Today’s the day, it’s the start of your new campaign. You held your session 0, got all the players together and ran them through creating a group ready to embark on the adventures you’re about to set in front of them. And then, an hour or two into the campaign, there’s no enthusiasm, no buying in for the plot hooks. The players look disinterested, the characters aren’t meshing like everyone thought, it seems to be a train wreck. Have you had this happen before? Or something similar, like something tragic happens and your players suddenly dislike the way the game is going? Are you ready to handle this if it occurs?
Hopefully the above won’t happen in your home game, but being prepared for it is something a GM should always be ready for, and one of the ways to be ready for it is to know your players pretty well. Or, maybe a bit more specific, know the type of experience that your players are looking to have with the game you are running. Are they looking for those big gorram hero moments? Are they more into smashing and bashing their way through with little in the way of dialogue with each other? How do they feel about failure in a game? What does failure mean to them?
I bring this up because recently I realized something about myself as a player; I don’t really like the “no win” scenario, or at least the very low chance of successfully defying the odds that were stacked against you. While it hit me just recently for TTRPGs, I’d known about it for longer as it came to board games. If you’re familiar at all with a game called Shadows Over Camelot, you know that the game is one that you just are not going to win all the time. Truth be told, you aren’t likely to win all that often when playing that game. Not only is the “enemy” given an advantage against you to start with, there is also a traitor mechanic where one of the players at the table is out to sabotage the rest of the group from achieving their goals. Please note, I am not trying to knock the game at all. It’s wonderfully designed and can be fun to play.
For me though, knowing that the game is slanted against the players, and that someone within the group is working against the rest of the party rankles me, even though I know it’s a mechanic of the game. So for me, I’ll likely tend to avoid games where this is the norm; games that the players are meant to get so far but ultimately fail, or where the mechanics lend themselves to the party turning on each other in a quest for personal power (or various other reasons). If I know the GM, and know how they run their games, I may be open to it. I’m just less likely to sit myself at a convention table with someone I don’t know for a system that is known for these types of scenarios.
Returning to the overall topic of the blog, this type of knowledge about your players will help immensely in the long run of planning out your campaigns. You’ll know what excites them the most about a game, and some of the more negative actions that you, at the very least, want to lean on less heavily within a game. I would never say to throw out all the mechanics that players say they dislike, because you want to have enough tools in your GM belt to keep the players on their toes, involved, and enrapt in the story you and they are weaving collaboratively. You just want to be aware of what the players are looking for at the onset of the game, and then check in with them periodically throughout the story to see how things are going. Keep an eye on your players at the table as you introduce plot points or mechanics that they might have issues with, and gauge how they are doing with it. Set up some time to talk with them after the session or the next day, to see how they felt about things. Communication is key in this process to keep your players engaged in the game, and to keep everyone having a good time.
You might ask, what about a convention game, where you won’t know the players before hand? Or you might not know the GM for a game that sounds interesting that you want to play in? For running the convention game, you may want to make sure players are aware of what the session will entail at the onset, see if anyone has any trouble with it. For joining a game with a GM you’ve never played with in a game that maybe has some elements you’re not sure about, you’ll have to know yourself well enough to try something a bit outside your comfort zone. Be willing to communicate with the players and the GM, and make use of any safety tools (like the X Card or similar tools) if things go in a way you don’t like. Gaming should be fun for everyone, it can just take a little extra communication to get there.