One player "can't get into his character/the campaign;" other 4 are having fun: CotCT

[ksbsnowowl]

TL;DR: My players said they wanted a political intrigue game. I just started running Curse of the Crimson Throne for them. Most of my players are really enjoying it. One of the players wanted that style campaign, but disregarded all my advice about making sure their characters cared about the city of Korvosa; now he "can't get into his character," and doesn't seem to be enjoying the campaign.

Long rambling thoughts and background:
I've been the resident DM for my circle of gaming buddies for the last several years. Occasionally one of them will start a game, but they always burn out after a handful of sessions (various reasons, biggest being they always underestimate how much effort it takes to be a decent DM). Anyway, that's not the point. I've DM'ed for these players anywhere from 3 to 7 years of weekly games (or in recent years, two games per week).

As we were nearing the end of our previous campaign, I asked the players to fill out a short survey about what their favorite/least favorite parts of the campaign were, and asking what their preferred "style" of campaign was (exploration, dungeon crawling, a war campaign, political intrigue, etc.) Out of four players, three picked political intrigue as their top preference. Seeking ideas on some modules that would help fulfill that goal, I was pointed toward Paizo's Curse of the Crimson Throne (the original, we play 3.5). I've read through the first three modules, and I love it. Any published module will have its quirks and stumbling blocks, but on the whole it's quite good. Note, there are spoilers for the AP following.

The players read the AP player's guide, and chose their backgrounds. I very clearly cautioned them in the email when I sent them the player guide to make sure their characters care about the city of Korvosa. Everyone made their characters; four humans and an illumian. An Illumian Beguiler outlander who was just visiting the city on a day trip a few years ago, who then had his son kidnapped, and was jailed for murder (framed)... Followed by the rest of the party: a cleric, rogue, psion, and an "urban druid" (utilizing city ACF's from the Cityscape web enhancement & Unearthed Arcana). Basically, the Illumian wrote a background that gave him nearly zero ties to the city, and would make any normal person hate such a city, due to how it and its people had wronged him.

After defeating Gaedren (during which fight the cleric died; the alligator got him), the illumian player in question decided to go investigate the nearby moored ship (which is a bit of a red herring, though in talking with one of the orphans, they already knew no one in Gaedren's gang went on the ship), in the middle of the night, without a light source. He foolishly went exploring in the dark, and as a consequence, fell through some weak decking, into a dark hold. He played as a mild-aged illumian, to max his intelligence, and as a result had a weak (average, 10) Constitution. He took 6 points of damage from the fall, putting him at 0 hp's. Then the monsters that were in the ship's hold started to approach... it was not a pretty end. (Coincidentally, 4 years ago his first level character in the 20th-level campaign we just wrapped up died in basically the exact same way; not examine where you are stepping, fall down a hole, thus taking damage to put you at 0 hp's, then falling victim to the monsters at the bottom of the hole.)

The next week he came back with essentially the same character (Illumian Beguiler), but with different future multiclassing plans. This character is the previously-kidnapped son of the recently-dead Illumian. He didn't even attempt to write a new/different backstory (what happened? Why had the son disappeared years ago? Why was he only just now looking for his father?)

The last two sessions have been one initial fight with a street mob, saving a minor noble, and then role playing interactions with various nobles, city officials, dealing with quickly-changing situations in the city, getting a job offer from the captain of the city guard, and now working their way to getting information about their targets. (They are taking the more investigative, diplomatic, undercover route to solving the job at hand, rather than the old fashioned "kick in the door" approach the party fighter [previous dead cleric's player] would prefer.) Due to a few lucky saving throw rolls, the few times in the last two sessions that the Beguiler has tried to use Charm Person or the like, they haven't succeeded, or haven't done much good. But when it comes time to actually interact with NPC's, and ask questions, the Beguiler player just sits there, reading his damn tablet.

After tonight's session, this player just quickly packed up and left without saying anything (he normally stays and chats). I asked the other players if they were having fun, and all four agreed they were. (The "kick in the door" fighter would always love a bit more action, but even he said it was enjoyable. He interacted with NPC's a bit more than he normally does, and a lot more than the Beguiler did.)

So I guess this post is just a long, rambling way of asking, "what should I do?"

A big part of my thought process is leaning toward "change nothing."

In summary:
The player in question is one of the ones to have listed Political Intrigue as his top choice for a campaign style.
He blatantly disregarded my clear caution to make sure his character was invested in the city itself.
A combination of happenstance and bad choices led to his first character's death.
I've DM'ed for this player the longest of any of them, and he very definitely only has fun when he is "winning."
It seems like the open-ended prospect of role-played social interaction has shut down his ability to engage with the story.
According to the other players, I'm delivering the campaign they asked for, and they are enjoying it.

