I was recently talking with @wandererbill and mentioned some techniques I find useful to keep a party together, in-game, or socially, out-of-game.
In order to avoid players checking out of a scene because their characters aren’t there, I always allow suggestions and comments. I think it’s important to maintain space and time of the imaginary world, otherwise it all collapses into a dream where people come and go, where the past is malleable and cause and consequence are not ordered. That is to say, if your character isn’t there, you can’t do anything. But at the table, the players are still there, so if one player is doing all the talking because their character is doing something on their own and there’s a moment of indecision, everybody should feel free to comment and suggest. We’re all watching this scene like a TV series. Of course we can all comment.
Furthermore, as the referee I can influence the granularity of everything. If something would make for a cool adventure it might take the party an entire session to achieve it, and yet it can turn into a simple two sentence answer or possibly a roll when it’s a solo-event. I try to make sure that the solo-investigation takes just one roll, a few sentences, and the scene never turns into a fight, so to say. It doesn’t always work, but this is the goal. This automatically prunes solo-time. To push it even further, I switch into narrator mode, summarizing the solo-events instead of playing them out, denying the scene from taking time at the table. This is fast-forwarding, but not quite skipping. I want to encourage these characters to return to the party, report back, and then let’s all do something, together.
If this cannot be avoided, perhaps because we made characters that have no cause to adventure together (why?), then I can always switch into a movie director stance, go around the table, point at players, “now you!” and after a bit when the exchange happened and a die was maybe cast, “as we wait for that, we cut to…” and soon enough “in the mean time…” – and I do this aggressively, in small time slots. This results in a somewhat military style of pointing at people to let them know that now is their turn, while simultaneously waving at others to hold their thoughts, or maybe cutting talkative players off when they’re running too long. It’s weird, but when there’s a lot of players, or when there’s no party play to return to, it works well enough. We’ve made these kinds of mistakes in games where there are characters that are well suited for fighting and others that are not, with their players trying to solve problems by fighting, and players do not. This happened to me when I ran a one-shot of *A Song of Ice and Fire*. It worked for a session, but it was exhausting and I don’t want to claim that it’s a good solution. It was simple a short term solution that worked, for me. Next time, however, make sure players create characters that will adventure together.
If the problem is that players focus on their characters mechanically, and the only time the characters interact mechanically is during combat, then the game still lacks cohesion, socially. One thing I’ve tried to do is a move from Lady Blackbird. When there is a lull in-game, like a camp fire, a watch, a long walk, you ask one or two of the characters a question about their past. How did you meet? Why did you leave home? Do you have family back home? Just to get a few sentences. Sometimes I preface it by “please tell us a little something, to entertain us here at the table…” In a game with bennies, inspiration, refreshments, or short rests, you could make these sorts of reveals part of the condition to get the reward, if your players need this kind of push. I personally wouldn’t tie it to a mechanical reward, which is why I ask to be entertained as a person sitting at the same table. And the beauty of that is: anybody can ask for it. You don’t have to be the referee to make this move.
Generally speaking, when a game is a lot about rolling dice, it’s particularly important to give time and space to the words around the dice rolling. In the D&D 5E games I’m in, for example, there’s a lot of fighting, which means that I treasure the words said during a fight, or after a fight. Is it encouragement? Orders? Relief? As a person at the same table, I try to make sure such words are never cut off. As a referee, there is no cutting to the next scene while the players are still commenting in-character to each other.
A certain level of jokes or memes might be necessary if the players lack cohesion, each apparently only talking to the referee. Jokes are a way to bond as people at the table. Eventually I’m hoping this also translates to the characters interacting, of course. But it’s a start.
#RPG