Continue reading »]]> I’ve been meaning to write this and just hadn’t gotten around to it.  I want to offer up some observations, all personal and from 30+ years as player and gamemaster for Pen and Paper RPG’s.  (Who uses pens anyway?  I guess pen is just easier to say than pencil)

It’s about engaging the players and keeping them interested and focused on what’s going on at the table.  First let me state you’re not going to get every player every session every round.   It’s just not going to happen, maybe they’re tired from a long day at work, or having issues at work,  or they’ve had a fight with their significant other, or their car needs costly repairs, or whatever.  Real life intrudes no matter how much we might want to get a few hours to escape it.  Expect it and work around as best you can.

Your goal as a game master is to engage most of the players at the table most of the time during most of your sessions.

To help with this, here are some things that I’ve come up with after thinking and experiencing modern life -

Downtime -

This is a big one to me personally.

You have to reduce the downtime between each player’s turn so they’re not sitting on their thumbs for long stretches of game time.  If the player only gets to actively participate in what’s going on, once every half hour then you’re going to have a serious problem. Even if it’s once every 20 minutes you’re going to have a problem.  IMO you should be shooting for sub 15 minute’s between a given player’s turns and sub 10 is better.

Do whatever it takes to get that time down.  If it means moving out of your game system of choice comfort zone then do it.  Nothing in my opinion will make a player wander off mentally and physically more than having to wait too long between their turns.   There are tons of lighter game systems out there that can reduce the time for a players turn from minutes to a minute or less.  Don’t use a heavy system UNLESS your players are seriously interested in the system directly and the system itself will keep them engaged.

There is a huge list of factors that contribute to this.  The system you’re using, it could be inherently slow due to the number of options each player has to choose from when its their turn.  It could have complicated combat mechanics that require a lot of repeated math and comparisons.  The system may be structured such that it simply takes a lot of time to wear down a the bad guys, aka The Grind.

The players, they could be disengaged when it’s not their turn taking additional time each time it is their turn to get up to speed on what’s going on.

The gamemaster could have so many bad guys and so much data to keep track of for each one that his/her turn takes unduly long.

Something as subtle and simple as the number of dice rolls involved for each participant in the situation, if there are several involved then each one adds up.

The Setting –

If the setting isn’t grabbing the majority of your players then you’re going to get disengagement and honestly if you’re not running or playing in something you’re looking forward to each week then consider coming up with something else.

Game settings and storylines are very strongly influenced, even dictated, by the gamemaster.  In my experience most GM’s have a story they’re wanting to tell and that story unfortunately may not be one that their players are interested in at either the macro or micro levels.  I don’t exempt myself from this issue by the way.  But your idea of a great story may not be interesting to your players or interesting enough to engage them.

Maybe the player doesn’t like the excessive roleplay segments but the world setting is interesting.  Maybe they don’t like the excessive combat segments because they’re not playing a combat oriented character.   Maybe they want to be killing zombies instead of dragons or the other way around.

But if you’re not engaging your players with the setting then you have to engage them with something else.  And vice versa again.

The System –

Not everyone enjoys the same mechanics in a system.  Many people for instance find the Fudge system too simple.  Others find GURPS too complicated.  Some people enjoy the Aspects of the Fate system while to others they’re just a “Uh what now? How does a parking lot have aspects?”

I don’t personally believe that a system will make or break a campaign as long as the gamemaster is familiar with it enough so that it doesn’t get in the way of the story.  But if every 5 minutes you’re having to look up rules because you’re not sure exactly what happens when you grapple someone or how damage is computed or what determines success on a skill check etc.   Then odds are you’re in for trouble in terms of keeping your players interested in what’s going on.

Modern Day Reality –

Let’s face it, the players are not the same players the were 20-30 years ago.  We’ve played MMOG’s, CRPG’s, we’ve got RPG’s on our phones for goodness sake.   We’re used to, spoiled by and expecting swift game play, infrequently missing, and lots of POW! and Kablam!  We simply aren’t the same as we were back then.   We don’t have the time to invest in gaming.

And I don’t know about your players but my experience hasn’t been great in getting old players to learn new tricks.  Or even show a minimal amount of interest in new tricks at times.

So What Can You Do?

That’s probably what you’re asking yourself and struggling with if you’ve come across this article and it hit home enough to get you this far.

On some levels I wish I could tell you something other than find try again or find players who slot better with what you’re trying to do.

But that’s rarely an option for most locations at least in finding physical bodies to sit in chairs, virtual gaming is a horse of another color and not germane to this post and comes with it’s own host of issues.

So I’ll offer this little nugget of wisdom which I’m sure you’ve never heard before, “Know your players.  Know what drives them to show up.”

