help with group apathy

[Loki]

Hey all, I hope this is the correct forum for this post. I'm having a problem with apathy in my game group, and I'm really not sure how to deal with it.

We all played 3e D&D for about two years, with the last campaign coming to a close in the Fall of 2003. I was the DM, and by that time I was seriously burned out. I was really down on continuing to DM at that point, down on d20, and down on DMing.

Nobody else wanted to DM. I'd been reading The Forge, and was really excited by the idea of players directing the story more. I was also excited by TROS SAs. Basically my feeling was if I had to keep DMing, I wanted something that was new--either more collaboration, a new system or something.

The D&D game I was running had started out deadly, low-powered and political, but as the characters gained levels and magic items, it became increasingly combat-oriented and high-powered. We tried TROS but no one was satisfied with how their meticulously planned 3e characters translated. We discussed dropping the campaign, which only made me happy. We discussed different ways of playing the game. We played Great Ork Gods, which some liked (especially the optional shared narration) and others didn't.

We stopped roleplaying and started playing CCGs, board games, video games and generally having a good time.

Then about a month ago I started running another low-powered 3e game. I wanted to try another system, but one of my players refuses to learn a new system, since he's sick of the endless discussion of which system to use. Another player doesn't want to learn a new system because he doesn't want to buy a rulebook that we don't end up sticking with. So I went with 3e. It worked out well at 1st level, and the game has been almost without combat.

I'd like to keep running the game, or running another game, but my players seem apathetic. They say they enjoyed the last one, but don't really have any ideas or enthusiasm about another one. A new system is pretty much out of the question. Their enthusiasm for making new characters is pretty minimal.

Basically the attitude is if I run something, they'll play, but don't expect them to talk about it beforehand.

So that's where I'm at. This post might just be therapeutic. There might not be a solution. As one of my players put it recently, of the four players "one plays a psycho, one plays the tactician, one plays for humor, and one plays the romantic... how do you make a game for all of us?"

But I like these guys. We have fun hanging out when we're not roleplaying. It's like we all had this bad experience arguing about what to do last Fall (which I am responsible for), and now no one wants to go there again.

The crappy thing is that I'm not burned out any more (maybe I just needed 9 months off), and I can't seem to get anyone excited about roleplaying.

Advice, admonishment or kicks in the ass appreciated.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Chris,

Here's my call: you can't be responsible for other people's fun. If all they have to do is show up, and you're the one expected to be excited enough for all of them ... well, that ain't gonna work. Hell, if even one person has this attitude, it's bad news.

So, without knowing more details, and regardless of whether they are saying they're willing to role-play, I have to ask: is this what they really want to do? Sure, you're all recovered and ready to go, but (a) one or more of them might not be and might be just as happy to play boardgames or rent a movie, and (b) in order to mollify people in the (a)-state, you're using a system that you're not pumped about.

So potentially no one's getting what they want. In my experience, people in this situation will not actually come out and say so, even if someone says "we all need to talk." They'd rather just let the disinterest evolve non-verbally into doing something else, leaving the one or few people who were uniquely interested in role-playing to wonder what happened.

Sounds gloomy, huh? The good news is that probably at least one other person in the group is more in your side of the field, and would probably be happy to glom onto a neat system and try it. I suggest starting out with just a couple other folks. Don't start a new game in the sense of investing in ten books and supplements and making characters that are designed to advance through 100-infinity sessions of play. Instead, play something that's fun now and will pay off now.

The situation you're describing is very common (with fair nod to the possibility that you guys don't correspond to my inferences at all), and it's nothing more than what any starting-out band goes through at least twice before they really get going.

Best,
Ron

[Loki]

I think you're spot on, particularly with the bit about the "a" folks preferring to just let the situation peter out of it's own accord. We use a forum to meta-game and schedule meetups; the last 3 sessions or so when I've asked what, if anything, people would like to roleplay, the most I've been able to get them to commit to is showing up. Then we typically play a card, board or video game.

Something clicked when I read your diagnosis. It makes no sense for me to stick with 3e to mollify the guys that aren't actually much interested in roleplaying. I need to run the game I want to play, and find people to play it, whether they're in the group currently, or elsewhere.

Thanks for the help.

[Callan S.]

Loki: On a side note, the players may have been burnt by the last D&D game dying. If they were looking for power and combat but when they got it it clearly resulted in the campaign autodestructing, they can't exactly look forward to all that again. Meanwhile you might have been thinking the low power is what they wanted. Just a hypothesis on my part.

[jdagna]

I think the group has one of two problems:

1) Some members aren't really into RPGs.  They value the social time and will play RPGs as a way to socialize, but not as a goal in itself.
2) The members do all want to role-play, but they're concerned that the disappointments and disagreements over the past year will threaten the social aspect of the group.  Their apathy is a way to avoid confrontation and disagreement.

In both cases, I think the solution is the same: separate gaming from social activity for the group.  If I were in your shoes (and I have been) I would say this "I really enjoy meeting with you guys on Friday nights, and I'd like to keep doing that.  I also want to role-play, so I'm going to start a group on Thursdays over at my place.  You're all invited if you'd like to play."

This potentially solves both problems.  If there are people who don't want to game, they should no longer feel pressured to play as an excuse for socialization.  Likewise, if they're worried about gaming disrupting the social group, now they have a game night AND a social night.  Any issues and disagreements that come up in the game night don't have to spill over into the social night.  You just have to make sure that there are "boundaries" between the two nights.

I've done something like this on three occasions.  

The first two, in high school and in college, were cases where school friends were also meeting to game.  In one case, I discovered that only one person really wanted to game, so the two of us kept on, while we still had fun hanging out with the others on different days.  In the second case, we found that everyone wanted to play, but shifting to a new time and place gave us a focus on the gaming we hadn't had before.  Instead of chatting and hanging out while we gamed, we started right on time and stayed focused on the game, then hung out on another night.  The apathy, it turns out had resulted from everyone really wanting a more hard core game... but they didn't want to give up the socialization to get it.  (Furthermore, we'd all been so polite that we didn't realize we all shared a goal of a more hard core game).

The third time was a little less extreme: I just told everyone that they were welcome to come over two hours early to hang out for non-game reasons, and that we'd focus strictly on gaming at the regular time.  Most of the people only showed up for the game, but it more clearly established priorities for each time period and things went much more smoothly.