Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 117 - How to Make Your Players Care

Episode Date: March 20, 2022

We've all been there.  We put together this little adventure of daring adventurers doing amazing things to save those that need saving.  Our bad guys are clever, the twist is unexpected and you've worked hours to make sure everything is balanced...and come game night, your players can't even be arsed to learn the quest giver's name or why clearing out the ankhegs is even important. In this episode, I discuss the difficulty of getting players to care, some techniques to make it easier, and close the episode wtih a little fireside chat with the players on the topic. #DnD #RPG #DungeonsandDragons #Pathfinder

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. If your NPCs are believable, it makes it easier for the players to believe they're real. And if the PCs believe they're real, that's how you get them to emotionally invest. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 117 of the Taking20 Podcast. This week, all about how to make players care. This week's sponsor, pigs. If your pig loses its voice, it's become disgruntled. Don't forget, episode 120 will be the listener mailbag episode.

I've received a few questions, but I would love to get more. Please send them to feedback at taking20podcast.com or to any of my social media pres feedback at taking20podcast.com or to any of my social media presences at Taking20Podcast. Today's fantastic question was sent in by Devin in Flint, Michigan, and wow, is it a doozy. How do you get your players to care about the game? Thank you so much for the question, Devin, and let's dive right in. I don't think I'm overselling it by saying this may be the hardest question I've received so far by any listener. There's so many variables to what makes someone care about something that it's difficult to know what direction to attack this problem from.

So I've decided to answer this in two parts. First for the DMs, and then I want to talk to the players. So DMs, let's start off with a definition. In my mind, care means to emotionally invest. That being said, I have the worst news for you I could give you. There is no way to guarantee your players will care. Ultimately, it's up to your players to decide whether or not they want to care about the game, the adventure, the campaign, or the game session. No, stop the music.

That doesn't mean that there's nothing that you can do. What you can do is make the game easy to care about. And how do I do that, Jeremy? Well, I'm glad you asked. I have some thoughts. Otherwise, there really wouldn't be an episode to record and I could be taking a nap right now. There are some groups where this will be nearly impossible. There are groups that despise role play and they may not engage much with your world. Emotional investment may not be part of the way they like to game, and maybe that's just the way they're wired. Going around talking to NPCs and feeling invested in their plight could be exhausting for them, or they're just not good at it.

Their real world could be an emotional drain, and they don't want that during their weekly gaming session. They want to hit the battle mat, roll dice, discuss round-by-round tactics, and be big damn heroes without worrying about all that quote-unquote mushy stuff. And that's okay. That's the game they want. If you reach this point, though, you probably have to decide if this is the game you want to DM. If you do want to DM a game like this, fine, you probably have to decide if this is the game you want to DM. If you do want

to DM a game like this, fine, press on. But if not, it is time to have a difficult conversation with your group about whether or not the game should even continue. Personally, I would love to run a role-play-heavy campaign with political intrigue, emotional connections, NPCs that feel important to the world. I've run games like that in the past, but my two regular groups right now aren't really all that interested in that deep of a game. So I write. I wait, lurking in the shadows with my story of the great house brought low by scandal, with relatives and enemies waiting to pounce on the once powerful family,

ripping it to shreds and fighting over the remains. And one day, time is right. to pounce on the once powerful family, ripping it to shreds and fighting over the remains. And one day, time is right. We will emerge from the shadows and I will run that game. But until then, what can you do to make your players buy in? What you can do is make it as easy as possible for your players to care, and if they don't, your conscience is clear. You can sow the seeds of emotional investment, and if they don't bite your conscience is clear. You can sow the seeds of emotional investment, and if they don't bite, you've done your part. One thing you can do is make the ground ripe for emotional investment by the players is giving your NPCs emotions.

