I'm a fairly new DM, and I have a campaign, (Obviously), But each time I try to play most of my players end up not playing the actual campaign, and instead they choose to talk and mess around. I don't know what to do. Does anyone have any advice? I have been trying to let them choose their own story and everything but that doesn't mean anything if they don't do anything in the first place.
It’s really difficult to say. It could be they just don’t want to play D&D. It could be that after 1.5 years of lockdown, they’re so excited to be around people that they are more focused on that. It could be that they have a different play style than you, and prefer to chat with friends for a while, then play a little bit, instead of the other way around. For other less charitable options, it could be they don’t find the story engaging. When you say you let them choose their own story, that might also be the problem. It could be they don’t know what they are supposed to do next, so they just mill around, waiting for a someone with a “!” over their head to show up.
The last one is actually the easiest to fix. Do a bit of railroading to at least get things started. Push them into a mystery or two, and let them take it from there. Show them what the story could be.
I agree with Xalthu. I would go even farther with the "railroad" (a term and concept I generally despise) since it seems like your group needs a bit of a tug in the right direction. I would say that a healthy railroad as a narrative hook is certainly acceptable.
Start next session in medias res, (Latin for “in the midst of things”). Begin the session by narrating that the party has been taken (from wherever they last left off) and are now all imprisoned in black iron cages in a hags lair. Or suspended from hanging cages outside the a fire giant's castle. Or locked in the cellar of a vampire's crypt. You get the idea. The caveat is that you need to ensure you properly present that failure to escape from their current captivity results in death - like being cooked alive in the hag's cauldron, plummeting from the fire giant castle ramparts, or being turned into vampire spawn. Even more so, its not a simple pass-fail. Some players may succeed while others fail to escape and die. This raises the stakes.
With such high stakes, your players are sure to be seated around the table slack-jawed and with a renewed interest as they realize that they have found themselves in a deadly encounter and not all of them might make it out.
If the players still continue to blow off the game and chat about other things, then you should seriously consider that they have no real interest in D&D. Good luck!
+1 to Media Res as a technique to compel the party to focus on the game and not dithering.
Of course it depends on what they're dithering about. If they're dithering about what they should do, but are on the topic of what they should do, they're actually playing the game, so sit back and let them play and be ready for them when they resolve. I'm loosely paraphrasing a Matt Colville video that came out I think yesterday.
But yeah, the players may well go idle if they're not given a situation to respond to. If the party is making something happen for you, make something happen to them. Just be mindful that if they're actually talking about the game, that's actually playing the game. If they're off in some sort of side chat that's not about the game, then it is in fact stalled and it's on you to make the game go and jumpstart it.
If they are talking about what to do, then as said above they are playing the game. That doesn't mean you can't make something happen (someone runs into the village shouting "Bandits!" before going down with an arrow to the back for example), as their dithering will not stop the world from progressing around them.
If they are talking about non-game stuff, then you need t ograb their attention - pick out the player hwo's in the middle of the conversation, and talk directly to them about what their character sees happen right now, and ask them what their character is doing. If they return to the game, then great, the game continues. If they pass it off and go back to the conversation, I'd simply pack my stuff up, scrap the idea of dnd for the night and let them get all their chatter out of the way this session. If they ask why, I'll say that as nobody is playing dnd, there's no point in having the dnd stuff out. We can pick this up next week if you want to play then. Alternatively you can offer them one chance and outright say "are we playing dnd tonight or what?"
If the issue seems to be a lack of direction, then chances are they are waiting for you to give it to them. "Railroading" is not the right term here - it means that whatever the players try to do, the plot progresses in a straight line. Your issue is that they aren't even moving - so show them which way the rails are heading, and let them decide if they want to follow them. Think of it as Guiding rather than Railroading.
Last point first, analysis paralisys is a real and ever present obstacle in a game like D&D. Anywhere that abstract thought and abstract spacial reasoning is the norm the opportunity for someone to get lost in the shuffle, or to not understand what's going on increase. Some people are just not as great as others when it comes to being told a description of a location and allowing their mind to put the words into visual representation in their mind. If your players seem to do fine for a time, and then when some complicated description pops up and they're off chasing butterflies this might be what's happening.
