Hot answers tagged groups
51
I think it boils down mainly to the winning two step formula of
Invite females to play
Don't be a dick to them when they do
Step one should be fairly self explanatory, but for some reason many people worrying about this topic skip it. Try it, it works. My roommate was talking to a manager lady at work about an unexpectedly shared interest in Babylon 5, ...
42
Two words: Dramatic Exit
Though others adequately attempt to help with the group dynamics, I'll answer the question as asked instead: "How do I quit a game gracefully?" and work my way around to the same place.
Work within the fantasy. Make appologies to the GM and offer to work with him/her to make it work within the story of the game. Make your last ...
36
Sounds like you have a couple separate issues mixed in together.
Uneven Spotlight Time
If only some characters are engaged in the planning, make sure and spread the spotlight time around to the others. After 5 minutes of the planning characters doing their thing, go around to the other characters and get 5 minutes of what they're doing, don't let the ...
34
Ask more generally about their comfort boundaries
Tell the party that you have some ideas you think might be crossing the line, and ask them where they'd like the line to be drawn. In that context you might even give examples and include something similar to your idea as just one of several.
Throw in a scaled-down version as a test
Use the general concept ...
33
"For every 5 minutes you spend planning realtime, an [hour/day/week/whatever's appropriate] goes by game time. Over 10 minutes realtime and I start checking to see if the enemy gets wind of your plans and uses it against you. Let's get this thing moving!"
Especially in a game where logistics and character death aren't core parts of play, putting pressure on ...
32
As with any motivational approaches, there's the carrot and the stick. You have to be careful to not simply be permissive of the late behavior, or else you won't incentivize the people who are showing up on time to do so.
Start at a known time and allow a buffer. On our group we have a "doors open" time and a "game" time, to allow for people to show up ...
26
As noted, this is a player decision rather than a GM one. However, here is the system that one of my groups used to good effect in the past:
Loot is pooled until the end of the night or adventure (although particularly powerful upgrades may be lent out on a temporary basis).
Calculate the total sell value of the pool of items (that is, how much the players ...
23
Female gamer geek, checking in with 2 cents...
It's okay to treat women/girls like "one of the guys" -- as a matter of fact, it's preferable. Walking on eggshells around us is just as much unwanted attention as never taking your eyes off our breasts. Ignore people who suggest you have to communicate differently, be PC, etc. to get female players: the ...
22
I think you are right in assuming that "everyone pulls their own weight" is not very helpful or realistic. However, everyone can pull different weight.
In my group I'm the host, which means I clean up after my friends. In return, I don't have to travel on game night - an even trade as far as I'm concerned.
I think when you are the "one in charge", you ...
22
Roles Really Aren’t That Important in 3.5
To begin, spells are the most powerful class feature in the game. Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 doesn’t really care much about roles: you will be more powerful the more magic you have. You will never be more powerful going for a non-magic class, even if the rest of your group is already magical. So I call ...
20
Welcome and great question! You have two major paths you can try.
More Social Characters
One of the joys of roleplaying is trying out things different from yourself. And personality types are as much a part of that as being an elf or a dwarf. You can do research (read How To Win Friends and Influence People, watch some of those personal-makeover shows, ...
19
Don't lie about it and don't cause drama. Just tell them you need to back out of the game for a while.
I quit all my games every several years. I get really burnt out on tabletop gaming and it stops being fun until I take a 6-12 month break. Whenever I've come back from such a break is when I've had the most fun and come up with my best characters. I've ...
19
I'm going to go against the prevailing advice here:
If the other players won't let you play a character that you find interesting, because that character won't "pull its weight" in combat, they're violating Wheaton's Law.
If you want to play a character that is ineffective in combat but effective in other situations, that is your right as a player. You ...
18
I'm currently running a weekly game and think I've hit upon a series of tactics that, for me, works better than anything else I've tried thus far.
1) Regularly Scheduled One Off Night - Most gamers suffer from a bit of magpie behavior (flitting from one shiny object to another) and that's not necessarily a bad thing. To create an outlet for this, we have ...
18
Much like with kids and animals, routine helps.
Accept that a certain amount of socializing will always happen at the beginning of the game, and allow it to happen.
before you start the session
A half hour before you (as the GM) would like to start playing, put the food away and take out the books, dice, miniatures and other paraphernalia that you ...