Tina the Stablehand thinks it's critical for her to get into college. She mentions it casually to one of the characters and talks about how it would change her life, her family's life, for maybe even at least a generation. Be realistic. Think what this would mean for Tina. Tina works in a stable and wants to be, I don't know, a biochemical engineer. Put yourself in Tina's shit kickers and imagine how desperately you'd want to have a path out of working in a stable all day. Now you know how Tina would react to PCs agreeing to take her letter to Stanford on her behalf, much less how she'd react when the party returned with a decision letter. Elation and hugging if she were accepted. Grief and despondence if she wasn't. Emotional reactions

grounded in a real world make it easier for your PCs to react with emotion, invest in the story, and start to care about your game, your world, and the people in it. If your NPCs are believable, it makes it easier for the players to believe they're real. And if the PCs believe they're real, that's how you get them to emotionally invest. Next tip, communication, communication, communication. You should be crystal clear on the goals that the party needs to meet in order to keep the adventure moving forward. But Jeremy, you may be asking, how does that help with player buy-in? I don't know. I've been drinking hand sanitizer all day. Now, it should go without saying that

that was a joke. Please do not go drink hand sanitizer like a dumbass. You will die. Back to topic. Clearly let your players know what level of emotional buy-in you want in your game. Some GMs want to run games that are little more than tactical battle simulators with a flimsy threadbare plot that connects them together. And that's okay. If you want your players to care, make sure they know how important it is to you that they do buy-in and they do connect with the story. If they know that's what you want, they'll tend towards being more emotionally connected. Dovetailing off previous points, give life to your NPCs, and this revolves around DMs lose your fear of roleplaying.

There's a world of difference between you enter the shop, it's kindly dimly lit, and an old man says, what do you want? And you enter the shop, it's dimly lit, and an old man says, what do you want? And you enter the shop. It's dimly lit, and smoky candles burn here and there, giving the room a rather dim light. Just inside the door, a beefy half-orc with a short sword on her hip looks you up and down and then goes back to leaning against the wall. A gnarled elven man walks out from behind the back. He's at least 700 years old, by your reckoning, and he says, Oh, hello. Is there something in particular you're looking for, youngster? Are you just trying to get out of the rain and here to waste my time? The second one has life. You can see it

in your head. The voice and role-playing helps reinforce the description, and it makes the world seem more real. That first example is just a pen and paper description of a shop. The second way of describing it makes it feel like a particular shop with a particular shop owner, and that makes it feel more grounded in reality. Another tip, make your NPCs lovable, despicable, or pitiful. I know I'm leaping to extremes, but the better way to say it would be to make some of your NPCs easy to love, easy to hate, or easy to help.

Not all. Think about your interactions with classmates, coworkers, friends, relatives, people on the street. There's a certain percentage of them that you feel affection for. There's a certain percentage of them that you wouldn't piss on if they were on fire. Large chunks of the people you interact with, though, are just somewhere in the middle. Have those NPCs that are lukewarm, and they get lukewarm reactions from the players. That's fine. But you should also have those NPCs that view the PCs as friends, allies, rivals. They treat them accordingly. In the Skull and Shackles campaign I'm running right now,

a group of people on a pirate ship are rapidly splintering into factions. The neutral, waffling, unsure NPCs are so boring to play. You play up their uncertainties and how they see the benefits of one group over the other, but there's not a lot you can do to spice up neutral. Except when they're being blackmailed into not helping the PCs, or they've been paid not to help the PCs, or they've been threatened not to help but are choosing to do so in secret, on the sly, on the DL.

Do the Utes still say on the DL? I don't know what the modern vernacular is anymore. In secret. Or the one that's playing both sides against the middle. The allies of the PCs are fun to play, though. They can be helpful in unexpected ways, smuggling items and food for the PCs when they're in punishment, and siding with the PCs when they're getting bullied.

But also fun are the antagonistic NPCs. Oh my gosh, they're so much fun to roleplay. If you'll pardon the term, the bullies, bitches, and bastards on that ship can really get under the skin of the players, and when it does, it always puts a smile on my face. I'm pretty sure that points to some sort of character flaw of mine, but my shackles group react more to antagonists than to the kind, sweet, and friendly NPCs, and I love seeing my players emotionally connect with the world. Another thing you can do. Establish one NPC as a confidant to a PC or vice versa. Give one-on-one moments between PCs and NPCs where one could open up to the other.

