m m

welcome back to how to be a better d m let's jump in with today's

warm up topic tanner

yes

your dandy group of five is suddenly and permanently moving a dandy group of four

one of your players is leaving for whatever reason and the rest of the players

love having five characters so you now get to create a character that is actually

your character you will be playing what character do you create

okay for my

yah

character since i would not

h

want

m

you know especially since i'm the i'm the d m i don't want too much

involvement what i'd probably do is i would take it an existing n p c

like from this story

m

and i just embody them and

yeah

they now tag along right and at that point it just

hm

depends on

yeah

what it is so i'm gonna in order to really go with the spirit of

the warm up

my

i'm goin to say that it is a

oh

a half ling

oh

a half ling who specifically

oh

is like overly empathetic you know

oh

that's kind of like their character flaw slash

yeah

quirk where they're just like

hm

any time that a player is like i heard

m

at all or inconvenienced they just they're

oh

like oh my oh my goodness i didn't

oh

how are you even live you know

yeah

like they just get overly concerned

yeah

and that's kind of the character quirk in terms of what they are

oh

i'm going to go with cleric just simple cleric you know i think that that's

like

oh

um in terms of an n p c that i would have fun going back

to over and over again i think that having a cleric who is

oh

like overly pathetic

yeah

um and maybe like a little nosy you know like and to

m

get confessions or the equivalent

h

of that from players and being like hey

oh

you can you can trust me you know and i think it's a good chance

for

yeah

one of my favorite types of humor which is annoying people um

uh

no on joking but h

h

but

oh

i think that would work out well

oh

let's say that he's a half ling cleric named dunder yeah

i love that it's funny that you say half ling clerk because in the campaign

i'm running right now like a lot of sessions back i actually did introduce an

m c who was a half ling cleric to tggleinwith

nice

a while

nice

you know venner done

yeh

that but welcome back listener to how to be a better excuse me i'm your

host justin lewis with my cohort tanner wayland

hello guys

and and today we are here to help you learn how to craft better stories

for your players as u d m sessions of d and d and today we're

actually on to talk about a big challenge which is how to engage players who

don't necessarily seem to be engaged and before we get to do day's topics let's

go through some housekeeping

oh

items as usual

perfect

sorry tenor

yeah

i don't know why i'm yawning so much today

you know what i hear that kirsty and i we just had the weekend

yeah

and

hm

we're already kind of dead because it was a busy weekend and then we're also

leaving chicago on uh

oh fun

yeah yeah we're leaving thursday coming back the following wednesday so um

oh

so anybody from chicago you know just you keep your eyes

yah

open and you probably still won't

h

see us because we're a you know needle and hay stack but

ah

but

yeah

regardless uh yeah so but like even just the preparation like we both have to

get it on work and stuff and we're just we're tired

h

so i

m

might be doing my own share of yawning but anyway

i

i'm

get

curious

that

justin i hear that you have

yes

one shot coming up

yes yes so this saturday october first at four o'clock p m mountain time i

will be i will be posting the one shot for september ah and if you

want to watch that that is at better dungeon master dot com slash watch all

of the slots to play

yeah

are actually full and we we had to re schedule a couple times but we

finally got it nailed down and it's going to happen this saturday for sure

great

and then the next one shot is actually happening on october twenty second i believe

that's happening at six p m mountain um and again you can also watch that

on better than gamester dot com slash watch that is being hosted by our

h such a struggle

yeah

our friend and guests of the show bone daddy rob from this dungeon is occupied

which is a podcast similar to how to be a better dim and then if

you want to sign up for the next one shot or even just get on

the list for anyone shots coming up just go to better dungeon master dot com

slash one dash shot and sign up it's free and it's first come first

yeah i think those both sound awesome you got you got a little tit

ah

bit of what your your one shot is going to be about this saturday

yes yes i do it's one that i've run before actually so if you have

had me run it for you you'll get a more polished version but essentially you

and your companions get a letter from one of your friends from the town of

autumn's grace in the no prefecture of fair wind and this letter indicates that strange

things have been happening in the town a few families have gone missing and then

they have inexplicably

m

reappeared without any notice and their behavior has been modified somehow they're acting strangely and

this friend of yours teresa

oh

is concerned them no one else in the town shares her concerns even though the

third family of kind of this string of events has recently disappeared and then reappeared

and they're happening more close together but that's just a little haste of the one

shot you'll be getting

love it

this saturday if you watch it or play

great awesome

yeah next housekeeping item is i want to give a special shout out to all

of you spotify listeners out there we i looked the other day we have thirteen

reviews pretty pretty good reviews actually i haven't figured out how to see sorry they're

