Getting the Ball Rolling
So I’ve been running games using Obsidian Portal for a while now, and in the past year I’ve discovered a thing or two about players – they are lazy. Bear in mind that I’m generalizing here but, really, let’s be honest.
Obsidian Portal is this haven for creativity and sometimes implores us DM’s to pour hour after hour of work into our campaign pages, meticulously tweaking every detail until it looks just right on the page and leaving no stones unturned when it comes to adventure logs and wiki pages.
Then you say to your players “Did you check out XYZ on our campaign page” and nine times out of ten you get “Nope, not yet. Been meaning to” or something to that effect.
See for players, the site might seem less of a dreamy wonderland of potential RPG greatness and just another thing keep bugging them to do. Maybe update their character sheets, participate in a discussion, plan your next session or maybe just update their damned character sheet or at least give it a portrait! I’ve gotten pretty crafty in the past when it comes to trying to get my players to participate more on Obsidian Portal. Here’s a few suggestions I have that have worked for me in the past and (most) are still working for me to this day.
Garnering Participation
Share the Workload: Have everyone alternate (yourself included) writing up adventure log posts, that way everyone gets a chance to put their two cents in, your campaign stays relatively well documented and there’s not one person who is constantly bearing the workload. Let your players create wiki pages if they like and go wild with the formatting and perspective of things. A campaign with adventure log posts in 3rd person, first and meta perspectives or just a set of bulleted items for points of note beats a blank one!
Lore shaping: Allow your players to leave their mark on the game world, tell them that you’ll name a landmark, NPC, or otherwise memorable piece of game content if all they do is log in and make an adventure log post or wiki entry. My players long neglected to come up with an adventuring party name, so I threatened them with allowing their one and only active Obsidian Portal member to name it – and so it was! My group of vampire ass kicking adventurers are now named “Igor’s Traveling Troubadours” courtesy of their most likely clinically insane gnome rogue who is always trying to create potions but winds up making poison inadvertantly and rendering himself unconscious for hours at a time from ingesting the wrong concoction.
Squash those pet peeves: One of mine is the silhouette graphic that all users have until they give themselves an avatar. It’s not just an OP thing for me either, I can’t stand head & shoulder shaped silhouettes no matter where they reside! Tell your players if they oblige you by doing something to get the anal retentive monkey off your back, you might just provide them something in return – a get out of death free card, or an item, bonus xp or even something unique like a card full of ”DM points”
And then there’s other methods…
Bribery: Ah one of the most tried and true ways to garner results from a person – giving them stuff. The two big basics are loot and XP in the case of RPG’s, and if you’re going to offer XP make it something worthwhile, offering the same amount of XP for running errands or killing a few minions will likely be overlooked or deemed not worth their time. When it’s enough XP to gain half a level they’ll pay attention. I’ve noticed that most players don’t like it when one person gets too far ahead of them in XP so this has a domino effect wherein when one person does it, they usually all follow suit. However use with caution depending on your group, I suppose it could be polarizing too.
Ah loot, didn’t someone once say that in a nutshell “Playing RPG’s is about killing things and taking their loot”? Without getting too philisophical on you, yeah it is so why not offer up some more of the good stuff if you can get your players online and helping out with campaign management and progression? Offer them items, I once asked my players to give me a list of their top 3 most wanted items within a certain level range and rarity and if they got on OP and contributed I’d make sure at least one item from every PC’s list showed up in the next big loot cache in game. Not only did it help them, but it helped me as a DM to design encounters around things where such items might be accquired. You didn’t think I wasn’t going to make them work for it did you!?
If in game loot isn’t really something that works for your group what about metagame loot? Offer to buy the pizza next time, provide the gas money, buy them a mini or a book or whatever else might drive them.
Threaten and Berate: Ok not really but, there’s no other way to put this into words, honestly just be persistent and try and sound convincing. You can teeter on ‘annoying’ if need be. We all know how great Obsidian Portal is great for our campaigns, there’s no reason all your players shouldn’t drop by even if it’s just once a week for 5 minutes.