In games where it's light role-playing or if your players aren't big into role-playing, just have the NPC open up to the PC a little bit. Their hopes, their wishes, their dreams, and their secrets, their desires, whatever. One of the most common movie tropes that you'll find in any movie involving the military especially, there'll always be one soldier who pulls out the picture of a loved one back home. Their family, their wife, their boyfriend, their kids, their mentor, whomever it happens to be. And when that happens, even my son will say out loud, yep, he's dead. You just know they're going to die. This is a letter I've been writing to my

father back home. This is the picture of the girl I'm going to marry when I get back. Or, did I ever tell you about my little Debra? These are moments where characters are opening up to each other. Have some of those in your adventures. Have your NPCs open up to your PCs. Die rolls determine a lot, so there's no guarantee that guard number two, who's missing his daughter's beautiful singing voice, is automatically going to bite it the next campaign. But it does make them feel more real, like real humans or real elves with real goals that they'd like to accomplish. Add these softer sharing moments to the story, and whenever things get quiet and in a little bit of downtime, see if the characters

take the bait. Another thing you can do to make your players care is make sure that your player characters have a role in the story. There's nothing worse than just feeling like you're along for the ride and didn't really do anything. Not every character is the chosen one, destined to save the world of Hyperia from the evil clutches of Baron Von Fartsnacks. But as you're designing the campaign, building the adventure, use the characters' backstories to tie into the narrative. One of my DMs, we ran a Star Wars RPG way back in the day, and I chose not to play a Jedi because I wanted to play a

character that was supporting the Jedi, was a traditional soldier, but didn't have any sort of force powers. The DM at the time, Mark, did a great job of making sure that my character's backstory and wants and desires still were part of the campaign, even though pretty much throughout the campaign, I was pretty much throughout the campaign, I was little more than a support character for these godlike, force-wielding Jedi. But the DM did a great job of making sure that I felt like I was critical to success of the group, mechanically with my skills and narratively with my backstory. And that's a lesson I think we all DMs and GMs can learn. Each character, at least once, should be front and center stage in the spotlight,

made to feel important, made to feel like there's a reason that fate has guided them to be at this place at this time to do this thing, no matter what that happens to be. If the players feel like their characters are important, that'll tend to make the players feel like the game is more important as well. Another thing you should do is give each character a time to shine with their abilities. This may sound similar to the last bullet, but it has a different focus. Characters get cool abilities, and many times a player will agonize over which cool ability to take when their character gains a level. over which cool ability to take when their character gains a level.

They'll weigh pros and cons and they'll look data up and builds online and they'll talk to members of the party. They'll talk to you as the DM and try to figure out what's the best ability for them to take right now at this level. They've agonized over the decision. Give them a chance to be the big damn heroes with that ability. If they took an ability that gives them a chance to be the big damn heroes with that ability. If they took an ability that gives them a poisonous bite attack, let that poison make a difficult encounter a lot easier.

It's going to be hard to sneak into the banquet hall without anyone in the Sanguine Guard noticing. Our best shot is the service entrance with one guard, but he has a shotgun. Two minutes in the campaign later. Okay, so the lone guard at the service entrance for the Sanguine Court lies frothing at the mouth because of Dallian's poisonous bite attack. Are you going to wait until she's dead, or are you going to loot the body now? If Dallian took an ability that gave him a poisonous bite attack, and suddenly everything's immune to poison, you're taking away opportunities for Dallion's player to have them use this cool ability in an adventure. So don't do that to your players. Don't nerf new abilities that they may

