DM help

[kpazzh0ly]

Hello all who reads.
I have been DMing a self made campaign(3.5 variant with a few house rules.) with uses of module aspects for almost a year now (1 day a month for 6 hours). I still don't feel like the players are engaged. I also don't think they have a true motivation to be a party. It doesn't seem like any character has a real reason to be on a quest with the rest of the party members.

When I have introduced NPC's in hopes that they would care or enjoy the NPC'S it hasn't worked. Almost as if I killed a NPC it wouldn't matter.

The party does fairly well at combat and personally I just think I am doing a poor job writing a good story, or finding a good module that fits the campaign thus far. I have ideas I just don't always know how to put it into a D+D situation. I have two modules I am going to use in the next meeting and hope that brings more depth.

I'm really not even sure what I am asking of you to help the situation, as I feel I am solely responsible. I guess this is just how you learn to be a DM, but if anyone has ideas on side quests that aren't just about combat that can help them unite. Or if any one knows a in depth module.

[Callin]

The players honestly need to put in some effort it seems. Do they offer suggestions for sidequests or give out plot hooks via roleplay or backgrounds?

The DM can only work with what they are given, and if that is nil then yea you might as well be running random encounters with random maps and just doing combat.

[Seto]

This can be a good help if you haven't read it ;)

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76474

[kpazzh0ly]

Thank you for posting that thread as soon as I am done replying I will be reading that thread.

My wife has watched the penny arcade acquisitions inc video casts on youtube and we both enjoyed. And she also has a great background that I have helped her come up with, but she is still new to dnd and she feels that sometimes the group doesn't listen to her. Which I have told her, you have the ability to charm at will. Use it.

Only one of the other characters has given me a small background. I think I'm just going to give them backgrounds as we progress?

I don't give them XP for role playing, I give them the Plot twist cards. But I think that I will have to give them a bonus XP at the end of a session for role playing. I don't want to always hear I attack, I want to hear how.

[ArcturusV]

Well, there's a few things that come to mind if your players aren't engaging like you'd want.

Remember 1, that "roleplaying" doesn't end when the dice come out, in particular one thing I like to do is, when a player drops an enemy tell them to "give me a deathblow" where they describe just how they finished off the target. Be it the roasting of skin and smoldering corpse left behind in the wake of a lightning bolt, or how the fighter sliced open someone's stomach, and as they desperately tried to push their guts back in, lopped off their head. This gets you out of "I attack" or "I cast lightning bolt" or the like without slowing down the game THAT much.

2, Include non-standard rewards. This is a simple way to get players invested in a setting, which gets them thinking about the world as something other than a packet of XP and GP. So they free some captives from an orc warband.... they get back to town and suddenly are worshiping this hero who saved them, throwing things at them like "Oh, I just baked this loaf of bread!" or "Please, stay the night over at my place, it's the least I can do for you" or even the classic fantasy "Hey... marry my daughter!" sort of thing. Or a lordling that they did some great task go, "Hey... I'll give you the deed to Greenhill Acres to the south". Simple, basic stuff... but since they can't just SELL the goodwill of a population, or someone's daughter, or royal mandate to develop land, etc... it gives them incentive to do something about it.

3, making the team hang together. Really this isn't something you can do. There's only two things you can really do to make the team want to stick together, and both of them are kind of heavy handed and annoying. The first is that you force them to be together by threat. Something like an archdevil who wants to kill them all off, or some Archmagus who is going to blow up the entire world. Some grand, long term plot threat that forces them together because no one individually can handle it. The other is similar, and that's to make them a Destined Team. Something like each of them has one piece or trait or key to some MacGuffin that the plot revolves around. Some sort of destiny so that only Bob the Ranger in your party has the right bloodline and fate to free the seal from Part C of the Doom Staff that they need. This is bad though because while it forces the party to work together, it also means that the players have "plot armor" because you can't kill them off... no one else could replace them.

