How do you do non-emo gaming

[Mark Hoover 330]

Since HS my players and I were always emotionally invested to some degree in our characters and the story. I've had folks cry at the table, whole campaigns have been engineered around personal growth and so on. Because of the way I game, I tend to add emo stuff into my games.

If any of you have paid attention to my megadungeon campaign posts over the past year, you know that my players are not really touchy feely types. This past session that came to a head. Turns out, when push comes to shove even the guy running the paladin will gladly solve problems like a Vulcan; the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, emotions are illogical and so on.

Anyway, now to my problem: I've run and designed every game in every system for 30+ years with emo roots. I plan out sympathetic bad guys, NPCs have backstories, storylines are meant to emotionally connect with the players. Currently I have 4 players that frankly do not care about the game on a personal level.

So what, I just... open up the Bestiary, pick appropriate monsters, drop them in with some loot and string together some surface level plot? Like, do I mine TV Tropes or something? I don't really know how to craft games for folks like this.

Also, this leads to a second problem: motivation. With these players and the way they game, there's nothing that they see as personal, so there's really nothing I can do to motivate them. The only reason they have their characters go on adventures are 3 reasons: money, mechanical power for their character, or because a more powerful authority told them to.

While on missions, especially now at L8 when they can afford and reliably cast a scroll of Breath of Life now and then, there's really nothing I can do to threaten them other than TPK's. They've shown a willingness to attack NPCs until they hit 0 HP, then stabilize them later; none of the PCs have signature gear for me to steal or corrupt; they have Cohorts, AC's and Familiars among them, but a few levels ago one player reminded me that his familiar is just GP and some time spent to bring back if it dies.

Help me understand and build adventures for folks who will have no emotional engagement with the source material. Also if any of you play this way or have played with folks like this, feel free to offer anecdotes or educate me on non-emo gaming.

[Chell Raighn]

Before you shift gears to indulge their emotionless play… there are a few things you could try to nudge them into emotional investments…

First exploit their backstories (if they didn’t make backstories or gave barebones “I’m a lone wanderer” type of backstories this is a dead end.)
Second kill the familiar and enforce that the new familiar is less obedient… if the familiar dies again, repeat… eventually the player with a familiar will start to care more about the well being of their familiar (or just abandon the familiar outright if they truest are emotionless)

Most importantly sit down and talk with them about it… explain to them that these games are just as much for your enjoyment as it is for theirs, and that the emotionless play is not something enjoyable to you… see if you can find a middle ground where they feel comfortable playing with emotions and you don’t have to remove all emotional play aspects.

Edit: you can also use logical solutions to problems against them… if the Paladin is turning Vulcan, simply make the most logical choice in several situations turn out to be the wrong choice. That will cause them to question their choices more and can actually direct them more towards emotional choices.

[Kasoh]

Sometimes, they might not notice the work you're doing. Shocker, I know. If you stop putting in the effort for NPCs they might notice and ask about it.

That is a somewhat passive aggressive approach to the situation.

Other passive aggressive solutions involve increasingly shady people offering money to the party to do work for them because they "Have a reputation for doing what needs to be done." See just how far that paladin is willing to go.

Then again, I find that Mega Dungeons are terrible for roleplay and world engagement. The solution to almost every problem in a megadungeon is 'Go down another level.' and once you go down a level you rarely consider the previous level as its been 'solved.' Its the party's bonds with each other that will provide the most drama and if the party isn't interested in exploring that kind of dynamic there really isn't much to do.

But you do have levers to pull. Mechanical superiority and money. If that's what engages the players then that's what you have to pull.

Party hired to go explore a ruin or whatever with promises of riches. Only there aren't any riches and the enemies there are far too difficult, or just annoying. Mythic Rust Monsters, domination, Disjunction, Staggered and Nauseated conditions, ability drain, curses, polymorph. It has to be the absolutely most frustrating series of encounters because the player has to say 'This better be worth it.'

