The party in my home game has me fearing the future of the campaign. On one side we have a skill-crazy bard who wants to do nothing but role play, exploring the social orders of cities and talking to NPCs a whole lot. The other, I'd say the majority of our small group, likes to employ their skill in combat, raking in the XP's. Both groups begin to question the point of playing if they can't get enough of what they want out of the game they're playing. Rightly so.
How does one write an adventure that successfully keeps the interest of the talker, yet doesn't leave out combat opportunities for the fighters?
My prior attempts at trying to solve this have led to not enough of either for any of the players. I'm pretty much at a loss.
Help?
Or add a bit of investigation that leads to butt kicking. Fighters will appreciate the bard working towards battle rather than working away from it. The other option is to put in place some short roleplay challenges in which the bard can win a financial pay off for the group.
If you have a secondary DM, split party activities can be done in the same session, if you want their actions to occur simultaneously.
There's only so many situations where one person can be roleplaying while combat and exploration/subterfuge occurs at the same time, though.
Here's a few:
Pit Fighting
The party is split between the combat in the ring (participating to be a distraction, or for the purse/fame/reward), and the social aspect of "working the crowd", meeting contacts, interrogating a suspect, building reputation, etc.
Ocean's Eleven
The "Face Man" speaks with someone in charge at a location, either to gain information, plant information, be a distraction, or any combination of things, while others are achieving some other goal at that location like killing targets, subterfuge (scouting/stealing), etc.
Interrogation
Now this one depends on that alignment of the group (if you have a paladin for example), however having a detailed roleplaying session of a long/intricate interrogation (from mexican standoff to a person tied to a chair) can offer some combat and social dynamics playing together.
There are a couple angles to this. The main goal is to gain something from a particular target, and the Face Man in this situation will be using his social skills to achieve this goal.
However some combat and subterfuge actions will grant major bonuses to checks, or influence the direction the conversation goes.
Threats being made and then carried through by Team Action. In a standoff, the combat side can sway things in favor of the Face Man (having more guys, or less hurt, etc).
In specific interrogation (guy in a chair), you can have Team Action go and act on specific pieces of information gleaned. They come back confirming what the target is saying, or bringing back a loved one to threaten harm with (whether you actually will do it may depend on alignments).
The key is being fast paced between interrogating the captured preson, and the combat/sneak side of acting on that information.
Skipping parts that might take a while (don't roleplay all the moments between leaving the interrogation and getting to the place where combat/subterfuge might happen, etc).
Sending spells for updating between Face Man and Team Action can save time as well (like a strike team radioing their commander with updates as he interrogates a suspect).
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If, however, the Bard wants to roleplay full games where he's in the thick of social settings... you might be stuck having two gaming sessions like kyrt suggested.
If people have such opposed views on what they want from the game, sometimes you might have to ask one side to wait until the next game to play that kind of style. This would be the extreme situation though (if one side balks at the ideas given so far for mixing the two).
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Pit Fighting
The party is split between the combat in the ring (participating to be a distraction, or for the purse/fame/reward), and the social aspect of "working the crowd", meeting contacts, interrogating a suspect, building reputation, etc.
This is the exact situation in my current game (Age of Worms). I have three clanking tanks, who have exhausted all their abilities in the arena, and have no stealth whatsoever; and a super-stealthy, fast, shadow-tainted Scout/Ranger, who, after the savage mauling they got, is thinking of pulling a sickie for the next match.
Since the whole point of entering the games is to search the bowels of the arena, we have a sneaky B-Team, consisting of Mr Shadow, and several NPCs the party have picked up along the way, snuck into the arena in the guise of their medical and management staff.
Last session saw the other tank players temporarily take over one of the sneaky NPCs, which include;
the elf wizard assistant of their dead fence,
a recovering evil necromancer (who never got sent to jail, as they intended, but was recruited to research by above dead fence,
a talking raven companion (modified Order of the Raven, Ravenloft),
and a phanaton (gliding raccoon-person) burglar, brought from the southern jungles by their employer.
Having found something juicy, the raven has flown back to the tanks, to inform them that the rest are sat in a Rope Trick for the next 6 hours, on watch.
In all honesty, ideally, both the campaign and the players themselves will have both. A time for heavy skill usage, and a time for combat. Bards are no combat slouch, and the only class that can't really add much skill wise is the fighter, so I don't see why you can't have both, unless both groups of players adamantly dislike their opposite.
Yeah, I see this more as a player preference thing, than a class/role thing. It's not the "can't" but the "won't" (or rather, "would rather not", heh).
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What's your group's relative play experience between these two encounters?
What do you as a GM want to do in the campaign?
