Hello everyone and welcome to the Finder’s Archives.
This week I’m going to take a stand on my little soapbox and do some shouting from here.
This came from a fellow game creator and DM that was asking players to show some enthusiasm for their games, and they went out of their way to specifically point out to the new DMs out there to not expect visual reactions and enthusiasm along the line of Critical Role. (For those who don’t know, Critical Role is a very well-known and well-received podcast and YouTube channel that runs a D&D campaign for a bunch of voice actors).
I’m actually here to talk about the opposite view of that. NOT that you shouldn’t expect enthusiasm and engagement from your players, but that you, as a DM or GM can coax that reaction out of your players. I’ve had a number of groups where there were players that started off shy and held themselves back, for quite some time, and you can never quite drill that out of them, nor should you. It’s their personality, but I do believe that you can get them to show their enthusiasm and react to your work.
The way you do that it through engagement. And it goes both ways. For you to engage the players as a GM, you have to bring something to the table that catches their attention and garners those reactions. The easiest way to do that, especially with a new group of players, is to dive into the background stories of your characters. If you as the GM go out of your way to incorporate story and plot elements that draw upon the background of those characters, you’re far more likely to draw them in. Not guaranteed, it’s never a guarantee, but it’s far more likely. A good example (and one that ironically mirrors something in the latest Critical Role campaign) came from an older campaign of mine.
Two of the players had relatively blank backgrounds. One was a human sorcerer with the dragon bloodline, the other was a half-elf cleric who was an orphan. Slowly, over the course of the campaign, it turned out that the cleric wasn’t ACTUALLY an orphan. Instead, they’d been abandoned by their mother, after a tryst that they couldn’t own up to – as they were married into a noble family. That mother just so happened to be the mother of the human sorcerer. But the father of the sorcerer was human. And they started to wonder, and eventually, their mother owned up to having had a SECOND affair. This time with a very charming human… Who, when the sorcerer went to investigate, turned out to be a dragon. And the players lost their MINDS when they realized that they were related. That included the other players as well, who were laughing their butts off.
Again, something you can draw on is simple tie-backs to previous moments in the story. At one point, the characters had entered a dungeon, and the cleric had gotten herself charmed by a succubus. So when the others attacked the succubus, she tried to defend it. The easiest way to do that, of course, and not hurt her friends was to send the succubus back home, so she banished her. So far, so good. But later on, when they got involved once more with some demonic witchery, the succubus came back of course – yet again the cleric failed the save – and more or less ended up having an affair with a succubus. And accidentally passing on information to the bad guy, who (unbeknownst to the party) had enslaved that very succubus.
And once more, when the players found out, they lost their minds (especially the cleric, who hadn’t realized until it was too late that it was a succubus they were having a relationship with). So, as a GM you can engage players by playing with what they know, and their expectations.
Now for the players, you too can show some enthusiasm and engagement for the game. After all, the GM has likely spent hours creating this world and this adventure for you by, if nothing else, then simply by reading the pre-made adventure. Make your background stories, pay attention to what’s going on, and let yourself live the life of your character. If possible, discuss with your GM what you liked and what you’d love to see more of. and if the GM is one of those who inform the players beforehand what he expects of the story, stick to it. Don’t try to disrupt it, simply enjoy the ride, and live the dream – and if it’s a story you don’t want to be told, say so in advance, so that GM has a chance to adjust their story.
So to both sides – show your appreciation and do what you can to enjoy it. 🙂
Kim Frandsen
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- Finder’s Archive – Crypt of the Eternals - June 2, 2023
