Setup: I'm playing in a weekly/bi-weekly D&D game run by my wife. The current group is 6 players in size and is the result of combining 2 groups, 1 good and 1 evil, together into 1 bigger group. As I was a player in both groups I have 2 characters, which isn't a problem for me as I've GMed for most of my natural life. My concern is that of the entire group, my characters are the only ones with defined goals.

One character is a Lawful Cleric of the god of Retribution. He seeks out the guilty and smites them. As I was the most experienced player he became the de facto leader of the good group (which consisted of 1 ranger/rogue, 1 dwarf barbarian, and 1 wizard). He was also the only one with a goal (become the right hand man of the god he follows) which is pursued and coming about. Subsequently there are more sessions focusing around his goals and his religion.

My other character is a Drow assassin. The evil group consisted of 1 orc barbarian and 1 fighter. Additionally, the evil group sold their souls (which is what tied them together) to a powerful demon. The group followed the fighter as his wish was to assemble an army and take over the world. (The Barbarian's wish was to become the greatest warrior and my character wished for the power to destroy the Drow and their god. )

Okay, the two groups, sans my Drow, come together as we prepare to do the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil adventure. The evil barbarian and fighter are told by their patron demon to help the Cleric destroy the cult within. The good group is following a trail of evil clerics which burned an innocent town down to the ground and killed all of its citizens.

First snag, the player of the fighter decides that his character is more of an organizer than a direct fighter and decides to switch to a new character; he creates a monk. My elf is busy with other things and I play my cleric as the groups merge and start towards the temple. The monk comes along for the ride. (As de facto leader and being Lawful Neutral my character lets the evil barbarian and monk into the group with little trouble.)

Second snag, my Cleric is supposed to die. It's part of the story for his eventual goals. So the group goes to the moathouse and fights a powerful blue dragon (since we're much higher level going into this than recommended the foes are also beefed up). After a noble sacrifice to save the wizard my cleric gets obliterated by lightning. Only some ashes remain. The dragon leaves after being heavily wounded.

Here is when the trouble begins. The good dwarf and ranger want to press on and explore further. The rest of the group wants to fall back to town and regroup. The monk is disgusted with the dwarf and ranger for not reacting to the death of the cleric. The wizard and evil barbarian feel the same. After a 30 minute real-time, in-character debate in the middle of the courtyard the group finally leaves back to town. It is evident to everyone, both in and out of character, that with the cleric dead the group has no leader.

So, the group now realizes that they lack a solid reason to go into the temple. My Cleric was always very reserved and private and never told them exactly why he did the things he did. Since their characters had no goals of their own they just followed him around. The dwarf wants to kill stuff. The ranger wants to fulfill the cleric's quest out of respect but doesn't know what it is aside from going into the temple. The monk wants to protect the wizard and will follow whatever she does. The evil barbarian is confused since he was supposed to help the cleric destroy the cult. What the wizard will do is uncertain.

So next session I am bringing my Drow into this mix. My Drow has a definite reason for going into the temple. The patron he really is working for wants to sabotage the demon's goals and get my Drow his soul back. He knows that the demon wants something in the temple and is out to find out what it is before the demon can get her hands on it. To this end my Drow needs the group. My Drow can get the group motivated by pulling the strings of the wizard and the others. But should he?

Since the other characters still do not have any long term goals am I dominating play by leading them into following the goals of my characters?Part of me says no because they couldn't come up with anything on their own in the months that we've been playing. Another part of me wonder if they haven't come up with anything because they've been too complacent and just followed my character around. Making it worse is that none of the other characters want the job of leader (except maybe the wizard but the player might not want it).

Additionally, I know a bit more about the campaign as this is the first campaign that my wife's run and I'm helping her out. We're not trying to railroad the campaign but the only other player who indicated a goal for their character and pursued it was the fighter who put himself as an NPC.