not reviews the ratings thirteen ratings on spotify

yeah

i haven't figured out how to see reviews but they're pretty good and there's no

names attached to him so i can't thank you by name but thank you so

much you spotify listener out there who has found it worthy of your time to

give us a five star rating it's it's very humbling and we're super grateful to

you for that

yeah that's that's honestly incredible

yeah

means a world to us

yeah and if there are apple podcast listeners out there that think apple podcast is

better than spotify well you're just gonna have to prove it by going in giving

us some ratings and we'll see who is the better pot as listener but the

last thing we want to do is

m

ask you for a very big favor see only you can prevent horrible episodes only

you can prevent horrible how to be a better dungeon master episodes and the way

you do that is by going to better dungeon master dot com slash feedback and

give us feedback on these episodes tell us what you like what you don't like

i was in a facebook group the other day and i posted our show and

i said hey give us some give us some information on what you think and

one person said i missed the old seven minute episodes i think your episodes are

too now so um that's something to consider but if you like longer episodes you

need to tell us or else we're goin a do shorter episodes

that's actually a good point i'll keep that in mind for my other solo podcastskay

exactly but but but don't do anything drastic until we figure out what the listener

actually wants

no

because that was

i'm

just

going to change

one voice

everything

in

due to one comment everything in my life

i love that

just

i

realize

love that

your power over me just everybody you could say that my name is bad changing

it i'm changing it i'll do it just kidding

what

i

would

like

you

my

change

name

it to just just by the way

now i'm totally joking on that one i actually really like the name tanner m

really

yeah i do i do

oh

i actually like my middle name to lewis but with an e w

yeah

i asked m

oh i like that name too

yeah

actually

i mean you got the last name right but i've always thought like

yes

that louis would be a good first name specifically

yeah

like spelled that way because i mean there's

yes

a lot of louise you know and i'm like louis i don't think it's

m

highly of but louis is a first name that's

m ah

you know that's that's a

yeah

good one otherwise

yeah

i mean you got to love erigorn i mean just getting

yeah

i would never

just change

never

your name to rigor and why not i mean i might

m

be tempted to but i digress anyways let's get to today's main topic which is

helping play s who feel disengaged or you feel disengaged to re engage and the

first thing i want to start with and then tender kind of go off and

begin the points we want to bring up and the methods but the first thing

i want i want to bring up is that uh it's time for a reality

check you know at some point whether

oh

or or after trying any of these tips you might have to come to grips

with a fact that maybe that one particular player you're trying to engage in the

game doesn't actually want to play dan d they might just be playing to make

you happy they're giving it a try and they don't really grasp it yet or

it just isn't their thing so when you get to a point when you don't

know how to engage an unengaged player ask them if they really want to play

and sometimes you'll just find out that dandy isn't

oh

for them so with that reality check done let's get into our tips for engaging

unengaged players tenner will you go first

yeah and just as a cave

oh

at the start of this you know it's it's never wrong to if a player

is not even joying themselves obviously use the tips we're going to suggest

m

now but also if they'd rather just like back out gracefully give them that chance

right but

hm

if it doesn't seem like that's what they

oh

want like they don't necessarily want to back out gracefully they just

yeah

want to be more engaged then this this is the podcast

oh

for you but like one thing that i thought

yeah

was very is very important for engaged players

oh

is you know giving them more control like

yeah

just more creative

ah

control in general right because the whole idea about being engaged is i mean if

you think about times in your personal life

oh

when you're unengaged you know a lot of times they will and if you're in

a conversation or you know and you're not actually talking you know i've had moments

like that i'm generally

oh

like a very like social

h

person but like if i go out on a on a date with my with

some friends of hers and specifically i don't know the husband that well he doesn't

know me you know but my wife

hm

knows his wife pretty well then like sometimes they talk and i try and you

know interject and be involved but there are moments when i'm like i'm not a

part of this conversation i us you know and

yeah oh

and it's times like that that gets easy to get unengaged now when i'm able

to contribute and that's kind of the key word here and i think a lot

of our tips are going to deal with that if you're able to contribute um

in a way that makes the game feel different then your player will get re

engaged you know

i like that a lot actually um i know that personally for me in school

whenever i've had to read things or or study materials it was really difficult for

me when i felt the material didn't relate to me when it was just kind

of esoteric or ethereal but when i found that i was reading about a topic

that i could like you said or maybe

m

not i could but it would contribute to me you know like because we're all

in some way self centric i like your idea of helping the players realize what

they can do and helping them do more of that putting their giving them more

control and i think that's a really good point one other thing that i really

like to do is you know i've thought about this specifically in terms of people

with a d d and it's a real thing but people often characterize them as

just people who struggle focusing right but one thing i've noticed is that they don't

struggle focusing on everything

yeah

you know i've noticed that a lot of young boys but in particular who have

d managed to focus on video games for long periods of times which means that

they don't just have problems of focusing they have problems focusing on certain things so

