QOTW #11 How do you motivate players to get to the table?

[Onix]

On occasion, life gets in the way of gaming. Weddings, babies, illness, a million things can disrupt the flow of a weekly game. How do you motivate your players to get back into the game and sit down at the table?

I usually start soft, with "we gotta game!" Which is usually met by them agreeing. If exact plans are not fourth coming then I know it's not enough. I then will talk about cool things we've done in games to get their juices flowing.

[kumakami]

AH the age old dilemma....now that life has gotten a little quieter.....when and what do play?

I do the "we gotta game" thing too, the hardest part is finding the time to do so...on a side note I'm thinking about remotivating my self to finish the fixes and updates to F.O.G. by starting another PbP on 1km1kt......just to use this thread for my own needs

[Abstract Machine]

It's a toughie. Nostalgia & reminiscences are fun but transient. We can all agree to get the band back together but moving people on to something interesting that doesn't seem like a whole lot of effort is harder, not least because you have to pretend like it's easy.

And let's face it: none of the bands we know who've got back together seem quite what they were. They're not unusual anymore.

And, yep, we're all tired & in a bit of a hurry - weddings, babies, conquering the world with a spreadsheet.

You see this bound up in the suggestions for new RPGs: design a quick-start version, pre-make some characters, etc. All good suggestions but not the reason I roleplay. I want to will a story into existence, almost by accident.

And players, in general, don't want to feel that a) they're making too much effort, or b) that you're making too much effort. The temptation is to show off your preparation but that's as likely as not to put them off.

It's really got to seem like it's all going to be fun. And then it's got to be even more fun than it promised to be: just like any narrative, in fact - except you're not really 'in control'.

Even if your skills increase over time, this all becomes more difficult.

[Rob Lang]

1. Habit.

My players don't realise that they've formed a habit of gaming every week. On a week night. Just for a few hours. When we don't, it feels odd, empty.

2. Fun story

I don't bother putting filler into the campaign any more. Filler was there like music montages to give a more realistic feel to the game. The game never calms down, I keep throwing the best events I can.

3. Time box
We start at 19:30. We stop at 22:30, have a brief chat and then head home. We could game until 1am but that's no sustainable if we're doing it weekly.

4. Discipline
I put out an email every Monday/Tuesday morning to confirm timings and see who's coming. It's the "I'm in" email. Players expect me to do it, so I do. They reply. We all know where people are/what they're doing. We then all turn up ready to play.

This might sound like an odd one for motivation but if a player knows that they are coming to game, they are in that mindset and then get on with the act of gaming. No messing.

For getting them back into a game after a break, I tend to put a lot of work in up front and then throw a crazy idea into the mix. I phone them (email is digital effluent), I go to their houses, down the pub, wherever. I'm a pushy bastard and you have to be sometimes.

[Evil Scientist]

So GMing is basically a mix of drug dealing and army drilling - fair enough!

[Onix]

It's a psychedelic, unfortunately, not everyone gets addicted.

[Rob Lang]

It's just struck me that there are two sorts of people in the world:

1. People who like being pushy.
2. People who quite like being pushed about because they get more out of life by being so.

You only need one pushy person in a roleplay group and it really helps if it's the GM!

[Evil Scientist]