So, do I herd the group towards the direction of my goals or let them try and figure out what to do? Since the last time they tried to figure out what to do it took an half-hour and since there are strong Law vs. Chaos personality clashes between the characters I'm worried that they might end up 1) wandering off separately or 2) fighting each other.

Any thoughts or advice?

Ask the players?

What do they want? Once you open the discussion up to the players (and leave the characters out of it; we don't care what they think) you'll probably be able to determine what to do. Do they want you to provide a leader? Or do they not care about motives? Perhaps they are looking for something more gamist that involves less plot. Maybe they do want to be railroaded to the Temple so they can get on with it.

Ask.

Mike

Hi Alex,

Well, I gotta say, multiple elements of your account lead me to be very pessimistic.

1) The merging of two groups - why? purely social? the assumption that more is better? because it's cool, for an unspecified reason?

2) The "good" and "evil" (as well as Law vs. Chaos) difference between the groups - are they supposed to work together, clash internally, what? (And by "supposed" I am referring to the acknowledged social contract among all the players/GM)

3) The new GM dealing with already-established play groups and characters

4) The "GM behind the curtain," ie, you - which means, basically, that both you and your wife are (a) responsible for what happens and (b) not responsible for the GMing

5) The apparent lack of accord or discussion among the group about where "the story" comes from - it sounds like me like you all need to decide about that, right now

So, all together, I don't see much beyond a lot of aggravation. Ultimately, you have to get some more communication going. But even to do that, you need to decide what you want to do.

* Do you want to run this game? If so, do so, and quit being the GM behind the curtain. If not, then back off, and let the GM make these decisions.

* Do you want the "story" to emerge from character decisions? If so, then it's perfectly OK for some or none of them to go to the Temple - it's even (gasp) OK for the group to split apart and for lots of multiple-scene play to occur. If not, then start the next game at the door of the Temple and tell'em to shut up and like it.

There's no point to having discussions unless you, yourself, are clear about these things.

Best,
Ron

Alex,

Something that was very aparent from your post was that most of the characters were minor background characters in the main story. This is why they are disinterested. I know because I'm dealing with all of these issues in a Star Wars game, where there's one central story and we all seem to be minor characters. The jargon term for that around here is protagonism, or in this case a lack of it. But to get rid of big scary words, nobody has their own story.

For long term play, each character should have their own story. The best examples are TV dramas like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Friends or E.R., where the plots intersect each other. External complications are laid upon it, which often help the plots to intersect when aliances are formed to deal with the external problem.

If the players aren't committed enough to their characters to come up with a plot spontaneously, lead them into their won plot. An encounter with a sympathetic character, who suddenly finds themselves in need of assistance, isn't amis. Enemies can be made to pursue. The point is to establish human relationships that people learn to care about. This takes some effort to develop the characters, but it will pay off.

Let me try and answer some of these.

Ron Edwards wrote:
1) The merging of two groups - why?

Ron Edwards wrote:
2) The "good" and "evil" (as well as Law vs. Chaos) difference between the groups - are they supposed to work together, clash internally, what?

Ron Edwards wrote:
3) The new GM dealing with already-established play groups and characters

Ron Edwards wrote:
4) The "GM behind the curtain," ie, you

Ron Edwards wrote:
5) The apparent lack of accord or discussion among the group about where "the story" comes from - it sounds like me like you all need to decide about that, right now

Ron Edwards wrote:
* Do you want to run this game?

Ron Edwards wrote:
* Do you want the "story" to emerge from character decisions?

Clay wrote: Something that was very aparent from your post was that most of the characters were minor background characters in the main story. This is why they are disinterested.

Clay wrote: If the players aren't committed enough to their characters to come up with a plot spontaneously, lead them into their won plot.

It's hard to know where to start.

A number of your responses are quite confusing. It sounds like there are only two players who are the problem, but then you say that of all the players, only you provide any direction to the group of adventurers. So are the other players a problem or not?

wyrdlyng wrote: Telling them flat out doesn't work.

