So, I need some advice.
I started a game nearly two years ago. It was in a bad system that I started revising, and that was probably my first mistake (since corrected). I have days where it feels like nothing happens, days where I feel like I have to shove the players to get them to do anything, when there's simply roleplay when there's actual plates to be juggled. In two years, I have not completed four dungeons. The first arc of a written story out of six isn't done.
Now to be fair, not all of this is connected. There were timing and scheduling conflicts some days, holidays, so on so forth, and for a LONG while we could only run four hours (managing six now) which felt like it slowed us down a ton and left combat half-hanging a lot.
I'm not asking for help fixing my game. It's a mess, but I'm proud of this mess. It's my first real game that I GM'd. Homebrew setting was probably not a good idea, but a few of the players are invested in it, and I'm happy with it now. Rather, I ask, what can I do to be a better GM? How do I further their interest in the game? I want to feel like my players are excited for game day rather than simply there and content. I want them to pursue interesting things in the world, and feel like they're making a difference.
Pic related, final boss of the arc. It's an NPC they've been running sidequests for in the dungeons they go to, giving him seeming knick-knacks they come across.
Something that I wish my DM would do more of is character arcs for each of the players. I get most excited when I realize we're doing something related to a PC's backstory. I love the world we're in, and I know we have a larger overarching story to follow, but seeing how the DM ties in the character's pasts makes me feel like we're actually a part of the world instead of just cruising through it with little connection.
So far our DM has been throwing in little hints here and there, but recently we've been doing a side story line for our group's cleric. Haven't been this excited for game nights since we first started last March.
>>44521161
This. Sounds like something you should do, OP.
Maybe a former friend of one of the PCs is working with the BBEG. Perhaps an item they lost is rumoured to be in one of the dungeons. Their home town could be attacked by bad guys.
Most players don't seem to mind when you have some leeway with their characters' backstories. Except for the ones who write detailed family trees and complex background information. Those are best left alone, since anything you do is probably wrong.
>>44520399
Truncate your plot.
A lot.
Seriously, as someone doing a long set game, cut out huge chunks of it, shove parts together, make it faster.
Do what >>44521161 and >>44523214 say, add personal interest.
Don't do a negative thing like kill off backstory NPCs, but have them ask for help.
Get the players in trouble and have em sort things out. Give them a good longer term goal that they can see ways of achieving. Three or four things that they can do are a pretty good idea, and as they do one, the others get harder or change, so they need to prioritize.
Get it personal, and then get it active.
How do I give my players a nudge in the right direction in an open-ended situation?
Whenever it comes to, "After a day of travel, you arrive at the city. What do you do?" they all just sit there. I don't know if they're overwhelmed by such an open question, or if everyone is too shy to speak for the group.
Should I offer choices instead? "You could ask around the local taverns for rumors on the demon cult, or you could visit your old friend, the blacksmith"? I don't want it to feel cheap and obvious, like some shady character walks over and says, "Psst, the cult have a base in the sewers!" for no reason. I want the players' choices to matter and to encourage problem-solving, but I don't know how to foster that.
>>44524927
>How do I give my players a nudge in the right direction in an open-ended situation?
you don't. Just let them do what makes them happy, and work on what they give you. Do not bother with fitting them into plot, just take notes on what they do, jot down every little open thread they leave and go back later to some of them. Do it with their background, too (it'll turn into loved by players [ >>44521161 >>44523214 ] situations. Makes everyone feel like they really matter, and that's veeeery important). I know it'd be hard to ditch your pre-made arcs, but do it, if it will benefit the game. Salvage your ideas, if they overlook something, serve it in another way, another time. Again, take notes of whatever they do when facing an open-ended situation, since it's the time they'll pretty much tell you what they want and how to satisfy them. Once players realize they do not have like five or seven premade locations in town and they can do whatever pops in their mind, they'll surprise you with what they can come up with, and how the game floooooows from there.
Hope it helps in some way.
>>44525242
Good advice, but I don't think it works for my group.
They get utterly lost in these open-ended scenarios, they need some level of hand holding to get to the next interesting thing, but then there's no satisfaction beyond getting from A to B.
Now, if I throw them in a dungeon and there's a choice (e.g. left or right) and they use their cunning and skills to figure out which way to go, they really enjoy it. I want to map something like that to a city or the wilderness, but without saying, "You have these choices: do the obviously correct thing, or waste time. Which do you do?"
It's not so much that there's a plot or pre-made locations, I try to have at least three things going on in the background that they might never encounter, it's just that they have no idea what to do and remain silent. So I'll ask, "What do you guys do?" over and over, throw in the occasional, "Think what your characters would do," but everyone just sits there awkwardly, or does mundane game stuff like, "Uh, I buy a new sword. That's me done."
