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Engaging Your Players
39 Plays1 year ago
In the eighth episode of Tabletop Tune Up, Mark and Ben tackle a crucial aspect of game mastering—engaging your players. Ensuring that players remain invested and enthusiastic about your game can be a challenging task, and knowing how to keep their attention can make all the difference in creating a memorable RPG experience. Join us as we explore the common pitfalls that can lead to disengagement and discover practical tips and techniques for reigniting interest and keeping the game at the forefront of your players’ minds. Whether you’re facing a lull in your current campaign or simply want to enhance your game’s appeal, tune in for strategies that will help you keep your players invested in every session.
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Transcript
Bomb Defusal and Personal Connections
00:00:00
Speaker
Benji, how are you doing with that bomb? Come on, come on, come on. I got it! It's a cylinder cypher. There's eight wheels. Looks like 14 letters on each wheel. 1.5 billion possible combinations. Give or take. Oh my god. What now? the The wheels, they spell out a message. You are done. No way. not yet we are No, no, listen. Not D-O-N-E. D-U-N-N. It's my last name. It knows who I am.
Music and RPG Events
00:00:52
Speaker
That is British punk music that you've delivered for us this week, Mark. Nothing but the good stuff. Just the good stuff here on Tabletop Tune Up. It is the beginning of July at the time we we're recording this. It is hot where I am. What's going on there? Yeah, it's getting um it's just hot and rainy, honestly, out where I am, out in Minnesota, neck of the woods. But yeah, lots of things have gone on in the last few weeks. Ben, when last we talked, you were talking about free RPG day and you were going to be running something. How'd that go?
00:01:23
Speaker
It went pretty well. I ran two intro slots. Essentially, one of them was an introduction to Dungeons and Dragons. And so it was for people that have never played. And if you've never GM'd something like that, Mark, I super recommend it. You're asking me if i've if I've never run a game of Dungeons and Dragons, I should do it? No, no, if you've ever run one for brand new players. And I know you have, and there are a lot of fun. Oh, yeah. So yeah, definitely. So the second slot was a GM's workshop. not so much a lecture, but it was more a chance for people to engage with each other and share common thinking and learn from each other. And so that was really kind of interesting. Some people were very new though. I did get a piece of feedback. Oh, I wanted more of a lecture format, which I've never heard people say before on this. So I referred them to our podcast. So I hope if you're out there, you're listening and you find all of this stuff super useful and interesting. Excellent.
00:02:11
Speaker
How about you what's ah what's doing your neck of the woods are were you playing new games are you taking advantage of summer software sales of the steam summer sales banner are gonna bankrupt me nickel and dime.
Understanding Player Engagement
00:02:24
Speaker
As far as my games a lot of them are in hiatus right at the moment or just taking a little bit of a break. Honestly feel a little bit of burnout one of our games so I am recharging my batteries and You know just kind of recharge for the next step of the game, which is a big step. I just want to be rested and ready I definitely think we should have an episode at some point on Jam burnout figuring out how to sustain over a period of time and then also known as you know when to take a break and got to kind of see this burnout happening and just kind of be proactive about it. So you don't lose yourself or your players. So in any case, I'll come back strong and ready. But speaking of strong and ready, we got a show to engage our listeners in. This week, friends, we're going to talk about player engagement, a crucial factor in any game that you want to last more than a session or two. This is about the players being interested in sitting down and playing that game with you and with each other.
00:03:20
Speaker
Mark, tell me a little bit about what you think player engagement amounts to. What are some of the key ideas there? If you want that kind of fulfilling game with the story that everybody's kind of leaning in toward, enjoying, you have to engage the players, all of them, ah both individually and as a group. So it's it's important. Honestly, if they're not engaged, they wouldn't be playing. So we want to keep them coming back. So let's ah let's talk about engaging them. Yeah, I do think there's a ah flip side to that too, right? Which is that players being engaged in the story, they don't technically have to be to show week to week, right? They could be like, hey, I'm just here for the pizza and the Mountain Dew and to hang out with my buddies and goof around for a couple hours. And that there's nothing wrong with that kind of game. I've played that game and it's a fun game.
