The past couple years I've been having some trouble coming up with the type of stories that can keep my player's attention between multiple sessions. My campaigns have slowly devolved into tours of local lore and culture between whatever setpieces I can devise, and my games are suffering for it. My players have lost interest in DOING anything in the game rather than just being interested in the chance to game, and I've found myself having trouble keeping things moving once I've fleshed out the world. ( Partially because I build a campaign starting with culture and aesthetic design rather than a cool narrative that I can base things on)
So I'm wondering if any of you have advice about building a really awesome narrative start to finish that can help keep both me and my players engaged. Any help would be vastly appreciated.
Hi.
Speaking as a "GM taking a break" I would ask you to consider the same: take a break, if you're struggling to come up with something fun to play ... then you're not having fun I assume. And this is a game.
Maybe it's time for somebody else to run games while you kick back and just play?
If I misunderstood you, and taking a break is not wanted or possible I would say that from your post the first thing I would reccomend is: ask your players what they want from the game and if they are having fun?
My opinion is that everybody in the group, players and GM alike , are responsible for bringing the fun -if your players "aren't interested in doing anything in the game", as you put it; then simply ask them why.
In addition; from your post I get the impression that you put a lot of focus on world building, maybe even without any player input, and then bring your finished product to the table and tell them that's what your playing?
If that is the case, maybe your players are having trouble relating to the lore and culture of your world and maybe they're tired of having to get into your lore, when they'd rather play something else?
Just a thought.
I remember a GM I played with a while back that was so enamored with his own creations that some games would devolve into storytime; with him sitting there reading aloud from his 4 inch thick binder of notes about the culture and locations and lore of something or another that nobody cared about ... his problem was (imho) that he forgot that we were playing a game, not evaluating his fantasy novel.
Not saying that's what you do (I wouldn't know), just saying it's an easy trap to fall into.
regardless, my own way of making stories/getting inspiration? I do the opposite of you:
- I pick a theme or mood that I want (last game was 'dark and gritty')
- I decide what kind of stories I want (last game was horror and an feeling of being against the odds)
-then I make the first plot, and I only make facts and details for things that will be used in that plot and lore that might come up during that game (the first session was in a haunted house in a rural part of a country; I made maps for the house and the elements in and around it, I named the country - didn't draw a map, I fleshed out 2 other side locations in case the Players decided to go exploring) ... -and then we started, I made up stuff as we played or inbetween sessions, slowly fleshing out the world - when I (finally) drew the players a map it was just the country they were in, half a year later they would acquire a map over the continent, and even then it was just 'big picture'-style, with lots of blank spaces wher I could put whatever I needed as inspiration struck.
(I once had a necropoplis spring into existence half a days travel from the town where the players were resting because I wanted to do a 'ruins & tombs'-dungeoncrawl. the players never noticed that it hadn't been there the week before, because I hadn't told them anything about what was to the east the session before.)
the point is to avoid making invisible lines in your head, boundries, or Canon (ugh)so that if you want to do something different for you next plot, like a desert adventure, you haven't already told the players that there are no deserts on this continent and sea travel hasn't reached other lands yet. It's a "center->out"-design approach.
For inspiration I recommend just reading good books or watching good media (films, games, series) .
Another source are any paizo modules or adventure paths that inspire you: read through some of them, steal ideas, entire plots, encounters, npcs, items, bits of lore and put it into your own world.
I once ran the skinsaw murders AP for my group, it was heavily modified and completely changed to fit my world, but the skeleton: the encounters and connecting bits of read thread was loaned from that book. (it's a good one)
Hope some of this helps, sorry about the wall of text (I got inspired)
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Put some of the work in the player's hands.
To outright steal a cool idea that could actually work for any RPG:
Get your players to build your world and give you the story hooks to build the narrative around. Get them to put two plot-hooks in their character history: A personal plot-hook and a major plot-hook.
Personal Plot Hook is something specific to the character:
Examples:
A missing parent,
Seeking a cure for a congenital illness,
A material goal (become Captain of a ship, become the richest merchant in the region)
Revenge against the mysterious grey-haired figure that burned down the village
The number XIII tattooed on the back of the character's neck.
A major plot-hook has to do with the player's race or class:
The Elves are at war with the demonlord that has invaded their forest land.
The Dwarves have lost contact with the Deep Fort of Ganundum.