you're you're unengaged player that doesn't necessarily mean that they're an unengaged person that they

don't like doing things in general so what i encourage you to do is try

and figure out what actually interest them outside of deity what things fascinate them with

things they like and if it's not obvious you're goin to have to do some

kind of problem solving an analysis but you know ask them what sort of things

they like to watch on t v ask them what video games they play and

if you need to start you know trolling are not trolling what's the word stalking

them

ah

on social media i guess you control them but hopefully you're doing it in a

nice way but uh

you're like hey

stock

hey

them on social

you suck

and

tell me what you like about games

exactly exactly but essentially you know i figure out stuff that they actually have interests

in you know for example like if someone was there stocking me gosh why can't

i remember that word but if someone was stalking me on social media they'd find

out that you know i spend time with my wife i have hydroponic garden in

my house and i do thready printing and those are all facets that you can

kind of dissect and put into a game because and maybe i'm not a perfect

example but let's say someone has an interest in cars well what's the best thing

to do with that then you start putting mechanical monsters or problems into your game

and hopefully that should interest your uninterested person because it's bringing in one of their

interest from outside of the game into the game if that makes sense

yeah i love it because i think there's so many aspects about i mean the

great thing about the india is that it's a whole world right that's why we

have different skills

m

that have nothing to do with fighting right because there's so many

hm

things

m

it's essential you

oh

could treat it like

yeah

life now but just like in a fantasy world and like from you know

hm

a few centuries ago and that's what's amazing

yeah

is like hey

yeah

if they if they aren't down for just the typical talking to

oh

an n p c about you know some thing quest related and then combat and

then some exploration and and treasure i mean i'm guessing they're going to be interested

in some aspect of that but it might get wrote for them

m yep

and they might get engaged

m

if that's the case be like okay

yeah

let's spice this up let's throw in any of the numerous other things in life

that make it interesting in that kind of like

oh

you know i think

oh

like you said you know finding out there what t v shows they like you

know what video games uh like different things like that that's a great way to

get started you know

hm

and then you can find out what kind of themes they like in games like

if they like eldon ring or game of thrones then you know some of these

darker themes might be their jam and it's like hey got to happen to that

more ah

exactly

but if they're like oh no i love like aragon then you're like okay so

more of a light fan to see more like typical but like

oh

a lot more dragons i guess

on

you know

yeah

whatever it is and that's actually kind of leads into my

oh oh

one of my

oh

tips which is specifically like side arcs because the thing is if someone's on aged

maybe you've been stuck with the main campaign for too long you know

hm

maybe they just

hm

feel like they've kind of been like pushed railroaded in some aspect towards like the

big bad and everything you as the d m have planned along the way so

just you know take a pit stop instead being like okay let's do a side

arch where you know i think d m is like i was mentioning their little

protective

yeah

of their work and so

h

they may be don't

m yeah

allow players to be as creativebecause they're like oh i don't want my players to

be creative in terms of coming up with like a really cool sword because that

will break the game or be really creative in terms of

yeah

like certain relationships are funny

ah

solves for things because like oh man i meant for this to be a hard

battle no instead

yeah

like have us dark that it's like

ah

you know what they're on a boat and they are travelling up river to go

to a vacation island and everything goes wrong but like they also like do a

lot ship type stuff you know and it's kind of like

yeah

the managing a ship and that's like very different but if they're people who are

into pirates of the carabean that's their jam you know and it's a nice little

wait rekindle their creative spirit you know

i agreed and on the show we talk a lot about the virtues of doing

one shots and there's no harm in doing one shots within the arc of your

campaign and they don't have to even be called one shots um

yeah

you essentially you know you can take any of these one shot type adventures change

things here and there and put them within our campaign as tanner is saying and

you have a nice break as it were without really taking a break and even

i just started watching the show demons layer have you have you

oh yeah

heard of that tanner

yeah yeah girl with

oh

the

it's

bamboo thing in her mouth has brother the whole thing

yep

a great

yeah it's super popular right now and i highly recommend it but spoiler alert in

case you are planning on watching it but around like episode gosh i don't even

know like episode five essential um he goes to the main character goes to the

big city and essentially meets the big bad boss like face to face right and

then the next episode he does a little bit in the city and then the

next episode he's basically the way that they work they get missions from crows

yeah

essentially the crow tells him to leave the city and go do something else and

me as you know a very linear thinker i'm thinking wait but the big bad

guys there why is he leaving you know but the way the story goes it's

much more delightful because you know that there's this big bad guy in the back

ground and it's kind of building this tension but it goes on this full long

detour which then turns out to not be a detour so if you feel like

putting in one of these kind of side arks is jarring don't feel that way

because it's not

yeah

at least if you don't make it that way

yeah because you can still tie it back in like at the end

hm

into the big bad or you just add it is like a wonderful little little

break

exactly

and you know like i had some

oh

well i was tinking about this i was like oh there's so many side arts

that you could do that would change

oh

everything up for a bit right for like two or three sessions

exactly

you know like you could do a squid game il death game when it's like

oh the players slept in in they wake up there in the middle of an

arena you know or you know or it's like oh

yeah

your characters are obviously kind of done with the combat and everything and some of

