Getting my players to act!!

i know 2 of them despise combat (one also doesnt role-play so i wonder why hes even fucking here), 1 we despise in combat because he spends 10 actual minutes on his turn deciding what he wants to do and does the worst possible choice (usually intentionally harming allies and dealing little damage to enemies), and the other 2 find it enjoyable when the enemies are more than just mooks.

sorry i sound angry, we just had another session and it really got to me today.

>Veeky Forums
>talking like adults

lamo

I would suggest then to talk with each one of them and ask what's their favorite part of playing is.

Keep in mind through if your game was bad they probably wouldn't join every week to play it.

nah, we can, its usually just the shitlords who cry and then say they dont want to solve it like adults because that would mean confrontation

i did this. about a little over 4 months ago i asked each player what they liked and i got varying answers from some, and unfortunately NO answer from the two abroad.

2 - liked where things were now, but they said it so half heartedly it hurt.
2 - no answer
1 - just likes "whatever" he says, but eventually another player managed to get that he liked interacting with NPC's
1 - and one said he would like to see more quests that involved player choice

It sounds like your players are just boring to play with. If they aren't going to put in any effort, then there's no reason to play with them.

lost cause? i hope not. I've sunk 2 years of my life into this. but you might be right

Right, so do that

But here's a tip:
There are certain players sometimes referred to as "observers." Basically they like playing, and have fun, don't like being in the spotlight and appear as if they are sort of side characters who don't do very much. Ordinarily, these guys are not necessarily a bad thing... They help give attention to people who want it. However, you might be in the unique position of having an entire party of these.

Basically, they like playing the droids instead of Luke Skywalker or Han Solo.

If these guys can latch on to someone who can RP well and likes being a more 'main character' type who can lead them, everything should fall into place fairly easily. Even an NPC may work, if you want to have them escort a princess or join a paladin or something of the sort

Or maybe they just can't roleplay, I don't know your group

>paralyzed by choice
>wants more choice
Trust me, players have no idea what they really want so asking them is useless.

>Or maybe they just can't roleplay, I don't know your group
haha yes that would definitely appear to be a problem, no advice could truly be perfect.

i hadn't thought about having an NPC for them to latch onto, in everything i read they warned against any kind of NPC leading the party.

It sounds like you're not giving them enough information to make decisions this is a common GM mistake where you just expect the players to know stuff thats actually just in your head when they're working off an entirely blank slate.

Not offering them any 'help' would only make it worse.

Your role isn't to offer them 'help' it's to tell them what their options are and give them all the information they need to evaluate those options whilst leaving the situation open for them to think of more.
You also need to tell them the consequences of the choices you give them BEFORE the make the decision and don't jump anything unfair on them due to some nonsense like 'they should have thought of that '

Generally every scenario should have three clues / three different solutions to it.

>>thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule

Likewise with puzzles you never A: Make them a choke point where the party can't advance without solving them. B: Offer only one solution, again use 3. C: If times an issue just add a time constraint to them. Solve puzzle in X time or suffer effects of trap (BUT the door or whatever still opens)

Ordinarily, it's a bad idea. It ties into the DM power trip and railroading that are usually not ideal.

You'll want to keep in mind that this is essentially a guide for your party, not an authority. For instance, in the scenario you laid out in the opening post, he might suggest the party parley with the guy to try and convince him otherwise, or find another way to get the information (such as searching his house.) But you should avoid having the NPC just waltz up and do the encounter for them.

They might also like an 'A route' or 'B route' sort of choice. For instance, the NPC might ask "Should we try and infiltrate this castle through the escape routes, or try and go in through the front?"

It's guidance, but not a strict rigidity that you want. Assuming your group would even be receptive to this, of course.

> It sounds like you're not giving them enough information to make decisions

i thought the very same thing, so i started carefully planning things more. but it changed very little when it came to situations involving non NPC interactions. not to say it didnt help, it made some progress, it really did. i had to make things way more obvious like give bad guys an evil accent and an eye patch (no seriously) or make a shifty guy stutter non stop for him to seem shady. (see "LA noir requires you to read subtle facial cues")

i will look into this three clue thing, it may help out when the players are sent to "investigate" as it were.

i also had no problems with my previous group with them following leads or clues.

