GMs, how do you get players engaged / immersed in your campaign?

[igotsmeakabob11]

Do you use ambience music, fog machines?
Guidelines for describing a scene/background to get the scene/setting into their heads?
Do you have them come up with ideas for the campaign?
Do you find Battlemats to help or hinder their immersion?

How do you make your players get really into the game, make them think about it when they're not playing, give them the itch to play again?

We're probably all familiar with the 'remember that Fun is #1' idea, and it's important to remember, but any advice or tips to remember when you're behind the screen would be great.

[tonyz]

Start by asking them what kind of campaign they want to play, and working from there.

Describe the situation they're in. Use several senses. Make it feel real.

Know what the bad guys are like, and up to, so when the players do something unexpected, you can react quickly and appropriately.

Be good at winging it and making snp judgements. Don't break immersion by hour-long rules arguments.

Dangle multiple little hooks, and see which ones the p,ayers nine at. Those become your main threads.

Reward what you want to see more of.

[Terokai]

i have them help me develop ideas for he world if we are doing home brew of have them describe their home towns and such. otherwise i talk to them between game and get their ideas and essentially become a publicity manager for the game getting the psyched for the next session

[Spook205]

Let them have the impression that what they do makes actual changes to the world surrounding them.

Then let them make changes.

Propose a world that keeps on eating, breathing and dealing with its problems without them there.

If Homer the Village Idiot is having a problem with basement rats, but the party goes and deals with a bigger problem, have them come back and discover that Homer and someone else dealt with the rats.

The best way I can describe this is perhaps a dated thing. In old Hannah-Barbara cartoons, we kids always knew what shelf was going to move. The animation cel layer was slightly discolored compared to the background layer.

Don't do this. Don't have NPCs, and events and such show up to serve specific functions as 'the character the party cares about,' or 'that inn they'll like.'

Just make them. The party will make their own choices, and when they make their own choices, then things that interact with those things have more meaning.

Don't abuse this. Don't burn down the inn just because they like it, but build on things.

You need a deep pool for immersion. Cultures, peoples, nations, disagreements, heresies, problems (that aren't necessarilly adventuring problems), and the like. Maybe the innkeeper doesn't like the stablemaster because when they were kids he dunked his head in a bucket. It doesn't mean anything in an adventure, but he grumbles about it constantly (he's a petty dude).

The party will pick up on it, 'that guy makes good stew, but don't mention horses, whoo boy."

Immerse yourself. Think of what it'd be like to live in your campaign setting. How do they get by, what do they do day in and day out? Who's where? What aspirations do they have?

How do things work? Why do they work that way?

Also, this is a goofy thing, but have NPCs behave like PCs. Have them occasionally do random nonsense you see your players doing. Even in real life, great warriors and statemen occasionally are spotted doing absolutely bizarre things.

[Necrovox]

First for me, voices (so long as their not all annoying) help. I speak German, I'm Irish, and I grew up in a hick town. I can replicate three accents successfully and believably. Because of this, one of my main bad guys has Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice, their NPC sounds like Christoph Waltz, and fey are all Irish.
Second, battlemats, pictures, and miniatures really help me get into a combat. I've played a game where we were all letters on whiteboard, it wasn't as easy to get into combat, and I got bored with the game rather quickly.
Third, backstories tend to result in characters putting more time and effort into their character. They will then develop more of a personality, and if you use the back story in-game, it can be quite rewarding for the player to see that his fiction has changed your game world. I require back stories. But some people may not want to force their players to be creative, they may fear that homework would "turn a player off" and so in game rewards (hero point system, extra feat, which is same thing as hero point system, just players with a backstory are "antiheroes," extra stats, extra traits, extra skills. This way there is more of a motivating force behind that character depth.
I roleplay everything: from a random encounter's suspense, to simple vending or inn stays. This has helped my characters flesh out their personalities greatly, and makes a night with no combat still fun.
Hope this helps, though, I don't use music, I find it distracting.

[David Haller]

If they're "invested" in the campaign, they'll be interested in it.

Make sure you have recurrent NPCs the characters have relationships with - allies, enemies (not necessarily "kill on sight" enemies, but rival adventurers, and unfriendly noble, etc), family, romantic interests, etc. Occasionally, these people need rescue (maybe even the enemies!)

Let them accumulate honors or properties in the campaign world - clearing a dungeon and them improving it as a base (and maybe eventually being granted lands by a grateful king) is a classic "hook" (and leads to adventures, as well).

Be sure players detail their character backgrounds, and draw ideas (such as NPCs) from there to connect PCs to the world more securely.

In general, if the characters have an impact on the world, and vice versa, they'll be drawn into the narrative.

[IdleAltruism]

My group runs a collaborative character creation. Everyone starts with creating a fairly complete vision of their history and everyone else takes a look at it and has a chance to alter and add something. Once everyone is done with that they move on to personality and then appearance. After all that they establish the characters' links and perspectives toward the other characters.

The group has limited input, each member can only alter a limited number of things or add so much depending on the category, and the player of any given character has a limited number of vetos per category (and the group as a whole can majority veto bad changes).

Overall it's a very unique system that generates very interesting characters. The goal is to role-play a character you didn't have complete creative control in creating. This makes for very unique, and in a fashion non-linear, characters. Because of the number of different aspects added to the character, no matter how bizarre they may initially seem, they have a way of creating very well fleshed out characters, and since the players establish the links between each other and how the characters initially view one another a lot of interesting party dynamics occur.

It also serves to make the players invested in the other characters and how they act and develop, as they played a crucial part in establishing certain aspects of that character. It's very satisfying to see your fellow player role-play an aspect you thought up.

[ClarkKent07]

One thing I do that has turned out really well is ask each PC to submit an in character journal after each session and in return they get minor in game rewards...an extra hero point, an extra skill point etc.

It has really been awesome in getting them to think as thier characters and then when they come back to play they have really reviewed the last session through thier characters' eyes.

Also as a final bonus at the end of the campaign I have an amazing multi-character perspective novel of teh campaign.

[igotsmeakabob11]

These are fantastic. I like the character journals, groups I've played with have done it before although they usually awarded experience rather than skills points etc.