And then its not. Hopefully annoyed, they go back to the Quest giver like 'WTF?' only the quest giver has skipped town. If they don't go on a revenge quest after losing money on paying for a dumptruck of diamond dust, then they have more patience than I.

The flip side of that is to just stop trying to challenge them at all. See how long it takes them to realize that combat provides no thrill. They always hit, they always win. See how long before someone starts to ask 'Why are we here?'

Honestly though? If the players aren't giving you the experience you enjoy? Just stop the game. Tell them "I'm not having fun running a murder simulator for you guys once a week--your lack of engagement with the game bores me--so I'm stopping the campaign. Best of luck."

[Nectarian]

I'm guessing these are different players than your HS guys.

I don't think killing familliars is a great Idea, because, as you said, for the player it's just a sum of GP to resurrect to him. Yes, maybe after the 2nd time the familiar died, the player might be more careful about the familiar, but he's not emotional invested. He cares about the money, and simply making him lose it, will only frustrate him, so neither you nor him will get much joy out of this.

Talk with your guys. Tell them you are used to a more emotionally attached group, and you're (as I understand) are not happy with the campaign as it is. Maybe your players are very loot-centered (maybe from a video game background), maybe you aren't giving them opportunities they can react emotional too, maybe they don't really get the idea of the game being more than just killing bad guys and advancing your character stats (I don't know how experienced they are).

If nothing works, maybe it's time to face it, maybe it's better for you to step down as GM and let someone else lead, maybe even find another group (I don't know how close you are to your players).

[Totally Not Gorbacz]

You were playing a different game 30 years ago, PF1 is a tactical wargame that encourages minmaxing and tricked-out character builds that own things in 1-2 rounds, so it attracts people who are into that kind of gameplay.

[DeathlessOne]

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:

You were playing a different game 30 years ago, PF1 is a tactical wargame that encourages minmaxing and tricked-out character builds that own things in 1-2 rounds, so it attracts people who are into that kind of gameplay.

Huh, that's not my experience with PF1 at all. There are a lot of players that seek out every kind of game and use those same kind of tactics in order to exploit the mechanics of those systems regardless of what they are actually playing, but I've seen them come and go with pretty much every new system or game that comes out.

Anyway...

This issue is a player issue, Mark Hoover. Speaking from personal experience, I am the kind of person that immediately shuts down their emotions and emotional attachments when critical decisions have to be made. My emotional processing takes place before an event occurs, or after, never during. This is because I have a fairly rigid but robust way of looking at the world and assessing my priorities prior to certain events happening, and knowing how I should (or possible will) respond to them if they ever occur. It makes me incredibly difficult to manipulate or sway based on emotional appeals. I resonate with that example of the Paladin that turns 'Vulcan' to a certain degree. When mercy is exhausted, there is nothing left but vengeance and destruction. In my opinion, it is best to be emotionally disconnected when such outcomes become necessary because evil will attempt to use your emotions to sway you from what has to be done. It will use innocents against you.

I am going to second Chell Raighn's advice. I get great emotional and personal satisfaction from playing in games where I am encouraged to interact on those same levels. I enjoy being part of a story, not just some impersonal force set to cut my way through enemies for some vague reason. I suppose that it comes down to having a conversation with your players and expressing your interest and desires for a more emotional rewarding environment. Personally, I am better able to play and enjoy those kind of experiences when there is a certain level of divorce and distance from real life and real consequences.

[SheepishEidolon]

The Vulcan mode comes from a perceived necessity: Players assume bad things will happen if they don't do their (mechanical) best. This is deep-rooted, so you need something radical to shake it up.

For example a whole session without any critical encounter. Let them tell their stories to a wandering bard - he is willing to pay, depending on how much information they get to him. They can't lose, but they will have to work (as PCs and players) to get the largest amount of money. Side effect is that they connect more to their previous adventures.

Or let them solve a conflict between two other parties, with noncombat means. A classic is woodcutters vs. fey, I did this lately. Again, they can't lose, but they might get rewarded, with items, friends and story clues.

