[korso]

I first played D&D over ten years ago and have only recently began playing again. My friend that reintroduced me to the game finished his campaign a few months ago and I saw it as my opportunity to get a couple going myself. I run two games. One is your average D&D style and the other is of no importance but I forsee the same problems in it as im about to bring to you here. Sorry this is a long post

Now like most good campaigns theres some good story and plot. Mine is fairly original with a few holes filled in by a webcomic that runs somewhat off of the games rulesets. When I introduced it to the players I told them they had pretty much free reign over their characters as long as they agreed to a few conditions I wanted.

The point of all this was to break away from the normal way of play. The characters had a past which superceeded their logical alignment and should be considered with making a character decision. By that I mean the kind of relationship you have in real life. To take from a site I once read(sorry I dont know the link anymore), two evil spellcasters could both be trying to take over the world and the players find out they are working together. They players make the mistake of thinking why do that, and then try to inform the lesser evil before he gets "betrayed". In truth these two spellcasters were just friends from going up together despite having every reason not to trust eachother.

The other was to incorporate the originality in their class choices which caused them to spend two years appart until the first session where they reunited. They even got to write what happened during that time to explain things and get some small reward as a result.

To get to the point of all this explaination, the players reverted back to their old playing style within the first 2 sessions. They played like they played every character they ever made. One is selfish and is always trying to steal from the party loot. Another is so concerned with self preservation(which stems from really rediculous "traumatizing" situation in his real life) that he will never do anything without payment. The next is so apathetic that he wont do anything else everyone else agrees. After him is this chick that is so fricking concerned with humping trees and playing the little druid/witch it has me banging my head against the wall cause thats the only sound that seems get her attention and lastly is the very person to reintroduce me. Of all of them he is the most cooperative but only in the sense that it continues the game. Without the other players its become hard on him and I wana fix that.

The first real quest involved comming to the rescue of the lethargic players place of training. Immediatly the players decide no we dont wana do this we wana go seek out money and a fuzzy little squirl for the chick. Even when I got them to go, the supposed good and neutral aligned players decided ... well im sure some of you have seen this before.

I brought it up to the players and they came up with every little reason why they should get to play in that way and how the time spend appart could easily tear appart the fact that they were supposed to be family. The trouble is the story cant continue if its a bunch of adventurers that are only going together because they think they can "make money off of the other fools"

Is their any way I could get these people to actually follow that condition they openly accepted or should I even bother to keep trying? I spent many days working on this story and making it just right to work for what players can do to them. I wana make it work even if it means starting over

[3dom]

Players can be very, very, irritating to a DM when he starts or returns after a long time of not playing. Don't force them to do things, give them enough length on the rope and they can choke themselves to death. I mean it. If you want, I can send you a list of player traps as I get them that are easily within your grasp, all rule abiding (more or less). An oldie but goodie is the over estimation trap, where as another option to the quest you would be rail-roading them to, a quest is open to them that fits them exactly, even if it doesnt yours.One slightly mis-leading description later, thought it was a gnoll w/t tourch, turns to be a balor, and they quickly find out who calls the shots. (Make [darned] sure that they notice it and recoginise it as something they cannot take, and advice running as a good course of action. (Then, as they run, have it try and catch up with them. You would be suprised what a halfling rouge can/will do when a balor is chasing him/her.))

May this advice find you well.

[Rintaran]

That's a very common problem. To put it short, there's very little you can do to get them to play your style of game. When people become experienced with this game, they come to play a certain style almost exclusively, often driving possibilities for other styles from their minds, and outright working against them if someone tries to force them to play it in that manner.

As the DM, yes it is your responsibility to create story, plot, and encounters for the PCs. However, you're 1 person, and there are 3,4,5,6 or possibly more people that you have to satisfy. When creating your story/plot, you have to keep in mind the way they prefer to play and incorporate it into the story. The story may not play out exactly as you have it drafted... Heck, it should never play out as you have it drafted. Players will always come up with something to mess up a highly detailed story, so you want to keep it a little loose, and you want to have multiple avenues that they can travel to get down the basic path of your story. This will probably mean tweaking the work you've done so far.


Or... If you want to be really cheap and have them run your story, you can always geas them...

[Dthclaw]

Rough sitch, korso. Rough indeed.

I would suggest toughing it out with this group of players only if they are the only players in the area. This sounds like a situation where you wound up with a bunch of 'legacy players' from someone else; best thing you can do is go to a place that gets a lot of gamers (university clubs are probably the best; game stores are a decent second), post a campaign synopsis and call for players with some contact info, and start a new group.

Sometimes you're going to have to just cut your losses - I learned that lesson the hard way; I'm one of the fortunate few that had something better come from the fallout of not cutting my losses, but it was one of those one-in-a-million results.