00:04:07
Speaker
Player engagement, as we're thinking about it here, isn't just that people show up. It's that they're really invested in what's going on in this game. They're really into the story, and they want to see their characters go through that and have great moments. And the reason why that matters to you as a GM is because you're going to do a lot of prep for this game. And that's the value of that prep that you're seeing come back, right? if you do the work, you want to see the return on that investment of your time and your effort. Invested players are also going to add to your creativity. They're going to add to the overall game. They're going to make it a better game for you. It's going to make a better game for your your fellow players. Ben, what does an engaged player look like to you? I can tell when people are engaged in what I'm doing because they are interacting with me. They're interacting with each other. They're very much talking about what's going on in the story as opposed to other things.
00:04:58
Speaker
They're emotionally engaged. When big moments happen, they are connected to it. They are exalting. When bad moments happen, they feel it in the pit of their stomachs. The emotional registers are going.
Challenges of Player Distractions
00:05:08
Speaker
Social interactions are going. And then I think something else is that you're going to see they're not looking at other distractions. So so I think if you look around the room and you see people are on their phones, then I think they're starting to look disengaged. Importantly, though, you can't reverse engineer that. You can't just say to people, hey, put your phones away, and then they'll be engaged. It doesn't work that way. You've got to be really engaging, and you've got to be more interesting than what's happening with their text messages or their phones. And that's not to say, by the way, that people won't have some legitimate reasons to get into that. But for the most part, if that's how they're wasting time while they should be in your game, you probably need to figure out how to make your game more engaging.
00:05:43
Speaker
That is so true. I would like to actually touch on and something you kind of breezed by, if you don't mind. I want to go back to you were mentioning about emotional engagement with the game. And I do think it ah as a GM, you need to be able to spot and identify some of these emotional engagements. Sometimes they may look negative, actually, and they are actually a sign that they are engaged. I've seen players who are very upset about certain things at the table. And if they were upset, it means that means they cared. if If they didn't care, they wouldn't get all that upset. But they do. So just be able to spot that engagement. And maybe that's just a sign of maybe your engagement needs to tweak a little bit to turn that disappointment into some sort of enjoyment. So don't just get thrown off by negative engagement. It's still engagement. It means they like the game. There's something about it they want to preserve.
00:06:34
Speaker
That's a really interesting point. When they're negatively engaged, as you say, then they're still invested, but they're just not getting what they want. And you've got a window of time, I think, to re-engage them before they just go to gray. They just start like disengaged and they don't want it to even be there anymore. So to kind of spot that kind of stuff, we need to be able to read a room. Reading the room 101, Mark, what are what are we looking for? How do we read the room? Well, first of all, you got to be your head's got to be up. You got to be looking at them. You got to be seeing when they're looking at you, when they're looking at their phones, when they're looking at their are friends with a question mark look like, hey, what is going on in the story? And you know that look. Yeah. So you've got to be you got to be really focused on the social aspect of the game. And that means that you're going to be watching what they're doing. Are they into the books and their character sheets? Are they looking at their phones? Are they kind of falling asleep?
00:07:27
Speaker
But let's also put over our other senses. That's stuff we can kind of see, but we can also use our ears and we're going to be listening to ah how often are they speaking? Are they talking to the NPCs? Are they talking to the players? Are they interacting verbally with each other? Excellent. Okay, so this is how we're reading the room. We're listening, we're looking, um we're seeing if their focus is on the materials and the action of the game.
Virtual Gaming Obstacles
00:07:54
Speaker
Here's the thing though, Mark, there's a lot of people that are also doing games virtually these days with online platforms like Foundry or Roll20 or whatever platform they're using. How is any of this different or what new elements do we need to think about if we're talking about a virtual game?
00:08:09
Speaker
I don't think any of the things we've talked about above change whatsoever. I mean, you can still hear if people are engaged. You can hear when there's crosstalk. You could hear when there's off-topic discussion. So none of that changes. What does change is sometimes they're not gaming at a table that's kind of quiet. They could be playing in a common space in their house or could be kids behind them. They might have to mute their mic for a moment just so they're not distracting the table. They may have responsibilities with respect to their kids or dogs, or they may have to respond to that. Another thing that you're going to come across playing virtually is they might be multitasking with their computer. I mean, you've got a computer. Sometimes you've got maybe two or three monitors. um If you're so lucky, you might be playing a side game. That's not out of the bounds of what you might expect in an online game. It's possible. They can do a lot of stuff with their computer if you're not in the same room with them physically.