[kpazzh0ly]

Well, there's a few things that come to mind if your players aren't engaging like you'd want.

Remember 1, that "roleplaying" doesn't end when the dice come out, in particular one thing I like to do is, when a player drops an enemy tell them to "give me a deathblow" where they describe just how they finished off the target. Be it the roasting of skin and smoldering corpse left behind in the wake of a lightning bolt, or how the fighter sliced open someone's stomach, and as they desperately tried to push their guts back in, lopped off their head. This gets you out of "I attack" or "I cast lightning bolt" or the like without slowing down the game THAT much.

2, Include non-standard rewards. This is a simple way to get players invested in a setting, which gets them thinking about the world as something other than a packet of XP and GP. So they free some captives from an orc warband.... they get back to town and suddenly are worshiping this hero who saved them, throwing things at them like "Oh, I just baked this loaf of bread!" or "Please, stay the night over at my place, it's the least I can do for you" or even the classic fantasy "Hey... marry my daughter!" sort of thing. Or a lordling that they did some great task go, "Hey... I'll give you the deed to Greenhill Acres to the south". Simple, basic stuff... but since they can't just SELL the goodwill of a population, or someone's daughter, or royal mandate to develop land, etc... it gives them incentive to do something about it.

3, making the team hang together. Really this isn't something you can do. There's only two things you can really do to make the team want to stick together, and both of them are kind of heavy handed and annoying. The first is that you force them to be together by threat. Something like an archdevil who wants to kill them all off, or some Archmagus who is going to blow up the entire world. Some grand, long term plot threat that forces them together because no one individually can handle it. The other is similar, and that's to make them a Destined Team. Something like each of them has one piece or trait or key to some MacGuffin that the plot revolves around. Some sort of destiny so that only Bob the Ranger in your party has the right bloodline and fate to free the seal from Part C of the Doom Staff that they need. This is bad though because while it forces the party to work together, it also means that the players have "plot armor" because you can't kill them off... no one else could replace them.

I like that very much. I think that are times that I personally overlook on how to run a session. Sometimes I think I give characters too much detail that they should find out on their own or make their own choices.

I also somehow want to incorporate situations that no matter what they do "right" or "wrong" it causes other things to happen. I.E. The king asks to marry his daughter, but the party refuses which enrages the king and alternatively causes a hostile environment for them in that land with a bounty on their head. Or if they do accept the royal marriage, as cliche it may be, she was kidnapped. Or maybe an ambassador was murdered during the wedding...etc etc... They don't necessarily have to cause another quest, but I want it to be apart of their "history" so to speak. Something like Fable, that as the characters continue forth the decisions they make have an effect on the game world. But I find that to be very hard to keep track of.

We as a group play every other week, one week my campaign and the next, one of the other players. I think that only playing once a month per campaign also causes an issue. But I have come across a dead spot where I don't enjoy playing a character only once a month. I actually rather DM 2x month and actually have a good story going.

I am really trying to get a local game where I live so I can play weekly for a few hours.

[kpazzh0ly]

Something else I forgot to note:

So my wife really loves Disney, princesses, fairies and mermaids. She is also a part of the vampire craze. So in my campaign she is playing a Half-fey princess who's kingdom was destroyed by warforged. She has been on the run. Long story short, she met a man/boy (17) who she fell in love with (My character in the other campaign). Well he left obviously to do his own thing to protect her.

So her reasoning to adventure is to find her husband, but along the way to gather people to take her kingdom back.

Reason I am bringing this up, is because out of game the players know she is a half-fey with wings. In game, they are suspecting that she is different. The other characters now know that she is a princess via an NPC who accompanies them to protect her. Which is fine, but the other characters don't seem to role play the fact of, what, I JUST SAW YOU FLY! or You're a princess? Things like that. It bothers me, and I don't know how to correct it.

They also don't know who her husband is, and I am really trying to get that character out of that campaign so I can introduce him here. I think it would be amusing.