Getting hack and slashers into roleplaying is hard. I find, however, that most hack and slashers are mollified if they get 2-3 chances to shine each game. They just want to feel important. There are a couple ways to solve this depending on what you want to do in your game:
First, you can add more combat. But if you add more combat you need to make the combats run faster so they finish quickly and give the roleplayer something to do. If you've got a combat monkey who has so many options they're slowing down combat, put a time limit on their turn. Grab a 30 second or 1 minute hourglass. On each player's turn flip it over. If they're still flipping through books to figure out their actions by the time the hourglass runs out:
"5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You're holding your action. Tell me when you know what you want to do. NEXT." This is a slight modification of how a GM I know handles summoners and conjurer casters at society tables in organized play. Good players will grumble the first few times and then they'll learn to play faster. It also helps the slower players realize they're wasting people's time. So long as everyone is subject to the rule, it's pretty fair. 1 minute is a LOT of time to make decisions, and they simply have to start taking actions by one minute. If they're mid stream don't cut them off.
Second option is to allow more Roleplay prior to combat encounters. Instead of kick the door down combat, reintroduce Ye Olde Concept of PULLING. Bards are great at splitting the enemy party. A couple charms here, a suggesstion there, and a bard can easily use his roleplaying panache to take incredibly difficult encounters and break them down.
I personally have used the enchantment and command/control casters like the bard and witch to distract guard patrols while my party breaks into buildings, calm a mob about to riot while the PCs are doing some fighting in the streets, etc. Basically, give them encounters they blatantly cannot succeed at unless they find ways to break them up. Let them know this CLEARLY through storyline and obvious hinting. Then maybe drop a hint that perhaps the party can split the encounters up with some smart roleplaying, keeping enemies distracted. (My favorite is convincing guards that it's actually not their shift and they should go get a drink.)
Once this occurs a single time, your players will try it every time they can. There's a great feeling of "HAH!" when it works.
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Most well-written mods have aspects of both. Dnd is mostly a fighting game (the rules for social encounters just aren't as deep as games like L5R / Shadowrun for dealing socially). But there are always fights whichcan be avoided by not approaching "both guns blazing", and diplomacy in interrogation often allows information the party wouldn't get.
So let th bard feel useful by adding these encounters; meanwhile the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, and you don't want one person to slow and bore the entire party. I do NOT recommend the ideas above, splitting the party is primarily an issue for "GM" time, which is to say there is only one GM. Just script out some good diplomatic opportunities now and again and the bard will be happy.
Split the party.
Really? Well, if you insist...
;-p
Pose this question to your players. Seriously. They're going to be your best source of ideas in this case. Present your frustration, let them present theirs, brainstorm some ideas.
If you're afraid bard-player will feel picked on, talk to him privately first.
As far as general adventure design, I would suggest an urban campaign where there's lots of thugs to beat on, but some intrigue and other things to discover to keep the bard happy. If you're really good with the intrigue, hopefully the others will get interested too (but don't necessarily count on it).
Tangentially, I recall being in a slightly similar situation. I started a campaign in a city and I in fact declared that I wanted to do some city intrigue, where the party would be rewarded if they picked up on clues and followed them.
One player (playing a fighter-rogue, going into shadowdancer) actively worked on networking with NPCs in the city, trying to unravel the mysteries the PCs found themselves in.
Another player had a mostly fighty paladin, but with some good diplomatic skills, and he did his best to engage with the story (and helped reform one of their first enemies).
But most of the other players presented the attitude of, "So where's the dungeon to crawl through?" Two players created a fighter and a barbarian each of whom had no social skills or urban crawl abilities whatsoever, AFTER I had told them what the campaign would be about. One player created a rogue merchant, and later switched to a cleric of the god of cunning and trickery, and she proceeded to show no interest in the intrigue, and only interacted with random shopkeeper NPCs instead.
I talked with the shadowdancer player and the rest of the players. Many of them said something to the effect of that they weren't happy with the setting/situation they were in, and some of them would rather kick some ass. The party was large and that was actually also hindering efforts to do a lot of roleplay--they kept splitting so then half the party had nothing to do while another group was roleplaying (and here is where I look at the other suggestions to split the party and say NOOOOOOOO. It is a nightmare to handle, especially if you have easily bored players). I was a less experienced GM at the time so I was also really, really struggling to make sure everyone had something to do.
I could have tried to force them through the city intrigue plot, and they'd continue to be frustrated and so would I. I looked at what I thought most of my players' expectations were and decided I'd need to adapt. I could run my spy game with another group of players who would enjoy that thing. In the meantime, I'd give the party a dungeon to crawl through--but the trick was, I also made sure that their goals aligned with the more intrigue-savvy shadowdancer.
I had the city hire them to clear out a haunted stronghold. Doing so gave them political opportunities (which made the shadowdancer very happy) while also provided a place for the characters to kick ass and crawl through dungeons. I worked a different aspect of the plot line than I had originally planned to, and did get them hooked into some of the history behind what was going on, but they got to focus on the things they wanted to do. After a very rocky start, the campaign ended more or less smoothly.