Halflings are secretly agents of a powerful dragon, sent out into the world to retrieve word of a potent artifact it seeks.
The Order of the Dragon Cavaliers have sworn to slay every dragon in the campaign setting for burning down a once great city.
The wizard school of Arhaim library has been transported to an unknown plane.
Then take those pieces the players provide and start trying to find out how they fit. Subvert some of the expectations. Once you have a rough outline just start dropping the cookie crumbs that relate to each character's hooks into the story and they should be able to put together the story themselves as they start listening to requests from NPCs, following clues and fighting the forces that they themselves decided on.
Put some of the work in the player's hands.
To outright steal a cool idea that could actually work for any RPG:
Get your players to build your world and give you the story hooks to build the narrative around. Get them to put two plot-hooks in their character history: A personal plot-hook and a major plot-hook.
Personal Plot Hook is something specific to the character:
Examples:
A missing parent,
Seeking a cure for a congenital illness,
A material goal (become Captain of a ship, become the richest merchant in the region)
Revenge against the mysterious grey-haired figure that burned down the village
The number XIII tattooed on the back of the character's neck.A major plot-hook has to do with the player's race or class:
The Elves are at war with the demonlord that has invaded their forest land.
The Dwarves have lost contact with the Deep Fort of Ganundum.
Halflings are secretly agents of a powerful dragon, sent out into the world to retrieve word of a potent artifact it seeks.
The Order of the Dragon Cavaliers have sworn to slay every dragon in the campaign setting for burning down a once great city.
The wizard school of Arhaim library has been transported to an unknown plane.Then take those pieces the players provide and start trying to find out how they fit. Subvert some of the expectations. Once you have a rough outline just start dropping the cookie crumbs that relate to each character's hooks into the story and they should be able to put together the story themselves as they start listening to requests from NPCs, following clues and fighting the forces that they themselves decided on.
This.
THIS!
This Is Motherf***ing Gold!
I am doing this from now on.
Hey, no trouble, inspiration is just about the best thing out there and you've actually helped me phrase my problem in a better way.
I'm very good at building living, vibrant and interesting settings. What I'm lacking in however is good stories to place in those settings.
Once I get my teeth into a setting idea, I can easily come up with themes, food, history, social structures and all the adventures that can be easily gleaned from those. One of my most recent games involved bootleggers in a dieselpunk age of sail/western/roaring 20s flying about in their airship getting mixed up with train robberies, prohibitionist border patrols and swing clubs full of demons. I had the background music perfect, npcs that my players were laughing about for days, and a bunch of adventures that the group was eager to get to the bottom of.
The issue was however that while these adventures were great, and the theme was on point, the campaign really had no direction beyond " lets see what crazy adventure we're going to be having for the next few weeks." I'd figure out something neat, I'd let my players at it, and they'd run through to completion, ready for the next helping.
Rather than a novel with ups and downs, loss and catharsis it was like I was making a serialized penny dreadful. Good for a few laughs and thrills with and continuity drop or two, but overall weightless in the grand scheme of things.
My campaigns have slowly been becoming this over several years. More and more it seems like I can't work out a good throughline beyond what to expect from a simple adventure. It's gotten easy for me to say " we're in a colonial america analog, lets have fun with muskets and tricorn hats" and a lot harder for me to say " alright, you were all nearby when this ship was wrecked shortly off the coast, some of you onboard, some of you on the coast. You all get tangled up in the disaster which will have repercussions throughout the coming weeks." Putting those two things together is even worse.
I've got a couple of campaign skeletons with arcs and twists and I've got a lot of meaty settings with flavor and memorable anatomy.
what I'm lacking is a heart or sufficient necromantic grease to make the story move and react like some semblance of a living thing, not to mention the problem of finding the perfect fit of plot and setting to make everything gel spectacularly.
Put some of the work in the player's hands.
To outright steal a cool idea that could actually work for any RPG:
Get your players to build your world and give you the story hooks to build the narrative around. Get them to put two plot-hooks in their character history: A personal plot-hook and a major plot-hook.
Personal Plot Hook is something specific to the character:
Examples:
A missing parent,
Seeking a cure for a congenital illness,
A material goal (become Captain of a ship, become the richest merchant in the region)
Revenge against the mysterious grey-haired figure that burned down the village
The number XIII tattooed on the back of the character's neck.A major plot-hook has to do with the player's race or class:
The Elves are at war with the demonlord that has invaded their forest land.
