Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 195 - Uninterested Characters and Players

Episode Date: October 8, 2023

There are two problems I’ve seen regarding interest level:  characters who don’t seem to be buying in to the story and players who don’t seem to be interested in the game.  These situations have multiple possible solutions but require a little nuance to address.  In this episode, I talk about the symptoms of these problems and ways you can possibly address them.   #dnd #Pathfinder2e #DMTips #5e #PleasePayAttention   Resources: https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/11wmccd/uninterested_character_problem/ https://youtu.be/LQsJSqn71Fw

This week on the Taking 20 Podcast. Just in general, they don't treat the threat posed by the big bad as real. There's no immersion or engagement. They just don't seem to care at all about the game, the stakes, or the consequences. Unless it directly affects them, they won't invest in the game or situation at all. Thank you for listening to the Taking 20 Podcast, episode 195. Tips for DMs about characters and players that won't engage with the story. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Engineers.

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Thank you again, Brandon, for sponsoring the giveaway. I greatly appreciate your support of my podcast. Two problems I see complained about pretty regularly on social media, discussion boards, and Discord are players and characters that won't engage with the story for whatever reason. To make sure we're on the same page, I want to start off by making sure we all know what we mean by characters and players. I use this example regularly, so if you've heard it before, I apologize. If you hit a character with a hammer, they will take 1d6 damage. If you hit a player with a hammer, you will go to jail.

Players are those things sitting around your table, whether physically or virtually, that breathe and live and eat. Whereas the characters are represented by numbers on the character sheet. We good? Okay, good. First off, uninterested characters and uninterested players are two completely different problems that require different solutions. But I want to start with the easier problem to solve. Disinterested characters are characters in the game who won't engage with the story or the world in any meaningful way. It's like the character knows they're in a game. Nothing's real and nothing really matters and they act that way. The character

doesn't react realistically to in-game situations. One of their in-game friends gets disabled and catches on fire. They shrug and go back to their word puzzle. A group of civilians are put in danger by a big bad time bomb. They go out for takeaway. A world-ending threat emerges. They don't care. They just say, I can go to a different world or a different plane of existence. Just in general, they don't treat the threat posed by the big bad as real. There's no immersion or engagement. They just don't seem to care at all about the game, the stakes, or the consequences. Unless it directly affects them, they won't invest in the game or situation at all. You know what? Let me try to

explain it another way. I once heard a non-tabletop player derisively describe tabletop RPGs as a, quote, shared group hallucination that doesn't involve drugs. And they were very confused when I got excited and said, yeah, you get it. It's awesome. We all know in our heart of hearts that the game we're playing around the table or the virtual tabletop isn't real. The characters we make aren't real. The big bad isn't real. The encounters thrown at the characters aren't real, and no one at the table is in danger of really getting gored to death by a Minotaur in the next six seconds.

But we should be playing as if our characters could have that happen during the Minotaur fight, and both the characters and the players should engage and react as if they don't want that to happen to themselves or their friends. The game and the adventure are not real, but our characters should react as if it were. That's part of the group-shared hallucination that is tabletop roleplaying games. And we should be playing our characters in a way that either helps keep others immersed or at a minimum doesn't actively seek to break their immersion. Absolutely this is true for heavy roleplay games where there's a lot of emoting and speaking in character. But even in a more tactical game, very little roleplay, we should be treating the battles, the social encounters, the interactions with NPCs and others with at least a dash, a touch of reality.

The word I've been dancing around is verisimilitude, the appearance of being true, the simulation of reality. And I believe characters and players should treat the game with a touch of verisimilitude. players should treat the game with a touch of verisimilitude. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that every character should emote and buy in at 100% every single game, all in or nothing. But for the sake of a good game, everyone should at least buy in enough that shows their character cares about their motivations, their goals, treats companions and NPCs and risks and threats as if they were real. But Jeremy, my character doesn't connect to anyone or anything, and they really wouldn't care if the puppy orphanage exploded. Okay, fine. Everyone has the right to make the character they want.

But by doing so, you've made a character that will never choose to join the story with the other characters. You've made one that's inert and unresponsive to the world and the situation, and that's, frankly, boring and not really supportive of the other characters in the adventure, or your DM for that matter. One of the core foundations of most tabletop RPGs is a social contract between the GM and the players of in-game behaviors, how the characters will behave to each other, and how they will buy into the game world.

