Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Sleekwolf 11-19-06, 09:29 PM	Hi all! I'm DM'ing for a small group at present, but I'll cut straight to the point and say that I have always had difficulty getting them motivated for virtually any quest, whether insignificant or momentous, because all they TRULY end up caring for is battles (experience), wealth, and magic items. Now, I'm not saying we haven't had some fun campaigns, but I am saying that they don't develop much depth to their characters. It's not even that they're powergamer/munchkins, but they don't seem to *care* much about anything in the game. They go through it because it's there, and because it's a vehicle to more power. It's difficult for me to point out the contrast between them and actual powergamers, but you'll have to trust me that it's there. They still *like* stories, they just don't invest themselves in them, and so the story pans out bland as opposed to epic and exciting. They almost without fail play neutral characters. They basically play the average joe in modern North America, except in a fantasy context. God, it's so annoying! How do I encourage my characters to care for a cause? How do I encourage my characters to care for each other? I want to give them just ONE great plot that involves them on an intellectual and emotional level, so they'll understand what it is I've always wanted our D&D experience to be like.
clarkvalentine 11-19-06, 09:57 PM	How do I encourage my characters to care for a cause? First, remember that even neutral characters dislike evil overlords who will try to enslave them, love their children and will fight to protect them, and will object if someone tries to burn their crops and evict them from their homeland. In short, give your characters a plot that they have a personal stake in. How do I encourage my characters to care for each other? Encourage them to create characters that care about each other. At chargen, say that they're all siblings or childhood friends. Or say "Now that you've created your characters, each one of you tell me how you recently saved the life of the character to your right." You get the idea. Don't create characters in a vacuum. Don't say "Show up with 4th level PCs." Make character generation the entire focus of the first session, and work with the players to create a party that will want to work together.
CharlieRock 11-19-06, 09:58 PM	Placing their hometown/families in danger? Like, they have to return the town clock's missing gear (stolen by goblin engineers) so that it may strike midnight before x-day because if it doesnt the whole town gets destroyed by an evil spirit (Dragon Ghost?). The spell holding the spirit in check relies on the clock regularly striking midnight or it loses power. Then they might want to go retrieve a magical scroll that casts a more powerful version of that spell to keep the spirit in check without relying on the town clock (this scroll being current resident of the Evil Temple of Mongo the Mad).
Reversefigure4 11-19-06, 10:15 PM	Well, they must have characters that care about something. Their friends and family. The right to free speech. Protecting nature. Acquiring books. You could ask the players to come up with plot hooks their PCs would be interested in. Two of the simpliest - making money and gaining power - make for easy (if crude) plot hooks. The old man tells them about the legendary Books of the Blood Mages, an ancient sect of terrifying wizards, and the power they could gain from possessing them. Want to make it at an emotional level? Make that emotion anger. Somebody else beats them to it, takes the books, and bolts. Voila, a BBEG the PCs want to hunt down.
LiXinjian 11-19-06, 10:17 PM	I think what he's looking for cannot be expressed in game terms. If none of the players care about the storyline, why would they care more if their character's hometown was on the brink of destruction? No amount of in-game motivation seems to work, I take it. What you need is to pick one player you know more than the others. You need to find what real life issues really annoy, irritate or motivate him. Then you need to play it heavy on that element. If he gets angry at inefficient clerks, you need to give his character one recurrent and important NPC that's really inefficient, until you get a reaction from the player. If it's the frantic spending and the ridiculous economics that grate him, emphasize that in your campaign. The idea is to slowly pull one player into the emotional world that is D&D with the hope that his emotional commitment to the game will draw the others to it, too. In order to do that, you'll need to play the player, not the character. To continue my clerk example from above, don't stop until you ear the player sigh around the table and drop stuff like "What is the matter with these people?! Jeeez!! It's a simple matter of handing me the proper form! What can be so tough!?". Of course, if your NPCs are clones of each other or bots with no characterization, that will require another effort from you.
