>3 out of 6 characters in the party have no character traits outside of being chaotic / chaotic evil
>these characters have no relation to the plot or setting at all
>any attempt to rp is one-word responses and basically sits silently every session
>every problem has to have the solution spoon fed to them or they will just ignore it or sit there silently
This is getting extremely stale as a DM. What am I supposed to do? I have a few players / characters that seem to genuinely rp and have characters with complex motivations, then the other half mostly just sit silently and sometimes do something chaotic or wacky.
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Have a discussion about what game you actually all want to play.
I think that's the main problem OP is having; his group wants a game, while OP wants a narrative system.
The passive players are audience members,
The others are actual players.
Audiences wanna hear the game unfold and hangout, players have ambition in a fictional world.
Run XP for gold recovered and let audience gamers stall. They never progress.
>starting party
>around 7th level get nearly TPK (I was the only survivor, monk)
>new characters have no interest and no relation with the main plot
>I feel like the macguffin, being the sole object that keeps this shit on tracks
>if at any moment I don't reing them in they go in random ways and the GM gets anoyed
>I get plot targeted constantly
>I died unavoidable inescapable impossible incounter that felt more like a cutscene
>GM: Damn, I completely miscalculated your char's power, doesn't matter just reroll a new one
>Me thinking: maybe he just wants to start a different plot
>GM gets mad at me once he realizes literally no character is related to the plot
>mad at me who was up to this point the only one doing shit for the main plot
I feel you, OP
That sounds rough. As a former player turned DM, I realize that there is a large gap between player and DM understanding of what works and what doesn't in terms of player characters.
I used to run a chaotic "do whatever" type character in an old campaign that had no relation to the plot whatsoever, and me and the DM had arguments over that a bunch of times. I didn't realize at the time that this type of character is extremely miserable for the DM to run and plan sessions around.
The issue is when players already have an idea of a character in mind that they would run regardless of the setting / plot. Something like "a tiefling bard who wants to play a concert in hell" being shoved into a completely unrelated political intrigue campaign. The DM is going to be bored because the players don't interact with the game, and the players are going to be bored because they have characters that don't care about the plot.
I think in any future games that I run, it's going to be mandatory that any PCs have a compelling reason that they are willingly traveling with the rest of the party. It gets tiring hearing "why would my character do x" in reference to main plot hooks.
This is what session 0 is for. Everyone, PC and DM, have to be on the same page and have a reason to be there.
>The issue is when players already have an idea of a character in mind that they would run regardless of the setting / plot. Something like "a tiefling bard who wants to play a concert in hell" being shoved into a completely unrelated political intrigue campaign. The DM is going to be bored because the players don't interact with the game, and the players are going to be bored because they have characters that don't care about the plot.
This might be true, but goddamnit it drives me up the wall. Shit's play pretend, literally everything is up to bargain, Fricking work out a plausible way to realize your bullshit concert within the setting I have put you in.
>It gets tiring hearing "why would my character do x" in reference to main plot hooks.
My fricking players always try to play the "My character would/wouldn't..." card to weasel out the barest effort to engage with the plot. I can't deny a hint of FRICK YOU satisfaction as I immediately rattle off three/four options for each of them to be completely in-character and interact in some way with the plot point at hand.
>My fricking players always try to play the "My character would/wouldn't..." card to weasel out the barest effort to engage with the plot.
What was the plot(s) that they refused to engage with?
Anything diverging from the most pigheaded interpretation of "There's a BBEG, gotta kill'em".
> "Here's a source of information about the BBEG"
> "My character wouldn't be distracted because he has to kill the BBEG"
> "Here's a npc who has literally met the BBEG"
> "My character wouldn't be distracted because he has to kill the BBEG"
> "Here's a feature that literally spells out the secret to summon the BBEG and fight it"
"> "My character wouldn't be distracted because he has to kill the BBEG"
And I get that at times roleplaying a character could get in the way. But it is literally as simple as "If I hate the aformentioned NPC because [reasons], I won't befriend him or even negotiate with him, but let's rob his archives for everything worth studying". That's what I meant by "three/four options to interact in some way with the plot at hand".
