Hey fellow GMs and Players.
I am newbie GM currently running a game with 3 PCs, none of my players have played before, its going quite well and we are a few sessions in.
The group mix is two players who when i was walking through character creation very quickly volunteered complex character concepts, so the class/race/backstory was all about actualizing that and also fitting it into the game world/my campaign. The third player is more of a "rollplayer" than a roleplayer, and very quickly volunteered that he wanted to be "A big guy with a claymore". We settled on fighter.
Please no roleplayer vs rollplayer arguments, as a player and GM i feel both are legitmate and neccessery. Actually our mix works well since my players are friends and feed off each others energy at the table, so be it a big battle, skill challanges or complex RP scenarios there's always someone keeping the group energy up.
My question is this : Since i'm a GM who actively explores my players backstories and personalities for adventure hooks/ways to make loot meaningful to them and ways to make them *care* about the campaign I am starting to worry that my rollplayer might start feeling left out etc... What can i do other than ensuring there's a good complex battle or two every session to engage him? Is my concern a legitimate one or am i projecting feelings that I (as a roleplayer) might have if i were a player at my table in his shoes?
thanks all
GuRei
I've done it and I can't help you overmuch. Give him almost impossible minigoals... and lots of food. Often it's the thought that counts.
almost impossible minigoals... could you elaborate on that? What i had been thinking of was having an Iron Knight (his PC is a Gorumn follower). Then i'm gonna make the Iron Knights a bit like highlander (there can only be one!!!). That'd be a good source of duels with a little bit of roll play thrown in, and he can enjoy collecting the badass loot they have. I've also had a 14year old peasant boy decide that that PC is "his hero" and start emulating him to see what he does.
Lol, he and I are the only two out the four who drink at all so we bond over a couple of brews at each session, food is a communal thing though :P.
Another related angle to this is that i do like rewarding my PCs backstories too... not as in "you did your homework so take this exp/gold". What i mean is that for example the half-elf ranger has a birthmark in the shape of a cresent moon and eagle that glows slightly with the full moon. I'm going to have it keep glowing after the full moon this time around and give him smite evil as per the paladin ability once a month. How do i balance that?
I play in a group thats about 50-50 Roll vs Role every week. A successful way to reward the Roll is to give him bling. The bling can be followers, ladies, recognition by the locals, cool gegaws for his sword, collectible armor sets, a rainbow pony, magically refilling beer steins, you know, important stuff. And as you really only have one person who needs "supervision" you can base a lot of stuff off him.
I had a player who took over one of my NPC female dwarf Clerics, he was more of a Rollplayer, but as they adventured in one particular town I had the ladies and wives of the town come out of the woodwork, they invited her to tea socials, gave her pies, knitted her doilies, made her give sermons on Sunday. Little kids would come up and beg her to tell adventuring stories, in other words, I made him into a Roleplayer slowly over time. The backstory became less important than the front story.
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Well one solution would be to sort of force the issue a bit and force him into role playing just a bit. This may sound high handed but that's not how I mean it.
Example you could have npc's that engage him specifically. For example you could have a npc big strong guy challenge his strength and one thing leads to another and he engages in a short tournament. Or some wench seduces him then steals something from him and disappears. Then when tracking her down the PC will be more engaged and invested in the investigation as he is suddenly personally invested in the outcome.
Do this every few sessions and reward him specifically for his victories with whatever he seems to value most. If that is gold (as it is so often with roll players) then give him gold. He will not feel left out.
You have implied however that each PC has their own separate xp track. Don't do that. You are new, your players are new give everyone the same xp and reward individuals in different ways that do not involve xp. Having everyone at different levels is a bad idea unless you really know what you are doing, and even then it is to be avoided as xp difference means level difference which means the lower level characters are much much weaker than those you reward. You WILL play favorites it's impossible not to so don't do it. In the long run when a character if a full 2 levels behind the others you will understand why I recommended against this.