Sorry about the confusion. I guess the core of the problem is that there are two players who have different styles of play from the rest of the group. The rest of the group can mix and match styles fairly well (add some Narrativism to a mostly Gamist system like D&D, etc.).

Originally the problem was the three newer player but one of them has moved beyond purely Gamist play fairly rapidly.

I know that D&D is a Gamist system but it was the only common linking point between the newer players and they wanted to try it.

I would like to do the 2nd listed option and we (the rest of the group) is trying to nudge the two remaining players into something closer to what the rest of the group is comfortable with.

My wife has tried tailoring the system away from the "kill and loot" methodology of D&D by doing things like rewarding for good roleplaying and granting the group items that increase in power as the group does so that accumulating a horde of magic is no longer necessary.

I'd love to try SOAP or something more Narrativist. I've just held off due to fear of shocking them. Maybe I should stop hesitating and try it as a fill-in for a week.

I'd like to move away from D&D to another system for many reasons (I dont like High Fantasy, D&D's a bad mix of realistic and abstract, etc.). I keep meaning to order a copy of Riddle since it sounds like something most of our group would play. Perhaps that would work better than throwing them into a purely Narrativist game cold turkey.

wyrdlyng wrote: I'd love to try SOAP or something more Narrativist. I've just held off due to fear of shocking them. Maybe I should stop hesitating and try it as a fill-in for a week.

I keep meaning to order a copy of Riddle since it sounds like something most of our group would play. Perhaps that would work better than throwing them into a purely Narrativist game cold turkey.

Hey Alex,

I'd love to try SOAP or something more Narrativist. I've just held off due to fear of shocking them. Maybe I should stop hesitating and try it as a fill-in for a week.

The only problem I've found with SOAP is that guys often just don't get it, and struggle with deciding on genre appropriate behaviors. In our game of SOAP last summer, for instance, my friend Jim had his character stop at McDonald's for lunch.

That's one of the reasons I typically recommend InSpectres. I've yet to find anyone who struggles with the genre.

On the other hand, if you've got more than one female player, especially if they're the type that just can't force themselves to learn which dice to roll in D&D, then I'd say go for SOAP. The women will fall naturally into authority roles they've never occupied before, and it'll shake your group up a bit.

Paul

wyrdlyng wrote: I'd love to try SOAP or something more Narrativist. I've just held off due to fear of shocking them. Maybe I should stop hesitating and try it as a fill-in for a week.

These symptoms you've described sound very, very familiar to me, especially the Dwarf's player.

He isn't going to try and trace the shadow creatures because he knows their origin probably isn't in the module. He says 'whatever' to non-combat situations because he knows they're probably text boxes with a binary eventual outcome. He loves combat because only in combat do the rules give him sufficient backing for him to force the GM to allow him to make a difference in the adventure.

Now, I don't think *YOUR* GMing is like this. But the classic 'old school' D&D GM is, and if he's experienced with that, he's learned all these things. And at some point he probably knew that if he questioned how things worked in the dungeon or asked where the shadow creatures came from or didn't do the obvious response to the boxed text, then things came to a crashing halt and the GM blamed him socially for disrupting the game. That's a pretty strong negative reinforcer.

And the killer is that just telling them that those rules no longer apply, that they CAN do that kind of thing now, usually doesn't work. Partly because they were told BEFORE that they were participating in a story as a hero (in spite of the restrictions).. but, far more dangerously, because their mental system may well simply no longer see roleplaying as a creative activity. No matter how much they want to make story, the creative resources necessary just aren't activated in their minds because they're so used to not needing them.

I also think D&D tends to compound the problem; you always tend to wound up with a 'led party' in D&D games because the rigid class separation means that no character is individually competent to cope with anything that the system says they should be able to cope with. Cooperation is not just a good idea; there's no option if you want to live. For this reason, although splitting up the party might be good if you want a player created story, D&D's system won't help you run it; even all its balancing rules are designed for parties. If you split the party INSIDE the Temple in RtToEE then you're probably dead the first time you meet something (it's a HARD module).

