play. If it's positive, I'll just try to push the story along via dungeons. If not, I'll have to see if they take to something else I guess.

If you think they might like dungeon crawl type stuff, but still want plot and story....you can just bring the dungeon to them. You just need to dump the idea of Ye Old Earth-like Tymes. My Multiverse is full of this stuff:

*Kalor is a city built over a lake on wooden poles connected by rope bridges. And the lake is full of all sorts of aquatic monsters, so going from place to place in the town is 'running the gauntlet'. Lots of folks are trapped in the inner city, and many more are trapped in debt(as you must pay for the safe haven of any building.)

*Jardath is a Scro(orc) city where might makes right. If you can kill anyone that does not agree with you, then what you say is law...

*Wastrreli is a giant 'city mimic' that eats people and is grown around a magical power source. Lots of wizards live there. And you can 'flavor' your self to be less appetizing to the mimic(or more so as well).

Evererranasel is an elven city where all other races are fourth class non people.

 

[mazzoli]

Old Earth-like Tymes

That wouldn't be following rule of cool, now would it?

The campaign world is definitely not "Old Earth-like Tymes". The party has solved a Victorian-style ballroom murder mystery, plundered an Indiana Jones style temple, molested an airship, killed a mob boss wearing a suit of magically powered armor and defeated a demon infestation of common farm animals.

I have little to no patience for low fantasy and work hard to keep my players entertained with ridiculously over-the-top scenarios, which is part of the problem. These things are hard to come up with consistently and they just don't do anything to provide even the basics of connection between each adventure, so it's taxing trying to tie everything together.

I think I've got a good idea of how I'm going to proceed from here, but if we want to turn this into a more open-ended discussion of player types and how to tailor games for them, that sounds good.

 

[Tamlyn]

...molested an airship...

 

[mazzoli]

To be fair, only one of the characters did that...the rest just watched it happen.

 

[GSHamster]

I think you should start by providing a couple of explicit choices. "You can do A or you can do B? Which one?"

That at least will get them making some decisions.

 

[Filcher]

I think you should start by providing a couple of explicit choices. "You can do A or you can do B? Which one?"

That at least will get them making some decisions.

This.

Or, alternately, what if you sit back and are okay with it?

DM: "A week passes. The innkeeper collects his 5 gp for the rooms."

Players: "And?"

DM: "A another week passes. What do you do?"

Players: Silence.

DM: "The innkeeper collects his 5 gp for the rooms."

DM: "A week passes ..."

... repeat as needed until they get the point.