No one's an agent of the big bad. Everyone works for the good of the group. Details about the lethality of the game, the theme of the game, within the game world, and other in-game concerns. But the social contract doesn't just include in-game material. It also includes out-of-game or at-the-table agreements. What rules are being used and discarded?

The duration of sessions, scheduling of games, the theme of the game, how to handle potentially triggering or uncomfortable situations, how lore is conveyed, and how you as a player should engage in the game. A lot of the same points about in-game engagement could be applied to player engagement as well. This social contract about how you'll behave around the table and towards other players in the DM is an important aspect of RPG role playing for all of us. There is a level of respect that you as a player are expected to show at the table. Respect for the time, effort, and labor of love that your DM is pouring out every single session so you and the other

players can have a good time. Respect for your other players that you'll support their roleplay and support their fun just as they will support yours. Players, when you don't act like you're interested in what's going on at the table, it can quickly turn into a situation where your GM and the other players feel like you don't care. They'll feel disrespected. Now, okay, I can hear some listeners saying, well, when it's not my turn, I look at my phone because I'm bored or such and such takes too long to take their turn or some other reason. here's what I want you to consider. How could your action be perceived by others at the table? If you spend all your time when it's not your turn looking at social media, browsing through your likes and shares, reading headlines,

looking at porn, whatever you're doing on your device between your turns, it's easy for the others to assume that you've switched off, tuned out, don't know what's going on. And then when it does come around to your turn and your first words are, Yeah, sorry, what are we doing? We know you've tuned out, and whatever you're doing on your phone is more important than the shared narrative you're weaving with the DM and the other players. Please note, I am not talking about people with situations or conditions that may make it hard to concentrate on one activity for a long period of time. I have yet to meet a player who wouldn't give those of you in such situations every benefit of the doubt and happily game with you at the table,

providing you whatever accommodations you would need so you could have a good time as well. If that's you, I'm not talking about you when I talk about these concerns. However, consider that some of us only get one to two game sessions a week if we're lucky, and we look forward to them all week long. My late Saturday night game with my DM Tom and fellow players Paul, Richard, Rob, and Ruben, I know a lot of our names, that game session is the equivalent of Pathfinder 2E bliss for me. They are all brilliant and talented and a joy to be with.

But if one of them, me for example, was not paying attention and never knew what was going on, had no idea what the other characters' tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses were, then I'm a burden to that group, plain and simple. There was a time when I let myself get distracted during that game and I would try to answer work emails mid-session, but I realized that wasn't fair to the other players, my brothers who seem to enjoy the game just as much as I do. I've learned to turn off my phone notifications because my 9 to 5 is cyber security and I'll just say that dumb

asses click on phishing links left, right, and sideways. I won't go into my cybersecurity rant here, but I'll just say if you get emailed by somebody who doesn't sound like them and isn't from their official company address and they're asking you to go buy, I don't know, Apple gift cards, fucking call somebody to verify it at their official number. Wow, sorry, I kind of went somewhere work-related. Let me reel that back in. To reinforce the point I was making, Wow, sorry, I kind of went somewhere work-related. Let me reel that back in.

To reinforce the point I was making, there's a social contract between characters and one between players. When your character is uninterested in the world and the character seems uninterested in the game, then that's a violation of that social contract. Doubly true when the player seems uninterested in the game and seems to have tuned out. Rarely, by the way, this social contract I keep talking about, rarely is it ever written down in-game or out-of-game,

or even discussed at length, a lot of times, maybe not at all. Or if it is, it's only during session zero. This contract, written or not, likely not, spoken or not, probably not even that, is in effect every time you sit down at a physical or virtual table, and it is critical that everyone around the table be on the same page so everyone can have a good time. It details how you should behave around the table and toward each other. Again, whether it's spoken or written or not.