Trying to keep players challenged has unwanted side effects. An encounter can be harmless and still interesting. It can even be trivial, as long as it serves other purposes, like introducing a new area / an NPC. In fact, challenge can distract players from what you actually want to offer to them.

[Mark Hoover 330]

@ sheepish: These players' last 2 campaigns b/4 mine, the PCs were straight up murderhobos. Early in my game, the party encountered a lone hill giant herding dire sheep and a group of hobgoblins acting as bandits because they were starving. If I hadn't outright TOLD the players they were all about to die if they tried combat, that would've been the end of the campaign.

Instead I FORCED the players to use Diplomacy and other skill checks, negotiating sheep for the freezing, starving hobgoblins so that they, in turn, would help the hill giant find a new bride (since his previous wife had been killed by orcs).

I was roundly told by the players later that they didn't like being forced to only resolve things through Diplomacy. Later in the campaign, these same players complained about all the "talky bits" of my games. Since then we've experienced multiple PC deaths since the players will ALWAYS choose violence first.

To that point: this group has on multiple occasions used lethal damage to reduce a creature to or below 0 HP, stabilizing it after the fact. They've done this instead of using Diplomacy or Intimidate ahead of time, or instead of using some kind of circumstance or roleplaying, and one time they did it to a prized horse right in front of its owner.

Also to those saying I should rap it out w/these players: before the campaign began I set the expectation (knowing their reputation as murderhobos) that all PCs had to have Good somewhere in their alignments. I asked them to play up said alignments, try to be "heroes." This also worked mechanically for me since I like using Prot vs Good with low level NPC Adepts.

Since session 0 I've had multiple conversations letting my players know that emo gaming "fills my bucket." They've tried being more emo, bless their hearts, but they just aren't that way.

Driving home after the last game, my buddy told me "NPCs are a weakness for GMs to exploit. Our characters don't have weaknesses." In the same conversation this player said he couldn't remember a single campaign through decades of gaming with this group where any of the PCs had families, significant others, kids, favored pets etc, unless it was 3x/PF1 and those were part of a Class Ability or Feat.

Lastly, I'm not trying to punish these folks. I don't want to trick them into doing shadier and shadier missions or coerce them into caring about the game world. They LIKE surface gaming as if the TTRPG was a video game; that's not my thing.

Until I can get a new group going IRL, right now I've played a few games online to tide me over. In the meantime, I'd like to give these players something more their speed. I just struggle with, I don't know... divorcing emotions from the Gameworld.

[Mark Hoover 330]

Also (missed my edit window), funny thing about that hill giant/hobgoblin negotiation - the paladin I keep mentioning is a LG Paladin of Abadar. I keep telling him to REALLY read the deity but I don't think he really understands that even paladins of the god are to some degree merchants, judges, negotiators.

Just a couple sessions ago the paladin player was packing up and congratulating everyone on slaying a powerful undead who was withholding some information. I mentioned that they could've bargained with the creature, she said she'd be open to that. "I don't negotiate with evil" he said.

The very next session, the PCs were approached by a unique, high-powered quasit on the Prime as the mouthpiece of Orcus. Said quasit demonstrates its power over the undead but then blurts out a potential solve to the current problem in the dungeon. The paladin, without missing a beat, takes the mission from the quasit and the PCs go and collect a McGuffin pointed out to them by a demon.

The player saw NO irony in this.

[Mudfoot]

You need new players. I don't think this is salvageable in a campaign setting. You might get some decent beer'n'pretzels hack'n'slash evenings out of them, but that's about it.

[Mark Hoover 330]

Mudfoot wrote:

You need new players. I don't think this is salvageable in a campaign setting. You might get some decent beer'n'pretzels hack'n'slash evenings out of them, but that's about it.

Right. I agree. I'm between cars right now without the money to re-car myself, and there's still a schmandemic on right now, but I'm trying some online stuff to tide myself over. When I can I'm going to try and find new players for an IRL game (my preferred method).