Always room for more
All that being said, what are your ways for getting your players onto Obsidian Portal? Have tips for everyone? Leave em’ in the comments and also be on the lookout for your chance to win some ascendant time if things like this come up on Tip Tuesday!
Obsidian Portal is the award winning Online Campaign Management System for tabletop role-playing games. It’s free to use, it can be accessed from any web browser and it's built from the ground up for gamers by gamers.
We host a huge community of tabletop RPG players who are all looking to get the most out of their tabletop gaming experience. You play your campaign and we help you manage it. It’s that simple.
I’ve gone the XP reward route and probably will continue to do so. It’s easy and therefore appeals when I am, as I recently told my players, stuffing GMing duties into the cracks around all the “must do” items in my life. When you’re running a game that uses something like hero points or drama dice, you can offer those as well. When I have had more time, I’ve been known to create a small deck of incentives using some printable business cards and a word processing program. People who have contributed something get a draw from the deck at the start of game. They could get anything from a free re-roll of one die to a +20 on a roll of their choice to a vital clue. It depends on the game but is limited only by GM creativity. (These also make good roleplaying awards, especially when you are trying to keep advancement from getting out of hand.)
I’ve gone the XP reward route and probably will continue to do so. It’s easy and therefore appeals when I am, as I recently told my players, stuffing GMing duties into the cracks around all the “must do” items in my life. When you’re running a game that uses something like hero points or drama dice, you can offer those as well. When I have had more time, I’ve been known to create a small deck of incentives using some printable business cards and a word processing program. People who have contributed something get a draw from the deck at the start of game. They could get anything from a free re-roll of one die to a +20 on a roll of their choice to a vital clue. It depends on the game but is limited only by GM creativity. (These also make good roleplaying awards, especially when you are trying to keep advancement from getting out of hand.)
I think OP could do with a very basic badge system for GM’s to reward their players with. most ingenious idea of the session, most entertaining player, best use of non standard weapon etc. If the OP was the source and the arena for players getting rewards they would visit more often and more visits will in some cases translate into more action. As a GM I’d be happy to pay the ascendant fee for this sort of little extra gizmo.
I’d also get more out of my players if we could make their character pages more shiny. links to facebook or blogs. export as NPC, things that will make (as you say) the OP as much of a dreamy wonderland for players as it does for GM’s.
I think OP could do with a very basic badge system for GM’s to reward their players with. most ingenious idea of the session, most entertaining player, best use of non standard weapon etc. If the OP was the source and the arena for players getting rewards they would visit more often and more visits will in some cases translate into more action. As a GM I’d be happy to pay the ascendant fee for this sort of little extra gizmo.
I’d also get more out of my players if we could make their character pages more shiny. links to facebook or blogs. export as NPC, things that will make (as you say) the OP as much of a dreamy wonderland for players as it does for GM’s.
I’ve given up on players in general. Few want to participate outside the game – they game to escape and dont need it following them. There is a rare one who really does want an immersive experience and can participate beyond group settings.. but they are rare and often end up resenting the others if no one else shares their enthusiasm. How i get players to participate is the share the thankless task of GMing – at least once a year. I then am careful to point out failures and gaps in consistency and continuity through the actions of my character – so they understand how hard it is for me to do it full time and get it right. Whatever i am doing continues to earn me free food and praise when we get together – and i can survive on that because all the other stuff sometimes just comes with being a GM, and loving the world building and story crafting because you just do, not for incentive.
I’ve given up on players in general. Few want to participate outside the game – they game to escape and dont need it following them. There is a rare one who really does want an immersive experience and can participate beyond group settings.. but they are rare and often end up resenting the others if no one else shares their enthusiasm. How i get players to participate is the share the thankless task of GMing – at least once a year. I then am careful to point out failures and gaps in consistency and continuity through the actions of my character – so they understand how hard it is for me to do it full time and get it right. Whatever i am doing continues to earn me free food and praise when we get together – and i can survive on that because all the other stuff sometimes just comes with being a GM, and loving the world building and story crafting because you just do, not for incentive.