And “If your desires and the players desires don’t mesh, don’t try to force it.  You’re doomed to failure.”

Design your story around those drives and desires.  If it’s hack and slash group, then throw dungeon crawls at them with vast amounts of loot and monsters to take it away from.

Say yes to your players. I repeat, say yes to your players.  Don’t come up with ways to screw them.  If a system is inherently screwing the PC’s then fix it, do away with the mechanic or get a new system.  I have one golden rule in designing my own game system, if a mechanic sucks then it’s coming out.  There’s a difference between a mechanic that adds difficulty/tension and one that sucks.  Spell memorization sucks.  Making death saves when you’re dying adds tension.

Learn you’re system or know your system.  Yes you might end up having to shoehorn a size 9 hiking boot onto a size 3 ballerina’s foot to make a system work for something it wasn’t intended to do but at least you won’t waste time looking up rules.  And hopefully you’ll be able to keep the game moving quickly enough to keep most of the players entertained at a given time.

And a key rule, if you’re not having fun as a GM then again don’t bother.  If you’re not having fun there’s just little to no chance you’re going to be able to make it fun for your players.

Don’t railroad your story.  The story that you think is just oh so damn cool, the players may end up with a been there, done that or I’d rather be buying rope.  So be flexible and learn to read your players.  If they’re browsing ESPN on their laptops while you’re trying to play a game then odds are you’re story is of little interest to them.   In a side note, if they’re wandering away when it’s not their turn, odds are you’re system of choice is taking too long to play out and they’re simply getting bored waiting.

Boring, don’t bore your players.  Don’t have scenes where most of the players didn’t need to be there but were forced to.   If you do have to focus on a single player for undue amounts of time make sure that the other players have at least the appearance of having something to do during the encounter even if you’re just pretending and nothing they do will have any impact.   And make sure they don’t know that.

And finally don’t force it.  I used to have a saying, primarily right after Ultima Online came out, if it was pretty obvious that the majority weren’t paying attention I’d close my notes and say “Okay disinterest has reared it’s head, we’ll try again next week.” and we’d spend the rest of the evening talking about something else.   Just because you’re pumped and ready to go doesn’t mean you’re players are and you have to learn to recognize that and work around it.

I hope something here helps you get a more engaged players and more engaging materials to present to them.  Because nothing kills your own enjoyment of this particular hobby than presenting it to players who aren’t interested.

Continue reading »]]> Just a quick note to say I’m voting with my wallet on this one and refusing to buy Bioshock 2.  Three different DRM systems are installed to get this thing to work properly.  I’m appalled. Until I get the stupidity to set up a game machine that’s JUST a game machine that I can reghost after every game to start over clean I’m not installing something that loads down my WORKING machine with this much crap.

In a year or so if they remove the DRM (and the price drops subsequently) I may consider it.

I have a ‘friend’ who bought Bioshock Uno and didn’t even unwrap it and instead downloaded a cracked version to avoid this bullshit.  My ‘friend’ refuses now to continue to support and pander to this kind of thinking.

<rant off>

Continue reading »]]> I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts lately and thought I’d ramble on about players from the DM’s point of view, mostly in a bad way of course…

As a player you should remember that you’re part of a group.  You’re not going to be the sole focus of attention so when it’s not your turn let someone else have a bit of spotlight. It’s discourteous to the other players to not give them their chance at the mic.

As a player you should remember that you’re part of a group.  Step up and be heard, get involved.  Don’t just sit back observing or staring off into space. It’s really discourteous to your DM who’s gone to the trouble of creating something for you to ignore it.

I’ve had to deal with both types in my career as a DM/GM.  They’re both more than a bit of a pain after months and years.

Things I’ve found annoying from players in large quantities, and that based on the voice inflections and reactions from Dm’s in the podcasts might be fairly universal.

Constantly going “No he can’t/doesn’t/wouldn’t” to the DM in any form as a common reaction to the DM.

• DM: “Okay the fell necromancer shifts his gaze at you, Alofel and necrotic energies flare up and blast outwards at you.”
• Player: “No he doesn’t.  He doesn’t have that power any more.  It’s a typo.  Wouldn’t he hit Steve instead?  He misses.  I duck out of the way.  I’m immune.”

Once is okay, twice is within reason but constantly over and over ‘retorting’ with some variation on the above every time the DM announces a NPC’s attack gets old fast.

Immersion breaking ‘conversation’ or ‘dialogue’ between a character and an NPC.

• DM as Necromancer: “I shall have your soul chained in a everlasting fire for daring to interfere you pathetic mortal.”
• Player: “U r gay.”

Once in a while, sure it CAN be funny.  But constantly chanting how gay what is supposed to be some scary evil dark wizard is, gets very unfunny pretty quickly to most DM’s I’m betting, myself included.

