How do I get my players to step up and do things?


Advice

Sczarni

I GM for a small group, just my two brothers and my wife. We play over Ventrillo. I just had a pretty lousy session last night which reminded me why we went on hiatus for so long over break.

One of the big problems that we seem to have is that my players are very reluctant to take actions. They seem to just sit silently, waiting for me to tell them what happens. This is very frustrating for me as a GM.

For example, last night, they're entering a city, where they're supposed to try to find out some information about a man they're tracking. I tell them they're coming into the town, I give them a map with some highlighted locations on it, and I say, "What do you do?" I'm met with silence. I say, "You can try to find out information about this guy you're looking for." Silence. "How would you like to go about doing that?" Silence. "Well, there's an inn over here where you can stay. What would you like to do?" "[long pause] We go to the inn, I guess."

Every time I need them to make a decision, I feel like I'm pulling teeth. In the past, I've tried to overcome this by providing them with very obvious courses of action, but then they complain that I'm railoading.

So does anybody have some good advice on some thing I could do to get them to participate better?


1 person marked this as a favorite.

"I'm waiting."


Perhaps it could help to do some verbal highlighting.

"As you enter the town, you see smoke rising from the chimney of the Prancing Nag, an apparently bustling tavern. Between two nearby houses you also see clotheslines that are attended by two women who are gossiping loudly. In the distance, you see a guard stationed at the door of a fine manor flying the flag of the local lord. What do you do?"

Sovereign Court

Sounds very adventure game to me Rumpin. Makes me want to try and get ye flask.

Have you consulted them about this issue? Part of it might be them being on Ventrillo, they could be doing other things and not paying attention. I know I have a hard time reading something while also listening to someone. If I was scanning a website while playing I'd lose all kinds of details.

Sovereign Court

Gaming online can be rather difficult, I know the times when I've played I've done a lot of RP encounters over e-mail, and then run the combats with Roll 20 or another similar tool when the group is all online at the same pre-designated time. This way you can include only the people that see/hear/interact with certain aspects of an RP encounter and take the time to fill in more detail.

RumpinRufus gives an excellent example of coloring a world with clues, though!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Wait you use vent, but do you use any sort of webcam-video of the players or shared map, chat program, fileshare, etc.

Man I remember being on vent in raids and just flat out checking out at times, that has to be an inherently rough way to play tabletop games

I mean, when you're talking, how do you even know they are even there and listening and not off like getting a coke or dealing with life stuff or just reading a book or looking at harlem shake videos or something


RumpinRufus wrote:

Perhaps it could help to do some verbal highlighting.

"As you enter the town, you see smoke rising from the chimney of the Prancing Nag, an apparently bustling tavern. Between two nearby houses you also see clotheslines that are attended by two women who are gossiping loudly. In the distance, you see a guard stationed at the door of a fine manor flying the flag of the local lord. What do you do?"

I agree with RumpinRufus.

Keep in mind, too much freedom can be paralyzing, especially for people who are not used to the wide open world that comes with a table-top game (compared to video games). Alot of players have the idea (either from rail-roading or from video games) that there is only 1 right way to accomplish the mission, and will do nothing rather than risk doing the wrong thing.

You need to break your roleplayers of this "1 right way" idea, and encourage them to be more free-form. Let them know this is a wide open world, and they really can do whatever they want (and are not strictly limited by combat rules).

Start with having things happen to them or near them, even if they arn't "main plot" related. If the players respond, great, reward them and improvise how it ties into their quest (or maybe it doesn't). If they don't respond, just put a new situation infront of them.

Encourage them to roleplay, and only use dice-rolling as a suppliment. If they want to use diplomacy, tell them they actually have to say outloud what they want to communicate in their diplomacy check. The dice roll only affects how clearly they communicate it.

Clever ideas should give them circumstance bonuses, and if they take your ideas and run in a different direction, or ignore the story you want to tell, and start telling their own story, DO NOT STOP THEM.

If one of the players has an idea, you should try to make sure it ends up being rewarding and successful (unless its obviously crazy, like "I'm going to bash my head against this rock until I have a prophetic vision"). By showing your players that you are willing to adapt the story to whatever they want to do, you will encourge them to be clever and proactive in the story, rather than observers.


My advice is to try to find a few people to play with in person, over Vent and using online stuff is much harder to do as a GM than it is when you are all sitting at the table together. Another big problem is that unless you guys are using video as well, they may not get your cues. Most of the human language isn't spoken, it's body language so they wouldn't be able to tell when you are done explaining things sometimes.

I'd suggest instead of Vent, you guys try to do some Google hangout and see how that works instead, it might help you out a lot and make sure to use a map program like maptools.

Sczarni

We've tried Google Hangouts, but one of my brothers' connection doesn't run it well enough.


How long have your players been playing? I'm just wondering if they are just very inexperienced, have them watch some videos or listen to some podcasts (like Will Wheaton & Penny Arcade). Give them some ideas on how to take the cues and become better players, otherwise if YOU aren't having fun then it's not worth playing IMO.

Liberty's Edge

Start asking individually if they are silent. I have had to do that from time to time to get movement.


If players do little to nothing their xp relfect their choice.

Sczarni

Wel, I had the opportunity to talk it over a bit with one of them this weekend, and he said that he feels there's a lot of too-many-option paralysis, and that often they don't realize when it is that I'd like them to make decisions. So I'm going to work on trying to make that more clear for them, and see if it helps.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / How do I get my players to step up and do things? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.