But no. "I hate the guy, so since the less imaginative thing that you can do with an NPC is to talk with them and since I hate them I won'd do it, I then won't engage with anything regarding that plot point. That's what my character would do, that's inevitable. Now cater to my bullshit".
No, b***h.
You can rob him.
You can scheme and backstab him.
You can sell him out to a rival and then profit of the spoils of his work.
You can do whatever you want, stop hiding behind "your character" the simple truth that you can't be bothered to even try imagining something that I'm not spoonfeeding you.
This kind of shit killed my passion for DMing about a year or two ago. Pic related is me venting.
Try with picrel approach
I've been running Worlds Without Number, and I like the following mechanic:
>each character must have a goal
>at the end of every session, if your character meaningfully pursued their goal, they get 3 experience points
>this is the only way to level up
Have you tried not playing D&D?
AS ALWAYS, try talking with them first and kick them if they won't see reason. You only need three players.
you only need 1 player. robilar solo'd toee
Don’t even need a sandbox, just prep scenarios instead of plots and this’ll never happen.
sorry anon but you need to take the redpill and move beyond that and understand you only need to prep locations and factions......
Tried sandbox and was really lame and didn’t achieve any more than prepping scenarios over having to do more work
It's railroading, not storyshitting.
>it’s railroading to expect a PC to have character traits and be invested in the world
What the hell
They're both the same thing.
>expect a PC to have character traits and be invested in the world
You're lucky they stopped stimming on their phone long enough to throw a dice these days.
No they are not the same thing
Storyshiting is when someone starts to interjecting a story into a group who does not want that.
Railroading is making something go EXACTLY how you invision it
One is some edgelord monlogoing on
The other is the Gm saying rocks suddenly fall on the left pathway and now you have to go right
>Storyshiting is when someone starts to interjecting a story into a group who does not want that.
>Railroading is making something go EXACTLY how you invision it
See, they are the same.
Write a webserial.
>See, they are the same.
No, those are definitely two different things
Those two things can happen at the same time but it doesn't mean they are the same things.
dunno man, look the same to me...but maybe I'm in the wrong.
Nah, it's the Referee being DM Rowling injecting his webnovella.
It's the same thing.
>It's the same thing.
No
A player can storyshit and they can railroad.
Storyshitting HAS to be about story while railroading doesn't.
You can have a Gm railroad you through out a OSR dungeon but that doesnt mean he is storyshitting.
Can´t*
I disagree with this statement 100%
Having a captive audience to your improv audiobook is terrible and always leads to railroading to communicate the Storyshitting.
Railroading is when the Gm guides you along the intened path
while storyshiting is when the gm or player start adding story
While you can have a Gm have the party knocked out with no saves (railroading) To have the badguy monologue about his plans (Storyshiting)
You can also have a player randomly start talking about their deep in tragic backstory in the middle of a dungeon unprompted
Railroading is something the GM can only do and it doesn´t have to be about the story
(Think of a GM locking the party into a room and denying all ways to get out until they solve the puzzle)
While Storyshitting is something both players and Gms can do.
(Think of the edgy backstory again)
Two sides of the same coin.
If you railroad you storyshit.
No
You can railroad without the story in mind
And you can story shit without the railroad
Stop trying to make fetch happen
gay are still going to use the word.
would you rather it mean what i'm saying or would you rather it just being used to demean anything storywise
>Ctrl+F
>"That Guy"
>0 results
You haven't even held up to your own definitions the last time I saw you trying to force this.
It also doesn't apply to OP's situation, since half the group is on board while half the group isn't.
Option 3, you personally suck my dick
Sorry anon, I'm only gay for jesus
Meanwhile that's what you're effectively doing to this very thread. Please frick off and die, gaylord.
Blow it out your ass, you insufferable homosexual. FRICK you posting this shit over and fricking over.
What's the party composition? What's the campaign look like? Is it a published adventure? This post reads like half the group aren't interested and you shove them along with the others anyway because you don't want to split the party. Some players genuinely don't care about faction drama and heroics - give them a heist or dungeon crawl and they're golden. You might have to mix styles in order to move the story forward.
