Weem’s DM Tips for RP Prompting and Immersion

[Greg K]

Throughout my campaigns, I tend to have an occassional one night session based around an individual charcter's goals/background/etc.

Character A wants to gain glory and reknown among his tribe? When the player's go back to character A's homeland, the party members have a chance to tell of the character's deeds at the festivities celebrating his return. Hearing about the character's deeds from others carries more weight than the character's own retelling.

Character B left his homeland, his family, his fiancee and his duties as a knight without word to anyone in order to track the people that ambushed his border patrol? The characters get to deal with the fallout and intrigue as they try to restore his good name upon returning to his homeland.

Robin Laws actually had a Dragon article about making a campaign like a TV show. While I don't like plotting out the campaign like that, I liked that it discussed having a session that highlights a particular character's story.

 

[TarionzCousin]

One thing I've done for the past ten years or so is give a consistent "Plus One to any d20 roll if you adequately describe what you are doing." I've never required that players do this, but I have regularly prodded them after a close roll with "Do you want to go for the +1 description bonus?"

If the description is particularly entertaining to the group, I've been known to give a +2 or even grant an immediate success. This particularly helps keep the group interested when the rogue is off scouting alone--as he is highly motivated to give elaborate and amusing descriptions so he doesn't trigger any traps, alert the bad guys, make too much noise, etc.

 

[Hussar]

Interestingly enough, on the same vein as sending emails during the week and the like, Fear the Boot just had a podcast on Using ARG's (Alternate Reality Games) in RPG's The gist is that you set up something like some of the TV shows like Lost have done - a website where there is a clue that leads you to another website, maybe an email address, that sort of thing. Blind alleys and whatnot, all based around your game.

Sounds like a hell of a lot of work, but, it might be interesting.

 

[Hussar]

Dusting this one off.

One of the biggest things you can do to prompt RP as a DM, is to actually have NPC's TALK to the PC's. I've seen it many times that DM's have the NPC's treat the PC's like they have a nasty social disease and basically treat the PC's like dirt at every opportunity. If the players actually try to talk to your NPC's, as in the players initiatiate conversation, GO WITH IT.

Since the players have already initiated things, they obviously are showing interest. If every barkeep responds like the gruff bastard in Mos Eisley cantina, the players are just going to shut down. If every time they try to talk to someone, they're meeting nothing but resistance and obfuscation, and outright beligerance, well, that's only going to discourage further attempts.

To be honest, I wonder if many of the players I've had over the years have been taught by DM's who constantly did this. If you do this, the only thing you're teaching is that NPC's are there to be killed.

 

[weem]

Dusting this one off.

One of the biggest things you can do to prompt RP as a DM, is to actually have NPC's TALK to the PC's. I've seen it many times that DM's have the NPC's treat the PC's like they have a nasty social disease and basically treat the PC's like dirt at every opportunity. If the players actually try to talk to your NPC's, as in the players initiatiate conversation, GO WITH IT.

Since the players have already initiated things, they obviously are showing interest. If every barkeep responds like the gruff bastard in Mos Eisley cantina, the players are just going to shut down. If every time they try to talk to someone, they're meeting nothing but resistance and obfuscation, and outright beligerance, well, that's only going to discourage further attempts.

Indeed.

I always talk to my players with the voice of the NPC.

If a player says, "Well, I ask him about the wagon", I will generally respond with something like, "what do you ask?" which reminds them that they need to be more specific and in most cases, they use their characters' voice. If they don't still, I am answering with the NPC voice anyway which immediately prompts them - sometimes I even get the (unnecessary) apologetic nod, like "oops, my bad, you want to know what my character says".

Once the players get used to this, as mine have, you will find they use their characters voice more often than not (if not all of the time), which is awesome.

And personalities definitely need to vary, as you mentioned. It's okay for some to be gruff and hard to deal with, but the majority of people (common folks), at least in my campaigns, are personable at least. When my players run into someone truly hard/impossible to deal with, it's more of a surprise to them as this is not the norm.

 

[pemerton]

Adding to Hussar's point - in a more-or-less standard heroic fantasy campaign, PCs of mid-to-high level not only should be able to talk to NPCs, but should be figures held in high regard by many of those NPCs. If you let PCs have successful audiences with mayors, barons etc (as well as publicans) you can go a long way to making the players engage in an affirmative way with the gameworld. Even if the world is still mostly backdrop, I think it can help the mood and tone of the game if the players have a positive rather than an indifferent conception of that backdrop and their PCs' place in it.

 

[Hussar]

Wanted to blow a bit of dust off this one. Too good a thread to let languish.