[ladyofdragons]

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him roleplay.

Honestly, our group is a bunch of roleplay-heavy people, and we still come up against this problem. Rather than moving forward with the story, we just end up wandering the city trying to get everyone's personal quests done, or moving off the main storyline onto something completely different. It might take several game sessions to get back on track. Drives me buggy as a player, I'd rather just keep on the story path and get to the fun stuff than sit and wait while someone does something for just their character.

It's hard to get people to "think outside the box" and change their style of play. You can circumvent their desires to do stupid personal crap by taking away it's focus: if the girl wants a squirrel, give her one. as in, "ok, you find a squirrel in a tree outside the town. When you offer it a nut, it takes it and agrees to come with you". no more than that, no roleplaying it out. get over their crap ASAP and back to the storyline, where you can focus on the roleplaying that they do that fits the context of the campaign arc. It's sort of manhandling as a DM, but it works. Eventually maybe (no guarantees) they'll realize that doing their own crap just isn't as fun as moving forward with the campaign arc.

On the flipside, positive reinforcement can also work wonders. Give them personal XP bonuses for roleplaying within the story context. Give bonuses for party unity. Be public about it when it happens. If they're not too dense, they'll get the picture.

[korso]

Well it seems some things have started to work for the better. The problem with these games is the players actual characters never change one bit. If anything its always getting worse with the problems they bring in from their own lives. The worst of which being the one with the issues on self-preservation. My style of roleplay doesn't require to much from the players at least with them actually roleplaying. A couple of sessions ago the players finally entered a one way portal they were even payed to explore. They fell onto a chunck of land with a single large building laying in ruins which was all suspended between the planes and time itself. As they made their way through it they were subjected to visions of the past and the people whose last moments were spent in it. In making their way through it they found themselves stuck with the corpse of a seemingly familiar man and seeing a vision of his last few moments. Soon the players figured out they could interact with certain objects and that changed the past. Roughly I played a bit of irony on them where these seemingly selfish individuals were forced to save this man repeatedly in order to move on. The man was actually someone they met in the first session and will come into play later on.

See... I can bring a story out when I have cooperation and fortunatly im going to get a little talk with my group and make a few changes but we will see what went on. Honestly I do have one thing to be truely proud of. Me being essentially the newbie and these being veteran players. If theres one thing I can really do its make a good trap. In the first dungeon I set a trap for the players. Before it all I lulled them into a sense of security by placing some minor traps in their way. Next they crossed a pathway surrounded by lava which was dangerous but it hid the real trap. Starting from the beginning of the lava room the players were made to see a treasure chest suspended by a rope from the ceiling. In getting across the room they made their way down some stairs to see the chest was indeed out of their normal reach.

Now, it's obvious this was a trap, but the chest itself was perfectly safe. You see through all their poking, and proding, and even sending the winged member to examine all up around the ceiling they never bothered to check the very floor beneath the chest. Well they decided to move on and check it on their way out when the crazey wizard nat 20's throwing a dagger and releases the chest. The players with their backs turned hear a clank and then what they thought was the sound of rushing water. When their feet started burning cause the lava from the room above was now draining into the room they were in. The trap was a simple pressure plate hidden in plain sight. The players had their eyes on the prize and never bothered to watch the metaphorical undead horde rising beneath their feet.

So things are getting better, but I have a feeling im still gona need a bag of tricks just in case. 3dom or anyone who wants to help feel free to post whacha got and I can keep ya updated when the sessions begin in a few weeks. I can build a pretty decent trap but I,m gona need more then that to keep'em in line.

[3dom]

Flattered.

When making a trap, there are two things to keep in mind.

1) They have to not see it coming.
This could be achieved by making something that would seem to be dangerous or big, or generally distracting. A statue of a large-sized gargoyle seems more concerning than, oh say, that small hole in the ground on the left side of the room, providing very little illumination in a red colour, considering the fresh corpse on top of it. The player might have thought that the gargoyle killed him and resumed hiding against the wall. Not that the hole has to just be on the floor, covered. What about the walls? What about behind the statue blocking the hallway? I used flamers, but feel free to trick it out as you will.

2) Have it never, ever be a "common" trap.
Always avoid the DM's handbook traps where possible. Players can read things that they never should without you knowing. Then again, if they aren't too clever...

"Don't worry, rust monsters only have 27 hp."

Real clever.
Good luck bro.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

LAte to the thread as usual lately, but I'll give my 2 cents anyway. I would say the best wayt ot attack this issue is to use a carrot adn a stick. Those two always seem to work well together. The carrot, as Lady pointed out, can be extra XP and in game rewards. A real simple stick I like to use is alignment adjustment, and you don't necessarily have to tell the player you are doing it. It can actually turn into a nice side adventure that teaches the players that ther eare concequences to their in game performances.

