Ideas to improve player participation


Gamer Life General Discussion


Our group is having a bit of a dry period in gaming. Part of that is due to me having to move and a few weeks later another main group member having to move twice in a month. Plus it's summer and people are dealing with vacations and such.

But it also feels that the group just isn't as invested in gaming anymore. People are creatures of habit, and I think we sort of got out of the habit of making time for gaming.

So I am looking for ideas to spice up the gaming experience so that it is more likely to appeal enough to get people to make it a priority and plan some activities around gaming instead of planning gaming around every other possible activity.

If anyone else has gone through this and has come up with some ideas to bring back the spark, I'd love to hear what you did. If others just have some ideas, those are welcome too.


I never bump.

Never.

Dark Archive

What kind of game do you run?

I know it seems like such a simple question - but do you run heavy plot, role-playing games or do you run heavy action and combat oriented games?

For me if we are going through a lull, or things are disjointed I plan a very "attention grabber" sort of reboot session - and I plan the session to happen (outside of game scheduling conflicts resolved). Even if you have to tweak things from the listed modules planned out encounters, just jolt it with something memorable that everyone wakes up. Kill a valued NPC, set up a huge spontaneous fight with recurring bad guys.

Without knowing playstyle, age, distractions (at and away from the table) and how you run your game this is a very difficult question to answer.

It could be as simple as a setting up a fowl-up proof session (check and double check everyone's availability) and play with fixed expectation and series of events as you plan them for the day - i.e, don't sleepwalk through the session (not accusing you of this) and provide a grab them by the collar session.

You get them back into the story and they will be waiting for the next session.

Edit to add: also at table distractions take away from the game experience, which carries over to wanting to play the next session, etc. When most people go to a movie, they put away their phones once it starts - and then get into the movie - gaming is no different. If you have people distracted (phones, etc) or sleepy (we play till 1 am on some nights) you are going to have a strained game session. Everyone will not get the full experience.

AD, have you ever seen a movie you like - you wanted to see this movie for awhile and now you just see the credits rolling - and then wanted to watch the sequel immediately? That's should be your game, that effect at the end of "I would like it to have been longer" or "damn, I can't wait 2 years for the next part to come out!!". That should be the expectation. It sucks to dump it on the DM, but when it's showtime, it is in fact - showtime. You need to be in it 110%, everything firing. They will reflect what energy and urgency you put in the game.

- In a heavy RP game, keep it moving - go from scene to scene quicker and make the RP events have direct and current visable effects. Or in the middle of Rp, throw in a fight as unexpected as possible (assassination, ambush, in a bar talking and town is under attack).

- In a combat game, changing up things to get peoples attention can be harder. Introduction of Super-foes, recurring villain or friendly NPCs killed (revenge is a good motivator) all work. Having 3 to 4 different foe fights simultaneously (3 to 4 sides, PCs included - all trying to kill each other) is a good change up.


Aux,

We are mostly a group of middle-aged married guys with kids. Three of us have grown kids, the rest have kids still in school.

Right now we have two games underway. There are two groups involved, but four of the group overlap between the two games. Each game has one other player that isn't in the other game.

We tend to play my custom campaign game more frequently, but that's because it's supposed to be a weekly game. Lately it's been more like a monthly game. The other game is a popular PF module and is run by one of the other members of the group. That one is supposed to be monthly but we've only managed two sessions since February, one of which was last weekend.

I think we have a reasonable mix of combat and role play, although the role playing is more prevalent in the campaign I run. So far the module campaign has been the more challenging one to get players engaged.

Dark Archive

Adamantine Dragon wrote:

Aux,

We are mostly a group of middle-aged married guys with kids. Three of us have grown kids, the rest have kids still in school.

My group is younger by a tick - many kids but still very young (1st and 2nd graders)

Adamantine Dragon wrote:

Right now we have two games underway. There are two groups involved, but four of the group overlap between the two games. Each game has one other player that isn't in the other game.