I've seen a parallel problem in my own D&D group. We had a loud and annoying player, who led the party and also did ludicrous in-character actions that annoyed the other players (abandoning the party in a dragon's lair, announcing that he had other people's items, holding the halfling thief out of a boat window over the mouth of a sea monster..). He stopped when asked, but then all that was left was a bunch of silent people (yes, myself included, and I'm not proud) who had no clue what to say, or even how to tactically play their own characters, because they had been so used to the leader telling them (IC and OOC) what to do and them basically just coming up with IC excuses for doing it. Of course, the silence got really boring, and so the leader always got effectively asked to start again because, unpleasant as it was, it was the 'local maximum'. People just disconnected as far as possible from their own characters so that they could get their entertainment by laughing when the leader player hosed or mocked the party, and if they lost that bit of treasure by him randomly claiming he had it then, hey, so what? They knew that would happen when they picked it up. Of course, the campaign collapsed.

(We did get it back, though, because the leader player started playing a wizard - which is one of the classes in D&D that is most dependant on others. I notice your party leader was a Cleric - the LEAST dependant class, especially in 3E. I don't know if a similar thing would work for you, though.)

Thing is, I don't think the guy in your post is a Gamist. All the Gamists I know DON'T say "yea, whatever" to non-combat; they play along and give an in-character response whose effect is to bring the combat nearer (even the really hardcore non-roleplayers still manage an "I shall smite the dread foe in thy name, sirrah" or something equally cliched.)

Definately running another game would be good, but I've been told by another GM I used to know that they had a player like this who played brilliantly in another game system, and then reverted right back again when the group went back to D&D.

wyrdlyng wrote: This is what my wife's trying but how do you do that without railroading them into it? ("Dammit, you will be the star of this episode and like it!")

I think that the habits they picked up from old D&D are keeping them from being more than just Interchangeable_Party_Member_3 and Interchangeable_Party_Member_4. I'd like to break them of this but I don't know how. Telling them flat out doesn't work.

Clay wrote:
That will get at least one of the characters involved. If the targetted player remains detached and uninvolved, their character is quite clearly sociopathic, and a personal extinction may be in order. If news of this lack of concern gets out (and any GM worth their salt will arrange for it to get out), people will shun the character and the people around him(her). Nothing spreads faster than bad news, so people are eventually going to refuse to do business with them. Drop heavy hints that this is starting, and immediately present them with an option to redeem their name - someone to rescue.

wyrdlyng wrote: I guess the main point of frustration is that the newer players don't provide hooks for their characters or don't react to them when they appear. So in order to keep from sitting at the table staring at each other in silence I have my character follow one of his hooks.

So my question is how to you get players to Protagonize themselves? If we could do this I wouldn't feel the need to grab the reins, so to speak.

hyphz wrote:
This *is* railroading. You're making one option (going to the NPC's aid) obviously better than all others. The player has the 'choice' of going after the guy who helped him or having his ability to function shut down. I do not think it will take him long to decide, or that it will make him feel like a protagonist.

Clay wrote:
If you don't like my proposed method, please feel free to offer an alternative. It takes trouble to cause someone to change. I offered up trouble. Find an alternative trouble if that one is undesirable. Or modify it. The GM doesn't have to mandate that the character is captured. Maybe the character can fight/flee his way out. The real point is that the character needs to have a pressing problem that can't simply be resolved with a roll of a die. It has to be something that's not going to go away easily.

Clay wrote:
A little bit of reading might be in order. Detective novels deal quite well with forced protagonism. Sitting back and not taking action is never an alternative within this genre. The trouble will come to you if you don't go to it.