00:09:06
Speaker
I think that's just kind of an extension of that point about the phones. If they're doing that stuff, that means they're probably not as engaged with your story as they can be. Okay, so reading the virtual room is interesting. The multitasking possibility happens. We also need you to be patient with audio challenges. of Technology is the bane of some of these games. Some people have all sorts of technology issues that may cause them to maybe use their phone instead of the discord audio or something of that nature. So the audio is real bad. So these are all like little obstacles toward reading the room.
00:09:40
Speaker
I think that point about being patient with people in a virtual space is important. I think an implication of that is don't expect to do the same amount of stuff in a virtual game session that you might get done in a tabletop game session because they may be different. I don't really have any science on that, though, because it is the case that some of these online platforms save you time with respect to maps and miniatures and managing some of that material. So I don't know what the average turns out to be, but ah do be patient with people because it may take longer to transact certain kinds of game elements. One final thought here is consider video chat with your players instead of just audio if you think it would
Causes of Player Disengagement
00:10:13
Speaker
help. I don't think you always have to do that. Not everybody can do that, but it's worth trying if you feel like people are disengaged. Certainly having eye contact, being able to you know use body language a little bit, that can go a long way. um Even right now as we're recording this podcast, Mark and I, even though we don't publish the video, we actually have a video feed connecting us so we can
00:10:34
Speaker
raise our hands or make little hand motions or things that help us stay aligned and coordinated and organized. So let's talk real quick about reasons why people might be engaged. Let's assume that they all come in with some goodwill. Of course. When I was teaching classes, the first day of any class was really important because no student walks into a class and goes, I hope this is really an awful experience, right? Everybody walks in with a little bit of goodwill. And then the question is, how are you going to capitalize on that and have a great class? Or conversely, how are you gonna blow it? And then everybody starts getting disengaged in that situation. And it's similar here, right? So what are the reasons why people could get disengaged, Mark?
00:11:12
Speaker
One of the ones I see probably the most, particularly in larger groups, or maybe a complicated game system that takes a long time for turns, it kind of comes down to table management. It could be too many players. You're just not getting enough face time. It takes too long in between turns. So that's a hard thing to overcome. You can get bored waiting for your turn that might last a few seconds maybe. In our episode on house rules, you might remember I was talking about a champions game I ran. In this champions game, I learned to house rule everybody's speed scores to about the same value because I did run a game with rules as written. I had a character who wasn't super fast. And in a four hour game session, the player told me, I got to basically act three times. Everybody else was faster than he was. And so the amount of time it took to transact turns and all of the other things with a slower character meant that he just didn't get enough game time to play.
00:12:08
Speaker
When he said that, I just felt awful and I realized, you know what, this was something that I need to now find a way to re-engineer. So I think if you are experienced with that system and you're still having that problem with people not having enough play time, start thinking about house rules ah or maybe think about a different system. Yeah, also be read up on your character. Know what
Balancing Gameplay Styles
00:12:27
Speaker
it's going to be doing if you're a player so that you can act quicker. Ask your players for help in speeding up their turns. You want to get through those turns quick enough that disengagement doesn't happen. You want them to also be engaged with each other's turns so that they're watching what's going on and they're able to play off each other really well. So table management, time, that would be one of the first ones. What about you Ben?
00:12:51
Speaker
I think the next thing I would look for, for reasons why people might get disengaged, sometimes it's got nothing to do with us. Sometimes it's got nothing to do with the game. Sometimes it's just they've got other life stuff going on. They may have had a long shift that week. Sometimes I found that if you schedule games later in the week when people are, you know, they've got a little bit less energy than they do on Monday morning, that can actually play into what kind of game chemistry you get out of your group. So it could be life stuff. It could be people have, a family member that just passed away, or they're sick, or any number of things it could be. So that's one of those things where you want to be especially patient. And what's the story here? Can we can we help this player get re-engaged in the game with the outside elements? So Mark, what other reasons do we have then that people get disengaged?