Sleekwolf 11-19-06, 10:17 PM	I did indeed try to do that at the beginning. They were part of an order of knights and both had personal connections of a sort to their prince. The prince was taken captive, but they were still willing to abandon him at one point. They quickly lost any sense of a moral code guiding them, as well.
Sleekwolf 11-19-06, 10:20 PM	Good idea, LiXinjian! My only worry is that I've done something similar before and one of the other players felt left out. But I think I can balance it, perhaps. Thanks all for your ideas so far!
clarkvalentine 11-19-06, 10:21 PM	It does sound like they have little interest in really roleplaying. While annoying to you, who I assume would like to roleplay, it might be time to talk to them out of game about what kind of game they want to play. If they just want a straight ahead "kill 'em and take their stuff" sort of game, there might not be much you can do to change their minds. Not everyone's preferred play styles are compatible.
jagraham 11-19-06, 11:16 PM	Have an NPC party that's truly heroic come to town and make the party jealous when the villagers clean their boots and armor, give them the special bottles of wine, know their favorite songs, get the best rooms, more flirtatatious attention from the womenfolk. For the PCs, its cash and carry. Now when the PCs doing something heroic, even by accident, have the good folk heap praise upon them. If they still don't pick up the hint, have baddies treat them as peers, offering the small bribes (i.e. insultingly small) to get out of a town that will be attacked. Or even off small money to assassinate fairly defenseless folk. In other words, have others disrespect their courage more than their abilities.
quenya 11-19-06, 11:42 PM	I really think you have the answer to your question hidden in your original post. As a player nothing motivates me more than a burning hatred of the Villian! So if you want an epic story you need an epic villian with a brilliant scheme... Now if your players are pointed in a direction that intersects with said evil guy they may not care. What if however your party attained some status enough that the villian took notice? What if the best part of a great treasure, awesome magic items, were stolen by minions of the BBEG? What if some of the party lost a level because of deaths at the hands of these minions, revenge will motivate your players in to an epic story. have them lose whats important to the players, and characters. You told us what they care about... now its your job to hit them where it hurts.
Orbb_was_railed_by_God 11-20-06, 11:27 AM	If your players are acting like hired mercenaries, then treat them like hired mercenaries. If all they want to do is kill, put an on-going war on. If the orc nation to the north is always conducting raids, have one of the furthest towns north have an Imperial Bounty post, paying 1gp per orc tongue/ears/whatever. If they return with the head of a cheiftain, its 100gp, and the head of a warlord it's 1000gp. Each time they go to the Bounty post, the grizzled old sergent who they will come to know and love will be interested in their latest kills, and present them with a few missions, each with varying levels of reward/difficulty. If its more standard "kill the orcs that have taken up refuge in the caves" fair, then no biggie. If they mayors daughter is being held to ransom, and the sergent has held this one back because he knows only the PC's can do it, they are much more likely to take the save-the-princess mission over the generic-hack-and-slash one. Remember, with new NPC's take it slow, let them get a feel for the character and how he helps them achieve their goal of getting more powerful. A cleric who heals/cures poison and disease/removes level drain may require a payment afterwards. If they do it he says he'll do all their healing for free (say, a quest to retrieve a lost holy relic from the undead-guarded tombs of wherever...) A wizard who requires a certain spellbook etc, and will reward on reciept. Play to the players and what they want, and they will unwittingly immerse themselves in your world. And once the players are saying things like "let's go see the Bounty Post guy and see if he's got any more he's held back for us specially" and then they go and find the town has been razed and the Bounty Post guy is now in three different pieces around his office, they will probably want some revenge.
Stormbrand 11-20-06, 04:42 PM	Bounty hunts, mercenary assignments, rumours of the location of treasure. That sort of thing. Throw in gradual plot twists as they come around. Offer the PCs contracts, and have assassins come after them for taking the contracts away from someone else equally interested in doing the job. That sort of thing. And of course, having the PCs wanted for treason for abandoning the Prince is fine.