I agree with Hyphz, one cannot force protagonism. The best solution is to set things up so that any choice is protatgonizing.
An example would be makeing them choose a side in a conflict.
Thus they will pick one or th other, or possibly play one against the other or work for both. All these are interesting.
Other options include giving them a leader role, for example they could lead a bunch of incompetent NPC's. This forces them into a leadership plan, or they are stuck with some silly plan. (Wish I could remember who came with this idea)
I think that part of the problem is DnD's 'modular' nature. Thus if players stray from the 'path' bad things tend to happend to them. Thus, unless a clear call to action comes from the GM, they don't do anything, as they have learned that protagonism=charachter death/problems. Thus, no protagonism. Unfortunatly the only way around this is to gain their trust, probably through a combination of telling them OOC and encouraging them when they do something protagonistic(say by letting it be helpful, or at least not to harmful).

Hello,

These last few posts about protagonism are interesting, but I think people are dodging the core issue: that Alex's group is not socially oriented toward role-playing in any GNS-coherent way.

We could arrive at some Golden Method of protagonizing player-characters and it wouldn't mean a thing. The group was formed out of convenience, and its imaginative components are constructed out of pre-existing characters and situations from previous play. We have two GMs, neither of which has Buck Stops Here authority over the other, and I have seen such situations become extremely dysfunctional in the past.

Alex, frankly, I don't see your position as being good. For one thing, you've phrased your questions very much along the line of "How can I make this group play more like I want them to," which I think is presumptuous. For another, I don't think your "authority," for lack of a better word, is socially arranged in a functional way. Please review your reply to me, above - I may be wrong, but I think you missed the entire point of my post, which I've tried to present more clearly in this one.

The current line of discussion is composed of what the posters would want out of playing with Alex - it is, as I say, interesting, but it's meaningless. The same goes for the railroading issue; I could direct people to a number of threads about why Bangs are not railroading, but it's irrelevant to the topic.

Alex, I guess what I want is to ask: speaking in terms of the group's enjoyment of play, who is the problem here - them or you?

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Alex, I guess what I want is to ask: speaking in terms of the group's enjoyment of play, who is the problem here - them or you?

Hi Alex,

First, less importantly, thanks for tolerating my harshness in this thread. I know I can be kind of relentless about this subject, and I was concerned I'd been too surgical in this case.

Second, most importantly, that was a brilliant and amazing post, not a rant at all. You really nailed exactly what seems to be the trouble, and arrived at what seems to be the only solution.

I think we've dealt with a very common problem in role-playing, and that this thread may become one of the most valuable "go look here" touchstones available at the Forge.

Best,
Ron

Ron, you were honest, not harsh. I can respect the difference. And it was all very cathartic. An old friend of mine once gave me good advice for roleplaying: "Don't game with someone you wouldn't spend time with outside the game." This was one of the times that I took a chance and it didn't work out.

Aside, I guess in a way I felt sorry for him because everyone seems to put him down. Two of our players know him (the boyfriend/girlfriend) from before we started gaming. I went to the boyfriend's birthday party which included our problem child and obviously the girlfriend. While there I noticed that all of their friends seemed to put the problem child down and make him the butt of their jokes. After a while I realized that it's because of reasons similar to what I mentioned (they all have jobs and families but he doesn't want to get his act together and they're tired of carrying him).

At first I thought it was because he was young but then I learned that he's in his late 20's. If you a) can't hold down a job at Denny's because of your attitude, b) can't make payments on a car but buy M:tG cards by the box, c) live from friend's couch to friend's couch, d) can't go to school because you got angry and broke a glass door (and can't take a class until you pay), e) rely upon your friends and family to always bail you out of trouble and you're in your late 20's then you really need to take a look at your life and where it's going.

I've known him for over a year and thought that he might change but there doesn't seem to be any chance of that happening.

In the end it does come down to the fact that gaming is a social activity. If you wouldn't be friends with someone why would you game with them?