Dungeon Masters on Obsidian Portal are often faced with the problem of how to motivate their players to use the online tools available. Today I’d like to share some ideas and approaches that will hopefully help in that regard.
Now it’s true that DMs spend much more time on their campaigns than most players do. After all they are responsible for entire worlds while players only have their characters to worry about. Add in factors like day jobs, lack of time between games, and other real world concerns and it can be hard to get them to take the time.
FemmeLegion talks about the concrete benefits of participation in her campaign’s wiki. Here is the key quote:
Please don’t discount the importance of at least occasionally making some sort of “diary entry”, even if you’d rather handle it privately over email rather than putting it up here. They’re a great way for me to keep tabs on what you guys as players think is important in the game. This, in turn, helps us all to avoid situations where you guys really want to go chase after MacGuffin B, but I’ve put all my effort into fleshing out the storyline for Main Plot A and thus I’ve got very little for you with regard to MacGuffin B. It also helps me see if you guys overlooked a clue or plot detail that ended up not being as obvious as I thought it would be, so I can try to deliver it another way before you get too frustrated.
Sometimes this isn’t going to be enough though. This is usually the point where incentives come into the equation. Opinions differ on what is most effective, which is only natural. Every gaming group is a unique collection of personalities and will require different motivators.
There are a number of excellent approaches already in use within the Obsidian Portal community. The carrot on the stick ranges from granting action points or XP to small but permanent abilities. Here are some of my favorites.
FrankSirmarco runs a fantastic Call of Cthulhu game in which he has instituted his own Mythos Point system. When his players make forum posts, create adventure logs, add to the wiki or otherwise contribute to the online world building they get Mythos Points. These can be redeemed for one time adjustments to skill rolls, automatic success on sanity rolls, and other tangible in-game effects.
Arsheesh has probably created the most sophisticated, but easy to implement Prestige Points system. I think the thing that really makes this one impressive is the array of possible rewards.
What are prestige points? Well in short, they are acquired points that your PC’s can spend for a variety of purposes to gain abilities that affect game play. Some of these effects are temporary in duration, such as Round and Encounter Abilities, while other abilities are Permanent in effect. How do you gain prestige points? Simple. By contributing to the creation of our campaign site. Exactly what this contribution consists in will vary. However the typical way of earning points is to keep an updated character journal.
My own S.E.X. (Submissions for Extra Xp) system is a bit more freeform, but has given me great response. By giving it a racy name (originally found on the OP boards, I must admit) I’ve at least ensured that I have my player’s attention.
No matter what incentives you offer, the response will vary according to the individual players involved. Some people will never really interact with the game outside of sessions. Don’t let it stress you. There are others who will participate, and some that will get really gung-ho.
One thing that can really help, at least in my personal experience, is if you get your players to write-up their contributions and email them to you. Often players will have a perceived barrier when it comes to working with the wiki, but will write lots of content if you offer to integrate it into the site for them.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, ideas, and success stories. Leave us a comment!
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. 
Good article DML! I think bringing this topic to the blog and out of the forums will probably bring more readers too.
The DM for our classic Deadlands campaign laid it out quite simply for us: at the beginning of each session, we normally draw three poker chips from the Fate Pot – which grant us various in-game benefits, depending on how we choose to use them (XP, re-rolls, soaking damage, etc). If we contribute to the wiki, or make a journal entry, or do something on the site to help flesh out the campaign in the preceding week, we get to draw an extra chip. Nice and simple, but effective.
Mine is simple – no log, no XP/Loot. Works every time.
Excellent! Please keep sharing your approach to this usually thorny issue!
Jeffrey – Draconian but effective, I can think of one of my old groups I should have done that with.
Ryan – Sounds like action points with props. I’m a big fan of props, they help immerse people int he game more.
DarkMagus – Such was my hope sir!
In my Shadowrun campaign, I awarded players 10 extra Karma to dump into their character immediately if they uploaded a character bio and picture. Also, in order to help with campaign planning, I love the Obsidian Portal calendar feature; it helps me to know just who is actually going to be making it to the next session and to plan accordingly. Every time a player RSVP’s via the calendar, whether they attend or not, they receive a small amount of bonus Karma.
DMLoki – still keeping it real, I see. Nice One! Good to bring this up for discussion, even if it only reminds us DMs never to stop trying to communicate to our players. I already use a Prestige Point system (similar to Arseesh’s but my own) and it does help. I think in my next section I will also give them a message similar to FemmeLegion’s quote. Jeffrey’s model would never work for our group. For a start, two of them do not have internet access (I know, …unbelievable…but true!) and one of them has strict personal rules about keeping game and online separate, so I make do with what little input I get – most of them are pretty good at being involved in the forums and I send them important wiki pages as separate links.