Most DM’s do what they do to bring to life a cooperative story set in a ‘real life’ world where characters, pc and npc, act in realistic ways.  It takes interest and energy to do all the extra work involved.  Players who show up so they can be the asshole (or pschopath/klepto)  in the game they can’t be at the office tend to be a bit of a burden on the creative energies and interest required to be a DM.

What I call psuedo-cheating (don’t get me started on real cheating).

• DM: “Does a 22 hit you Barkil?”
• Player: “No.”  a minute goes by, “Yeah it hits.”

• Player: “I rolled a… 23.”
• DM: “Okay that hits.”
• Player: “No it was really a 3.”
• DM: “*sigh*”

Please remember during my little mini-rant, that I’m ranting about consistent, frequent, constant behaviour of this type. Like any decent DM I can overlook, ignore, or go along with a reasonable level of this kind of thing.  But constantly doing it gets old.

And no this isn’t some sly subtle jab at my players, due to RL, lack of interest, medical reasons, I don’t have enough consistent players to have a group of players that I can enjoy being with to have a RPG group going on.  At best I get to DM the occasional one-off or playtest or ‘delve’.

As a player remember the DM is supposed to be having fun too.  Try to gauge his or her reactions to your behaviour and adjust accordingly.

Because if the DM isn’t having fun, especially over the course of several sessions, then you’re going to be looking for a new DM.

Any gaming group whether it’s chess, bridge or rpg’s is a social group with the implied social contracts that are always the price of being in that group. You have to be social and sociable.  If you like roleplay then deal with there being rollplay going on.  If all you want to do is roll dice then deal with there being roleplay going on.  And as a DM I know this can change per player on a session basis.  Sometimes a player just wants to roll dice and loot the corpses of the bad guys.  And sometimes they just want to sit back and have an animated discourse on the qualities of the rope they’re purchasing.  But remember you’re one of a group and they also vary in what they want to do.

Know what your character can do.  I personally find myself questioning why players want to bother showing up when they show no interest in the mechanics of their characters much less the game system that’s being played.  Constantly having to wait for a player every session while they ‘re-learn’ their characters abilities or worse, just ‘spam’ a single abilitiy over and over regardles of its effect or efficiency simply because they don’t want to be bothered to learn more can be annoying.

It’s not very enjoyable for DM’s who spend excess hours over and above the actual session hours coming up with the adventures, plots, hooks, bad guys, who have the not so easy task of juggling tens of ‘characters’ during every combat, of keeping things in balance for the players so it’s not a cakewalk as well as not instant death, of remembering what’s happened before, what they want to happen and steering a plausible path between those points to have players express a serious lack of interest in what’s going on at the table.  [Massive run on sentence of the day.]

I have a saying, “Looks like apathy has reared it’s head, we’re done for the night.” and it’s had to be brought into play more than once.  When computers started to intrude on gaming sessions, whether it was Doom when we first got PC’s or Ultima Online when we first got MMOG’s  or whatever.  Once the conversation’s saturation point became something other than the game at hand, I’d shut it down.  When I’m running something, I’m there to run it, not talk about the current hot topic.

So as a final wrap up, I think this can mostly be summed up with “As a player in a group game, be courteous.” or in layman’s terms: “Don’t be a dick.”

Or the odds are very good there won’t be a social group anymore.  At least for you.

Continue reading »]]> In looking at the next Dragon magazine (subscription only unfortunately although there are ways around that but at $5 a month how onerous is the cost?  Give up one lunch or go with the cheaper diner for dinner out once a month and you’ve got the cost covered.  Okay enough with the supply and demand and supply side economics).

Anyway they have a undead thing article which includes some of the new powers for classes from the Players Hanbook II coming up in a month or two.  I see a disturbing, to me, trend of turning healing surges into batteries to fuel powers. Â  “One ally can spend a healing surge and you deal 2[w] extra damage.”  “You can spend a healing surge and the attack adds 5 ongoing damage.”

I’m not sure I like that at least as used now.  Healing surges I think, right now at least, should be used for that, healing.  Otherwise let’s start calling them power surges or heroic surges or whatever. Â  They’re started to ‘power’ up attacks, utilities, items etc. and going way past healing so the name should morph to reflect their new uses in my opinion.

And letting other characters spend a healing surge to power your attack?  That’s a stretch to me.  It might be good fluff, where the evil vampire steals the life force of his minions to allow him to destroy the gate sealing in his dread dark master, but for PC’s to be doing this on a daily or worse encounter basis? It comes off as power creep and fairly significant one to me especially with some classes that have an excess of healing surges for their likelihood of needing them.  I see casters starting to be referred to as Energizers…  As you may have noticed from past posts, I’m very much against feeping creaturism.

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