Take breaks. Get the chatter out, let the players decompress for a moment, especially if the mood has been tense for a solid while. Bio breaks need to happen. When the break is over, hopefully you've planned your break at a place where you come back in to a "hot start". Come back to the table and call for initiative to kick off the combat that was just started before the break. Keeping people engaged means you have to manage beats. Not everything can be an up beat - winning combat or scaling a cliff. Some things have to be down beats - sitting at the inn or pub in relative comfort and safety. Travel isn't always dangerous 100% of the time that you are out. There needs to be and ebb and flow to your story to keep people drawn to it. Your players engaging with each other is not a bad thing, it just needs someone to manage it and to manage the time at the table.
Talk to the group out of game. If they aren't interested in playing D&D - fine. Maybe they don't like the story - also fine. It could be that they don't enjoy or understand their character - fine as well. Whatever the reason that your players have to not play D&D is perfectly acceptable, so long as you accept it without taking offense. If they do want to play, but have an issue, no matter how large or small, work with them to solve the issue. If they all, and yes I mean *all*, say that there is nothing wrong with the game system, world, PCs, whatever - if their issue is that they just get distracted, try to help them there too, but remind them that the game requires that everyone be involved with the game when the session is active for the game to work. For everyone to have fun. And right now, you're not having fun.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I'm a fairly new DM, and I have a campaign, (Obviously), But each time I try to play most of my players end up not playing the actual campaign, and instead they choose to talk and mess around. I don't know what to do. Does anyone have any advice? I have been trying to let them choose their own story and everything but that doesn't mean anything if they don't do anything in the first place.
Maybe keep the campaign timeline going. Maybe already have done so. Restart the campaign on the following day after some tragedy/misfortune has happened.
You have a campaign and presumably, there are needs. What happens if those needs aren't met? Yet, how comparatively sweet might it be when they are!
Give the group clear adventure hooks but don't spare them from the implications if they don't bite.
Players are typically more invested in things they choose to follow. In my game, I seeded a lot of different plot hooks throughout the local area surrounding the start town, made so that any direction they went they'd run into a different thing that could unfold into something bigger, and I let them discuss and pick. Players especially love to feel like they've discovered something. In my other game I'm in as a player, I ended up apprehending a thief that had a mysterious address on a slip of paper in his pocket. I followed the address and found more suspicious stuff that led to a warehouse, and I investigated the warehouse and uncovered a large weapons smuggling ring that was working for a group planning an attack on the city. I thought it was a great adventure especially because I got to discover it, my character got to be the driving force pursuing it, AND the dm used my character's backstory as a vigilante to draw me in. Just an example of how you can pull players in by baiting hooks for them.
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I'm a fairly new DM, and I have a campaign, (Obviously), But each time I try to play most of my players end up not playing the actual campaign, and instead they choose to talk and mess around. I don't know what to do. Does anyone have any advice? I have been trying to let them choose their own story and everything but that doesn't mean anything if they don't do anything in the first place.
It’s really difficult to say. It could be they just don’t want to play D&D. It could be that after 1.5 years of lockdown, they’re so excited to be around people that they are more focused on that. It could be that they have a different play style than you, and prefer to chat with friends for a while, then play a little bit, instead of the other way around.
For other less charitable options, it could be they don’t find the story engaging. When you say you let them choose their own story, that might also be the problem. It could be they don’t know what they are supposed to do next, so they just mill around, waiting for a someone with a “!” over their head to show up.
The last one is actually the easiest to fix. Do a bit of railroading to at least get things started. Push them into a mystery or two, and let them take it from there. Show them what the story could be.
I agree with Xalthu. I would go even farther with the "railroad" (a term and concept I generally despise) since it seems like your group needs a bit of a tug in the right direction. I would say that a healthy railroad as a narrative hook is certainly acceptable.
Start next session in medias res, (Latin for “in the midst of things”). Begin the session by narrating that the party has been taken (from wherever they last left off) and are now all imprisoned in black iron cages in a hags lair. Or suspended from hanging cages outside the a fire giant's castle. Or locked in the cellar of a vampire's crypt. You get the idea. The caveat is that you need to ensure you properly present that failure to escape from their current captivity results in death - like being cooked alive in the hag's cauldron, plummeting from the fire giant castle ramparts, or being turned into vampire spawn. Even more so, its not a simple pass-fail. Some players may succeed while others fail to escape and die. This raises the stakes.
With such high stakes, your players are sure to be seated around the table slack-jawed and with a renewed interest as they realize that they have found themselves in a deadly encounter and not all of them might make it out.
If the players still continue to blow off the game and chat about other things, then you should seriously consider that they have no real interest in D&D. Good luck!
+1 to Media Res as a technique to compel the party to focus on the game and not dithering.