Start rewarding the improbable. If one of the two other PCs do things that probably aught not work, but you roll with it and something amazing develops, it could go two ways. 1. The Rollplayer begins to follow along and starts to take more risks. 2. The Rollplayer feels left behind and sulks. 2.5 The Rollplayer takes it half way or too far and sulks while trying overly outrageous things. I would take this as a good sign, although it would be frustrating at first.
Where things would really work is when he does something in line with what you're after, reward it immediately and with vigor. If his peasant boy gets injured and he leaves battle to go help, BAM! Peasant boy is actually a HAND-WAVEY in disguise. (You'll know best what will work well in your game.)
Backstory is sometimes hard for people to do, but future oriented stuff should work. What does Claymore want? Big swords and loot, sure, but what does he WANT that is not material. Infinite wishes? Power beyond reconing? A castle? Heck, sometimes if you want to see what a character is really like, throw them in front of the deck of many things. I was in a game where a character drew the Castle from the deck... and then fell in love with it! The character eventually retired to manage his keep and became an NPC so that's maybe not what you're after, but nonloot nonXP goals can go a long way to help.
Some of my character's improbable goals:
1. Tuntus the Eight Times Dead (Half-Orc Oracle.) Wants to get into Gorum's afterlife by dying in battle. Every time he dies, my DM changes his name to the next iterative of dead. (Below 0 HP, but still lives.) He also comes back with more scarring and death-like looks. (Wasting curse.)
2. Breegin, the Executive Producer (Gnome Summoner, +100 years or more). Somehow, this character developed a fondness of books. It was a post-apoc campaign, and he was old enough to predate the apoc so any creature comforts went along way. He was lured away from the party by a nice library of books and bottle of nice wine made from grapes that scream when you pick 'em on the darker side of the Abyss.
Other motivators include the deadly sins, hubris, revenge, collections, obsessions. Etc.
But as a rollplayer, you will see greatest effect when his roleplaying is rewarded as much as his rollplaying. He'll have to make the first real move there and that may be out of his comfort zone. I hope you'll consider it okay if that doesn't work for him. Some people enjoy the comfort of rules and may get upset if rules don't exist for what's going on.
Thanks for the input guys, its all good stuff and its now all sloshing around in my noggin :).
I was having some simlar thoughts, with collectables i was thinking Iron Knight themed paraphinalia with enchantments and whatnot. And in general he's alwys pleased with a bigger, shinier, more claymorey sword.
And i had been thinking about stretching him out of that non RP comfort zone slightly, while still remembering that its *tottaly fine* if thats not his thing. Like i say the way our group is rounded out works well for the most part but I just worry that he might start feeling left out since i can see the characters connections becomeing more important.
Ways i'm thinking of doing this include : the peasant boy david. He will be traveling with the refuggees that the party is escorting at least for the next session. I'm gonna make RP investment in him by Claymore result in greater combat efficy of david, and i'm gonna say that at the time when he RPs. Like i'll describe how david starts holding his sword better as claymore teaches him and his eyes glow with happyness and you feel a bond between you two then i'll OC say "so yeah, his base attack bonus is now +1 cause of that!"
Also i'm thinking as he kills more iron knights highlander style, he'll be going up the ranks and eventually might be able to actually get a small group to follow his orders in the war thats on the horizon. But to do that he'll have to convince them, if he goes with that.
Regards the advice on XP, its good to hear that. Origionally I wasn't planning on counting XP at all, but just following encounters and keeping an eye on how often i wanted the party to level up. But my players were *very* keen to know about XP "Man! that was an epic fight with those goblins!! Dude did you see when you shot that warchanter in the head? you f$*&ed her up man!!... so how much exp do we get?"
SO... i agreed with them that i'll devide encounter EXP equally between the three of them. Other than that i do ocassionally throw 10-100xp for anything particularly awsome or in character (like a really cool and timely critical hit, or when our ranger basically dived infront of a hobgobiin and got KO'd to protect a baby). I keep track about twice a session of how much xp everyone has and make a note to have a low threshold for awarding these bonuses if somone is more than 75xp behind. Am i likely to run into trouble, or do you think i'll be ok?