Necrosis 11-20-06, 05:04 PM	as has been said here make it personal, grant actions consquences, if they act like merceneries, well friends of their defeated enemies will have little compunction comign after them...
DM_Shonuff 11-20-06, 08:16 PM	I feel your pain. When moving to a new area, I found a groupwho were the Kill-em-loot-em Monty haul is-king type of group. Any storyline i put together went in one ear and out the other. It was annoying. I left them. I wasdn't thetype to Dm their type of game. They wouldn't meet me at my level and I wouldn't sinck o being the computer game in their pen and paper DIABLO game. If they are your friends and you have no choice but to stick with them, then you got only a few choices... 1. come down to their level a bit and SLOWLYfeed them more RP. this one may take some time but in the long run, you can sit back and go " member those hack-n-slash games...those SUCKED". 2. put the dice away for one session, and MAKE them roleplay, expain to hem NICELY that the decisions will come from the story and the roleplaying they add. XP and items based on ROLEPLAY involvement. ( don't give the house away during this "training" ession, just give them a taste. 3. Work on you. What I mean is work on the DM side of it.If your BBEG sucks..the goal sucks. If your plot and side story arcs suck...so will their inerest. So these guys care for nothing but gold and power. Have someone take that away. i.e.: You guys sleepin in tavern/inn. wake up. Stuffs gone. Golds gone. Door is cracked slightly. A dead boy is on your floor in a pool of blood. YOUR daggers are in his back. THose who didn't have daggers, under your pillow is a garrot/noose/ bloody rag. etc. Town is waking upand screams are heard outside. " Then leave them cluse to get back what they care for most. This is good to flow into #2 because it isn't hack and slash when you're scurrying naked in the shadows of an alley trying to get to a pair of pants and a cloak hanging on a line to dry. This one will make them RP. expecially when they have to talk to townsfolk to find out who did it..or get and explain clues they found to them. showing a bit og torn plain fabric...maybe the textile area of town might know who bought this last...etc. Hope these help.
kelvinaw273 11-20-06, 10:36 PM	This is a bad situation all right. A couple of ways around it I have tried: 1) Background - make the players write their character backgrounds. They can put in as much as they like about where they come from, what they do etc. but each background must contain certain features: what motivates the character, what angers them, what they hate, what they love, who their first romance was with, who their parents are, what they do etc. This is unfortunately open to abuse as this kind of player may well write themselves in as total mercenaries with no human emotion or drive, or else play it for laughs or play it for advantages. Then incorporate these in as plot hooks and events. 2) Make it Personal - know your players and what makes THEM tick, and involve these themes in adventures. 3) Experience Awards - these work great if the players know you will award experience for role-playing, and they want it, bribery can work wonders! Best Acted Scene = 250 xp (who put the most into really PLAYING their character?) Best Line = 200 xp (who made you all laugh/cry/OMFG?) Best in-character contribution = 150 xp (who slogged away doing just what they should, acted their alignment truly etc.?) Class and Style award = 100xp (who showed some real STYLE about what they did?) One-off Award = 50 xp (who did something else noteworthy, be it a timely crit or a serendipitous action?) It's best off if you get the players to nominate and vote at the end of each session for this, so it becomes an intrinsic part of each gaming evening.
jasonbrisbane 11-21-06, 12:27 AM	Nothing annoyed my players more (or got themto RP more) than having their favourite Weapon, Spellbooks, artifact-they-just-found stolen from under them by a theif, who sold it to a local warlord, who lost it in a game of poker to a vampire, etc... Eventually they will find it again but they wil have developed a hatred of anyone and anything who had their item And dealing with stolen goods is a crime ni most places, so they are in fact being Good aligned... although perhaps more on the chaotic side.... Worked for me...