00:13:36
Speaker
ah One of them could be like maybe there's just too much emphasis on one type of gameplay. People have different styles of games they enjoy playing. Some people really enjoy a combat heavy game. Other people like a really rich storytelling experience. and They like to be able to interact with all the NPCs and kind of just squeeze everything they can out of any RPG experience. It could be that maybe your game is leaning too heavy on one aspect, which is making them feel alienated. And so what do you do if that's going on? You know, that's an interesting one because what if the rest of the group really likes combat and some people like RPG? Well, you really got to find a nice balance. You're going to have to be able to mix this up and in a way that can kind of satisfy everybody as much as possible. You're not going to make everybody 100% happy, but you can sure try your best.
00:14:25
Speaker
I think that's right. I mean, this is one of those moments that highlights the real value of group chemistry and the goodwill that people in the group have. And frankly, everybody kind of showing up for all the same reasons to play. This is something that I think in your session zero, it's really good to talk about. I remember specific players I can think of that said, look, if there's not at least one combat every session, whatever else happens, like this is dumb. I've had another group that actually bragged hey we went through an entire game session or two and there was never a combat because we were so deep into the role-playing. And so putting both of those kinds of players in the same group can be really challenging and I think the best thing to do is to try to make sure everybody's there for the same kind of game.
00:15:03
Speaker
Now there's one other reason why people might might be disengaged, Ben. I don't really like to talk about this because I've never experienced this one ever in all my years of playing. It really is a foreign concept to you, I think, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, maybe my story is just lacking. Yeah. No, that's not possible. that's that's No, it's true. You can absolutely goof up your story. You can goof up the hooks that bring your characters into the story. Mark, we had a good friend, good player, fun guy, great to play with. I was a baby GM trying to get something off the ground. God bless him. He stuck it out. But he finally at one point just represents and goes, yeah, I'm out. I can't do this. So you know i think I think there's some things you can do here to get the story elements that you need. The first thing I would do is start reading up on story design, screenwriting, or other kind of structured storytelling things. And that's going to teach you a lot. Now, obviously, role-playing games are not a writing medium. We've talked about how you don't necessarily have control over the players and all that stuff.
00:16:02
Speaker
but you are going to learn things about how to hook a character in, how to use their backstory and things like that. I was curious about that game, Ben. like Did you not see it coming? Well, look, I don't have any... I don't have a i i think I was 17. I don't think I had any idea of how to engage people in ah in that kind of game. I didn't have a good solid hook. The story that I was thinking about putting in front of this player was one that had
00:16:33
Speaker
no relation to his character's background. And so I think I was essentially railroading them into a location across the world. I wish you guys could see Mark on video right now. He is laughing his ass off. And he's right too. It was a really bad experience. It lasted like 30 minutes, I think, right? We're not even talking about like an actual campaign game. It was just one of those things where it was really evident from the beginning. The the worst thing is he didn't take us with him.
00:17:01
Speaker
No, honestly, we've all been there and I i laugh at you, man, but i I have certainly, this has been my story of mini games. So yeah don't feel bad. yeah Look, there's a learning curve. Speaking of skilling up on the writing literature, there's something you'll find in that writing literature where they say, listen, you're going to have a whole bunch of bad stories that you're going to have to write. And there's not a question about whether or not they're in there and they've got to come out. You're just going to have to write them until you get all the bad stories out and then you're going to start writing good stuff. There is not a skill you learn in which you don't learn to fail first. That's right.