Another thing I think DM's can do to prompt RP is to keep an eye on the pacing. I know that there is a tendency around tables to get caught up by one of two things - excessive detail or analysis paralysis. Either of these can lead to one or two players getting really excited while the others start zoning out. In the first case, one or two players get really fixated on some element - what does X look like for example - and the game gets bogged down in minutia.

The latter case usually springs from the first - overloaded with details that lack context, the players try to formulate some plan of action and that planning goes on and on and on. I've seen groups spend over an hour trying to work out the exact questions to a Divination spell so that they have all their ducks in a row before the spell is cast. Meanwhile the other three players at the table are pretty much bored out of their minds.

As a DM, you really have to nip this in the bud. I'm of the opinion that no single scene should take more than about 15 or 20 minutes. I do except combat from this, because the scene should be changing pretty drastically round on round. But, if you're spending more than about half an hour on any single point, you're probably losing the interest of the players.

To this end, I actually don't have a huge problem with the DM being a bit pushy. Turn to the players and ask them to sum up. If they can't, just start advancing the action anyway. "You finally come to an idea of what your spell should look like. This is the information that is revealed."

It might be heavy handed, but, a bit of heavy handed is far and away preferable to mind boggling boredom.

 

[bryantsonnier]

The group i dm seems to be the hack and slash type of group, where i really like the whole story line idea of d&d. This leads to an issue where going from the town where the "roleplay" tends to be minimalistic to the location of the dungeon. I get a rather dry tastless feel rolling for random encounters on the path as well as the board "and we're walking and we're walking...." when i try to get them to describe to me what they're doing.

Ideally i feel the dm is to set up the backdrop and the players tell me what they are doing. I get a negative feel about the whole thing so i almost want to say "you set off for the dungeon and arive there 2 days later and 'Action!' " but in a world where monters lurk around every bush and its a wilderness out there to put it the way i just described it, it sounds like they took a leisurely stroll through the woods of despair and their way to the dungeon of death.

I also don't want to steam roll them throught the story i want to tell. Any tips?

Also on the steam rolling thing, what is the balance between running everything by the rules (i.e. roll perception, you see nothing, roll perception, you see a beholder) and dictating you see nothing you see nothing oh! you found a beholder. with the see nothing, their may or may not be something there cause if everytime you ask for a perception roll they find something when they get a crappy roll or i tell them they found nothing they tend to metagame and dig deeper anyway causing me to add extra rolls where there really is nothing just to throw them off the trail. I end up having a lot of rolls which doesn't feel like it flows.

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=6669441]bryantsonnier[/MENTION] - a couple of thoughts. First off, only roll when the results are in some sort of conflict. In other words, only roll when it matters. You want them to see stuff anyway, so, don't bother rolling. Just tell them. Why try to hide stuff?

If the wilderness is dangerous, don't tell them it's dangerous, show them. If they traveled for two days and saw nothing more dangerous than an irate squirrel, even though there might be dangerous stuff out there, they don't see it. You want to make the forest seem dangerous, eat a couple of the characters once in a while. That tends to help.

 

[weem]

[MENTION=6669441]bryantsonnier[/MENTION] - See hussar's advice above, which is spot on.

Also, here are some quick ideas regarding how you might show them the forest is dangerous. Some can be simple, some more complex...

Simple

1) There could be corpses along the path

2) Large/ominous footprints spotted

3) Areas of the forest could be destroyed by what must have been something very large

Dynamic situations

I think of these as setting a small stage that the players can explore, which you can turn into something big, or leave static for effect.

An example might be that you describe to the players...

"After traveling for what must be hours at this point, your find yourself stepping into an opening in the woods... at the far side, perhaps 40 feet away, you spot 4 deer, 3 of which quickly dart away from you, but the 4th seems to have it's leg caught in a hunters trap"

The idea is simple... "trapped deer". However, you leave the rest of the details open and let the players actions determine how far you want to take it.

If they approach very carefully, perhaps investigating the clearing before getting closer, maybe that is enough (in your eyes) to demonstrate the danger of the woods. They were obviously very cautious not taking the woods for granted.

However, if they decide to shoot the deer from there, laughing and running over to it - perhaps you spring a trap on them. As they get closer they see that the trap is not a simple man-made trap, but rather one crudely made by who-knows-what. It might be at this point that they are ambushed. In this case, they get some combat (which you know this group likes) AND you demonstrate the danger of the woods. Perhaps they are not ambushed, but find something else... perhaps the deer is an illusion and as they get closer, they discover the remains of humans nearby, crudely buried under leaves and a thin layer of dirt. You could then ambush them OR, better yet, do nothing... let them worry now... "what is out here?"

The idea is, you throw something in their path and let them explore it, using their actions to determine whether or not you make more of it. Their actions may inspire an idea for you as well - something they might say or do might make you think of something to add, etc.