Koverchenko 11-21-06, 10:56 PM	One thing I always do when I start up a new campaign is figure out some common thread to tie the party together--now, sometimes a group of players will be good at doing this themselves, but there is nothing wrong with the DM giving them some help, in my opinion (and it sounds like your characters might need some help, yes?). Give them a reason to be and work together beyond simple money making and cooperation. For example, in my last campaign--an undead campaign set in a small and isolated town surrounded by nasty undead creatures--I made it mandatory for my characters to have suffered the loss of someone special in their backstory (I regard writing up a backstory as absolutely required--a DM needs to know his or her characters at least as well as their players to do the campaign right, I think, and that can't happen unless the players communicate things about their characters). The person could be a wife or husband or parent or child or sibling or beloved friend or any number of these and others I haven't thought to mention, but there had to be the loss of someone very important to the character in the character's history. And that loss had to have been suffered at the hands of an undead creature. This became a source of brotherhood and unity, something they could bond over. It gave them a reason to be friends--people become friends because of common interests and meshing personalities and experiences, not because they are members of classes that are powerful together. It gave them a common enemy in a way that made sense. And it gave them a very powerful RP element to grab onto--coming to terms with their loss. I have decided to incorporate this strategy into my future campaigns, and I think it will help a great deal making things work.
DarkRhystar 11-21-06, 11:29 PM	And once the players are saying things like "let's go see the Bounty Post guy and see if he's got any more he's held back for us specially" and then they go and find the town has been razed and the Bounty Post guy is now in three different pieces around his office, they will probably want some revenge. More likely they'll just start looting corpses and go after the ones who did it to get the town's treasure's for themselves (indirect stealing for the win...). If the players do not wish to become immersed in a campaign, you cannot make them so. Just as you cannot force someone to like something, you cannot force them to "get into it." Players must make a conscious decision to get involved.
theblindman 11-22-06, 01:25 AM	It's not even that they're powergamer/munchkins, but they don't seem to *care* much about anything in the game. They go through it because it's there, and because it's a vehicle to more power. It sounds like the most important thing for them is combat. So design a story line that revolves around combat. Think gladiatorial arena, with recurring villains (it's not to the death) and some sort of betting system they can get in on. Create a series of tiered leagues, each with its own power level (Manticore League is levels 1 through 5, Griffon League levels 6 through 10, Grimoire League levels 11 through 15, and Dragon League levels 16 through 20) and a roster of teams. The PCs enter as a group, and before each battle have to ante up a magic item of a certain minimum value (the values get higher as you go up in the leagues). Get creative with game design - try some capture-the-flag, a little bit of hold-the-fort, try a sport or two (football but with longswords), sniping contests, spellcasting contests, and so on. Design NPCs that are fun to fight and fun to heckle. Think up some witty things your NPCs can shout at the players. That sort of thing. If you can chew the scenery well enough they'll love it. If you don't feel like a pure gladiatorial style, give them a quest that sets them against a series of increasingly-powerful opponents. Think up a series of artifacts, or a series of magic rings or whatever, that have been scattered around the land. The power-hungry PCs decide that they want to get their hands on them, and set out on a quest to defeat each and every one of the people who own the rings. At the same time, introduce two sets of rivals, one group like them, basically good but interested in power, and another truely vile, who want the rings so they can conquer the world or something lame like that. If combat is what they love then give them combat. Set the roleplaying either directly around the combat, or directly in the combat. Witty-banter in between attacks of opportunity can be fun. Good luck :)
Archangel62 11-22-06, 01:29 AM	Hrm...well, one way of doing it is making the bad crap happen to them. Maybe the dark overlord sends his men out to sack the town the PCs happen to be in for gold and supplies. They get roughed up, and want revenge, and the plot can progress nicely from there. Also, if they become heroes of the region others might start talking to them more, helping them, creating an incentive for RP. Just my :twocents: .