We tend to play my custom campaign game more frequently, but that's because it's supposed to be a weekly game. Lately it's been more like a monthly game. The other game is a popular PF module and is run by one of the other members of the group. That one is supposed to be monthly but we've only managed two sessions since February, one of which was last weekend.

Thanks for the info.

It could be several things - nothing that is anyone's fault or a reflection of defect or mistake in DMing. The holidays really knock our schedule off. We game on Wednesdays (tonight, and I should be working on my Chill game) so its less of a conflict with daily life - middle of the week, sort of a dead day (no pun intended) on the social calendar side.

It could be that you guys are just spread out too thin. Not to knock players, but sometimes a session is just a session - doesn't matter who the DM is. They still need to float it by wife/gf/domestic parter that they are going to game. "Oh sweetie, I have my game tonight" pause "but didn't you play last week"? More silence. "Well, tonight are playing Dragons Demand, last week was my game"...then the shuffling sound of clothes and personal belongings being placed on the street.

Gaming is a tough hobby, not the act of gaming which requires obnoxious players and Dms to sit around and RP/roll dice, but the act if pulling off a night to game. You should only have a "side game" as a group if your core game is rock solid, on schedule and over booked so you need a second crew/session/game. I ran two different Gamma World groups amongst a group of friends (some not so friendly to others) years ago - 13 guys, all nuts. I won't do that again. It was too much and I was redlining other things in my life (job, gf, eating, breathing). On top of that - when one group didn't meet for whatever reason the rage levels (mine) went up because I still had allocated the time in my schedule for that group.

Adamantine Dragon wrote:
I think we have a reasonable mix of combat and role play, although the role playing is more prevalent in the campaign I run. So far the module campaign has been the more challenging one to get players engaged.

This is a problem - since you have to tell the DM to spice things up/you're doing it wrong. Not knocking the other DM, he just may be falling into the trap of thinking "hey, its a module - I shouldn't add anything to it and just run it as written". I don't know his mindset.

I don't know if you should shut down/delay that session or if you feel comfortable enough to talk to that other person, DM to DM and say - you need to get some hooks into this thing, you need to re-read this and add some personalization. Or whatever you think is lacking. Maybe it's the skills and narrative of the DM. Again, I don't know the specifics so I am just throwing some ideas out.

Here is a trick I use to keep my players engaged, and it may work for this other DM: Bad guys...really good bad guys.
Not all uber, unkillable bad guys (a few were), just memorable bad guys that are recurring, and drive the players to really hate them, hunt them down and want to fight them. I have players who have stopped actively gaming (life, schedules) and they still talk to me about the bad men they had to fight in my games. Ego, revenge and just plain hatred are very strong motivations to get players engaged. Of course they need to be there in the first place. If the module is go to point 1, talk to A, then go to point 2 and fight B and save C then you will have disengagement. Players will roll and it will become routine. Modules (to me) are just ground work - the DM needs to breath his own life into the things, put his own touch and twists and maybe even alter or enhance NPC roles.

I wish I could be more helpful. On a superficial level I would just consider some form of consolidation until the need for a second group is required. It could be that people are just spread too thin. I wish I had access to my level of game knowledge, tech resources (laptop and ready internet) when I was much younger teenager with all the time in the world with nothing to do. But I don't, you don't - that has to be a reality when planing any game session going forward. Can't be done on auto-pilot and each session needs full devotion to make it happen and to make it memorable.

Silver Crusade

Sometimes a total break from RPGs for a few weeks is needed.

Current group will sometimes go camping or just play some board games and/or card games--popular with us are Zombicide and Munchkin (any version).

Also I'm of the philosophy that sometimes a movie with the group is a better break than board gaming. You go see a sci fi flick and gripe about work over wings after. Good times.

THEN you pick up again on the game.


I do somewhat agree that the odd natural break is often not such a bad thing in and of itself.