The party right now are a rogue, a warlock, a ranger, an artificer, and a fighter. The rogue and warlock are run by the same player, and share the same AI-generated backstory, and are both chaotic. The ranger is a wild chaotic yuan-ti pureblood. The warrior is a big goofy goliath with memory loss. The artificer is a chaotic evil simic hybrid.
The party is already split -- there is a seperate session run for a lone paladin who left the party. Given scheduling only allows us to play on a single day per week (often resulting in biweekly sessions), I think running any more sessions would be extremely difficult.
Despite this, I've told everybody explicitly that it's okay if their character wants to leave and do something else, but given the fact that most of the party have no real character motivations, and as such they just sort of do whatever, it's not likely that will happen again.
In terms of just running some type of gold/xp type dungeon crawler campaign, I feel like it would get boring for me very quickly, along with the players who are actually expecting some kind of narrative. IMO, 5e combat is incredibly bland, especially with mostly martial classes and a warlock.
What have they done so far? Have they made any connection to any NPC or locale? I used to have this type of group and I figured out how to rope them in, but I need more info on the sessions so far.
>In terms of just running some type of gold/xp type dungeon crawler campaign, I feel like it would get boring for me very quickly, along with the players who are actually expecting some kind of narrative
shift your perspective anon. the role of the gm is not to be a half-ass fantasy author. feel free to worldbuild and wank a little bit, everyone enjoys it, but when it comes to narrative? gold/xp forces the players to PLAY to advance, and as a result THEY CRAFT THE NARRATIVE. once they get the wotc mind viruses removed, and understand they have agency in the world and the game forces them to do so by way of gold/xp, living expenses, so on.. yeah. try it out
This. Have you tried playing D&D? (The original osr one, i mean). You dont have to have a plot at all
Assassins. Not competent ones, at least not initially, but always include one slightly tougher than the others that could be captured. Drop some clues that someone or some group wants the PCs dead for real or imagined slights. Gradually increase the assassins' prowess until it becomes impossible to ignore and then let the character fall into some plot.
Alternatively,
had a good idea about using theft, but remember to use it sparingly. Another approach is to have a shady patron refuse payment and try to frame them for some other crime, but this is usually done at the start of the campaign to bring the group together (and even then with mixed results).
>there is a seperate session run for a lone paladin who left the party
I made clear if it is not temporary separation from plot (taken prisoner tec), such one char becomes NPC, so I do not need to worry about it anymore
I have one silent player, but he at least cooperates with team; meanwhile I have also one apparently autistic but vocal, who takes unproportionally time of session to get usually killed with zero plot progress and than takes even more time to roll new char
Try to attach their characters to the plot. I like to use theft. In all my years theft makes players the most focused on getting involved in fricking shit up
>I like to use theft
Same. This is a pretty good one for the players. Another one is love. If you know what kind of girl at least on of the players likes, just insert that into the plot.
I knew one of my players was into goth chicks, so I made an NPC oracle goth chick with red hair, she was blind so she had a sash over her eyes. I described her and had her interact with my buddy's character and I think he fell in love. After the quest that she gave them, they come back to the forest she was in burning and they find out that the local Warlord had kidnapped her because she could see the future.
The dude was so fricking invested into saving her he motivated the rest of the party into conflict with an entire nation.
Another one of my players was new to RPGs, and shy as hell and just played the murderhobo, even naming his character "Urk" because it's "the last thing his enemies would say". He would just do combat and maybe say a word or two the entire session. But after "pairing" him up with the daughter of the Commander of the City Watch, the dude actually wrote "love letters" and gave them to me for the NPC. The NPC convinced him to meet with her father, and her father gave him a quest to prove to him that he could court her, and then they were off to the races. He ended up loyal to the city and even taking the City Watch afterwards.
That campaign ended with 3 out of the 4 adventurers getting married and having kids. The last one had a situationship and never got resolution. I used love interests a lot to "nudge" them into certain directions and keep them motivated. I think having a hard time motivating your players is a bit of a skill issue tbh.