00:17:33
Speaker
So get used to failing for a little bit, enjoy it, and let's hope your players enjoy it too. Sometimes they can really laugh at it. It can be really fun. Have a glorious failure every once in a while. Yeah, I think it's really great. I think we're actually planning to do a podcast on what to do in your game as a train wreck and how to get back on track. So dear listeners, that's a little bit of my backstory on things that I've gotten
Improving Storytelling Skills
00:17:58
Speaker
wrong. And we're laughing about it now. At the time, it was a deep learning experience. And that was the kind of thing that motivated me to get back into learning about story structure, what hooks characters, why they're going to get in and engage in the plots and the stories that you want to bring them on. Other things that are relevant here, right? I'll just go through this quickly. First of all, get inspired by movies and books that are part of that genre. If you're playing a sci-fi game,
00:18:23
Speaker
ah watch a Star Wars or a Star Trek movie or The Expanse or whatever it is that turns your crank. um If it's going to be a fantasy, have some Lord of the Rings marathons or something. like Whatever it is that gets you going and inspired and it gets your head into that space, go ahead and do that. Mark, what do you do to inspire yourself? I remember when I would read these Jim Butcher Dresden books, the one thing I always took away from those books is how great his hooks were at the end of each chapter. And I was like, I want to incorporate good hooks in my games. So you can get them from books, you can get them from movies, all sorts of fun stuff. I would also say watch some live play podcasts and videos. There's a lot of critical role fans out there for a good reason. The final thing I would say is you can always remember email us at tabletop, tune up.
00:19:09
Speaker
and We'd be happy to tune up your ideas and your thinking, and you can email us at tabletoptuneup at gmail dot.com. yeah That was a smooth segue. Was that good? I feel like I'm growing in this whole podcasting medium here. so Ben, real quick, we've we've got we've got disengaged players. We notice them, we've seen them, we spotted them. We have a feeling of why they're disengaged. We've already figured out why they're disengaged. How are we going to get them back? we've got a list of all the different ways to engage them. The first thing, obviously falling on that last point that we were just making, is engage them with story. One thing you can do is start using their backstories as part of the way that you can bring them into the game. Have the character's relative show up as an NPC in the next town, or find some story layer, some part of their backstory that you can bring into the main campaign story, and all of a sudden they're going to start to get engaged.
00:20:00
Speaker
I love this one, Ben. This is great. This is something I've seen you do. Sometimes when you drop a little bit of that backstory, it absolutely lights up people's faces because they realize, oh my gosh, this is this is for me. like There's a moment there of realization that this is all coming back to what's on their paper. It's not all good news, though, Mark. Sometimes having the villain single them out is also a lot of fun for me as a GM, especially when it's you as a player. ah you You can have the the you can you can have the villains or other people pick out the players as targets, as people that they've got special beef with. So there's all kinds of things to do, both good and bad. All right, Mark, give me another way that we can engage our players here.
00:20:45
Speaker
Maybe it's the desired type of gameplay they enjoy. So if you know that player who's maybe a little bored, maybe that player likes combat, sprinkle in a little combat when you can. Get that player back, rolling dice, and feeling engaged.
Incorporating Player Backstories
00:21:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a nice point here, too, which is that the way you're talking about it, Mark, is as an individual player. And when you're looking out at a disengaged room, It's an interesting question. Is it everybody that's disengaged? Is it one person that's disengaged? And some of these strategies will work for both. I think what's interesting is when you look at a room and you're like, hey, everybody's really engaged in this combat, but I've got that one player at the end of the table who's kind of just not into it, and having a moment in combat that then calls that player out or gives them a little role-playing opportunity when maybe that's the kind of gameplay they want, that's a way to break up that pattern a little bit and bring them in.
00:21:39
Speaker
There are opportunities sometimes in a game, if you're really keeping your eyes open and and your ears listening, that you might be able to serve multiple players at the table with styles of game they like. I'll give you an example, Ben. There was a game I was running where I believe you had a ah martial art monk that wanted to go one direction and have a ah classic hallway fight scene. Oh my gosh, it was insane. And we had Jeff, our friend Jeff, who, who was playing a kind of a peace loving priest. So we had one player go down one end of the hallway, another player go down, to have his own fight scene on the other end of the hallway. One person was just punching faces. The other was turning hearts. Yeah. I i remember thinking about that game when we played that ah number one, that I think you handled that really beautifully in terms of.