>>44527159
Wow, your players are either stone-dumb, or are so used to playing video games that they expect you to railroad them to the point of leading them by the nose.
I'd suggest that you have them start keeping a list of things that they want, need, and should do. Like a quest log, or a journal, or whatever. They write down clues that you give them, or things that they realize they need done, then whenever they're in town, they pull those out and go through them, seeing if there's things they can do to forward their characters or the plot.
It could be something as simple as the ranged character writing down, "Buy more arrows," and you having a short roleplay thing where the guy selling arrows has a small case of enchanted arrows, or the spellcaster writing down that they need specific components for a spell, or asking someone that might know if they recognize a symbol they saw in the dungeon. Make them do something to get them involved. Give them a stake in the game, something that they need to remember to do on their own.
>>44527482
I think it's because of video games, yeah. They're not bad players and they do really get into conversations and try different things, it's just difficult when you have a whole city or 360 degrees to wander in. In a video game like Final Fantasy you enter a town and usually exhaustively search every building. Newer video games often have compass or map systems that tell you exactly where to go (even if it's to a place you don't know about or an NPC you haven't met, which is dumb).
I guess I'll just start throwing more hooks in there that mean individual characters damn well need to do things in town (because that broken sword isn't going to fix itself). Thanks for the advice.
>>44527621
It can be hard to break players (and yourself) of that kind of mindset. My group came from almost exclusively playing 3.5/PF Adventure Paths, which are good for what they are, but essentially boil down to a series of if-thens that happen to the players. They settled into a groove, I think.
Then, when they get dumped into something more sandboxy, they kind of just... waited for something to happen. And I just kind of waited for them to do something, and neither of us really had any idea how to get started.
So what I did was essentially what you've decided to do: I threw shit at them. Inconsequential shit. Shit that had absolutely no bearing on my idea of the campaign's "plot". Shit I made up on the spot. They're in town? There's a parade going on. They ignore it? I forget it. They ask about it? I give them answers, and those answers become canon, and if they fuck with it enough, maybe the parade was actually for the governor's daughter's wedding, and the groom is planning to usurp the governor once it's finalized and throw the region into chaos at the behest of some villain that I couldn't previously get them to give a crap about, or whatever.
Also, it's never a bad idea to have down-time. Give players down-time and ask what they're doing. Most of them are going to say "bumming around town" or "womanizing" or "staying at <HOME BASE>" or whatever. That's fine. Find one of them doing something alone and have a shady figure call out to them from an alley and offer a deal for some information on... something. Have them get into a barfight (assuming you're playing a system where combat doesn't take ten hours to resolve, otherwise it gets tedious to watch one guy fight all night). Do random inconsequential shit and have that spiral into actual consequential shit.
I guess when I first tried to GM I had a "story" in mind, but now I kind of just fuck with my players in as many ways as I can think to and run with whatever they screw up the most.
>>44530849
>I kind of just fuck with my players in as many ways as I can think to and run with whatever they screw up the most
This is one of the best ways of playing the game. Another couple of things to remember:
Don't say, "No." Say, "Yes, but," and finish that sentence however you see fit. Now, clearly, if someone's being stupid as hell, you should warn them that they're doing something stupid as hell, but overall, say yes to basically whatever your players want to do, run with it and its logical outcome. Don't take autonomy away from the players if you can help it.
In the same vein, don't use narrative cutscenes. If you start into a villain's monologue, and your players want to interrupt by, say, shooting him in the face, or body-tackling him, let them. It'll be more interesting that way, to the players, and watching what happens should prove suitably hilarious to you, as well.
Don't be a rules lawyer. It'll become blatantly obvious when some part of the rules is getting in the way of the players having fun. If that happens, you're the DM, don't use that rule, or change that rule to suit the players' play-style. Make it simpler. Make it come up less often. If it's getting in the way, it doesn't need to be there. Next time there's a break, ask them how they think it could be streamlined, or made better. The books are guidelines, manuals, not concrete rules. They don't cover every possible outcome, and they don't try to.
>>44531483
I wanted to say a fourth thing, and I forgot, but I just remembered what fourth thing was.
Consequences. Not necessarily in the vein of punishing them when they do something wrong, but just obvious outcomes that have an impact on the world. If they save a village, that village, and people from it, remember them, and might be willing to help them, or give information. If they go do something else instead, that village isn't there anymore if they pass through; it's in ruins, with people huddling in the shells of houses, or just reduced to a few rotting corpses or skeletons, and some scorched earth. Make them be invested in how the world progresses as much as they're invested in how the story does.
