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Champion Pickle
2015-08-04, 01:13 PM
In my experience both as a DM and as a player, one of the hardest things to do is keep an adventure moving. I've had more luck with adventures that were designed to be linear, like a dungeon crawl , instead of adventures where the players need to take more initiative, like a murder mystery. Promises of loot always helps to. How do you all keep the momentum of your campaigns?

Spojaz
2015-08-04, 01:49 PM
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+to+motivate+people

Seriously though, there are a lot of books and articles about motivation in the business world, and most of the tricks are universal enough to be usable in a game setting.

Personally, I make sure that the group has a goal, and that almost every dangling quest hook interfaces with it. Some are obstacles that need to be overcome before progress can be made, some prevent loss, some are the progress. For the mystery plot, remember that red herrings do not work in tabletop games! They sidetrack and feel like wasted time. always. un-fun.

Also, make sure the players know that they are also responsible for their fun. If their character is lazy, or a coward, or needs to be bribed to follow a quest hook, maybe everyone would have more fun if they were playing a different person.

Sacrieur
2015-08-04, 02:02 PM
By not being a bad DM.

Rockoe10
2015-08-04, 02:04 PM
If you have an NPC, a 'Cheap' way to get things moving is to have that NPC be gun-ho kinda person, a Leroy Jenkins so to speak

kyoryu
2015-08-04, 02:42 PM
Well, first off, a good dungeon crawl is anything *but* linear.

But the easiest way I've found to motivate people is to ask them what they think would be interesting. And then do that.

Yora
2015-08-04, 02:51 PM
I always require all the players to make characters who have the motivation to go on the kind of adventures I am going to run build in into their personalty. In my campaigns you can never "play anything you like". I tell the players right from the start that this campaign will be about a group of zealous inquisitors, a group of barbarian warriors who fend of enemies and monster that threaten their village, a group of thieves with aspirations to make it big in the underworld, or whatever the campaign will be about. Over time you can tailor the adventure hooks more to appeal to specific interests of individual players or characters, but it's very easy to begin every adventure in a way that doesn't require you to push the players along to get them moving.
You don't need to motivate them. That type of adventure is what the players have been signing up for.

neonagash
2015-08-04, 05:46 PM
Well, first off, a good dungeon crawl is anything *but* linear.

But the easiest way I've found to motivate people is to ask them what they think would be interesting. And then do that.

This sums it up for me too. I like short adventures with lots of different decision points.

That way the players decide what's most interesting to them at any given time and I just have to improvise from their hunches.

Champion Pickle
2015-08-04, 06:59 PM
Well, first off, a good dungeon crawl is anything *but* linear.

Linear may not have been the best choice of words. I meant adventures where there's a clear direction to go in(the next room of the dungeon, for example).

Knaight
2015-08-04, 07:08 PM
Plenty of players don't particularly need motivation, they tend to be proactive and as long as you have a good enough game you're pretty much. Other you occasionally need to prod, because they work better when reacting to things and aren't proactive at all. Then there's the downright passive/"baby bird" player group. They want the game done entirely for them and are generally perfectly happy to sit in the background. The only real way around the passive player problem is not having too many in the group at once. If you have only passive players, you're basically hosed regardless of what you do. Get even one proactive player in the group (ideally more than one or supplemented with a reactive player or two) and you're likely to be fine.

Red Fel
2015-08-04, 07:20 PM
Linear may not have been the best choice of words. I meant adventures where there's a clear direction to go in(the next room of the dungeon, for example).

That's kind of what "linear" means. When the two choices are "go to the next room" or "go back from whence you came," you're not forcing the players, but you're not giving them a breadth of options; that's linear.

That said, I'd go where the players want in order to keep them motivated. To me, this involves three steps.

Step one, the DM needs to roll a Gather Information check. Ask the players what their goal in the game is, and ask what their characters' goals are. If they have no real goals for their characters, you may have murderhobos on your hands; while not necessarily a bad thing, it means you'll have a harder time keeping them engaged.