00:22:29
Speaker
managing the time managing the fact that one person is in combat and the others not and Moving back and forth between those and I remember specifically thinking if this was a movie this would be hilarious because you'd be intercutting back and forth between these scenes of some guy in a Furious fistfight versus the other guy going, you know, we can all get along we can all be thinking about you know this patron deity of mine and So I think that's a really great balance. And yeah, just because you're in combat doesn't mean you can't incorporate some of these other game elements. So give me another one, Ben. what's What's another way to kind of get your players engaged? So one of your best assets is actually the other players as well. And there's a couple different ways you can think about this. One is think about all the character interdependencies that there might be. Let's say your disengaged player is a rogue or somebody with a special skill set.
00:23:21
Speaker
ah Tracker you could think of any number of things in a sci-fi game. Maybe it's the one guy who's like the hacker character, right? Whatever this unique skill set may be Make sure that everybody else gets into a situation where they need that guy They need that skill set in order to move forward or to get the advantage they need for what's coming up next and that's gonna put a spotlight on this character who may be disengaged and it's just as good as if you were adding elements of their backstory to That's one of the brilliant things about the they design of even the early RPGs. you know Gary Gagax was thinking about those interdependencies and how they might bring people together. Let's use that to our advantage.
00:24:01
Speaker
Indeed. We've talked a little bit about Trail Talk as a ritual in our second episode as well. And Trail Talk is another way that you can have players engage with each other. It's not all about meeting challenges in combat. That's great. But also, you remember when we talked about the Trail Talk ritual, this idea that when you're traveling from point A to point B, whether that's a country road in a Dungeons and Dragons setting or ah airtime when you're flying across the globe in a modern espionage game. you've got an opportunity for the players to talk to each other and you would nominate with a dice roll somebody to then go and talk to one of the other characters. And so that's a great way to have the players engage each other in ways that will bring out the character's backstory, ways that will ask the players to contribute uniquely instead of just sort of sitting back and waiting for the game to move on as other players do things.
00:24:50
Speaker
And since we're kind of talking about a callback to our rituals episode, let's talk about those recaps and how those also bring people together. And also those cliffhangers also kind of engage the players. ah Mark, you have a strategy here, which I think is underhanded. I think it is a scurrilous. I think you need to answer to our listeners why you engage your players with bribes. but Come on, that's just really not, that's kind of a cruel way to put that ah out there. Who doesn't like a good bribe? This is why I publicly post my address on the internet, just in case. Yeah, magic items, special equipment, you know, these are kind of fun things to sprinkle into games. There's never a time when I've thrown in a magic item that everybody wasn't engaged. Everybody's like, what? Is there something there for me in that pot of gold or that treasure trove?
00:25:43
Speaker
Now, Mark, I can already hear, though, people being concerned about, well, wait a minute, isn't this going to blow the balance in my game? All of a sudden, a huge magical artifact comes out, or a vast trove of wealth is now here. What do you do about that kind of concern? How do you make sure you don't lose control over the balance of your game? I mean, you should be able to manage item distribution in a manner that doesn't disrupt your game. That's just something you're going to have to learn over the course of games. And maybe that's something we could address in a future episode. But really, maybe it doesn't need to be something permanent. Maybe it can be something that just gives them a nice quick fix of, you know, they get a jump on that speeder bike and get to do some, you know, exciting chase down scene where they're riding in a vehicle that they couldn't afford. I will say I've got an example of this too, which was
00:26:32
Speaker
that we were playing a Star Wars game, and without getting into the details of how this happened, we got a Star Destroyer. Mark, we got one of those prequel era Venator class Star Destroyers, and we were amazed. And we were thinking, like, the sky's the limit. And of course, wouldn't you know it, speaking of temporary gains, within a session or two, the GM had found a way to separate that from us and have it stolen by a mercenary group, and then we didn't have our Star Destroyer anymore. yeah But I'll tell you what, the moment where we first had that, we were all super engaged. so Somebody left the starter store unlocked. Where's the keys? Oh, no. Also, let's think about engaging players privately between sessions for maybe some situations that might be outside the scope of the game, things that are in life. This is where you're just being a friend.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. We talked earlier about ways that players might be dealing with life issues or other things that may be challenging. And honestly, even if it's not life issues, if it's stuff that's going on at the table that other players may have a stake in, there are going to be players that work with you that may not be willing to discuss that in a broad forum. And maybe you need to talk to them individually first. And after you've talked with them, maybe you can go together to the rest of the group and bring that issue up. So Mark, speaking of people that may be a little bit shy, let's imagine you've got shy or quiet people in your group, and it's not that they don't want to engage, interestingly. ah Maybe they do, but they just don't feel confident or they don't know how. How do you help those people out? Well, I've actually got some experience with chronically shy people at the table in some of the games I've run.
