I was thinking this week that I need to give equal time to all my players. I have one player that either sits in the corner and does nothing or takes up a lot of the time. And then, I realized about a quarter of the way through the game that everyone else was more ok with this then I was. That in reality, they were ok with this and I was overreacting in my head. What I came to realize is that everyone is not actually looking for equal time, they are looking for equal enjoyment, which does not mean equal time. And what I mean by equal enjoyment is equal time to create the happy moment, the awe inspiring moment, or the wow moment. The person I was referring to was typically just taking over so that there was a plan and a group leader and a direction for the adventurers from the adventurer’s perspective. This person was not taking all the awe inspiring moments, nor were they taking all the laughter moments or the wow moments. No, instead this person that I thought was filling all the time was just helping me move the story forward by not allowing the group to wallow without direction. As a Gm you will need to realize that the person helping move the story along may not always be the same person. You should encourage different persons to help in this aspect based on their abilities.
As a GM you also need to keep the opposite in mind that you may be focusing on one player way more than others to the detriment of the group’s enjoyment. While the one player you focus on may be having tons of fun in your game the rest of the group will tend to move in and out of even paying attention to the story. This is not to say that there are not other reasons for group members to be bored with the story, just to say that this is one of them.
The Story part
Well we started with the giving out of loot from the last encounter. And the group sailed onward. As stated in my last blog I wanted to do a couple more encounters, well turns out those encounters were a pod of orcas traveling by the ship, a beautiful sunset, and a some dolphins near the ship during the major storm just before the group reached the shore. In the storm I set it up so that, on the morning of the storm, one character woke up and saw the storm through the portcullis and then tried to wake a group member but they would not wake and so she went to ask a crew member and the crew member was in a panic over the storm. This group member then went to the male room and asked the wizard about the storm, and he stated that he needed to get ready first and then he could address her concerns about the coming storm. Not wishing to wait the whole hour that it appeared it would take said wizard to get ready, the group member then went up on deck still worried about what was about to happen. Upon arriving on deck she saw that the Captain was not worried and that Jean and her assistants were preparing to do magic. Thus, the group member calmed down considerably, and was able to go about her day without panic. The group spent the day talking to the crew and looking at the storm go around them for the most part. And they arrived at the latest location an abandoned fort on the coast a place the captain of the ship thought they might want to start. The group spent much of the day exploring the ruined fort that appear to not have had anyone in it for a few years. They found a few diaries that crumbled when an attempt was made to read them, and some musket balls. Eventually the group made their way to the central area of the fort a toppled tower that was a bit older than the surrounding buildings. Inside they found an illusion that was the entrance to a cave. And inside was ….. a cave, and the group began the first dungeon crawl by having to kill three shadowsTM . and thus, ends our game for the day.