Hopefully, you'll be able to find an amicable compromise as well.
Yeah. NEVER. EVER. Split the party. Ever.
You will have nightmares tracking a split party.
Well, you could split the campaign. E.g. spend two out of every three sessions playing with a combat-heavy party of PCs, and one out of every three session playing with a social-heavy party of PCs.
Personally, I think the worst solution is to force a mixed party to stay together (e.g. where some characters have little or nothing to do in combat).
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Pose this question to your players. Seriously. They're going to be your best source of ideas in this case. Present your frustration, let them present theirs, brainstorm some ideas.
If you're afraid bard-player will feel picked on, talk to him privately first.
I second this. The best way to resolve a problem is to talk to your players directly. Depending on the social dynamics of your specific group, you might have better luck doing it privately but a big sit-down before your next gaming session might work too.
Also, don't worry too much. As the DM you have the lion's share of work to do as it is. Do what you can to balance things for both groups, but your players might have to adjust their expectations to the reality of the game. Every player isn't going to "shine" at the same time or in the same way in every encounter.
Some of the above suggestions are really good. I especially like BQ's bit about adding "...a bit of investigation that leads to butt kicking. Fighters will appreciate the bard working towards battle rather than working away from it."
In the end, though, your players are going to have to find a way to participate, even if they aren't being 100% optimally effective at all times.
As for splitting the party, I personally advise against it. It rarely turns out well. In my seventeen or so of gaming experience I've found that it is normally just a pain in the butt for the DM and a seething pool of frustration for the players. Good in theory, not in practice.
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Making two campaigns, one of which is social, is a terrible idea. Look at it from a psychological perspective... the bard player clearly games as a social outlet, they're not into the whole "competitive fighting". They like stories and being around people; fighting gets in the way of this. The rest of the party fallls into hardcore dnd players. The bard has to be transitioned over; have them feel useful with interrogation and stopping certain fights, get key info, etc. Meanwhile help them appreciate the combat; help them with spells so they feel useful and appreciated... They probably won't like "combat bards".
Just saying, for this person isolation is probably the worst thing you can do.
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But look at it this way... Everyone could have gone to ALL of those things, interacted and roleplayed and not sat there bored, and it would have taken the same amount of OOC time. I do rarely have things while people are around town that are personal agendas, but I try to resolve these quickly and with as little loss to "group time" as possible. Just more efficient; it is a bit of fiat, but you (the GM) are the bottleneck in these situations.
The true problem here isn't anything you can fix directly.
Both "parts" of the group came to the game expecting different and contradictory things. One side or the other needs to switch. Doesn't matter which.
The bard needs to get into combat mode or the combateers need to start being more social. This is an issue that one or the other (probably the bard since he seems to be the minority party member) should have brought up before hand.
this isn't really an issue of "every party member needing to shine". This is a problem of one person wanting to use Solution Y to every problem and everyone else wanting to use Solution X. You can't do both.
My personal suggestion? Convert the bard to "combat" and then start another campaign revolving more around social interaction. Trade off weeks (or months, or whatever) going back and forht so both groups get what they want without having some peculiar parody inside the party of them switching sides every once in awhile.
Just my .02.
-S
I do NOT recommend the ideas above, splitting the party is primarily an issue for "GM" time, which is to say there is only one GM.
My suggestions were meant to be done in a "back and forth" style of session. So everyone is seeing what the other is doing, but no one is sitting there for too long doing nothing but watch.
So run one, or maybe two rounds of combat, and then switch back to the social situation and have another back and forth before going back to the combat.
I'm thinking of shows like 24 or Ocean's Eleven... everyone is doing something simultaneously, split screen, etc.. it's just not always combat that you are doing when you go back to the social character.
Pulp games work well for this as well, where combat isn't necessarily expected or required, but can be done if the player wants.
Think of a story revolving around a private eye, who has a body guard, and some underground contacts that he'll use, etc.
From my reading of your post, it sounds as if the bard wants to do pretty much nothing BUT social encounters while the other party members really just want to kick in the door. Normally I'd suggest balance of social/combat encounters to keep both groups engaged, but from this,
My prior attempts at trying to solve this have led to not enough of either for any of the players. I'm pretty much at a loss.
your attempts haven't succeeded. The problem seems to be that the two groups of PC's have zero common ground. So to answer your original question,
How does one write an adventure that successfully keeps the interest of the talker, yet doesn't leave out combat opportunities for the fighters?
if the talkers ONLY want to talk and the fighters ONLY want to fight, then you can't please both. It's the common trap of in trying to please everyone you end up pleasing no-one. My advice depends on a couple of factors: What kind of campaign do YOU want to run? Do you have the time/ability to run two different campaigns? If you're happy with both social, RP based campaign and running a combat heavy game AND you can swing GM'ing two games, then I'd suggest breaking into two different groups.