First thing to keep in mind is that not all characters need to be the social butterflies. Some character concepts include antisocial behavior. The strong silent type is a classic role, but whenever someone uses that as part of a background they always seem to get put down as a bad roleplayer. It often seems like the only acceptable role is the outgoing social character.
I had an inquisitor whose concept was that he was the guy you never noticed. He purposely dressed and acted nondescript. His charisma was 10 so he was neither good looking nor ugly. He had the conversion inquisition so when he wanted to he could turn on the charm, or become the scariest dude in the room. He even had the birthmark feat so he did not need a holy symbol to cast his spell. He avoided open displays of his power and preferred to observe the situation from the background. When I tried to roleplay him that way everyone said I was not roleplaying.
It also may be hard for him to come up with a background so maybe what he needs is some help in that department. Look over his character especially his traits and feats and see if there is something you can work into the story. As a GM you have more tools and options available to you then the players. Introduce NPC from the background of your characters. Not ones they have written up, but ones you created. Maybe the next important NPC the group encounters is a relative or childhood friend. If he follows a god have an NPC cleric of his deity become part of the plot. Just make sure that his character is not the only one this is happening to or he may feel he is being singled out.
Thanks mysterious stranger, i've had a similar experience with a character i played who was basically a failed terrorist trying to lay low lol... so i'm sympathetic to what i like to think of as flying casual but still roleplaying. I know this isn't what claymore is doing though, from discussions we've had. I think in a sense he is still making the transition from cRPGs to P&P rpgs. I say this cause he has made comparisions (good and bad) between the two and i know he is a big cRPG player. Also when we were doing character creation when i chatted about backstory he asked me "Yeah thats interesting and all but it dosn't really effect the game does it?" *gesture at the character sheet with numbers on it*.
Like i say i'm not trying to argue roll vs role playing. I think you need both although my style as a GM and player leans towards the latter. I'm just worried that failure to try and engage him at all in the role play elements (which are around 60-70% of my game) will make him feel left out, but on the other hand going to far will make him feel "singled out" as you so artfully put it.
I'm really glad you brought up "bringing in an NPC from the players past". Its an issue i struggle with in a way. What if I bring in his house's battlemaster who taught him the art of war from a young age and he says "hang on thats not cool, you're making up things about my character?".
The line i am treading with the other two is kind of agreeing on the areas where they are handing me "copyright" of thier backstory. In other areas we do things by agreement and collaboration, but when i want them to find somthing de novo i basically say "Your backstory says you didn't know your elven mother, so i take it i'm free to fill that in as i like?"
whats the etiquette in this kinda thing?
I've found that Hero Points are a good mechanic for really mechanizing the benefits you grant for good/bad roleplay and, if this particular player isn't too savvy on the roleplaying aspect as much as he's in it for the technical aspects of the game, he can always just choose to be an anti-hero, grabbing the free feat but losing out on ever benefiting from Hero Points. I don't find it very cool to overly reward or penalize players in terms of roleplay. Not everyone is some creative, expressive, roleplay genius; some are going to be inherently better and some are going to be inherently worse. It's poor GMing to say, "Well, you succeeded at your intimidate roll, but if you can't come up with a threat that convinces me, I'm disregarding it and saying you failed." It's equally poor to say, "Well, you failed at your intimidate roll, but I was pretty convinced by what you tried to do so I'm gonna say you succeeded anyway." How is that fair to anyone involved? And to try to justify it by saying "It's a roleplaying game, so roleplaying should come first" is a cop out because it isn't just a roleplaying game; it's a roleplaying system. Both the "roleplaying" part and the "system" part are supposed to be reciprocal. Everyone is going to have their own personal levels of roleplaying quality and system mastery and, no matter which angle you focus on primarily, the other will naturally elevate as well, even if by a lesser degree. So this player who is more interested in the technical system of the game will, after being immersed in and subjected to good roleplay from his peers, start to develop better roleplay of his own. Usually, players like this will develop a technical roleplay of sorts, developing characters who are adventuring for little more than to practice and hone their skills; and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that compared to a character with an elaborate, deep, and complex backstory involving family, adversaries, lost love, fated destiny, whatever.
