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aldantefax posted:Thus far only one player has continued to engage with the Mystery, but it was only fully revealed yesterday. Their enthusiasm is likely bringing other people in to help with session activity. Hey that's me! I was sure that at least one other person was working on that, if not two. The other players aren't super keen on sharing information, a habit that I am guilty of, but I've been working on it. As far as West Marches go, I did attempt to run a West Marches game a few years ago and I did learn a lot of lessons and your game has given me a lot of good ideas. I originally invited a bunch of people and then said I could run Here's what I've learned: -Players won't share information. Most people aren't terribly active outside of session hours and those that are won't talk about their mysterious encounters or strange things happening. If you want to have a cool mystery where different groups get different pieces of information you have to be ready to have it either be passed over or, as the DM, write out your own battle reports and hope someone is interested enough to piece it together themselves. -Each resolved quest needs to lead to at least one but preferably multiple quests. I tried to do a more organic form of introducing quests by having characters see castles, forts, caves, or vague warnings to not go places. Player engagement was always best when players had a list of things they wanted to do. Fax has a quest board that is constantly regenerated to fill the "always leading to more quests" so if players don't have a strong preference they can always do one of those. If this campaign continues on I can see the quest board eventually becoming ignored as players become more financially independent or better revenue streams are discovered/unlocked. If I were doing a more exploration based version of this game I would keep a Discord channel with a list of things to do that players encountered as possible quests. Like one time a group of players passed a fort being held by a necromancer and had a map warning them to not enter the "Cave of Water" but used it as a landmark. I would add those do the channel as possible things to do, rather than relying on the players to remember, keep notes, and tell others in a report. -This one is embarrassing in retrospect, but have much more regularly scheduled times and groups. I had a fantasy dream of having 20 people in a discord, all of whom would talk and organize dynamic groups. This is probably impossible without the most enthusiastic players imaginable. What I would do now is have one or two time slots per week that I would run games and let people show up, after confirming that they can come, of course. Then I'd try to set up the sessions/dungeons/scenarios to resolve completely by the end of 1 or 2 sessions so the group can do their thing and dissolve. At the time I had a bunch of free time so I could run games almost anytime after work. So I tried to set it up where one player would organize a party and then basically meet up with me. But there were only a couple of players interested in organizing groups so the game kind of did a slow burn before smouldering out. The rest of the players felt lost and I was very dedicated to have the mysterious world that only gives information when you ask for it. This didn't work out. Obvious in hindsight, but I hope someone else can learn from my mistake. -If you do want dynamic groups of ever-changing players then I would recommend having one or two hard times to allow for games, like Sunday at 2pm-7pm and Wednesday at 6pm-10pm. Then you take those you'd expect to be the most engaged or active players and bring them aside and explain to them that they're the "power players" and you want them to help organize groups. Effectively recruiting them to help make the game better. Then as the DM you should make a mini-battle report after each session or quest. Just a really simple paragraph of "the players encountered some wild deer that were invested with ivy growing out of their flesh but declined to eat it. They then got to the vault of the Merchant-Knight and managed to unlock it, but only took a quarter of the treasure inside." Just enough to whet the appetite of the curious but passive players to make them engage more. If you only have static groups, such as in Fax's game then you can skip the battle report unless you want to have multiple groups in the same campaign working closely together. -Be generous with information. Most people won't remember what you want them to remember anyways, so the mystery component stays. If it's important repeat it at least three times. Things I've enjoyed as a player in Fax's game: -This is the first time I've had fun doing downtime activities. I like being presented with trying to research about zones and enemies before going into the adventure. -I liked the moment where I discovered that myself and the other wizard player both had encounters with the same psychic ghost squid. I'm dying to solve this multi-group mini-mystery or getting more information on it but the other player doesn't seem interested. I suppose it's another thing to add to the downtime activities list. -The quest board is great. I enjoy being able to poach good quests from other groups and just in general always having something for us to do if we don't feel like pursuing a specific goal. -Mysteries. A nice codified thing that all players can work towards to get group rewards. The players get to clearly pick what interests them and that allows the DM to focus their energy towards that.
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Jan 13, 2021 08:56
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 18:06 |
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