Step two, bait the trap. It's simple. Take whatever campaign you planned to run and weave elements of what the players have told you into it. Character looking for his long-lost father? Drop subtle clues along the way, like a distinctive hat, or an NPC remarking that the PC reminds him of someone. Character seeking the cult that destroyed his village? Work them into the recurring villain vein. Character looking for an ancient civilization? Have ruins here and there, with clues and things like that, slowly revealing the horror that annihilated them centuries ago. For bonus points, weave them together; this one's father joined that cult, which plans to raise the ancient civilization from beneath the ocean floor.

Step three, make the PCs into stars. They all have talents, and not all combat related. This one has a lot of ranks in Knowledge (architecture). That one knows a lot about hieroglyphs. This one can identify members of any nation's military based entirely on footwear and haircuts. Give them the chance to do that. Every so often, give a PC the chance to not only be relevant, but to be vital. A player who walks away from the game feeling like his character was the star is a player who'll come back for more. And if they all walk away from the same game with that feeling, you've hit the jackpot.

That's it. That's all you need to do. Know what they want, feed it to them just a bit, and make their characters feel uniquely important and significant. If this advice sounds familiar, it's because I've given it before, almost verbatim. It works.

Unless they're murderhobos. In that case...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v243/d_jarrell/blazing-saddles-605_zps15464666.jpg

Kid Jake
2015-08-04, 08:16 PM
I try to piss my players off every now and then. Nothing lights a fire under a group of PCs like having an NPC get one over on them and their misguided rage usually carries them through a few sessions. By that point they've probably pissed off some NPCs of their own, who will in turn piss them off again and the cycle repeats itself until everything's on fire and they die and/or live happily ever after.

Champion Pickle
2015-08-04, 08:34 PM
I try to piss my players off every now and then. Nothing lights a fire under a group of PCs like having an NPC get one over on them and their misguided rage usually carries them through a few sessions. By that point they've probably pissed off some NPCs of their own, who will in turn piss them off again and the cycle repeats itself until everything's on fire and they die and/or live happily ever after.

As a player, whenever an enemy that's been particularly hated is finally dealt with there's a great sense of satisfaction. Anybody have any tips on getting your players to hate a specific NPC?

TheThan
2015-08-04, 08:55 PM
I use a shock prod.

makes for a very lively table.

Kid Jake
2015-08-04, 08:57 PM
Being a little too smug; taking something away from them; fighting cheap and dirty; run your mouth; etc...

The most hated NPC I've ever fielded was a super speedster mob hitman named Johnny on the Spot from my M&M journal, although I only meant for him to be slightly annoying at best. He introduced himself by sucker punching one of the PCs in the back of the head at 500mph and then spent the rest of the battle dancing around them while telling them exactly why he was better than them.

The sucker punched PC chased him down for several sessions totaling MONTHS of real time, murdered half the city's criminals searching for him, assaulted a heavily guarded and fortified safehouse to get to him and then proceeded to shoot him in both of his knees once he'd been knocked out.

Almost two years later he STILL hates Johnny enough that when he noticed the now crippled speedster survived the first arc of our campaign he's let me know that he intends to spend the majority of the second arc hunting him down to tear his arms off next.

Vitruviansquid
2015-08-04, 10:40 PM
1. Set the correct expectations. Let people know they *have to* take the initiative, or a lot of players don't.

2. Know how you're conditioning your players. A lot of DMs theoretically want players to take the initiative, but always shoot down their ideas. When you react well to player ideas, they will have a lot more of them.

3. If all else fails, there are systems where motivation is part and parcel of every character, every campaign. Try playing one of them those.