The party was large and that was actually also hindering efforts to do a lot of roleplay--they kept splitting so then half the party had nothing to do while another group was roleplaying (and here is where I look at the other suggestions to split the party and say NOOOOOOOO. It is a nightmare to handle, especially if you have easily bored players).
I agree 100% that splitting a party on any sort of a regular basis is just asking for player boredom and disinterest. It is extremely difficult to have split the characters while keeping all of the players engaged. It's the sort of thing that can go well once in a while but not on a regular basis.
Thanks much to everyone for their advice and opinions. I've studied all the posts and am working things out actively. Game time is next Saturday, after all. ;)
I thought about the situation some more. The party is a mixed bag, player wise, to say the least. It consists of an elven cleric with years of gaming experience who wants to be a "Legolas" and an "Aragorn," a human sorceress who's new to role playing and apparently wants to be a fighter judging by her actions, and the gnome bard who is also new to role playing and really enjoys her character concept. This party is definitely made up of individuals, which makes splitting the party quite easy. In fact the cleric's player spent most of the first two sessions alone and seemed to be actively avoiding the other PC's. The trouble is that they all become horribly bored when a split occurs. Then when it comes time for group interactions with NPC's the cleric likes to dominate the floor while the bard struggles to work her conversing skills and the sorceress sits back wishing her wand was a sword.
I've talked to all of them together and individually, during character creation and after each gaming session. I ask for feedback and criticism, advice and suggestions, and motivations and desires. I actively comment when a player tries to dominate the game, especially when the cleric pulls his "Well, I'm going to do this..." tactic. For all the coaching, adventure amending, and discussion, I've come to a hard decision.
Much of what I've read here will be helpful as I further experiment, though I may have to end up putting out some more of my time creating a second group for role playing, apart from the hackers and slashers.
Thanks, all!
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Sounds like the cleric is being a problem. Best way to deal with that is to hit him with something reasonable that he can't handle alone when he tries to do something alone. It shouldn't kill him, but ought to put the fear of GM back into the "experienced" player. Unless you know you've got an actual experienced player I'd bet he's not nearly as good as he thinks he is. Anyone who uses the "Well, I'm going to do this.." line is going to cause strife at your table, constantly.
Sorceress ought to get pointed to the dragon disciple prestige class, possibly followed by the eldritch knight. Gives her a way to get her melee on. If she's a non-draconic sorceress, let her fix it. Seriously though, talk to her about how she WANTS to build the character, and make it work for her. She's new. Let her get away with it.
Bard is being a bard. Can't fault the bard for that. Definitely ought to introduce her to the combat roleplaying lines of spells (Suggestion/Charms and other enchantment spells) and show her that she can play a combatant without using weapons and still be awesome. Pull her aside and challenge her to try to use those spells in combat to meet both her needs and the needs of the combatants. As I said earlier. The happiest a hack and slasher can be with a roleplayer is when they do their job and make hack and slashing less difficult. Make sure she succeeds often early on and then slowly make it incrementally harder.
I experienced a similar situation when my original gaming group formed up in college about 5 years ago. We were playing a 2 year long campaign, with 4 people.
I was playing an Elven cleric. Transitioning from a long career min/maxing D&D and every online MMO you could think of. Oddly enough, I probably acted a lot like the one in your game.
Fighter was a roleplayer coming in from a lot of white wolf, built a Two Weapon Fighter (this was 3.5 core, so TWF sucked). However, of all of us this guy was probably the most balanced middle ground player.
We had other players but these two I think are relevant to your experience.
I'm seeing a few parallels here. I can relate to your cleric. I know the feeling of "I don't want to wait for these roleplay solutions when I can just play god". I died 3 times in that campaign and learned my lesson. You are not a god without your friends backing you up. I leveled up IRL as a roleplayer in that campaign. A lot. I value my time in this game more than any other game I played because the GM did not appease me. He was fair, but he kicked my ass when I acted alone.
The fighter turned into a modified paladin after being storyline owned by a bad deal he made with the BBEG. Came back for vengeance. In all seriousness, this guy is who you need to find and add to your group. You need a player who people will naturally default to as leader, and as much as I'd like to say that was me in this group, the fighter really took the lead until level 7 or so. He was willing to roleplay when appropriate, but also willing to listen when I got tired of interrogating the useless prisoner who had murdered me while I tried to catch him the first time. "Dunkirk, just spike him already." Splortch.
This is not a problem you can solve alone. You need someone who will help you on the player side. As it stands you've got an incredibly fractured party who needs to jostle out who the actual leader is.