What would you do?

[legomaster00156]

Encourage him to retire his character and make one that he can get into.

[daremetoidareyo]

If you can't have fun as a beguiler in a political intrigue game, that's....just sad

[Caedes]

From a complete outside the wheelhouse perspective.

It sounds like they may have some other stuff going on in their life. If I were in your shoes I would probably reach out, outside of the game time and just do a check-in. Ask them if they are doing ok and if there is anything you can do to help out in terms of the game.

They may say nothing at all or they may share something they need. Either way. I think the optimal course of action if I were in your shoes is to have a conversation about it.

[Telonius]

I'd tend to agree with Caedes. Something about this doesn't add up.

Though I would have one quick comment - Illumians are almost never completely without a light source. Was he suppressing his sigils at the time?

[AtS]

Do you still enjoy this player's presence at your table? If you do enjoy his presence, are you willing to make concessions to how the game is currently running according to any feedback he might give you? If you are, you need to sit down and discuss this with him. Ask him why the current campaign is not giving him enjoyment, and what can change to reach that point again.

If you're not willing to do that, then you need to have a different discussion with him, and ask him to decide if he really wants to continue playing with the group. He needs to at least pay attention at the table, being on his tablet the entire time is not acceptable, and you should ask him to stop this. Being engaged in other activities also won't help his engagement with the story, so it could be self-propagating, where his inattentiveness is causing him to miss plot hooks and roleplaying opportunities that would otherwise help him be more engaged and happy with the campaign.

After all that talk, if he's still not happy, you need to think about what's best for your table, and decide if you want to keep including a player that refuses to engage with the game you're presenting. If he wants a different campaign, and you aren't willing to make changes, he may need to seek that out elsewhere.

[bean illus]

Start casually by beginning a conversation about "what would make this a great game"?

And vote for 2 mvp bonuses per game. Each player votes for 'best role play' and 'best mvp moment'. Two players get 5-10% xp bonus.

Plant a hook. Make an npc illumian? Tie the kidnapping to the plot?

[Quertus]

I think my conversation would look something like this:

"When you said 'political intrigue'*, Reality / a google search / whatever said CotCT, and I agreed with it. This is what I think of when I think 'political intrigue' (go on to list your criteria). What do you think when you hear the words 'political intrigue'? What were you expecting?"

"When I said, 'care about the city', I was thinking (go on to list what you thought). The other players thought (go on to list what they thought). What did you think those words meant? Why did you choose to (list what he did)."

Once you share a common vocabulary, then you can work on what to do about the problems. Of course, figuring out exactly what the problems are is an important step, too.

Clearly, you seem to think that the problem is that his character doesn't care about the city**; you say he seems to think that the problem is that he can't "get into character". Honestly, to me, this sounds too much like my "need to take a 20 to get a playable character" problem. If that's the case, then the best answer is, IMO, to put the campaign on hold, run a series of political-intrigue one-shots until the player has a playable character, and then insert that character into the adventure.

But, you know, I'm not there, so you'll have to figure out the truth of it for yourself.

* Was he one of the players who wanted a political campaign?
** OK, I haven't read all the spoiler, because, you know, spoilers, in case I ever play the module

[ksbsnowowl]

Encourage him to retire his character and make one that he can get into.

This isn't a terrible idea. There was some offhand comment that another player told me of later. Something about "just playing a barbarian." Honestly, a Barbarian in this style of campaign would be a riot, though would likely make things harder on the group by souring relationships and contacts with NPC's.


From a complete outside the wheelhouse perspective.

It sounds like they may have some other stuff going on in their life.
He does have some other stuff going on. He's in the midst of a job change (same basic job, changing companies; will have longer commute), but in the end I suspect it will be good. He's been griping about his old employer for years.


...I would have one quick comment - Illumians are almost never completely without a light source. Was he suppressing his sigils at the time?He was suppressing his sigils. The city of Korvosa is 90% human, and the player's guide does lay out that the city's populous does tend to be a tad bit racist against the ethnic human minority (mentions lynchings and illegal evictions). He was playing a "spy" type character, and the name he gave out to the other players isn't even the character's real name, it is an alias. So he has specifically been suppressing his sigils so he can pass off as human.


Do you still enjoy this player's presence at your table? If you do enjoy his presence, are you willing to make concessions to how the game is currently running according to any feedback he might give you? If you are, you need to sit down and discuss this with him. Ask him why the current campaign is not giving him enjoyment, and what can change to reach that point again.The player is generally enjoyable to be around. He does have some quirks that get annoying from time to time (he tends to play character concepts that don't work out well, then gets frustrated that they don't work out; he also is terrible at analyzing a situation and coming to the right conclusion, arguing against others to do it his way, which is wrong ~70% of the time), but he's generally a good guy. I'd be willing to make some small-scale concessions about pace of game, and stuff like that. But I'm not going to scrap the campaign for something else; I have too much of my limited time invested in preparing to run this already.