Vercingex
2015-08-04, 11:21 PM
Step 1: Find what the PC's love.
Step 2: Take it away from them.

dream
2015-08-05, 09:24 AM
In my experience both as a DM and as a player, one of the hardest things to do is keep an adventure moving. I've had more luck with adventures that were designed to be linear, like a dungeon crawl , instead of adventures where the players need to take more initiative, like a murder mystery. Promises of loot always helps to. How do you all keep the momentum of your campaigns?
Action. The more you throw at the players, the more they have to do. I've been a DM/GM since forever, with very few chances to play. Luckily I've found forum games here that allow me to play and I see games getting bogged down pretty often. Usually, the situation is the GM threw something at the players that didn't force a reaction. Whether combat or conversation, the action has to push the players to react. Then, keep it coming one encounter after the next. Check out this article on Rising Action (http://www.fiction-writers-mentor.com/rising-action/).


As a player, whenever an enemy that's been particularly hated is finally dealt with there's a great sense of satisfaction. Anybody have any tips on getting your players to hate a specific NPC?
Make the NPC the exact opposite of the player(s). Also, portray the NPC as a strong ally who later betrays the party at the most crucial moment.

Red Fel
2015-08-05, 09:57 AM
Step 1: Find what the PC's love.
Step 2: Take it away from them.

This, but with qualifications.

What the PCs love could be anything. A person. A town. Their shinies. (On second thought, don't mess with the shinies unless you really mean it.)

Taking it away can mean anything. Destroying it. Stealing it. Perverting it to Evil. Anything.

But keep this in mind: Hatred bleeds over onto the players. That's what's keeping them hooked. It's not just that their characters are invested, the players themselves crave bloody, terrible vengeance. If you're not prepared, that can lead to a very tense, angry table. Among good-spirited friends, it can lead to fantastic catharsis afterwards, but if your players are high strung, it can lead to angry words and hurt feelings. (And possibly thrown objects.)

So think before you take their shinies.

kyoryu
2015-08-05, 12:38 PM
Linear may not have been the best choice of words. I meant adventures where there's a clear direction to go in(the next room of the dungeon, for example).

No, that's what I assumed you meant.

In my view, good dungeon design doesn't do that. It gives you a number of options as to what you want to do and where you want to go within the dungeon.

Look at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1709227718/ernest-gary-gygax-jrs-marmoreal-tomb-campaign-star . If you scroll about halfway down the map, you'll see two of the dungeon maps. They're anything *but* linear.

Hawkstar
2015-08-05, 02:08 PM
No, that's what I assumed you meant.

In my view, good dungeon design doesn't do that. It gives you a number of options as to what you want to do and where you want to go within the dungeon.

Look at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1709227718/ernest-gary-gygax-jrs-marmoreal-tomb-campaign-star . If you scroll about halfway down the map, you'll see two of the dungeon maps. They're anything *but* linear.

You still have "Clear the dungeon" as a direction to go.

Champion Pickle
2015-08-05, 03:04 PM
No, that's what I assumed you meant.

In my view, good dungeon design doesn't do that. It gives you a number of options as to what you want to do and where you want to go within the dungeon.

Look at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1709227718/ernest-gary-gygax-jrs-marmoreal-tomb-campaign-star . If you scroll about halfway down the map, you'll see two of the dungeon maps. They're anything *but* linear.

I love sprawling dungeons(in TTRPGS, at least. Not when I'm playing videogames, strangely enough), but even twisting, expansive dungeons still have a direction to go in. There may be a bunch of ways to get there and a lot to do on the way, but there's still a path(or paths) ahead of the players so they know where the adventure is.

Mr.Moron
2015-08-05, 03:17 PM
I always require all the players to make characters who have the motivation to go on the kind of adventures I am going to run build in into their personalty. In my campaigns you can never "play anything you like". I tell the players right from the start that this campaign will be about a group of zealous inquisitors, a group of barbarian warriors who fend of enemies and monster that threaten their village, a group of thieves with aspirations to make it big in the underworld, or whatever the campaign will be about. Over time you can tailor the adventure hooks more to appeal to specific interests of individual players or characters, but it's very easy to begin every adventure in a way that doesn't require you to push the players along to get them moving.
You don't need to motivate them. That type of adventure is what the players have been signing up for.

This is more/less my approach as well.