Keeping the Players Happy

[GoodPilgrim]

Advice please:

I'm DMing a 15th-level campaign in a world of homebrew for three players:

1. A half-elf swashbuckler/elven spellsword/dragon devotee who happens to be a shipcaptain
2. A doppelganger druid/spellthief/daggerspell shaper who is his first mate
3. A homebrewed (by me) nightmare creature sorcerer/paladin who commissioned the other two to go on this quest, after his holy order sent him on this mission.

They made it down to the deep south whereto they were sent, and are now facing some frostfell conditions. So far, the campaign is all on track, and I hope and pray they're enjoying it, however, there may be some issues, partially my fault.

Player #3 (Paladin) has a tendency to take charge. In a way this is just fine, since his paladin character commissioned the others to the task, but his personality is rather forceful and may occasionally marginalize the other two. He's a great player and his character is interesting, and he's totally oblivious to the fact that the others may feel put off.

Player #1 (Swashbuckler) is the most peeved by this situation, and considers the paladin character to be nearly broken (given his combination of arcane, divine, and melee abilities).

Player #2 (Druid) is more mellow, but is also the only character so far to have died (exploding frost worm) and been resurrected. Also, all three of these characters have secrets that are kept from the others, and once he died, the secret that he was a doppelganger was revealed. The other two, however, took it in stride and were okay with it.

So anyway, my question is this: How can I best keep the swashbuckler and druid from being marginalized without in turn marginalizing the paladin? What is the best way to give the other two their shining moments? It's especially hard, because the paladin is almost broken, given those abilities, so I'm not sure how to pose a situation that would play best with the others' abilities and not the paladin's.

[eggynack]

Well, I think the first step is to talk to people. If the paladin is marginalizing people without being aware of it, you should probably make him aware of it. That issue seems like an out of character one. The second issue is with balance. I have absolutely no idea what your game's balance looks like, because I don't know the game's rules. If that character is anything like a regular sorcerer/paladin, that should be pretty far from broken. This seems like a special case though, so you should probably mention what you perceive as game breaking, so that it can stop doing that. Game balance and home brew can be pretty finicky things.

[ArcturusV]

Well, this sounds like the start of a story that ends up with people having "I hate DM PC" anecdotes. The DM's PC got a homebrewed race that no one else got, additional power over the team, the plot focuses around them.

The best way to deal with it is probably to take a logical step back with your character there by splitting up some priorities.

Frost Trolls attack the group when you made a stop. The players look towards the Sorcadin to solve it because, hell, POWAAAA is his. Paladin looks at them, says "Hey, what am I paying you for? I got to handle this instead..." and focuses instead on some task that needs be done. Depending on the nature of the plot this could be something time consuming and relatively simple (but requiring the Paladin), like communing with some forces/spirits that are supposed to guide the party on their next leg of the journey by spending several hours in meditation.

Not knowing more about the situation and the particulars of the dynamics going on, that's the sort of thing I would have to suggest. If you had to hire this crew to do something, they gotta go do that thing. If they were just a Courier, hired because they happened to have a boat and for some reason the Paladin couldn't just get someone to Teleport them in... well... there's kind of a deeper problem with the Plottage at that point. No one wants to play the Mailman.

[GoodPilgrim]

Good thoughts, all. I'm looking forward to our next session, and I'll talk to the Sorcadin in-between. Everything should go swimmingly.

[BowStreetRunner]

I mentioned in another thread something I used to help each of the PCs get some time in the limelight during another campaign a while ago. In this case, I used a party split to create a situation where each PC became the central character for a couple of gaming sessions, before bringing them all back together for the conclusion to that adventure. If things get too bad with your campaign, this method might help.


I think others have addressed the short-duration splits pretty well, and am sure you will receive some other replies worth considering as well. For the truly epic party splits however - such as Frodo and Sam going off to Mordor on their own - I have had some very successful experience with this.

I ran a campaign a while back with 4 main characters and at one point they parted ways, each off on a mission of their own with the intention of reuniting once they completed their separate goals. I ran each mission in a different set of sessions, and during each session I gave the other 3 players pre-made NPCs to run - along with a set of secret goals of their own.

I explained that the NPCs who were accompanying each PC would be run like a PC (full player control), and after all four missions were complete the entire group would get full XP for all the encounters in which the players had participated.

The 'secret' goals of each NPC however were not necessarily in harmony with the goals of the PC, and would often make the PC's job more difficult. I had considered offering additional incentive to the players for accomplishing the NPC goals, but need not have worried. All players were very enthusiastic - especially if it made things difficult on the PC in the group! They actually all said they had a blast and would love to run something similar again.