17
I don't think you should change anything about the game itself. You just need to invite female players and make sure they feel comfortable. If they show up and spend more time brushing off unwanted advances than rolling dice, they're not going to have fun and they're going to leave. Even if they think you're inviting them to the game just because they're ...
17
Crossdressing For Success
I play a character of a different gender than myself about 25% of the time judging from a review of my recent past characters. I think it's a great roleplaying challenge and is a lot of fun. Of course when I GM I run female characters all the time as a routine part of any game session, too.
"It's weird"
Though I've seen ...
16
The first thing is: get a game that inspires them. Without that, you're sunk. Often, settings will inspire people: try Poison'd, Kagematsu, Prime Time Adventures, Mouse Guard, Burning Wheel or a specific Fiasco playset. If you can, get them to choose one themselves.
Particularly, try a game with a GM. This does two things. Firstly, it gives them some ...
16
"A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community. I've decided that I've got to be practical myself, and that's one of the rules. How about breakfast?" The Pirates of Ersatz, Murray Leinster
From your question I noticed a few things. Nominally, I completely agree with ...
16
This always seems to be the answer, but...
Talk to the player first.
I'm assuming you have some means of contacting your players outside your normal game time, if only to set up game or let each other know of cancellations or emergencies. Send your player a message, something along the lines of "Hey, I've noticed that you seem dissatisfied at game lately. ...
15
Have you thought about breaking it up into two groups in the same campaign setting? That might be a way to make it more manageable. To get the quieter people involved, you will have to give their character information or knowledge that no one else has and get them to share it. This requires a bit of enforcement regarding what is in-character vs. ...
15
In Spirit of the Century, in character generation you specifically include other PCs as "guest stars" in parts of your origin, linking them with common experiences (and, optionally, skills). This got inherited by Dresden Files and other later FATE-based stuff like Disapora, Starblazer Adventures, and optionally in Strands of FATE.
In Ars Magica, the troupe ...
14
I notice that you didn't tag this question with a D&D tag, so I'm going to add an answer that doesn't assume D&D party dynamics.
If both players want their characters to get a particular piece of loot, awesome! They have their characters in a conflict, which is what makes stories interesting. Run with it. In this case, I would turn it over to the ...
14
I've mostly played RPGs as a PC, so I'll give you my opinion from that perspective. This is essentially a reiteration of the above bits of advice, so I'm not adding anything. But I thought you might value a PC's perspective. For the record, I tend to be a member of the group that just wants to get things moving.
My regular GM, in situations like you ...
14
Since I didn't see another answer I could comment with this on, pre-game (de)briefing could be an advantage to the players that doesn't rock the boat too much.
I have had this problem a lot because I was/am part of a gaming community at a college, which is subject to rampant schedule changes running the gamut from early for to completely missing a game. ...
13
Stop making kill-then-search a workable response to the problems they face.
The first aspect of this is to make combat dangerous. If you don't want to make it deadly, then at least make it have long-term negative consequences, as Richard outlined.
The second is to throw problems at them that they can't solve just by killing things. In a dungeon, "tricks ...
13
On the chance that this doesn't get merged into a different question, I'll go ahead and answer.
Specifically you're asking about ways to speed up play. My group has in the past implemented a couple of rules:
30 Second Decision time in combat - As in, know approximately what you want to do before your turn comes around, because once it does you have 30 ...
13
Here are the steps I would take:
Make sure you understand the group's current goals.
Get together with just the new player and work together to design a character that has at least one common interest with the other characters.
Still with the new player, design a scene where the new player meets the party.
On your own, design a scenario where the new ...
13
We had this happen once. She always said it was her character.
Eventually, in the middle of a dungeon, she tried to loot another (unconscious) player's body. The rest of us knocked her character out, left her to get eaten by the giant insects, and took the other unconscious PC to get healed.
That was us responding in character. We invited her to create a ...
13
Skip to the good stuff. It's not as easy to schedule marathon gaming sessions, but three or four hours a week is not as hard to arrange — the trick is making sure that those three or four hours are filled with the sort of thing that you and your fellow players really enjoy. (I might have continued with "…rather than interminable shopping trips, ...
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