Picture the paladin that keeps kililng unnecessarily and taking gold when he really ought not to be, or even refuses to tithe to his cause. Now he loses his Good alignement and all of his abilities. Instant quest begining with why are they gone adn running through the atonement requirements. And I bet that paladin will think twice about how he behaves in teh future.

Now mind you, if that is in character for him, then it's all fine and dandy, but if his character does not meet the requirements for his class, then that's just poor planning. That is one possible stick. Another might be things like what you did--traps that attack one's greed. Greed like that is a common problem in gaming groups; people fall into the Diablo 2 mode of "What did it drop?" instead of RPing. Quite frankly, that makes setting up traps and ambushes so very easy you should be giddy with joy at the devastation you can cause.

Now completely off topic but in response to 3dom's tips on trapmaking:

1 - The obvious and unavoidable trap can often be far more enjoyable. Ever see some players look at the door and then look up at the giant boulder above it and then look at the door again and just get real nervous? Heck, I used the same trap three times on the same party and they fell for it every time adn not because they didn't know it was there. It was just the best of two bad options.

2 - When setting traps, I would approach it more from the point of "why is this trap here?" Often, simple traps straight out of the DMG are perfect for that reason. And depending on the circumstances, they are often the best option. Just because a player can metagame a trap doesn't mean he'll survive it. Sometimes knowing what the trap is adn how it works will make a palyer even more nervous because he knows his own limitations and exactly what will happen to him if he trips it.

A good example of this happened to me the other day while playing a warlock. I was dealing with some gnomes that had supposedly gone missing, but I had foudn them in their mine. When I did, they started lying to me and giving rather bad reasons for me to go away, including that there was some ancient undead sorcerer in the mine. Now behind them was a door they really did not want me to go in and it came to the point where they had stopped yielding useful information. Being the impatient person I am, instead of just turnign the doorhandle, I used Baleful Utterance to shatter the door and scare the bejesus out of the gnomes (who were really tickign me off). The result was one very miffed raksasha. Had I known what was behind the door, I'd have been a lot more worried than I was and by overthinking the problem, I may well have gotten us all killed (we still barely got out alive).

For another good trap that is completely obvious, look to oen of Woe's contributions. A hall lined with twelve inactive stone golems and a single golden golem at the far end standing in front of a door you really want to get through [insert reason here]. When you approach the golden golem, it speaks, saying "The blood of one must spill to save the blood of others." At that point, you have one minute to decide who gets killed by the golden golem before the other twelve stone golems activate and beat the tar out of everyone. You know what is going on and you know what is coming. You are still in a world of trouble.

[ladyofdragons]

hmm... I like that planar-looping-saving thing. reminds me of a ST:TNG episode (the one with the card game and the looping until they saved the ship). I may have to steal that.

[korso]

Your welcome to it ladyofdragons. Have at it and do whatever you want. I'll provide a full detail later tonight but heres a short version while im still here at work. (ya know I think ill try and get it in piece by piece, the rest can be dictated by you)


Roughly what happened in my game:
The players are looking through a portal at first. They see a distance landscape in the portal, beautiful but unknown to them. As soon as the first person enters the image shifts. They see the ruined mansion flashing between it and the landscape.

The players on the inside can scan the terrain. It seems as if they fell into a bedroom yet the room has long since been destroyed. Looking outside they can see nothing but a purple haze for a great distance. A proper spot check and the players will notice a large but far off crystal in the distance. A nat 20 will allow them to barely see orbs orbiting the crystals. (ill leave the details as to why out).

Passing through the building they enter a number of rooms(mostly secret). With no way to move forward they are subject to images of the past. Unable to interact with these "phantoms" they must wait for their story to play out. Various actions by the players after the visions will lead to the survival of the man as well as opening a path for the players.

At the very end, the players make their way to the basement. I had some fun here by making only the stairs having survived whatever happened to this place and the images flickering in and out(a terrifying thought to fall into an unprotected part of whatever void they stumbled upon). At the bottom, the wizard(father of the family that owned the house) was performing a spell along with what could only be the avatars of some lost deities. A few details later the flickering images seem to merge with reality and at the last minute the man from the past sees the players and beckens them to follow him through the portal. The portal led to the otherside of the first image they saw

Other little details included a journal which was the only object of value on the mans body. Players could read the recent passages and notice that the man has felt their presence.

The original concept for this game had two parties working in conjunction with eachother but never actually meeting. In this case, I altered the party to be in the past where their adventures could be read in lost times picked up by the players. Later on im considering making their story an actual campaign using the notes from each interaction.