NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 6281991" data-attributes="member: 6668292">This is kind of a weird question to me, but I guess it resonates with a lot more people than I thought it would.I've never really had this problem to any large extent. What I've found is that the more the players are interested in what's happening in-game, the more they focus on what's happening in-game. Yes, even when we're not playing.Sure, between the sessions, I've helped build prestige classes with my players (years ago), or talked to the Sorcerer about what spell he'd take next, or whatever. And they looked forward to getting those things, obviously. At the same time, my players would spend more time talking about their plans for dealing with the invasion from the north, or wondering what was going on with many different NPCs, or focusing on a new potential threat and the implications of it, etc.I've gone about getting them interested in what's going on in-game in a few ways over my decade as a GM. There are two that stand out to me:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">For my main group of players (mostly 3.X or my own RPG), I focused on building a setting that I thought was interesting, and I let them play in it. It was almost always sandbox-style, but I made sure to start them at a point in the timeline where the action was rising, and where they could get involved. The players being able to explore the setting, make relationships, change the world, learn new things, etc. are all very important to this type of play.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">My current method with my 4e group (which has one of my long term players in it) is more about finding hooks in their character concepts, and then pushing them based on those hooks. Because we have a Warpriest of The Raven Queen, that means we'll likely see Vecna, Orcus, and The Raven Queen stuff in the campaign. Because we have a wilden Scout, I'll be throwing in more aberrants for the party to interact with. In this method, bringing focus to player hooks, mechanical abilities, and the like are very important.</li> </ul>All of this matters in-game, though. None of the players are waiting around for stuff to get interesting in-game either way, and so their focus is very much on what is happening in-game. Do they think about leveling up? Yep, but it's more of an off-hand "it'll be cool when I get this" as compared to a more focused "I need to get this; I don't care about anything else until I get this."Just my experience, of course. And, I admit, different players will handle things differently. All the same, I think that if they're interested and involved, that problem will basically die out for most players. Just my thoughts on it.</blockquote>

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