No again you're giving them vague clues and expecting them to read your mind about what they can do.

You literally just say to them after the interaction with the shady NPC for example.

"You don't think you can trust this character because you picked up on multiple visual cues and ticks that showed her was hiding something , you believe his eye patch signifies him as s member of insert evil religious cult and he seemed to be concealing a weapon he was ready to pull out.

"You can report him to the authorities, trail him to see what he's doing, investigate his home or another course of action you see fit.

All you're doing is saying ,' he has an eye patch and a stutter ' like what are they meant to infer from that ? That he lost an eye and has a lisp?

You're telling them remember what their characters know now what they know as players and you're being as explicit as possible.

I'm a lot like this, I rarely feel comfortable in a take charge position, and when I get thrust into a limelight moment, it's so surprising and out of nowhere that it's literally paralyzing.

In the most recent game I joined though, I've been trying to change this, and I've kinda become a party leader, from what I can tell. It helps that it's text based, rather than face to face, though it's slow as molasses. It's taken us a couple of months of the Ad Hoc system to make the progress we would have made in a single session, mainly because the GM's girlfriend has a pretty busy social life.

Playing a sort of rakish Thief right now, and it's surprisingly fun.

>"You can report him to the authorities, trail him to see what he's doing, investigate his home or another course of action you see fit.
The trouble is, this is exactly what the GM doesn't want to do. He wants the players to actually think for themselves, not just hand them three options and have them choose one.

The players of this calibre may very well never choose an option not handed to them on a platter. That's what he wants them to try.

If he doesn't want the give the players clear options and consequences then he can't complain that his players have no clue what they're doing and are scared to act.

Whilst you can be more subtle to differing degrees about the implementation of this if you aren't being clear in your games about the players information of the situation they're in and options then your players are going to be aimless or just resort to murder hoboing as there's at least clear mechanics for that.

Pro tip: stop using "puzzles."

The only reason that puzzles work in video games is that the player is trained from the beginning to recognize patterns. If it's glowing, hit it with your sword. If there's a square indentation in the floor, find a square block. Tabletop games are more about analysis than pattern recognition. The glowing things may be imbued with magic, are they dangerous? Are they just the local Flora, or flavor pieces of the background? The square impression in the ground might be an ancient trap door, or a filled in fire pit, or where a large pillar used to stand. Just because it's obvious to you doesn't mean it is to them.
Also, what you call puzzles are not puzzles. When was the last time you had to really think about a puzzle? I'll give you a hint: around 1998. Modern puzzles in games are pattern recognition, not problem solving.
In TTRPGs, you have the unique opportunity to give your players Problem Solving experiences. If you train your players not to think outside the box because the solution to every obstacle is to diddle a doodad that you just finished describing, of course they'll sit there mute when it isn't painfully obvious what rock they need to push in or whatever.

Your advice for the current situation is dogshit, but I'll be damned if that's not a great game concept.

Literally the plot of Crank

What a clusterfuck. Have you been playing the same campaign this whole time? It doesn't matter that much, but what system?

If I were in your position, I'd start by dumbing things down a bit.
>Play a simpler system so they don't get confused by all the crap on the character sheet.
>start with straightforward problem solving (ie, there's a bad guy guarding the door, but he's fallen asleep. His dog rests at his feet)

That's an excellent way to put it!

These are more like "puzzles". The problem is fairly obvious, the solution is open ended.
goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2016/03/1d135-osr-style-challenges.html

That's a fantastic find! Very interesting scenarios, some of them.

Never ever make a puzzle with a fucking solution in mind. Come up with a puzzle scenario like:
>there's a giant stone door
>the door has 4 doorknobs set in steel skulls, gold, silver, brass, and wood
>as you turn a knob the jaws of the skulls close and they are magically sharp
>inset in the middle of the door is a face of a woman that seems vaguely familiar

Now what's the solution to this door? I don't have any idea. But after my players come up with 1d4 clever ideas I'll let them open it. Come up with an interesting scenario and let the players just work at it.