That said if your finding that its hard to get a game going and have it keep on chugging well I've been there and in the same demographic (older players with families, jobs and kids).

My experience was the number one way to get a game going and keep it going was to designate a game night and then just stick to it.

The problem with trying to find a day that works for everyone is that you never manage it and your negotiating not only with every player but their spouse as well.

If you have a game night that goes off same day every week no matter who shows up you soon find that everyone plans their lives around the game night. In our group if we can't make quarem for D&D we play something else instead like a board game but this is an uncommon problem. Once one has a game night and everyone knows that X day is game night even the spouses are soon planning around it. They know your gone X evening so they build that into their schedules.

Hence in our group if I had to move...well there would still be a game night I'd just not be at it. They would not play D&D because I'm the DM but they'd play something...or at least hang out in some manner. Out for wings at a bar for example is a good activity. Anything really so long as game night goes on with those that do make the time to show up.

This also brings to light those who will just never make the game a priority. One of the difficulties with trying to schedule things around everyone is that people rate the game as having more or less importance according to their personal taste. If you have a game night and one guy misses it 50% of the time...well know everyone nows where he stands and the DM can be sure not to write him in for a critical scene in the campaign. In scheduling without a game night it might become clear that he was often the problem but it'd not be that clear...probably not even to him, that he just did not prioritize this as high as the rest of the group.

Silver Crusade

Jeremy Mac Donald, that works really well if none of your players do shift work. In my group, two of us are subject to the whims of our employer's schedules. Often the same weeks the two of us who are on shifts can't make it to game. For our group, this means that there are some weeks we don't have game. Some weeks we have game Sunday and Wednesday, and others where we have game "next Friday after".

Planning a rigid set-in-stone game day for us just does not work. But you're right that getting any set of adults plus significant others is a difficult issue at best.


My group has gone through periods like that a couple of times (we've been together for about 16 years), and the manner in which I pushed them back into keen interest is by giving them the task of designing an organization about which the campaign will be all about.

I simply told them what the tone of the campaign was going to be about, the starting level and some basic guidelines (such as how much gold the party had invested into it prior to the campaign, whether they had any property or hirelings, and so on).

Both times (I recently did it a third time, but not because of lack of player motivation, but rather because the story required it. We've been going through a sort of Golden Age since 2009 in terms of playing), the result was that the players got very invested in what they were making, and even months before the game even started people were organizing meetings over IRC or Messenger to sort things like NPC backgrounds and goals of the organization.

None of the campaigns those things spawned lasted too long, but that was due to external reasons. Still, they got the ball rolling and jumpstarted interest, and both were immediatelly followed by very memorable campaigns.

I think the reason it worked is because it sort of slowly percolates the "gaming mood" into the player's day to day life requiring very little time investment. As the thing takes shape, players start becoming more and more invested into it, until the urge to see it play out grows strong enough to prime a need to play again.

Sort of like using tiny branches to start a fire, rather than starting with bare logs, to use a made-up metaphore.


Very good discussion and advice. It's hard sometimes to look honestly and objectively at yourself or your core group of friends, and that is certainly the case here, but I truly do appreciate the thoughtful and helpful nature of the responses, particularly the time and effort that Aux, Klaus and Jeremy put into it.

Yeah, the "over-committed" thing might be a very good point. For years I played in two groups with no overlap. One was a weekly game and the other was a monthly game. There was no overlap between. That was probably good because it allowed me to play more regularly without committing other players with more demanding family members.

The other GM is definitely sticking to the module religiously. That's actually one reason I don't run modules, I get chafed by the notion that there is a specific way to do things. We spend a lot of time in that campaign flailing around until we finally locate the hook that the module has dangled out for us. In my campaign if my "hook" isn't working, I change the lure and cast it out again.

I really do think there is something to this idea of being over committed. A couple of our players do have real issues with spouses who look down on this hobby. Just the fact that two games are in play could be enough to set them off.

Something to think about for sure.

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