Give your players something to care about. Easiest thing for that is to give them a base of operations to work out of that has npcs for them to interact with. It dosen't take that much effort and players typically want something to invest themselves in.
Then again, your probably just a no gaymes gay coming here to argue culture war shit.
I was going to offer advice.. but you have SIX people.
4 or 5 is ideal, six is where it gets to be too many people.
3 is a bit anemic but doable.
Cut the chaffe.
>3 is anemic
Shit, I'm doing just fine with 1. Makes it much easier to make/fix mechanics and themes to taste; more people would just mean having to make more compromises.
We have four players, with two players playing two characters each. It was originally a two-player campaign, so we thought it was best for them each to play two characters, and when the two additional players joined, I didn't want to force them to just cut a character.
The party spent a few sessions being hunted by the government of the continent after choosing to assassinate a key figure for a small sum of gold. The party right now is 5x lvl 7 pcs, with the ranger able to summon a dragon. It basically turned into the party either absolutely rawdogging any normal encounter, or them using pass without trace to avoid anything that may be a challenge. It would feel kinda cheaty and repetitive to send a bunch of god-level assassins after them constantly.
It got pretty repetitive and not conducive to RP to have them be wanted and actively hunted by the government, so I tried to give them an "out" by having them meet with a revolutionary group to hand over a magical artifact that they had retrieved. They didn't really care, and the paladin took the artifact when he left and they still didn't seem to care. They were also given the choice to hand over the artifact to the government in exchange for full amnesty, and didn't want to.
So... Again, just cut the chaffe.
Talk to your players and ask the ones with 2 chapters if they wouldn't mind dropping to just 1.
It could just be that you have 2 people who are getting into their characters, one who is more invested in one of their characters, and one guy who can't handle creating 2 whole people at once.
Definitely cut the doubles. Then tell the vacant stares that if they don't start engaging they will be forced to leave the game or reroll characters with more agency
I've played with that group. Turned out that it was a DM problem - when another guy took over the burden and made people make story-related characters the RP came easy. That said, storygaming is still a lesser form of D&D. The best times we the players have happen when the story is somewhere else and all the characters have to deal with is a map with some points of interest, three camels, and rumors of mythic treasure. Frick the Grand Duke of Powerwankia, frick le ebin demigod guy, frick what the gods want! Give me wilderness to tame, monsters to slay, and treasure to bring home.
>make a sandbox and you dont argue about your shitty theatre club drama
That's bullshit of the highest order. Dumb, unengaged players in a sandbox won't be willing (nor able) to just pick something to do, they will just wait for you to actually push them towards a plot, which they will immediately stop following if you relent from pushing it on them for even a moment and then they will b***h and moan that they feel lost
I don't understand this new bait. Play a boardgame if you don't want to do a story together. But not any of the good ones because those have a narrative, too. Sometimes even an emergent one, and we all know how much you (pretend to) hate that.
Only play RPGs with people who read books and need creative fulfillment in their lives. If someone is lacking in either of these two things, there is a very good chance that roleplaying games aren't for them, but they don't want to admit it because they just want to be included in the experience.
TTRPGs are a good social outlet but that's only one half of the experience. The other half is using your imagination and getting immersed in the fiction.
Well, one solution I would add to the pot is to not let the PC's play evil characters or chaotic characters (the latter only if you know they're absolutely terrible at being anything other than chaotic stupid). If they complain about the no evil thing? Say "Sorry, you're supposed to be heroes."
It's so common to have players randomly meet and just go along with whatever the GM has cooked, but I can't envision an engaging campaign where PCs have no personal stakes in what is happening. I have no reason to care about a random town being under attack by Orcs and Goblins, unless maybe I have loved ones there or the invaders are after the same McGuffin as I. Just about anything would be better than "Guess I'll just follow those guys and possibly die to a Lich in a crypt."
>the other half mostly just sit silently and sometimes do something chaotic or wacky
characters seem wacky and chaotic because you haven't put effort into understanding, try asking some questions about their principles and motivations, then you can predict these "chaotic" moments and prepare
Yeah or maybe they're just zombies who attack at random
Ask them to leave. That's all there is to it.