How do I get younger, less experienced roleplayers to act and think for themselves?

Question

I have been running a campaign for a group of 8 people.

Two people in the campaign are mid age, very experienced, and know what they are doing.

6 people in the campaign are young and inexperienced, and don't now what to do. They just follow the other two, which is fine for a short period of time.

How do you get the other two to take a back seat and get the other six to play and take part more?

I tried asking the six players what do they want to do, but they just follow the other two. I tried separating the six from the other two, and get them to do puzzles and quizzes and mazes without them, but then the other two get annoyed saying things like "It's not that hard guys" and "they take forever".

Basically, the six get fed up of "the Two" controlling everything and running the show while "the Two" get fed up of the 6 taking too long and not thinking for themselves.

Answer 1

You should run a session with only the 6 less experienced players once.

Let them play their characters in a side quest, for which they won't get help/pressure from the 2 experienced players. Don't run a too complex quest, but try to face them with multiple challenges, like puzzles, traps, social interactions, monsters and even a boss, maybe.

When playing, do not let one player take the lead. Ask all of them what they want to try, how they want to react. In combat, the initiative order takes care of that, but for the rest, all the players should be equally involved.

Encourage them to be creative with their actions, even if it does not match what you prepared for the quest. They want to explode the stone door instead of finding the key ? Fine ! They choose to intimidate the merchant to get food ? Let them try, but set a relatively high DC and/or add consequences if they do so !

Reducing the size of your group is really the good way to give each player the chance to get involved and try new things. You could also try to split the party in two groups of 4, each one with an experienced player ! Run separate sessions, and ask your experienced player to teach what he and his character know to the other players, like a mentor ! Everybody can - and should - always learn new things :-)

Answer 2

IMHO I think that you have two difficulties here:

• The younger players naturally follow the elder players.

• Your group is too large.

How can you start to resolve this situation?

You may want to temporarily split the group so that the more advanced players and the rookies can each game at their own pace, and so the younger ones can think for themselves without feeling the need to rush or impress the elders.

As soon as the younger ones catch up you can recombine your groups.

If your players don't want to split, the elder players could do the "Gandalf": "Of course, you could do this quest on your own in like 15 minutes, but you decided to just be there, give vague advice, and let the young ones figure it out while you smoke the pipe." I think Gandalf was stoned throughout the whole story.

Edit: Since the edit to the question, I absolutely think you should split your group.

Answer 3

You could ask the more experience players to mentor the less experience ones. the mentoring can take the form of explaining the system, how to use their abilities to the best effect, and offering advise as to how to get better at role playing. As long as it is constructive criticism, then all is fine.

A similar approach would be to make the two experience characters the mentors of the rest of the party.

Clearly, this must not devolve into a master and his three apprentices. ☺

PS: Others have said it already but your group is way too big for inexperience players to come out of their shell. I would split the game into two.

Answer 4

As others have said, splitting the 2 more experienced players off from the group and letting the 6 newer have their own moment in the sun is a great idea. I strongly recommend that, if possible. (It may not be, for many reasons.)

You should also talk privately with the experienced players and remind them that:

• The game is supposed to be fun for everyone
• They were new once too

Get their take on the situation, and ask them to back off a little and give the new players a chance to learn.

Some puzzles may have solutions that require more than one action to complete - akin to the "turn 2 keys simultaneously" that we see in fail-safe situations. Set up a scenario where there are 3 (or more) puzzle parts that all must be completed together. Once one team member has committed to solving a part, he is effectively shut off from working on the other parts. This will force everyone to work the puzzles and keep the experienced players out of the action temporarily. You can even "rubber-band" the situation a bit by having several versions of each puzzle and feed the experienced players the hard puzzles while the new players get simpler ones - thus they'll all finish in roughly the same "real time" and you don't get arguments about "how simple" or "how long" things are taking. (Of course, your experienced players may complain about it not being fair, but a reasonable player will understand why you did it.)

Finally, consider creating puzzles that will actually pit the two experienced players against each other in some way - maybe the solution requires giving up an ability for a period of time, or burning a magic item, or some other moral/ethical decision based on their characters. If they're busy maneuvering against each other, then the newer characters can decide whether to back one side or the other, or find a different solution. Or you can use that time to let the new characters do something totally different and build their skills that way.

Answer 5

You should maybe do a non-gaming meeting once in a while where your players can talk about the game and the characters and the rules without actually gaming. Prepare some questions as to figure out what everyone is expecting out of roleplaying in general. Let the experienced players tell a few anecdotes from past games and give the less experienced players time to ask questions and read up on rules.

Figure out why the less experienced players do not know what to do. Do they not know the rules? Are they afraid to do something wrong? Don't they know what roleplaying is about? Are they shy to speak up?

You can come up with a decision making process that shortens the wait time for the rest of the group. Like default options in combat or suggesting (several) pathes of action yourself based on the character instead of letting the experienced players make other players decisions.

Either way handling 8 players of either experience level is lot of work, and you should definitely tell your more experienced players to have more patience due to the amount of players.

Answer 6

The same way you maintain autonomous behavior in older players. Allow them to act autonomously. Younger players can build confidence by overcoming smaller challenges. And with confidence comes the desire to think for themselves.