The Dwarves have lost contact with the Deep Fort of Ganundum.
Halflings are secretly agents of a powerful dragon, sent out into the world to retrieve word of a potent artifact it seeks.
The Order of the Dragon Cavaliers have sworn to slay every dragon in the campaign setting for burning down a once great city.
The wizard school of Arhaim library has been transported to an unknown plane.Then take those pieces the players provide and start trying to find out how they fit. Subvert some of the expectations. Once you have a rough outline just start dropping the cookie crumbs that relate to each character's hooks into the story and they should be able to put together the story themselves as they start listening to requests from NPCs, following clues and fighting the forces that they themselves decided on.
I've been hearing whisperings of fellowship on a bunch of my feeds, but yeah, that's a good way of dialing things in. If I start with an initial burst of flavor like" Hey folks, lets do 1001 nights spliced with some futuretech" to get everyone's ideas mostly on point, then It'll keep things from clashing too badly.
I'd still like to figure out a way to mine my own head for ideas though. :/
Have you had any previous enemies that you've taken prisoner and sent to a jail? If so you can do a campaign with new characters who get sent to jail (wrongfully if they want, otherwise have them make their charges to set up the initial character development) and align themselves with these enemies in order for them all to escape.
My current campaign has actually just folded ( scheduling, what can you do?) This is me more addressing an issue of building good campaign arcs after noticing that a lot of my previous games tended to go astray once I had finished the initial introductions.
So you're looking for less of an overall idea and more of a better way of follow through? Well with the prison idea escape is probably inevitable so having a revenge confrontation (initiated by the former enemies) with one's own former characters might work. Or am I missing what you're saying?Have you had any previous enemies that you've taken prisoner and sent to a jail? If so you can do a campaign with new characters who get sent to jail (wrongfully if they want, otherwise have them make their charges to set up the initial character development) and align themselves with these enemies in order for them all to escape.My current campaign has actually just folded ( scheduling, what can you do?) This is me more addressing an issue of building good campaign arcs after noticing that a lot of my previous games tended to go astray once I had finished the initial introductions.
I'm less looking for individual stories and instead I'm interested in ways to put stories together. It's the whole ' teach a man to fish' sort of thing.
I'm less looking for individual stories and instead I'm interested in ways to put stories together. It's the whole ' teach a man to fish' sort of thing.So you're looking for less of an overall idea and more of a better way of follow through? Well with the prison idea escape is probably inevitable so having a revenge confrontation (initiated by the former enemies) with one's own former characters might work. Or am I missing what you're saying?Have you had any previous enemies that you've taken prisoner and sent to a jail? If so you can do a campaign with new characters who get sent to jail (wrongfully if they want, otherwise have them make their charges to set up the initial character development) and align themselves with these enemies in order for them all to escape.My current campaign has actually just folded ( scheduling, what can you do?) This is me more addressing an issue of building good campaign arcs after noticing that a lot of my previous games tended to go astray once I had finished the initial introductions.
hmm, I guess the first thing to do is to stop thinking of stories as packaged bundles - like the scooby-doo-cartoons; where every episode is resolved and returned to the status quo at the end.
Some tricks:1.) always have 2 (or more) stories happening at the same time.
for example: the roscoe brothers are robbing a bank at noon, but at the same time the mad bomber mulligan has placed abomb in the city hall.
how do the players get involved? who do they think initially is responsible for the bombing? what happenss when the roscoe brothers deny being the bombers? where is mulligans next target?
2.) decide what the opponents/villians end goal is, then backtrack all the way to the beginning, along the way on each bit ask yourself: is this something he would do himself? or hire someone?
Ex: after several weeks of chasing down the roscoe brothers, while also investigating mystreious stabbings in old town, the group finds out that the brothers might have been hired by james carver; a nobleman and scholar with interests in the occult and friends in high places.
3.)never tie up all the loose ends at the end of a story, leave them to dangle and annoy players - then bring them back later as a reveal or new plot hook.
Ex: the players never found the third witness in the carver case, but 2 months later a corpse fitting the description washes ashore in another part of the country, the marks on it don't fit the carver case ...
I might have more tips, but for now it's lunch :)