DMs, before you use this episode as an excuse to march up to the player who doesn't roleplay the way the other players do, I need you to take a deep breath and listen carefully to this next sentence. There is a world of difference between players that won't engage at all and players that won't engage in the way you want them to. In the case of a player being completely disinterested and not interacting at any substantial level, I recommend you speak to the player one-on-one and ask them again with no

one else from your game even in the same room, are you enjoying the game? Are you enjoying the other players? Are you enjoying interacting with the other characters? Are there parts of the game that you don't enjoy and what are they? What parts of the game do you enjoy? And can you tell me what's pulling your attention away from the game and how I can help you alleviate any distractions? And I can't say this enough, listen to what they have to say. Give them the ability to speak freely, without judgment, without contradiction, and without interruption. You need to get to the heart of why they're not engaging. The most common cause of player disengagement I've noticed is cell phone usage during the game. I get it, believe me, I'm

on call 24 hours a day. We have work, oceans of memes, funny pictures, stories, gaming jokes right in our hands, purses, or bags, and the temptation is there to get pulled into it. But I want to encourage all players listening to resist and stay focused in the game. DMs, is there one player who gets lost on their cell phone and disconnects from the game for extended periods of time? If so, consider requesting people not use their cell phones except during breaks or maybe even put them away entirely. If you make this request and people continue to use their cell phones anyway, call the game session end a little bit early and cite the cell phones as the reason.

It sounds a lot like how you handle kindergartners, but if your players do not appreciate the hard work that goes into preparing for a game, maybe it's time to talk to them about that hard work you put in, and worse comes to worse, find another group. Sometimes game sessions will go on too long without a break and people will start to tune out. That certainly is a very real possibility. In DMs, I'd recommend at least a 5-10 minute break every 2 hours or so, and maybe a touch longer if you can. Let people take bio breaks, get something to eat or drink, or even just walk around, stretch their legs, and refresh their brains.

Now, if the problem is that the player doesn't participate in the game the way you want as a DM, that's usually down to a mismatch of game expectations. In that case, talk to all the players and ask them very frank about what type of game they want to play. Do they want one with lots of social encounters, speaking in character, role-playing as if it's real, improv, miming, or whatever else is part of your game. Get down to what level of immersion people want in this game, and if you want to run that type of game, run it. But if one player wants something different, like they want something more akin to a stage play where they're in full four-alarm role-play mode all the time and the rest of the people around the table want to be more audience members, as Matt Colville describes them, and I'll include a link to his video in the resources, then you have a mismatch, and as painful as it is to say,

that other player who's looking for something different may enjoy a different game more than yours. That doesn't mean I'm saying you kick them out from your table immediately, but if you decided you're going to run the game a certain way and the player wants something different, then they're going to be miserable. I would make sure I have that conversation with that player to make sure you can set those expectations. And if the player does want something different, then they may have a lot more fun at another table. Personally, as a GM, I'd rather someone have a ton of fun in this hobby at another table than suffering through the way I play. As a corollary to that, DMs, if most of your table point to one person who's either deadweight compared to the other players,

or they are method acting while everyone else isn't comfortable with it, it's time to make that difficult decision and have that difficult discussion with the table in general and the player in particular. DMs. If character or player disinterest is hurting your game, have a conversation with the player or players to make sure that you're on the same page when it comes to the type of game they want,

the theme, the duration, etc. Players. You have to make a choice when you make your characters, how involved and invested they are in the game. I would encourage you to buy in as much as you feel comfortable to, all the way up to 100% if you feel comfortable doing it. No one really likes hanging around with someone who doesn't appear to give a shit, so make sure your character does.

And players, if you get distracted between turns and it's because, I don't know, combat is boring or takes too long, you don't feel like your character can be involved in social interactions, I would encourage you to double down on your engagement in the game. Ask to help other characters or the DM with certain baddies or certain activities. Keep track of initiative, hit points, or spell effects. Choose to engage more with the game and choose to make your character engage more. I'd bet you and your players would have fun if you did it. Thank you so much for listening. Please

give this podcast a like and a rating wherever you happen to find it. Share it on social media if you could. It would go a long way to helping this podcast reach other listeners. Tune in next week when we'll talk about running your campaign by focusing on problems instead of plots. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Engineers. Two engineers were shown a picture of two cats sitting on a slanted roof and asked which one would fall off the roof first. Their answer? The one with the smallest mew. You see, because me mu is the coefficient of friction, and I just wanted to use my undergraduate degree in physics for something. Yeah. This has been episode 195, Dealing with Uninterested Characters and Players.

My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2023. References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.