Arsheesh was the first that I’m aware of that used the idea, but a Prestige Point system offers great incentive. Small in game bonuses gained by out of game contributions. I used the system to great effect in my game, getting around 25 journal entries out of my players for my campaign.
Arsheesh’s Prestige Point system can be found at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/age-of-legends/wikis/prestige-points
Arsheesh was the first that I’m aware of that used the idea, but a Prestige Point system offers great incentive. Small in game bonuses gained by out of game contributions. I used the system to great effect in my game, getting around 25 journal entries out of my players for my campaign.
Arsheesh’s Prestige Point system can be found at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/age-of-legends/wikis/prestige-points
I enjoyed reading the blog and will try and keep some of the ideas in mind. I presently use a Prestige Point system as described above. It is starting to work with some players and I DO get some involvement in the Forums. However, I have a small problem in that two of my players are not online, so they are unable to contribute.
I am still waiting for someone to complete an adventure log. I have offered XP but I will take a tip from the blog and offer a bigger stash of XP next time!
I enjoyed reading the blog and will try and keep some of the ideas in mind. I presently use a Prestige Point system as described above. It is starting to work with some players and I DO get some involvement in the Forums. However, I have a small problem in that two of my players are not online, so they are unable to contribute.
I am still waiting for someone to complete an adventure log. I have offered XP but I will take a tip from the blog and offer a bigger stash of XP next time!
We share the DMing duties among 4 players, but I’m the one who “organizes” the games, in the sense of posting the campaign logs, metadata, etc. I finally, after a year, have all but one player on our portal site. We have “flat XP,” so giving a little bump in XP to one player would not work out– our XP is completely shared around the table.
In all the campaigns I play, I, as a player, am the “party bard.” I do the session tracking and writeups, and I enjoy doing these for the group.
I differentiate between the campaign log (session tracking) and the writeup. Our logs are a basic recounting of what the adventure entailed, any key NPCs we met or monsters fought, rewards gained (loot and xp), and who participated in the adventure.
The writeup is the *story* part, where there’s a narrative from one PC’s point of view.
My method of “incentivizing” is this: The DM is never responsible for the campaign writeup, ever. The DM is much more likely than the players to write about some detail that the players overlooked, or to interpret correctly something the players misunderstood. Meanwhile, the players write their story.
My method of “incentivizing” other players is to write the story through my character’s point of view, and each of my characters has a different relationship with the other PCs in the group. In one character’s case, that means the other PCs aren’t even named in the writeup (this frustrated one player enough to write his own writeup!) In another case, reading the campaign log gives you the impression that my little wizard is the most valuable person in the party! In my main PC’s case, the campaign log sounds like there are three important PCs, and everyone else is window dressing.
I’ve written “story writeups” when my character wasn’t even there, talking about what she was doing while she was away from the group. Going to the campaign log and reading about nothing in the actual adventure, none of your heroic events, nothing– that can really make a player pause and say “wait– what about?” and maybe post a comment on their own.
In essence, my method of incentivizing comes solely from my position as a player, and it follows the logic: “history is written by the victor.” In this case, history is written by the player willing to write it!
Recently, I flat-out told one player that he should contribute writeups to the adventure. His character has a much different perspective than my character (he has suddenly become suspicious of her), and there’s a great opportunity for conflict and drama for him– he makes a better story, and rather than write it from his POV, knowing my own character’s POV, I asked the player to do so. I know the player is a skilled writer, so asking him to write isn’t like asking him to pull teeth.
I might adopt something like the prestige point system, though. Ours used to be an LFR campaign, and we used the Rewards Cards for that little “bump up” when needed. I know our players would appreciate having a bump once in a while, especially if they could get them through some out-of-game method.
We share the DMing duties among 4 players, but I’m the one who “organizes” the games, in the sense of posting the campaign logs, metadata, etc. I finally, after a year, have all but one player on our portal site. We have “flat XP,” so giving a little bump in XP to one player would not work out– our XP is completely shared around the table.