I think my conversation would look something like this:

"When you said 'political intrigue'*, Reality / a google search / whatever said CotCT, and I agreed with it. This is what I think of when I think 'political intrigue' (go on to list your criteria). What do you think when you hear the words 'political intrigue'? What were you expecting?"

"When I said, 'care about the city', I was thinking (go on to list what you thought). The other players thought (go on to list what they thought). What did you think those words meant? Why did you choose to (list what he did)."

Once you share a common vocabulary, then you can work on what to do about the problems. Of course, figuring out exactly what the problems are is an important step, too.I think this might be part of a good first step. Maybe the fact it took them 4 sessions before they started hobnobbing with a couple nobles and city officials made him feel his physically weak Beguiler was useless in the first 4 sessions, which does start out a little more traditional (here's the bad guy, here's why he's bad, go kill him).


Clearly, you seem to think that the problem is that his character doesn't care about the city**; ...

* Was he one of the players who wanted a political campaign?
** OK, I haven't read all the spoiler, because, you know, spoilers, in case I ever play the moduleWithout giving away too much, a fairly normal person would care about it if their homeland was under threat. Think the reaction Americans/New Yorkers had after the 9/11 attacks. That's not what happens, but it gives you the gist without spoiling anything. Some people don't care as much if something like that happens to a place they don't see as "theirs." It's not the whole problem, but it's part of it (this player also generally lacks empathy, and plays morally gray characters that have atypical reactions to things that should generally elicit sympathy).

He was indeed one of the players who listed political intrigue as his top campaign style preference.


...you say he seems to think that the problem is that he can't "get into character". Honestly, to me, this sounds too much like my "need to take a 20 to get a playable character" problem. If that's the case, then the best answer is, IMO, to put the campaign on hold, run a series of political-intrigue one-shots until the player has a playable character, and then insert that character into the adventure.
* OK, I haven't read all the spoiler, because, you know, spoilers, in case I ever play the module
Can you explain this more? I don't know if I'm picking up what you are trying to convey here.



Thank you all for the responses thus far. They've given me a few ideas and things to think about.

Edit: So our group has a private chat message board set up, and there was some discussion today about last night's session. It turns out that a big part of it was that there are two "party face" / social skill characters, the Beguiler, and a social Rogue (heading into Bard at 2nd level). The social Rogue was sort of leading the charge on investigating things last night (not exactly "hogging the spotlight," but he was the most prominent character last night), and apparently has invested more into his social skills (taken two skill-boosting feats, Deceptive and one other). So the Beguiler player was "bored out of his mind" and upset that "the way [the rogue] built his character essentially made my beguiler completely useless." He was also upset that "his dice hate him," so everything he tried to do "was a miserable failure."

So it sounds like he's not wanting to fill the role that organically grows out of the party interaction, and is upset because he wants to fill the preconceived role he was thinking of ahead of time. Given that someone "stepping on his toes" seems to be the big issue, I plan to send him a gentle email asking how the campaign isn't fulfilling his desires, and what I might be able to do to help, and asking if he wants to change characters to something that will fill a gap in the party and have less overlap with other characters.

My only worry is that the one other thing he indicated interest in (playing a barbarian again) will overlap with the party fighter (more toes getting stepped on) or as far as filling gaps, the biggest gaps in the party right now are that there is no generic mage and no cleric (but this group has historically played 85% of their gaming careers with me with no cleric in the party) and this player, and every character he plays, is very non-religious, so expecting him to play a serious cleric character is not realistic. He also just got done playing a Wizard in the previous campaign. One suggested possibility that another player mentioned was Archivist, which might be a good fit; I plan to suggest it.

[ksbsnowowl]

I wanted to post an update, and say thank you once again to those who took the time to provide advice on this situation.

In short, he has now quit the game.

I emailed him to ask if there's anything I could change to make the campaign better meet his desires, and offered up the idea of changing characters. He replied that the rough start (first character dying) combined with everything he had suggested or tried to do in game resulting in total failure made him feel like a tag-along NPC, and not a useful party member. He also expressed that he felt no attachment with his character (the replacement one), and thus was having a hard time role playing him, or coming up with ways of being useful to the party.