gain. Another thing, DM, design your campaign around character goals. The easiest way to do this, by the way, is to connect it to the character's backstory. The character wants to find the magical what's-it- where it's from during the campaign. Even if your campaign is about saving the village of Hassan, at some point, even if you don't have them find the magical what's-it, have them find information that could help the character do that later on down the road. They could go questing for that item, maybe even in a different campaign. Meet that goal, solve that problem, find that item, find that person that they've lost. If the campaign is long enough, I love having the opportunity for the character to meet that goal in campaign. But even if they can't, have them find clues or hints or suggestions

that they could eventually find it later on in their adventuring lives. Now, I mentioned using goals derived from a character's backstory, but that's not the only good source for goals. Sometimes goals unfold or evolve throughout the game. In my Skull and Shackles campaign, the party have grown to absolutely despise a couple of people on the ship. I'm convinced that at least one party member would happily die if it meant one or more of these NPCs died as well. I had no idea that they would grow to despise these couple of particular NPCs so much, but that goal has really evolved as the game has gone on. So start off by designing your campaign with hooks into character

backstories, but be on the lookout for any goals that their players decide that are really, really important for their character and be ready to change the adventure to meet those. It boils down to this. Care requires the players to make decisions based not just on logic, but also emotion. The endorphins or adrenaline released by the player is real, even if the character and the NPC aren't. Using some of these techniques can help the players feel more engaged with the campaign. I can't guarantee that they will, but it makes the ground fertile for emotional attachment to grow. Lastly, though, my beloved GMs,

if you feel yourself getting frustrated with the lack of engagement, talk to your players about it. Tell them how important this is to you, and ask them to engage more, to put more effort in, to care about the NPCs and world that you're building. Good communication is key to almost every relationship you'll ever have, romantic and platonic, so make sure that you spend time talking to your players, letting them know what's important to you and finding out what's important to them. At this point, I want to shift over to

players. Players, hey, let's cozy up together and have a chat, you and I. Comfortable? Can I get you some tea? Are you settled in? Good. Let's take a moment to talk about what you can do to assist your poor DM when it comes to caring about the campaign. First off, fucking pay attention! Do you know how much work it is to be a GM? All the preparation that goes into having a fun little adventure? Oh sure, you show up with your dice cavorting the world for three to four hours and then go on your merry way. Meanwhile, your DM is so damn stressed her toenails are falling off because she's gripping her socks with her toes inside her tennis shoes. So worried that she's not good enough, the adventure won't be gripping her socks with her toes inside her tennis shoes. So worried that she's not good enough, the adventure won't be gripping enough and someone may get upset. We desperately, desperately want you to have a good time,

but you gotta pull a little effort in. Just a little. I'm not even asking you to meet your DM halfway. Have you ever seen the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? I don't care whether you're religious or not, the artwork is beautiful to look at. Go find the picture of God and Adam, because I want

to use it as an allegory for players and DMs. In this picture, your DM is God. And no, I'm not saying DMs are gods. That's not where I'm going. But look how God is reaching towards Adam. He's stretching as far as he can reach. Players, that's your DM right there. Putting in the work, preparing, getting NPCs ready, stressing late at night and early in the morning, designing campaign major bullet points, worrying that they're not good enough, that you guys won't enjoy it. We GMs are reaching, stretching to make sure fun can be had by all. Now look at Adam in that same picture.

Adam is half-heartedly reaching back towards God as if he can't be bothered to put forth any effort. I'd say Adam represents the players in this picture, but to accurately do so, he'd need to be holding a fucking cell phone in his hand, checking social media, looking at funny videos, or, in the case of a recent game I DM'd, streaming an FPS video game while I was GMing. Do not be that player. Engage in the story with your fellow players, the characters, the NPCs.

Learn their names, take some notes, act like you fucking care and your game's gonna be better. I've had players talk to me about other DMs and say, well, the game is boring. And I always ask, what have you done to make it not boring? You're not a baby bird. You don't get to just sit in the nest and open your mouth and expect the DM to vomit good story into your waking beak. And this analogy went a really bad direction.

