How to handle players with differing desires?

[Kasai Shishi]

Hey everyone. I'm not really sure if this is the right place or maybe I should go somewhere else, but I was hoping to get some advice from others who have been in this situation. I realized way too late that the other place I posted it in was probably not the right one and it has been way over an hour since I posted. So reposting this here in hopes that it's actually the right spot. ^^;;

I am a pretty new GM that took on a text-based homebrew to new players that would be able to respond freely throughout the week, which worked pretty well at first. But then we noticed we weren't getting as much done as we'd like because of varying schedules and that was completely understandable. So we added a game day as well as having the ability to respond throughout the week. Which was really the saving grace and we managed to get through quite a bit... least until everything slowed to a crawl and feels like time has frozen forever in terms of the game (outside of the weekly meet up)

I have a 5 person party, we're all friends in and out of game, 3 who have been very involved and wants to get things moving so they can see where the story is going and how the world is building, but we have two others that are making it a bit harder. The other two have had some difficulty keeping up due to real life problems (nothing extreme or anything), They've expressed they're enjoying the game as well just don't really feel up to putting in the effort at the time.

Unfortunately this has kind of caused a rift in terms of how to proceed. I've tried to find a balance with those who don't want to respond daily, telling them I think everyone would be fine if there was some kind of response every 2-3days just to keep things moving, but that didn't work out either.

So, now I'm in this spot of having 3 people who are responding daily trying to somehow get the others involved. And 2 who just have landed into the weekly meet up. I tried suggesting maybe starting a second campaign to run through for those who want something to play on the active, but they're really invested into their current characters and the world that lies before them.

I had thought about possibly seeing if I could make their second characters part of my homebrew but to be honest, being new to what I'm doing to begin with, I'm not sure how that would work out in the long run of people having two characters to play.

And that's where I'm stuck. Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to make sure I was being clear when posting so I could get the best possible advice. Thanks to anyone who can help me in my situation!

TLDR: I have a 5 person party where 3 wants to be active every day, 2 have dwindled to weekly, can't manage to find a compromise. Have come for advice and assistance to others with more experience.

[Watery Soup]

I play a lot of play by post (PbP), but mostly with PFS, so things may be different for you. I'm going to use PbP to encompass a bunch of different media, like play-by-Discord or play-by-email or play-by-text - basically, anything where you make some kind of a posting that can be read at the recipient's convenience.

1. As a general rule, PbP isn't for everyone, just like F2F or VTT aren't for everyone. It's important to find the medium that works best for your group. Advantages of PbP: more chance for more elaborate roleplay, being able to play with people from around the globe, schedule-wise it spreads out games (15 min/day for several weeks instead of 4 hours one day). Disadvantages of PbP: tone and visual/audio cues are missing, games can often wait for an individual for multiple days, and games proceed rather slowly.

2. There are a few tricks PbP GMs use to move the game forward, but one is "botting" - getting instructions from people on how they want to act ahead of time. This is mostly for combat situations. Truthfully, I don't like it very much, and resist botting players when I am a GM (I believe posting is a privilege, not a burden). But it's a tool. I also use block initiative rolling, meaning all the enemies go as one block, which speeds up combat. If there's one enemy left with 1 hit point, I may also end combat narratively rather than stretching it out another day/two.

3. On a more meta level, PbP is more suited to shorter games (such as a PFS scenario). A typical 4-hour scenario F2F will be a 6-8 week scenario on PbP - longer things such as APs really need a strong agreement because it's a multiyear commitment.

4. Your situation is a bit weird, in that you seem to have a F2F/VTT component as well as a PbP component. It seems like everyone wants to play, and you should be happy about that (!!!). Definitely do not let perfect be the enemy of good here - if everyone shows up excited to play on game day, really ask if you need the drip-drip-drip posting throughout the week. So the fallback position is "we get together and have a good time once a week" and if "we incrementally move the plot forward during the week" doesn't work out, it doesn't seem that bad. Big picture.

5. If you really want to make PbP work, you may find more success if you selectively move PbP-appropriate stuff onto PbP. Do combats (the hardest part in PbP) in person, and then leave stuff that really shines on PbP for in-between sessions (like addressing the Dothraki chieftain in Dothraki, or large exposition pieces with character backgrounds). But, going back to #1, it's really about finding what people can agree to and sticking with it.

6. You can always have the 5-person F2F sessions, and then a separate PbP game for those that want to be posting for 15 minutes every day. Don't force people to play PbP if they don't want to. :)

[Kasai Shishi]

I really appreciate the advice and help. It means a lot. The last thing I'd want to do is ruin a good campaign I have going. So I think I'm just going to set up a new one for the people who do want to play on the fly daily and go from there. Hearing it from others and not just my thoughts helped me work through that bit. So thank you so much!

[breithauptclan]

Our game group only meets once per week. And that is on weeks that someone doesn't cancel because of family/life.

A second campaign that runs concurrently, played by the players that want a daily small dose of gaming sounds like an interesting idea. It would be a lot of extra work for you as GM though. One thing to try that may a) help reduce the load on you, and b) be more engaging than just a separate campaign: have a prequel campaign. Was the villain in this current campaign always a villain? What villains were defeated during that bad guy's rise to power? Or maybe the current campaign's villain was just a no-name at that time, or maybe this was so far back that the villain didn't exist yet. But something would have shaped the world for the current campaign's plot to come about. Old bad guy's toppled, old kingdoms replaced, national rivalries put to rest, natural disasters reshaping the landscape. Things like that.

[Kasai Shishi]

I had considered this very heavily but came to the realization that the world they're involved in would be too spoiled at the moment if we tried something like that and would lose the value when they got around to these points by their mains.

breithauptclan wrote:

Our game group only meets once per week. And that is on weeks that someone doesn't cancel because of family/life.

A second campaign that runs concurrently, played by the players that want a daily small dose of gaming sounds like an interesting idea. It would be a lot of extra work for you as GM though. One thing to try that may a) help reduce the load on you, and b) be more engaging than just a separate campaign: have a prequel campaign. Was the villain in this current campaign always a villain? What villains were defeated during that bad guy's rise to power? Or maybe the current campaign's villain was just a no-name at that time, or maybe this was so far back that the villain didn't exist yet. But something would have shaped the world for the current campaign's plot to come about. Old bad guy's toppled, old kingdoms replaced, national rivalries put to rest, natural disasters reshaping the landscape. Things like that.

[CaffeinatedNinja]

I have run text/discord based games, including a module and am currently halfway through an AP. My group has a couple very active players and two players who are not as active.

The biggest thing that makes this work is the understanding that not everyone always has an opportunity to react to any given scene.

If you wait for everyone to chime in, and some players take forever to post, it really drags things out. I tend to operate that if half of the players respond to a situation, that can be enough to move things foward. Who those players are varies depending on who responds first of course.

That makes it work.

The downside is if you have a player who is both slow, and hates seeing the story move ahead faster than they like, it might not work.

But you have to make some compromises in this format or your games will move at a snails pace.

[Claxon]

Honestly, have a session 0 and set expectations for everyone and try to make sure everyone is aligned in expectations. And give people an opportunity to say "I don't think this is for me".

For your specific issue, my suggestion is to have the 2 players that only want to attend weekly be away from the party for reasons. And during the weekly group session they can return for other reasons.