In all the campaigns I play, I, as a player, am the “party bard.” I do the session tracking and writeups, and I enjoy doing these for the group.
I differentiate between the campaign log (session tracking) and the writeup. Our logs are a basic recounting of what the adventure entailed, any key NPCs we met or monsters fought, rewards gained (loot and xp), and who participated in the adventure.
The writeup is the *story* part, where there’s a narrative from one PC’s point of view.
My method of “incentivizing” is this: The DM is never responsible for the campaign writeup, ever. The DM is much more likely than the players to write about some detail that the players overlooked, or to interpret correctly something the players misunderstood. Meanwhile, the players write their story.
My method of “incentivizing” other players is to write the story through my character’s point of view, and each of my characters has a different relationship with the other PCs in the group. In one character’s case, that means the other PCs aren’t even named in the writeup (this frustrated one player enough to write his own writeup!) In another case, reading the campaign log gives you the impression that my little wizard is the most valuable person in the party! In my main PC’s case, the campaign log sounds like there are three important PCs, and everyone else is window dressing.
I’ve written “story writeups” when my character wasn’t even there, talking about what she was doing while she was away from the group. Going to the campaign log and reading about nothing in the actual adventure, none of your heroic events, nothing– that can really make a player pause and say “wait– what about?” and maybe post a comment on their own.
In essence, my method of incentivizing comes solely from my position as a player, and it follows the logic: “history is written by the victor.” In this case, history is written by the player willing to write it!
Recently, I flat-out told one player that he should contribute writeups to the adventure. His character has a much different perspective than my character (he has suddenly become suspicious of her), and there’s a great opportunity for conflict and drama for him– he makes a better story, and rather than write it from his POV, knowing my own character’s POV, I asked the player to do so. I know the player is a skilled writer, so asking him to write isn’t like asking him to pull teeth.
I might adopt something like the prestige point system, though. Ours used to be an LFR campaign, and we used the Rewards Cards for that little “bump up” when needed. I know our players would appreciate having a bump once in a while, especially if they could get them through some out-of-game method.
Hi Folks, thanks for the article Jerry and to the commentators for your thoughtful responses.
I have often been disheartened by my players lack of interest for ‘our’ OP campaign site, so I was encouraged to read that I am not alone in this experience. One of my players even asked for a journals section in the wiki, which I created, and he has never used!
I am grateful, however, for a couple of my players who regularly read the material that is posted, even if they do not contribute, and it is no coincidence that they are both players who seek a more immersive experience in their gaming. I have wondered at times if my OP efforts were mere vanity, but like most of you I believe that our work is genuinely created to enhance the campaigns we are running and it is unfortunate when players do not take the opportunity to engage more deeply. Perhaps as DMs we seek an immersive experience as players when we game and wish our players to experience the same?
I will think about the useful suggestions made in this article and by commentators, however, it does strike me as somewhat disappointing that players need to be motivated in such ways. Perhaps a judicious use of the ‘comfy chair’ on some members of our gaming groups might produce the responses we desire…
Hi Folks, thanks for the article Jerry and to the commentators for your thoughtful responses.
I have often been disheartened by my players lack of interest for ‘our’ OP campaign site, so I was encouraged to read that I am not alone in this experience. One of my players even asked for a journals section in the wiki, which I created, and he has never used!
I am grateful, however, for a couple of my players who regularly read the material that is posted, even if they do not contribute, and it is no coincidence that they are both players who seek a more immersive experience in their gaming. I have wondered at times if my OP efforts were mere vanity, but like most of you I believe that our work is genuinely created to enhance the campaigns we are running and it is unfortunate when players do not take the opportunity to engage more deeply. Perhaps as DMs we seek an immersive experience as players when we game and wish our players to experience the same?