Of course it depends on what they're dithering about. If they're dithering about what they should do, but are on the topic of what they should do, they're actually playing the game, so sit back and let them play and be ready for them when they resolve. I'm loosely paraphrasing a Matt Colville video that came out I think yesterday.
But yeah, the players may well go idle if they're not given a situation to respond to. If the party is making something happen for you, make something happen to them. Just be mindful that if they're actually talking about the game, that's actually playing the game. If they're off in some sort of side chat that's not about the game, then it is in fact stalled and it's on you to make the game go and jumpstart it.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
If they are talking about what to do, then as said above they are playing the game. That doesn't mean you can't make something happen (someone runs into the village shouting "Bandits!" before going down with an arrow to the back for example), as their dithering will not stop the world from progressing around them.
If they are talking about non-game stuff, then you need t ograb their attention - pick out the player hwo's in the middle of the conversation, and talk directly to them about what their character sees happen right now, and ask them what their character is doing. If they return to the game, then great, the game continues. If they pass it off and go back to the conversation, I'd simply pack my stuff up, scrap the idea of dnd for the night and let them get all their chatter out of the way this session. If they ask why, I'll say that as nobody is playing dnd, there's no point in having the dnd stuff out. We can pick this up next week if you want to play then. Alternatively you can offer them one chance and outright say "are we playing dnd tonight or what?"
If the issue seems to be a lack of direction, then chances are they are waiting for you to give it to them. "Railroading" is not the right term here - it means that whatever the players try to do, the plot progresses in a straight line. Your issue is that they aren't even moving - so show them which way the rails are heading, and let them decide if they want to follow them. Think of it as Guiding rather than Railroading.
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Last point first, analysis paralisys is a real and ever present obstacle in a game like D&D. Anywhere that abstract thought and abstract spacial reasoning is the norm the opportunity for someone to get lost in the shuffle, or to not understand what's going on increase. Some people are just not as great as others when it comes to being told a description of a location and allowing their mind to put the words into visual representation in their mind. If your players seem to do fine for a time, and then when some complicated description pops up and they're off chasing butterflies this might be what's happening.
Take breaks. Get the chatter out, let the players decompress for a moment, especially if the mood has been tense for a solid while. Bio breaks need to happen. When the break is over, hopefully you've planned your break at a place where you come back in to a "hot start". Come back to the table and call for initiative to kick off the combat that was just started before the break. Keeping people engaged means you have to manage beats. Not everything can be an up beat - winning combat or scaling a cliff. Some things have to be down beats - sitting at the inn or pub in relative comfort and safety. Travel isn't always dangerous 100% of the time that you are out. There needs to be and ebb and flow to your story to keep people drawn to it. Your players engaging with each other is not a bad thing, it just needs someone to manage it and to manage the time at the table.
Talk to the group out of game. If they aren't interested in playing D&D - fine. Maybe they don't like the story - also fine. It could be that they don't enjoy or understand their character - fine as well. Whatever the reason that your players have to not play D&D is perfectly acceptable, so long as you accept it without taking offense. If they do want to play, but have an issue, no matter how large or small, work with them to solve the issue. If they all, and yes I mean *all*, say that there is nothing wrong with the game system, world, PCs, whatever - if their issue is that they just get distracted, try to help them there too, but remind them that the game requires that everyone be involved with the game when the session is active for the game to work. For everyone to have fun. And right now, you're not having fun.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Maybe keep the campaign timeline going. Maybe already have done so. Restart the campaign on the following day after some tragedy/misfortune has happened.
You have a campaign and presumably, there are needs. What happens if those needs aren't met? Yet, how comparatively sweet might it be when they are!
Give the group clear adventure hooks but don't spare them from the implications if they don't bite.
Players are typically more invested in things they choose to follow. In my game, I seeded a lot of different plot hooks throughout the local area surrounding the start town, made so that any direction they went they'd run into a different thing that could unfold into something bigger, and I let them discuss and pick. Players especially love to feel like they've discovered something. In my other game I'm in as a player, I ended up apprehending a thief that had a mysterious address on a slip of paper in his pocket. I followed the address and found more suspicious stuff that led to a warehouse, and I investigated the warehouse and uncovered a large weapons smuggling ring that was working for a group planning an attack on the city. I thought it was a great adventure especially because I got to discover it, my character got to be the driving force pursuing it, AND the dm used my character's backstory as a vigilante to draw me in. Just an example of how you can pull players in by baiting hooks for them.