Until then though, I've got to make said "beer & pretzels" adventures. I've been pouring life and color and drama into adventures for 30+ years now though. I'm finding a writer's block trying to... I don't want to say "dumb it down" but... de-dramatize my game. Any tips?

[Chell Raighn]

Well… the simplest way to run a emotionless game is to do as you asked about in your OP… crack open the beastiary and throw random encounters at them…

If they don’t want to be emotionally invested in anything, then you shouldn’t have to put in the effort to hand craft a world for them with story and plot driven encounters… give them their murder hobo simulator with zero expectations and no real goal…

If you want to keep things story driven though… I’d start with having that Paladin fall… he clearly doesn’t care about following Abadan’s Paladin code… make him feel the consequences for his actions… he can still run emotionless murderhobo as a fallen Paladin… he just won’t be as powerful anymore and the party might try to be less murder hobo-ey going forwards…

I know you said you don’t want to punish them… but by the sounds of it, they are making the game punishing for you as is… and quite frankly, no matter what you try to do, any method of changing up how you run the game will ultimately seem like punishment… might as well make it deliberate and clear rather than slow and grueling…

[Kasoh]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

I'm finding a writer's block trying to... I don't want to say "dumb it down" but... de-dramatize my game. Any tips?

If you aren't interested in making the players face the social consequences of their amorality then its probably easiest to just ignore it. All of the conflict should be transparent. Bandits have kidnapped the princess...for a cult...that works for a hag...who offers tribute to a dragon...who wants to rule the world! Or some such.

All the PCs really need to know is where to go next and who is okay to stab. You don't have to worry about complicated stories and motivations for the enemies, because most of them won't survive. No one flees. Everyone fights to the death. Drop a map or journal that provides the next context and location and be on your way.

The best way to look at this is to expend your energy on creative encounter scenarios. It may not matter to the players that the bandit boss's cruel behavior has driven his lover to the arms of his rival and together they're planning a coup before they deliver the princess to the cult but it will matter that the main fight occurs in a room of giant lily pads constantly changing elevation because of the steam geysers under the water. Get weird with it.

However, I will posit that some people think 'A bad game is better than no game.' This is incorrect. Playing in bad games causes problems in future games because that resentment will linger long after the players have left the table. So, running no game is better than running a bad game.

[Valandil Ancalime]

Try a premade adventure that is heavy on dungeons. Shattered Star is very dungeon heavy AP.

[Mightypion]

I would echo the call to turn your creative juices towards encounter design. Kobold Commandoes, or their mean Elder Sisters known as Succubi-Speznaz, create use of combat maneuvers etc.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Sounds like incompatible gaming preferences and trying to force your players to do one will (and has already) lessen their enjoyment.

If you really want to get players emotionally involved, don't force them. The only suggestion I have is to have them meet very exaggerated and vivid personalities without any backstory or plot connection to get into, at leat not at first. use your creative juices to make the NPCs larger than life, memorable, and without anything by the way of adventure hooks or problems.
Make them fun, not emotionally demanding. If the players don't care, shrug and move on to the next vivid personality. If the players react favorably to the NPCs, you can make them recurring and maybe gradually lure the players into getting invested in them. Wandering minstrels, travelling salespeople, other adventurers who can swap stories, noob adventurers who are really boastful and clueless about their actual skills.

Apart from that, stick to bland things like GOTO [Place X], Kill and Loot, Repeat.

[Mightypion]

Some possible larger then life NPCs:

--A fairly friendly propagandist, actually a Succubus in disguise who wants to become the Demon Lord of Marketing, and bamboozles the party into doing the PR for them (she is great at these).

--Elon Musk Steampunk inventor

--Not Captain-Jack-Sparrow

--Not Rincewind the sorcerror.

[Mysterious Stranger]

If your players respond to mechanical benefits give them mechanical benefits for acting appropriately. The easiest way to do this is to alter the way you grant experience. Players like to be rewarded and will do things that get them rewards. Instead of basing all the XP on overcoming obstacles give XP for doing things that are appropriate to their character. You can either reduce the amount of XP for defeating monsters in combat or give additional XP for engaging in acts appropriate for the character.