What system are you playing? Because my players were very very much like this and they started on DnD in 4e. We swapped over to Dogs in the Vineyard because that's all about narrating what your character does and driving the players towards the action.

Now the flip side of going to a mechanically more crunchy system is what we're struggling with, but I'll take that over "I attack with my daily" anyday.

As others have said beware puzzles, if you really want to itch that itch throw a sphinx at them. There's plenty of websites that have riddles for you to ask, my players in the 1 shot actually quite enjoyed the Androsphinx encounter.

>Riddles
Make them put their phones on the fucking table though.

Simple mathematical logic puzzles, yes. Doesn't matter if "their character wouldn't know the solution" because that is not the point.
The ones that frustrate are semantic riddles "speak friend and enter" or philosophical riddles.

Oh and never, ever make it the only way to progress. Even the Fellowship had a choice.

I just don't introduce NPCs unless the players seek them out. Ill tell them rumors but they have to follow up on them.
NPCs rarely "coincidentally" run into the PCs. I don't give a shit if they sit there all night with their thumbs up their asses. I'm not going to spoon feed the players.

>i have to out of game point out stuff they should do since we've been sitting in silence for 5 minutes.
Start by simply treating their silence as their characters doing nothing. If they freeze up in battle then their characters just skip their turn. If they aren't hopeless they should change their tune quickly.

I always find this really lame. I understand that you don't want to bottleneck at a puzzle but it really removes agency when you basically make all the players choices effectively meaningless.

I think it's better to think of 3 concrete ways for a puzzle to be resolved so they have multiple ways of resolving a puzzle but it's not totally arbitrary and devoid of though.

>giving the players a completely open ended solution
>removes agency
Right.

Kill them in their sleep. No players No problems

seems legit. thanks Veeky Forums

It's not open ended though in the example. If whatever they do leads to the same choice then there's no choice or outcome just a shitty illusion.

From a roleplay perspective why did whoever designed this dungeon design a puzzle that could be solved with any solution?

I've used that example with two different groups. One group figured it was a doorknob sequence of least valuable to most valuable door knobs and they were right.

The other spoke the full name of the ancient warrior whose face was on the door and were able to open its mouth to reveal a hidden fifth doorknob and they were right too.

I don't have a solution in mind, I let my players be clever and solve thing.

>players be clever and solve thing.

But they're not being clever or solving anything as there's no actual solution.

It's like printing a chess puzzle to.mate im 4 moves and someone saying 'what if I win by flipping the chess board over and the author of the puzzle going 'genius you win'

I had a DM once tell me we were locked in a room filling with poisonous gas, he pulled out an egg timer turned it to 5 minutes and slammed a rubiks cube down on the table.

He was a fucking asshole and you sound like one too.

Projecting detected

i would get a good laugh from that. i would then question the GM for his intentions, is he being a dick and saying we have to solve the rubiks cube? and why hes doing this?

(4 fucking Captchas are your for real??)

Do this. Give them several different options of What they CAN do, but he explicit that any other ideas they have can work goo. Part of the role as gm is to he the bridge between player knowledge and character knowledge. Hopefully, as time goes on with this, they'll come upnwith there own plans, but if not, at least you'll he creating an engaging narrative (more engaging than players sitting blank faced in silence.)

Just giving them info and then stareing at then blank faced waiting for them to come up with something is a surefire way to stall out a game.

Yea that's what I'm suggesting.

Take the puzzle for the fellowship to get into Moria I'm LOTR.

Designing that for a D&D game I'd say the players could get through by answering the riddle 'Mellon' , likewise the door could be wrenched open with say a DC 25 strength check, or a DC 20 arcana check could be used to disable the arcane lock blocking the door . Likewise anything else reasonable they could think of would work. The watcher attacks them in 1d12 rounds to give them a a time limit. But the answer to the puzzle/riddle on the door would always be Mellon.

In the bad example from my perspective whatever word the players say from Badgers to cake, to toilet lets them in if they vaguely justify it which makes no sense from a roleplay perspective, is totally arbitrary and denies player agency as their choice is meaningless and likewise the player who guessed it wrong is equally as valid as the one who actually got it right.