As one of Micah’s earlier interviews stated, it is also important for DMs NOT to get too upset if player input is less than they expect. Rejoice in any input at all. DM Loki, I bow to you once again.
Twig, you’re way too kind!
If you or someone you know is using some sort of incentive system, like Twiggyleaf’s variant, please post a link to the rules if they appear on your wiki. The more a DM can see what has worked for other games the better he can craft something optimized for the chemistry of his particular group.
Here is a link to how my variant works:
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/shimring/wikis/rewards-and-xp
(The Primordial Power Effect is a limitation, unique to the Shimring campaign, requiring a roll on d12 at any time a spell or character ability is used, resulting in a 1 in 12 chance of failure and chaotic enemy attack)
Normally I don’t allow my players feats or powers from PHB3 or Dragon magazine, but I allow players to retrain one if they make a Quest Log entry.
So far it hasn’t worked…
Good article! Thanks for the tips!
I’ve advocated this since I started using Obsidian Portal oh so many years ago.
Still, some of my players have been less-than responsive. So, I stopped telling them what the reward was. I have a couple players that will always contribute, because they enjoy it. I started awarding them for it at the table, in front of everyone. And I’ll give out amazing bonuses. Extra dots (not just points) of Willpower in Vampire games for example. It all depends on what they contribute. Nothing grabs someone’s attention more than someone else getting something cool that they could get if they just tried.
Nice article Loki. I know I’ve seen several people at the forums complain about not knowing how to motivate their players to participate in the campaign outside of game-time. I’m sure that these tips will help some DM’s to get their players to partner with them in the process of building their campaign site. Others may not, but such is life aye?
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
The caveat with all of these is that they are incentives. Some players will not have the desire, the time, or the comfort level with computers (unlikely but true more often than you would think) to do stuff outside of the regularly scheduled sessions.
I like to think that it’s like all those books on my shelves – an array of options for those who want them. I’ve got three payers doing journals in The Spelljoined, which is a record after 30 years of gaming. I also believe that this is an issue that will fade in time as the overall level of digital familiarity continues to increase.
Addendum: Since the launch of the new mobile template for OP I’ve suddenly got a lot of players using it at the table. Make sure your smartphone enabled players are aware of it and check it out, I think it will increase online participation and make the site truly useful to everyone in the game.
I like the “prestige points” system that lets players add dice to rolls or re-roll results, etc by spending them…it makes them more willing to contribute so they can replenish their spent points. The only problem I see with it is that some people (through no fault of their own) can not contribute as much and therefore when everyone else is gaining bonus dice/rerolls they get left out. Nothing to be done about that, though…it’s better than awarding xp or feats/abilities because then the players who can’t/don’t contribute technologically get left behind in-game.
I think whatever system you use should also incorporate in-game awards, as well, so that those who can’t contribute to the site can earn them in other ways (like properly playing a character’s flaws or something). I know we’re discussing how to get more site participation from players, but game participation should also be encouraged. Maybe develop a system with different “types” of points depending on how they are earned can be used in different ways? Ooooh, I like that.
I normally award XP for journal entries (10% of what they need to reach the next level, with a cap of 1500), but this does sometimes cause disparities if some players always contribute while others never do. In my new Kingmaker campaign, I created a small deck of Player Perks cards – just printable business cards. They go all the way from small benefits (+5 to one roll, declared before rolling) to things that have the potential to turn the tide of a battle (shrug off a condition). Contributions to the site get them a draw from the deck. The benefit of the cards is that it makes bookkeeping easy; they hold on to the card until they need it and turn it in when they use it. They always know what they have on hand, and they can quickly flip through their options when they need a boost. (As a player, I tend to forget what the various perk systems such as hero points and drama dice allow me to do, and am unlikely to stop things so I can look it up in the middle of a heated battle.) I also make rumor/clue cards up in the same way, sometimes distributing them as well.
I like the deck of player perks idea. Next time I run a pen and paper campaign I’ll probably steal it. Unfortunately it probably doesn’t work so well for online games (unless you constantly check your character sheet and have your “cards” there or something, I guess). Good one, Kitsuki.
Thanks for the shout-out, Loki!
Good article, but I have to disagree on the in-game incentives… I’ve found that encouraging players with tangible in-game bonuses just widens the gulf between players that really get immersed and those that are just there to have fun, or as Loki points out; not everyone is computer savvy enough to utilize the wiki pages.
I DO like the idea of utilizing what a player enters into the site (particularly character journals) for the campaign though; better involves the immersion players, while not granting an game rule advantage that will alienate the casual players.
As everyone knows though, what works at one table disrupts another…