Advice needed

[pman.512]

Recently me and my group changed GMs we have a fairly small group and it was hard to find a new Gm. Eventually we did and I was their choice. So we started a new campaign,but none of the players are really into it and quite frankly they're starting to lose interest I need some tips or advice quickly or our group is gonna fall apart soon.:smalleek:

[HunterOfJello]

We need more information and you may just need more practice.

What is the group like?
How many players are there?
How do they get along?
How long have they each played and played together?
What was the last DM like?
How much experience do you have playing and/or DMing?
What kind of campaign are you running?
Which game is it?

~

Have you read many guides about DMing online?

As far as books go, the 1st through 4th edition d&d Dungeon Master Guides and DMG 2s are highly useful. I've heard good things about the Pathfinder GameMastery Guide and plan to give it a read soon myself.

~

Without any information about your group or campaign I can suggest that you create a questionaire for your group concerning what they're interested in seeing in the campaign, what they like in games, what they dislike, what their prefered playstyle is, if there was anything they were looking forward to seeing in the future, what kind of character development they have planned, their music and food preferences, a short character backstory (the Ten Minute Background is good) and any other relevant question you can think of.

Later on you can periodically hand out progress questionnaires to better identify the players likes, dislikes and any changes you can make to the campaign.

~

Another preferred method I used to do when I wasn't dead tired after sessions was to watch each player throught the sessions and write down their reactions to the different elements of the session. Sometimes people can give away lots of information from their reactions that they wouldn't give on a questionaire. This is a good way to identify pet peeves along with the high and low moments of a campaign.

[SamsDisciple]

One thing my dm does quite frequently is he chooses one player to do some of the above mentioned work for him and the dm and player discuss through the week what to do in order to make it better. This eases stress on the dm and he can discuss specifics and get ideas vocalized. If you plan on hashing out story ideas you need to be careful who you choose that won't use out of character knowledge and will still enjoy the campaign even though he already knows what is going to happen.

[Delwugor]

How about just talking to them?
Ask them what they like and don't like in your game.
Make changes.
Repeat.