Engaging Shy Players
00:28:07
Speaker
One of the things they love about role-playing games is the fact that the game, in some kind of way, forces them to engage with people.
00:28:14
Speaker
but people do need to initiate that. One of the things I'd like to do with Shy People is bring in the other players into helping me get that person interacting. Could be inviting them to do the thing that their character does, ah just making them feel a little bit more part of the group. When the question is asked, they direct it to that player who's generally pretty shy and say, you know, Grog nor the Barbarian, what it what say you? keep in mind that you're going to have a mix of players in your groups. Some of them are really going to be the kind that have big personalities and they will fight their way into the center of that conversation. They will be the first people to speak up and other people won't. And so you as a GM may need to actually create that space for the people who otherwise wouldn't get into that conversation very quickly. I did have one game and I was playing with a character guy who
00:29:05
Speaker
Big personality. Loved playing with him. But he would monologue. And he would monologue multiple times on his turn. And it would slow the game down. And other people would feel like they couldn't really contribute. And so I'd have to actually say like... Okay, look, one monologue per turn. I said that to him actually during one of his turns as he was standing up to issue a great monologue and he he stopped and he went, you're right, thank you. And people can be gracious that way. I think people get the idea that there needs to be turns for this. And it's not just a matter of who's got the most bravado and personality and can occupy that space. Okay, so Mark, now we're talking about engagement and all these different ways we engage people.
00:29:43
Speaker
There's another interesting turn on this, too, though, when we're talking about the different kinds of engagement people have. Some of these are genre specific. Some of these are about the kind of game you're playing, too. So tell us a little bit about making sure that we're engaging people in the right way for the game we're playing. Yeah, think about your group. There might be a case to be made for some groups that maybe they shouldn't be playing a horror game or maybe a dark fantasy. Maybe it's just not in the group's collective personality. I'll give you an example. Ben, I ran a game for years where we were
00:30:17
Speaker
playing with my ah good friend of Weekend Warriors. And we were trying so hard to just play these really gritty Pathfinder games. We just couldn't do it. you know we We played once a month, maybe once every two months, and it was just nothing but fart jokes, having beers, and making jokes the entire time. And it became like wrangling cats to get this game to work. Well, so Mark, in that case, what was the solution there? We just changed the game up completely. we made We turned it into kind of like a ridiculous comedy. And we all played this ridiculous all-barred party. And we didn't proceed with the idea that we were going to be ever playing a dark, gritty fantasy game. This was the reality of this group of people. And we we had so much more fun because of it. I was going to say, so the following effect there was that once people's play style was aligned to the kind of game you were playing, the result was people were more engaged, you're saying.
Matching Game Styles to Player Preferences
00:31:14
Speaker
Yeah, and you're going to find that sometimes. You're going to find people who really like dark horror or you know they like more intrigue or different styles. And you're going to want to cater your game a little bit to engage them. Ben, I got something for you, though. How would the frequency of playing change some of that? That's a really great question, Mark. One of the interesting things is you're going to find different levels of engagement, whether you're playing at weekly games, at every two weeks games, let's say every other week or twice a month. or if you're playing games that are monthly, all of those games are gonna be different. Give you some examples. If you're playing a weekly game, people are gonna do a pretty good job probably of remembering week to week what's been going on. Yeah, it's kind of fresh in your mind, of course. Let me go to the far other end of the spectrum. Mark, you and I would have ah a game that we would go away to like a cabin and we would do over a weekend. And we'd do that like maybe once a year. Yeah. Those were all one shot games. They were high prep. We started, finished them during a weekend.