You mention you have a paladin of Abadar in the group. Give him bonus XP when he lives up to his deity’s code. For example, if he had negotiated a deal between the hill giants and hobgoblins.

A good GM uses both the carrot and the stick. From what you posted you are using only the stick.

[Mudfoot]

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

A good GM uses both the carrot and the stick. From what you posted you are using only the stick.

The impression I get is that if presented with a carrot, they'd fireball it and complain that there was no xp or treasure.

[Mysterious Stranger]

I think you are underestimating how greedy his players are. I would be willing to bet it the player of the paladin knew that he would get more XP for negotiating he would do it in a heartbeat.

When I read "instead I FORCED the player …". That immediately makes me suspect the quality of the GM. I don’t know all the details, so I am not making any judgements yet. But it seems to me that the Mark is just as ridged in his thinking as the players are. The situation with the hill giant and the hobgoblin seems to me a little subtle for a group of murderhobos. If he wants them to have an emotional response, he might need to play to some stereotypes. Instead of using a race known for its brutality and militant mind set for his victims he would have been better off using something that more easily provokes sympathy.

If the campaign is centered around a mega dungeon that is another mistake. The best way to create some sort of emotional connection to an NPC is to have them interact with the player before the encounter. Most people are not going to become emotionally involved in someone they met seconds ago. Threatening nameless peasant number 47 is not going to evoke much emotional response. Threatening Meg the tavern wench who gives you free drinks because she likes you will have a much better chance.

As I suggested earlier the best way to handle this is to reward your players for behavior you want to encourage. Let them know in advance their behavior will be rewarded and spell out what that reward will be. For example, the paladin of Abadar gets a 10% bonus to XP when he negotiates a problem instead of resorting to combat. But the other thing that needs to be done is to give the players enough of what they want that they are satisfied. That means that not every encounter is going to involve a emotional investment.

[PossibleCabbage]

Pivot to comedy, then add in the pathos.

[Sysryke]

Yes, lean into video game and movie tropes. Not so much MMORPGs, but more storyline adventure games. Think Legend of Zelda from the N64 generation, the Final Fantasy franchise, or Diablo. Your fun gets to come from colorful cut scenes where you narrate for a bit, your players get stretches of combats and skill challenges sprinkled with gp, trophies, and shiny new toys.

Also strongly second the over the top characters bit. Get creative, get weird, but don't get deep unless your players bite the lure. This crew will probably be fine with fish hooking/railroading, so lay out the story you want to tell, and let them act out their parts in the play.

As to the bestiary question, again yes. But, hunt for stuff that excites you. Run creatures you love mechanically or just for flavor. Choose creatures that don't necessarily fit the dungeon, but that you've just always wanted to try out. I know your players are rules sticklers, but it is your prerogative as a gm to customize creatures. Have fun with templates, and mix and match monster abilities. Hopefully this can give you some fun back, and maybe your renewed enthusiasm will perk their interests enough that they might start to care.

All else failing, I think you and I might both be the tilt at windmills type, but it may be time to see the golden helmet for the shaving basin it is. You may need to scrap the campaign and start with a fresh slate of characters and expectations. Or, ultimately, it may be time to step away entirely. You've put a lot into the game/group, but it's starting to sound like you're the only one trying in a failing marriage.

As always, good luck. Hope you're doing okay man.

[Mark Hoover 330]

So, here's a clever blog post written by The Angry GM on helping your players engage with your campaign on some kind of emotional level. In it, Angry suggests that a few players will always see your game from "30,000 feet." That is, they can have their characters ignore a dying NPC to go after the villain b/c that is the logical thing to do, not giving a thought to the family and friends of that NPC. These players play the mechanics of the system, like the Dying rules or whatever.