Therefore, cater to his technical preference and pull on plot hooks involving technical mastery of his character. Drop in a teacher character, drop in a magical weapon that is in the same fighter weapon category as his preferred weapon, but maybe one he hasn't taken Weapon Focus for. Have someone offer him his choice of a monetary reward or training for a bonus feat (of your choosing). Character interactions for him are going to hold the most importance if they can relate back to that technical aspect of his character so maybe a recurring rival that uses the same weapon or, alternatively, criticizes his choice of weapon. Since he doesn't have a deep, complex back-story to provide hooks for, pull your material from the campaign as it unfolds. Also, look to his traits (if you use that system) as they're not just there to provide mechanical benefit but also to provide plot hooks. If he took the Bullied trait, maybe one of those bullies is all grown up now and graduated to full-on thuggery. Or, if the character was the bully, maybe one of his childhood victims is coming to look for payback. If you decide to use the Hero Point system and he does choose to be an anti-hero, maybe at some point the mystic guide for these heroes of destiny openly questions why the 2 destined saviors of the world are being accompanied by a third member that he knew nothing about. Or maybe there's a prophecy about two people coming to save the world and no one thinks it's this player group because there are three of them and they all think it's some other two NPCs (one of which may be the aforementioned rival, bully, bullied, etc). Reward the players with what they are looking for out of the game, and then give it a slant. If a player is far more invested in the roleplay, give his roleplay rewards a technical slant. If a player is far more invested in the rollplay, give his rollplay rewards a storywise slant. If a player is equally invested in both, give him choices between concrete, objective benefits and abstract rewards that may open up different options in the story.
Ask your players! Explain that you're planning to introduce stuff from their background, and that you might pick stuff they haven't described in detail. I imagine they would be fine with it, but everyone feels happier having been asked. :)
If you do introduce undescribed people, make it less important people. Stay clear of suddenly inventing family or very close long-lost friends. Feel free to introduce childhood friends or teachers the PC's haven't seen in years, but don't suddenly introduce a sister, unless the characters background clearly states he has a sister. If it's important, ask "your background doesn't mention siblings. Don't you have any?", and accept whatever answer is given.
If you introduce a childhood friend, the PC's can get away with not caring (it's been several years, they could have grown apart). If you introduce an unknown mother, you're forcing them to react.
Kazzan has some good advice, especially towards the story/technical type feats. There is a decent (if not exhaustive) list of "story feats that can be used as free bonus feats to encourage involvement in the story. I've got a GM that likes giving the occasional story feat here & there.
For the NPC from his background keep it casual at first. Instead of the battle master who taught him everything he knows use a cousin or other distant relative. This way he can decide how he wants it to play out. Another option is the friend of a friend. So instead of the battle master have it be someone the battle master knows, but that does not have a direct relationship with the character.
Anything outside of the character falls under the GM’s control. For the most part a player should have pretty much free reign on his background. There will be some GM control of course. If the player wants to play the crown prince of the empire a GM is well within his rights to alter or veto that background. That being said the background of a characters background is fully within the GM’s control.
Words of warning.
Sometimes a player doesn't want the spotlight. I had a player who didn't make detailed character backgrounds and who I worried wasn't having fun back there quietly playing while other players took the spotlight. BUT every effort I made to include him only seemed to irritate him. Finally I asked him what I could do to help him out. And he told me to stop making him the center of attention. He was just having fun playing and didn't want the spotlight at all. So make sure your player isn't another one of these players.
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