He played three more sessions, "having fun for the first time" when he agitated some unhappy dock workers into becoming arsonists (without spoiling too much, let's just say that works against the party's goals...) He did end up being quite useful in a combat where he put three of the four foes the party was facing to Sleep. Then in the last session, where they needed to get their hands on some information, they ended up needing to play along with the whims of a minor crime lord; everyone else in the party participated, and when offered the chance, he declined.

It was obvious to all of us that he wasn't having fun, and one of the players was trying to understand what the Beguiler's player needed to be able to have fun (my attempt to ask that question and offer solutions was fruitless, but maybe someone else could get a grasp on why he wasn't enjoying himself). What little could be gleaned was that he was bummed, said nothing would help, and he'd never get into the campaign.

The other player got him to expound on that a bit later, but it basically comes down to two missteps on the player's part. One, is the reason he sees as to why he's not having fun, and the second is the reason that all the rest of us see clear as day as to why he's not having fun, but he is incapable of recognizing it.

The reason that he at least partly recognizes, is his entirely nonsensical character motivations, though he cannot recognize them as being nonsensical. His CN character hates the corruption in the city that sold him into slavery, and wants to root it out... He wants the city to become more Lawful and more Good... and his plan for doing that was to incite chaos. Not only was this motivation news to me (he gave me ZERO backstory on his second character, aside from my knowing it was the kidnapped son from his previous character's backstory), it had no direction, and no clear expression in the game. He wasn't looking for the guards that falsely arrested his father. He wasn't searching to hunt down the black market slave traders that sold him into slavery. His goal was generally to "end corruption" (not a bad motivation; wish I'd known that), but I guess the way he wanted to achieve that was by burning the city clean...

... Which leads right into the obvious problem that everyone else can see, but he is apparently incapable of seeing.

"I don't want to live in this city. I don't know why anyone would."

In a campaign where I said everyone needed to care about the city (because... minor spoiler... you are potentially going to become the saviors of the city, who fight for it through dark times, because you love the city and don't want to see it or its people hurt...) Multiple people have pointed out to him that this is a big part of why he's not having fun, and he can't see that. When the other player relayed this comment to me, it all made perfect sense. I mentioned before that this player has a very unusual sense of empathy. In the seven years I've known him, he has displayed a lack of ability to understand why anyone would have feelings of pride in his city, and why someone would think their hometown is any better than any other city, and value it above another. This isn't just his characters in game; this is also himself, displaying opinions about real world things.

So, yeah. In the end, he has quit the campaign, because the beating heart of the party motivation for the campaign... is at odds with his worldview, and he is unable to comprehend it.

[Manyasone]

Just a heads up, CotCT doesn't stay political intrigue past maybe the first two modules...maybe read the other ones as well, because ahum, a beguiler will mean nothing in "Ze Castle"...

[ksbsnowowl]

Just a heads up, CotCT doesn't stay political intrigue past maybe the first two modules...maybe read the other ones as well, because ahum, a beguiler will mean nothing in "Ze Castle"...

So far I have only read through the first three modules, which are all political intrigue to a greater or lesser extent. I did generally know that the fourth or fifth one went in that direction, though. But, now that the Beguiler is no longer in our party, that won't be a great concern.

[Mordaedil]

Oof, that sucks royally. Give that guy a hug in real life.

[bean illus]

Oof, that sucks royally. Give that guy a hug in real life.

Nice. Remember to do that.

[icefractal]

Just a heads up, CotCT doesn't stay political intrigue past maybe the first two modules...maybe read the other ones as well, because ahum, a beguiler will mean nothing in "Ze Castle"...In fact, you may want to diverge from the AP at that point, depending on your group. YMMV, but personally I would have rather stayed in the city, and I think there's plenty of adventure possible in doing so.

[Quertus]

So, let me see if I've got this straight:

A player wanted a political game, and was upset when he didn't get to call "dibs" on talking to people?

And, hearing the player request a political game, the GM picked out a political game that the player was psychologically incapable of playing?

Wow.




Oof, that sucks royally. Give that guy a hug in real life.


Nice. Remember to do that.

It's comments like these that restore my faith in humanity.

[ksbsnowowl]

the GM picked out a political game that the player was psychologically incapable of playing?

Wow.


It's not like I did it maliciously or intentionally. It took weeks of me wasting way too much mental and emotional energy trying to figure out how to make the game fun for him before I had enough info for the situation to "click" with a side conversation from years ago. The player himself doesn't even recognize or acknowledge that this is his hang-up.

Is it really too much for a DM to ask that his PC's be invested in the city in which they will adventure?

[icefractal]

Not too much to ask at all. The only thing I'd have suggested would be to bring up the issue sooner - if someone makes a character that's incompatible with the game premise, stop right there, figure out why, and fix/replace the character - don't just roll with it. That can be awkward, but as you've seen, so can not doing so.