This is my players. In the March session (we meet 1/month) the PCs were ready to ignore 2 living victims being tortured by a trap so that they could make sure the BBEG didn't escape. It was only after the Wizard PC really took the time to inspect the victims and nature of the trap before they realized how near death the NPCs were and how their deaths would fuel the creation of two more of the unique undead I'd created for this scenario.

After the session the player running the paladin sent an email saying he didn't like that catch 22 just being sprung on the party with no foreshadowing. I DID do a terrible job giving them clues as to what was going on, so that part was my fault. However, in the email he said his character's initial plan was to get after the BBEG, take a few rounds defeating the undead leader, then return to save the NPCs, but I forced his hand after revealing how close to death they were.

In this email exchange I asked about emotional engagement. The paladin player responded to this saying he's TRIED to engage with NPCs, but I take them away abruptly. He is frustrated with me as a GM prescribing a "right way" to play encounters and punishing the PCs when they don't choose that way.

So I DO abruptly remove NPCs. This is because: the players have all admitted they feel awkward when speaking in character, they've all voiced their opinions that they don't like "talky" scenes in games, and that the only time a Diplomacy check is even rolled at all is because of the PCs trying to get something from an NPC. There's no reason for me to create and maintain emotionally engaging NPCs if they only exist for a skill check that doesn't require the NPC being reacted with to have a name, a description or dialogue.

I don't have a "right way" for the PCs to resolve encounters. I have however been extremely blunt and transparent that I want the players to act "heroically" in this campaign. I made this clear before they made characters and they all agreed to putting Good into their alignments. There's lots of kinds of heroes, from Wolverine at one end to Captain America at the other, which I fully accept.

Being heroic though means caring about SOMETHING, ANYTHING, as much or more than you care about yourself. These players don't do that. The game is mechanics; there is no "morality" mechanic in the game, so they don't follow one. The paladin is the closest thing to it and I've brought up the code of conduct fluff in the past, but so far the paladin has always been pretty true to said fluff.

This past session, the guy running the PALADIN got upset that he couldn't play the mechanics of "let the NPCs suffer, but they won't die for a few rounds, so I'll go achieve the mission objective of killing the BBEG, then come back and get them." The third bullet point on the 4 parts of the paladin code of conduct is help those in need. Like, helping those NPCs was very clearly an afterthought until it was made clear they couldn't use RAW to game around it.

Anyway, my final email response is just that I'll continue and wrap up this campaign at a satisfying end point, then I'm taking a break from GM'ing for a while. I have no interest in punishing the paladin PC, making him fall, or suggesting to the player he run a fighter instead. We're L8 and the PCs have figured out the main BBEGs and plot to the megadungeon.

At this point I'm just going to show up with encounters made. I'll scatter them in the megadungeon with story bits relating to those main BBEGs and the main plot. No backstories, no monologuing. I don't even think I'll keep throwing in pieces of setting to relate story elements, like statues in certain positions or with specific symbols. They don't add anything to player enjoyment and if it's not nailed down it's basically getting sold as loot anyway.

No, rooms will get basic boxed text. Treasure hoards will be like "you find a small chest and 2 ancient vases. Inside these you find 3 art objects, mixed coins, and several loose gems. Adding these to the vases the treasure is worth 2500 GP. You also find a greatsword that radiates magic and a scroll case containing 2 scrolls..."

[DeathlessOne]

I've got much sympathy for you and the situation you are in. If it was me, I'd pull away from that table and not look back. You don't appear to be having fun and this is turning into a bland obligation you seem to feel you are required to do. If this keeps up, you might run the risk of loosing all the desire you have to engage in this kind of activity. Burn out is a real thing, and it can become permanent.

Find something else to scratch that itch. You need a period of rest and renewal. I usually find that in immersion of the literary sorts, where someone else gets to tell the story and I can sit back and enjoy the ride.