Good games, good adventures, good sessions require effort by both the DM and the players. This is collaborative storytelling. If your DM wanted to do it all by himself, he'd write a damn novel. Players, find a reason to connect to the story. You wrote your damn backstory. Use it to find a reason your character would care about this adventure or campaign. I don't know how old you are, listener, but I think a lot of us either had or will have a time in our lives when not caring was looked at as a positive thing. That time is sure as hell not at the RPG table. Being disinterested in the story, the characters, the NPCs results in your DM having a worse time,

your fellow players having a worse time, which results in DM having a worse time, your fellow players having a worse time, which results in you having a worse time. Your character decided to save the king's heir, find the king's hair, or harry the enemy monsters for some reason or another. Time to act like it at the table. Don't not participate because that's what your character would do. If that's the case, it's time for you to make a new character that would participate and would care. Players, if your character doesn't want to take on the big bad, save the town, rescue the prince, why the hell are you playing that character?

Retire that shithead. Dayeb the Barbarian can become Dayeb the Turnip Farmer for all we care, and you can bring in Borneg the Magnificent to take their place in the campaign. Since Dayeb didn't place in the campaign. Since Dayeb didn't care about the campaign, he can spend the rest of his days worrying about the pH of the soil while Borneg is elbow deep in basilisk viscera. You know, I'm thinking about writing a cookbook with the name Elbow Deep in Basilisk Viscera and other southern cooking techniques. Send in your comments and recipe suggestions.

Give your character a reason to rise above the rank-and-file rabble where they come from, players. Even if rank-and-file rabble were hobgoblin warriors, expert elven wizards, or stoic dwarven stonemasons, adventuring is dangerous as shit, and most of your average city guard would die horribly midway through their first dungeon. So why does your character want to adventure? There has to be a driving force behind it. Bring that driving force to the table, and it will make connecting to the world easier and will draw you into the game.

Finally, players, stop being so damn cold, calculating, and clinical. We're sitting around a table. We're not actually sitting around the campfire like our characters are. So it's easy to take a long view of things. No one wants to make the tactical error in combat that gives the baddies the advantage. So players will coolly make calculated responses to events that happen in the world. Really? Really?

That's the MF-er that killed your family. Right there. And he just called you a frizzy-haired bitch who isn't strong enough to save him. You've been looking for him for two in-game years and 13 character levels. What you gonna do about it? Hmm? You gonna let him pick up a pizza and go back to his impenetrable fortress? Of course you won't. Now's your chance to avenge your auntie. Now's your chance to make him pay for the pain he caused you. Your character would be excited for this moment. Tap into that character's excitement and show it to the players and the GM around the table. Getting into your character's headspace will automatically make you connect more to the game world, and it will make

the game better. Devin, I wish I had a better answer for you. I really do. I wish I knew the right combination of words to make someone care about a game, adventure, or campaign. All you can do as a DM is make it as easy as possible for your players to care about the world. Roll out the red carpet for them with good communication and clear goals. Up your NPC game to make them easy to love or easy to hate. Having an NPC confide in the PC with their goals and dreams. Giving each PC a role in all or part of the story. And design parts of your campaign around character backstory goals and goals that evolve over time.

Meanwhile, players. Please don't disengage at the table of the virtual tabletop. Find a reason for your character to be there. Have goals for your character and clearly communicate them to the DM. I guarantee with a little effort by the players, you and your GM will have lots of fun doing it. If you like this podcast, please consider resharing my episode posts. I'm getting better about using social media, but honestly, it's never been my strong suit. But I'm starting to share more things from my official accounts. Tune in next week when we'll talk about a suggested topic from Daniel, who donated to my coffee.

Thoughts about harvesting monsters the players kill. But before I go, I want to thank our sponsor, Pigs. Don't let male pigs deliver that important presentation. They're such a bore. Or attention hogs. Or they could get into legal trouble, and they will sue you. Okay, enough puns. That'll do, pig. This has been episode 117, How to Make Players Care.

My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.