Do you guys have any pointers on how to get the players to use the ”question moves” – I have three groups with different people in them and noone uses them. Even when I say ”remember that you get a plus one when acting on it” – they just go ”I run/throw/push it”.
What am I missing? What can I do?
EDIT: I think this is a meta thing and not a “hit them with a move”-thing. How do your players understand that they can ask “I’m a thief, what do I know of this guy?” or “Can I see a good way through?” – is there something I do as a GM in my descriptions of the situations that makes them just take the information I give them as the only information there is?
That sounds like an opportunity for you as the gm to make a move. If they rush headlong into danger, sometimes shit just happens.
Also, are they never inclined to search a place? (that can be discern realities), or find a magic item they need to figure out how works? (that can be spout lore).
Ambush, traps, and local lore are your friends.
Players: We rush the single goblin that is in the clearing.
GM: As you run up on him you hear boulders rolling down from the surrounding hillsides. What do you do?
Players: We kick in the door!
GM: You hear a loud explosion, Roll Defy Danger +Dex to try and avoid the damage from the explosive trap you just triggered.
Players: We attack the old man bent crouched over the body in the alley.
GM (on a failed Hack and Slash): The old man rips you with his talon-like fingernails, soaking himself in an arc of your blood. Before your eyes, you see the blood being absorbed into his skin as he grows younger and more powerful before your eyes. (They’ve naively come upon a Master of Blood Vampire, my own monster, that they may have been aware of if they had tried a Spout Lore move first).
Yes Michael Guerra, that’s pretty much it OR “we walk out”. Oh, I make moves Morten Halvorsen, and they’re happy with the adventure. 🙂 Absolutely Jim Jones, that sounds cool. But they never start collecting information, prepare or ask questions of what or who they know.
What I’m getting at here are not mechanical things within the game I’m starting to understand – I do what you good people recommend.
I’m understanding I need to get my players to understand as players that the NEED to start asking questions.
Victor Segell … are you playing with… 5 year olds?
Haha, don’t be rude Morten Halvorsen – I play with an assortment of well-spoken and well-educated adults with steady attention spans and at least an average intelligence level! 🙂
Victor Segell if you want them to ask questions, they need to learn that:
1) acting rashly has consequences, possibly dire one
2) the world you are weaving make sense, and is consistent, and follows rules
3) smart plays are effective and awesome
For most of those to happen, you have to give your world a bit of weight and reality. Not necessary real_ism_, but reality.
Like, if you present a room to them and think “maybe there are traps here?” and they’re like “we charge in LEROY JENKINS!” and you’re like “uh, Defy Danger” and they get a 10+ and you’re like “okay, I guess you dodge past the traps”… well, of course they’re not going to learn anything.
But say you present a room, and you know (or quickly decide) that the room has a series of lightning blasters that are triggered by anyone who enters without first saying the pass phrase. When you describe the room, you’ll be like “There are these four pale blue gems on the far wall, they sort of… thrum? What do you do?”
“Gems? I run across the room to get them.”
“Really? You just run in?”
“Yup!”
“Okay. Everyone else, as Leroy steps into the room, you feel your hair start to stand on edge and then WAM there’s this flash of bright light. Leroy, you take [b]4d10+2 damage, ignores armor. Everyone else, you’ve got a moment to react, what do you do?”
They dive for cover, probably. Some make it clear, some don’t. As they clear their heads, they realize that Leroy’s laid out in the middle of the room, dazed and blinded, and the blue stones have dimmed but are starting to glow again, that thrumming is growing, Leroy’s still out there, what do you?
What you’ve just done is show them that the world reacts to their actions, and their actions have consequences, and those consequences can be bad. You’ve shown them that fictional details matter, that your foreshadowing matters, that when you put something mysterious in front of them, it’s worth thinking about it. With that last bit, showing that the gems are starting to glow again, you’re showing them that there’s a pattern, that the world behaves in a predictable way.
Now, when the wizard Spouts Lore about these things, you give him answer that makes him think “yeah, this is worth doing.” Even on a 7-9, give him an answer that’s interesting (of course) with an obvious application (just don’t spell it out for them). E.g. “Something interesting, huh? Well, you know that any crystal that stores that kind of magical power is probably going to be pretty fragile.”
And then, right there, I bet you see a lightbulb go off. “Shoot the crystals!” And they do, and maybe they hit, and each crystal they take out reduces the damage dice rolled by 1.
Do that enough… have a danger with fictional heft and reality to it, that behaves consistently, and consequentially, where a smart play helps them get out of trouble or mitigate trouble… and they’ll start thinking before they act.
Thank you Jeremy Strandberg for a great answer! 🙂 I needed some player psychology-input.
Like yesterday when my players went to get a key copied from a criminal locksmith without a single gold and finally a lightbulb went off: “Oooh, we should have probably checked so we had something to give him before we asked him” – I think this was a good learning opportunity for them. Dealing with him delayed the whole mission and it went south fast! 🙂
These two principles are as much for me as for them – I’ll take them to heart!
2) the world you are weaving make sense, and is consistent, and follows rules
3) smart plays are effective and awesome
Just a question: are you sure you should try to get them to be more cautious/thoughtful? I mean, if the whole group of grown-ups wants to play Leroy Jenkins: The Role-Playing Game© maybe you should jump in board?
I get it when one player is a murder hobo and is derailing things for everybody else… But is that what’s happening here?
I’m getting the impression that your players are focusing on certain moves, and ignoring others. Might that be accurate? Like they see the cool action moves, and really want to use them, but overlook that the playbooks are a coherent whole?
One way out of that could be to change their focus a bit. Stop focusing on the moves all together.
Start with the game as a conversation, and only pull in the moves when they are triggered by the conversation.
To facilitate this you could take the responsibility of deciding when a move is triggered. Don’t let them go directly to a move. Make them describe what they are doing. Emphasize that it needs to make sense, that their characters should seem like real, coherent persons, not just pawns they use to make crazy shit happen.
Don’t get immersed in the technical rules of the game, get immersed in the emergent story and characters.
Morten Halvorsen Yeah, that sounds like a plausible case, but it’s not so as that they are looking at moves (besides their own perhaps) in this particular situation. We do have a flowing conversation and do not get bogged down by technicalities.
But I think that maybe they think of their characters as bodies and their own brains as the characters brains in a way – they act as if they don’t know the world at all (which THEY don’t, but their characters do). So I will take to heart about helping them understanding “that it needs to make sense, that their characters should seem like real, coherent persons, not just pawns they use to make crazy shit happen.” Thanks! 🙂
You are very right there gnomebreath! We’ll try out these upcoming new campaigns and se if it works out! 🙂 Otherwise we’ll do Leeroy: The Jenkening by Onyx Path! 😉