[Zepheri]

If you really want the players to be emotionally attached to the story, you must apply 1 very important thing:

You must look for people, objects and/or places in which the PCs are related in real life. like for example that the name of one of the NPCs is the name of a daughter or wife (with all and last name) or the boss of his work that he hates so much. this makes them psychologically compromise emotionally

[Unbegreiflich]

Cartman wrote:

respect my author-o-tay

probably best at that point to just take a 3hr bathroom break

[Neriathale]

Zepheri wrote:

If you really want the players to be emotionally attached to the story, you must apply 1 very important thing:

You must look for people, objects and/or places in which the PCs are related in real life. like for example that the name of one of the NPCs is the name of a daughter or wife (with all and last name) or the boss of his work that he hates so much. this makes them psychologically compromise emotionally

No, no, never ever.

Yanking on someone’s real life emotions in order to get them invested in a game is a really stupid idea.

[Totally Not Gorbacz]

Zepheri wrote:

If you really want the players to be emotionally attached to the story, you must apply 1 very important thing:

You must look for people, objects and/or places in which the PCs are related in real life. like for example that the name of one of the NPCs is the name of a daughter or wife (with all and last name) or the boss of his work that he hates so much. this makes them psychologically compromise emotionally

That's horribly bad advice because turns out most people play RPGs to escape having to think about a boss they hate, or worse.

If a player will want to introduce such an element by themselves, sure, but to have a GM do that? No, no, no.

[Azothath]

lol... I think you'd have to be a professional or a long term friend and knowledgeable of someone's situation to try to help them through a specific situation via targeted roleplaying and armchair psychology. I support helping a friend out even in group therapy.

Roleplaying can be an effort to teach through enacting engagement in controlled situations. That's a more generic and overall stance. People learn through stories they adopt and incorporate those 'lessons' into their plans and actions. Using common emotional responses or socially acceptable responses is a tried and true method to engage a reader (pro or con).

the OP is actually a contrary post. Humans ARE emotional and bring that to most situations. They have to be trained out of it through education to be more, let us say, impartial.

[Mark Hoover 330]

Like, honestly, I'm sure they brought emotions to past games. Maybe not in the same way that I have done, but I know that they did. These four gamers have all played together for years and they joke about the one 2e campaign where they had dozens of characters all with some variation of the same name, like Halbrent or Zalbrent and such. They go on about the pranks they used to play on one guy's "perfect fighter" PC or the one GM they played with for years that just suddenly rage quit in college.

I know they've brought emotions to their tables, but that all appears to be in games from over 20 years ago now. Since switching to 3x D&D they've either ONLY played 3x or PF1. They got REALLY into these systems b/c of how the mechanics worked, how you could customize your character.

Maybe its because we only play 1/mo and they don't like "wasting time" with excessive RP scenes. Maybe I'm a social outsider still. Maybe there's yet some other reason why they don't bring that energy and engagement to my games, I don't know. All I DO know is that I miss it, I thrive on it, and I'm not getting it from this group.

[Sysryke]

I mostly agree with DeathlessOne's last post. To parahrase a quote from Ghost, "Mark! You in danger boy."

But, to play, devil's advocate, I see a tiny seed of hope in your exchange with the paladin player. He did say he has tried to engage with NPCs. I don't think you're guilty of demanding that your players handle things only one way, but in your depression and frustration, I think you might have fallen into a singular syntax. The impression I got from your relay of the email exchange, is that the paladin player wants to engage, but he (and possibly the others) either can't or won't do so as an "Actor". What I mean by this is that some players really struggle to put themselves into the shoes of their character. It's nearly impossible for these players to speak "in character" and so they do rely on die rolls and mechanics. These tools are how those players narrate their characters actions AND intentions. Basically they need to just tell what they are doing or trying to accomplish, because they're not strong on showing it. If you can open yourself up to that different gaming language, you might just to be able to find the emotional common ground.

Now, all that said, that's a hell of a hypothetical happy blossom out of one tiny hope seed. I know how long you've struggled with this group. If you need to, step away. Don't let your love for this hobby die.

[SheepishEidolon]

How comes you want to make it work by all means? Do you fear a big void in your life without GMing a RL group? Do you consider it a matter of personal honor to make it work? Is it about meeting actual people?