00:32:12
Speaker
and It was a great time, some of my favorite games really, but we didn't necessarily expect that the next year when we came back, everybody's going to be sharp on what happened last time. They were all just self-enclosed episodes. They were like movies. and You can almost do that for monthly games or bimonthly games because I don't remember. i I have a hard time when I skip a couple of weeks of gaming remembering any anything. so I think the takeaway here is that if you've got really long intervals between your game sessions, then you're probably gonna wanna make those adventures, those stories that go on in those game sessions very self-enclosed. If you're meeting more frequently, it's gonna be easier for you to tell serialized stories. You know, it's like movies and TV. It's that kind of model, I think. On that point, Ben, as a GM, the game and the story are all kind of in your head. They're fresh to you. They're not fresh to the players. If it's been a month, because it's in your head doesn't mean it's in theirs. Chances are it's not.
00:33:07
Speaker
Yeah, you're going to have to do a lot of work to make sure that players are brought back up to speed. You're going to have to have a good recap. I think for those games especially, it'll really help you to make sure that there's not a heavy continuity burden going from game to game.
Handling Inconsistent Attendance
00:33:20
Speaker
Mark, I think it's time for our tune-up segment for this week. So what do we have here? I have a letter from one of our listeners or an email that states, Hey, tabletop tune up. I have a player that we all really like and he's not able to make sessions as often as the rest of us do the things out of his control. He wants to play and we want him to be able to join as he can. How can we create a game and allow him to freely come and go? That's a really good question, Mark. Obviously we have players who have all kinds of scheduling challenges and
00:33:53
Speaker
You know, if everybody likes this guy and they want to keep him around, there's a couple of different things you can do. ah The first thing I would say is this is something that's got literary precedent. You read The Hobbit, Gandalf is coming and going all the time. He's got to run off to Dol Goldr, and you never know when he's going to show up again. and so So that's something you could model in your game by giving this player something else to do off screen. And maybe that's so urgent that occasionally he's got to drop out even when it looks like your party's about to run into combat or some other high stakes issues going on. You're also going to have to make sure that he's got a means of transport. you know He's got a teleportation ring or something that lets him just zoom out of there as needed whenever that comes up.
00:34:33
Speaker
So that's what I would do if you want to give the that player the freedom to come and go. One thing that's neat about that too is you can also then weave that character's side story back into your main story at some point. I could certainly see a situation for that come and go kind of character. to Maybe he's the cook of the party or the guy who you know watches the carts as the players go adventure. So he might be staying back guarding the caravan. I could i could see a situation like that. I have always worried about what happened to those horses and creatures and things that got left behind when we were in the wilderness. We find the door to the dungeon and we all go in there, but the horses don't. What happens to them? like We just go to the next town and buy more horses. I want to know what happened to the last ones. That's so horrible.
00:35:16
Speaker
Well, this this character could be that person. That's and one idea. you know One thing I could even think of in, like say, like a science fiction game, you could get a little bit out there with ideas. You could even do this with your fantasy games. What if you had a little device, a box, as you will, that creates a solid light hologram of this person? Its power is limited before it needs to recharge. So your time with this solid light hologram of this person could only be a session or two. There's a lot of variations on this. What's interesting about it is that in that case, unlike the Gandalf example, the character does not have control over when they come and go. And so when they reappear in the game, that may be as much a mystery to them as the past events of the sessions where this player missed would be to that player. So I think there's a really helpful option there.
00:36:06
Speaker
And that's also kind of up to the players when he of course can make a session and he shows up. They're all excited to hit that button that activates this solid light hologram or opening this bag of holding to which this character tumbles out of every session. Well friends, I think that's it for our tune up segment this week. If you have something you would like to have tune up, I'd like you to just send us an email or you even make a comment in one of our YouTube videos. That would suffice. Tabletop tune up at gmail dot.com and we'll do our best to tune up your idea. That's right. Anything that you do as a GM, whether it's world building or table management or anything else, we're happy to talk with you about on this podcast. We have a great interview coming up. I'm excited. I'm not going to tell you too much about it. You'll just have to wait and tune in next week.
00:36:54
Speaker
on Tabletop Tune Up. And until then, keep those dice rolling.
00:37:28
Speaker
Tuna! Tuna!