I will think about the useful suggestions made in this article and by commentators, however, it does strike me as somewhat disappointing that players need to be motivated in such ways. Perhaps a judicious use of the ‘comfy chair’ on some members of our gaming groups might produce the responses we desire…
I run a Mutants and Masterminds game and I came up with something similar to one of your suggestions. I created “Super Hero Points”. Similar to the standard M&M Hero Point, with the added bonus that it can be spent on the same round as a regular Hero Point.
The can be earned by posting an Adventure Log or by posting a short story for their character.
Now instead of 1 of 5 players posting, I get 3 of 5 posting. I consider that a success. Additionally, those 3 will start to appear more heroic at the table and hopefully make the other 2 jealous and inspire them to participate more.
I run a Mutants and Masterminds game and I came up with something similar to one of your suggestions. I created “Super Hero Points”. Similar to the standard M&M Hero Point, with the added bonus that it can be spent on the same round as a regular Hero Point.
The can be earned by posting an Adventure Log or by posting a short story for their character.
Now instead of 1 of 5 players posting, I get 3 of 5 posting. I consider that a success. Additionally, those 3 will start to appear more heroic at the table and hopefully make the other 2 jealous and inspire them to participate more.
My current group of players have been pretty good about using OP, especially since I upgraded to Ascendant so that htey’re notified when something changes. I’m awarding a House Rule “DM Point” to players and one of the things I take into consideration is things like participating in the wiki. I really genuinely want to have my campaign be Campaign of the Month or Year, so I push them about it.
That said, let me tell a story about a group which no amount of incentive could persuade to get involved. I was running a local game and really wanted to take advantage of OP. And I knew it’d be a hard sell, so I decided to throw in incentives. The first one was that having a character background up on the site would automatically get you extra XP from the very get go. Nobody did it. I also said that if people would do adventure logs, I’d award extra XP. Nobody did it. I offered a third award to people who updated the world wiki with things like NPCs and places and quests. If you’re guessing nobody did it, you’d be right. And up front, I told people that every month, the person who did the most for the wiki would get a big reward, something like a new set of dice, a box of miniatures, a game book, or whatever. And still not a single bit of interest. It was extremely discouraging.
My current group of players have been pretty good about using OP, especially since I upgraded to Ascendant so that htey’re notified when something changes. I’m awarding a House Rule “DM Point” to players and one of the things I take into consideration is things like participating in the wiki. I really genuinely want to have my campaign be Campaign of the Month or Year, so I push them about it.
That said, let me tell a story about a group which no amount of incentive could persuade to get involved. I was running a local game and really wanted to take advantage of OP. And I knew it’d be a hard sell, so I decided to throw in incentives. The first one was that having a character background up on the site would automatically get you extra XP from the very get go. Nobody did it. I also said that if people would do adventure logs, I’d award extra XP. Nobody did it. I offered a third award to people who updated the world wiki with things like NPCs and places and quests. If you’re guessing nobody did it, you’d be right. And up front, I told people that every month, the person who did the most for the wiki would get a big reward, something like a new set of dice, a box of miniatures, a game book, or whatever. And still not a single bit of interest. It was extremely discouraging.
I don’t care, too much, if the players do or don’t use the OP site. My players actually do use the site, player secrets, participate in discussions, some have even created a few of the pages on the wiki. If they want to participate, that’s awesome and brings a tear to my eye. Bribing them to go on some website makes me want to vomit. They either want the extra info or they could really care less. As long as they’re adding to the game at the table, what they do on their own free time isn’t my concern.
I don’t care, too much, if the players do or don’t use the OP site. My players actually do use the site, player secrets, participate in discussions, some have even created a few of the pages on the wiki. If they want to participate, that’s awesome and brings a tear to my eye. Bribing them to go on some website makes me want to vomit. They either want the extra info or they could really care less. As long as they’re adding to the game at the table, what they do on their own free time isn’t my concern.
I plan to not let them level up until they have done their homework. If you don’t have a character picture up? You don’t level up. If you don’t do a writeup for your week? You don’t level up.
I plan to not let them level up until they have done their homework. If you don’t have a character picture up? You don’t level up. If you don’t do a writeup for your week? You don’t level up.