them have side hobbies maybe they get together to create a store or like a

stand at a local farmers market

yeah

and there's kind of a business rivalry and that sounds like such a funny like

little side thing where you can still do all the roles may be a combat

or two

yah

but it's just totally a different flavor and i think if you especially based the

side arc off of something that you found

oh

out about that player like you said you know earlier then then you got you've

got an engaged player immediately you know

agreed and on the note of having them you know do stores or restaurants or

things part of me wonders if maybe some players become disengaged because they aren't aware

of all that things that they actually can do with their character like i wonder

if my current group even knows that you know they can start businesses or do

things in between quests you know and and have other non quest related long term

of goals and so that might be something to also add helping your players understand

that they can do those things and helping them really expand their create

yeah

um but let's let's do a quick intermission hop back to our warm up of

earlier in the show so tanner in this situation you've created your character your new

kind of long term m p c but the player who said they were never

going to come back has come back and now you have to get rid of

this extra character how do you do it

okay going with the theme of our episode today

yeah

about engaging players what i would do is have the least

m

engaged player go for an outing with with under the the halflin cleric um dunder

would be like hey i've noticed you've been down no you don't need to lie

to me you know just like like le be up

m

in

yeah

that person's face and be like you know what let me take you to my

favorite place and then his favorite place is a waterfall or something i'm going to

say waterfall uh where when

hm

he was a kid he would go a lot when his parents died and you

know that's where he first started like falling in love with nature and feeling peace

and that kind of him to his faith and why i became cleric so what's

going to happen is he goes there

yeah

and then they share like a good moment and then out of the blue something

horrific happens right like for example

oh

from

yeah

the maybe from the top of the waterfall a giant rock falls and then the

player rolls rolls of checking and is able escape but dunder doesn't and he's just

done ah and then

uh

and then like the player looks up

h

and

yeah

and there's like a shadow and someone obviously like left and had pushed it or

you could go the more classic route and it's like

m

oh there's a giant octopus

oh

arm that reaches out grabs dunder and just drags like under drags him away and

then i could always bring him back later um

it drags dunder under

under under

is that what you're

yeah

saying

that's you got

uh

it

h

we're

yeah

just so in since i love this yeah so that's that's

yeah

what i'm saying dunder

yeah

went under ah thunder yeah

the thunderous waterfall

yep

i love it i love it well continuing on with our tips for engaging your

disengaged players the last one i think i'm going to share today is secret and

i think one way to help your unengaged player re engage is to involve them

in a conspiracy well not really like a conspiracy but kind of a conspiracy because

everyone loves juicy secrets so while you're at the table tryingcorporating whispers to a singular

player or having every one but one player leave the room or text individual players

if you do that i would say make it a little bit obvious that someone's

getting a text with specific information because even if you unengaged player isn't the player

involved in the secret they are still going to wonder they're still going to be

like what does that person know that i don't know they're goin to speculate as

to what

m

might be happening and this is going to involve their mind and hopefully spark their

curiosity which triggers interest if nothing else

yeah

and if you can't find a way to do it at the table try to

find ways to do it in between sessions but if you do that again you're

going to have to use the unengaged player as the accomplice the person who knows

the c it's otherwise they're never going to know the secrets because you know you

have to make curiosity or intrigue and make sure to use phrases like pretend you

don't know this or don't tell anyone else again this this kind of puffs them

up a little bit and gives them a prompt for how they should role play

and you know everyone's lied a little bit so they know how to do it

but but it really kind of our you're feeding them a little bit of the

intrigue and curiosity and an interest that can help them spice up kind of how

they're playing dandy

yeah and even going along with that i think allowing the secrets that you have

with your characters to be substantial you know i think that

m

can because going back to my mirigual

yeah

point if you are so protective of your game that you don't include players in

the creative process in a way that actually affects every he else and affects the

story then they're not going to care so if you give them a secret it's

like oh my goodness you found out there was ten pieces of gold in a

brick under the wall that's not going to do anything

uh

you know that's going to be like oh cool

yeah

so my character comes back and he's ten gold richer whatever you

yep

know versus being like you

yeah

actually were the person who killed that character's sister you know um and like you

come up with

m

that together

oh

and you like really try and keep that a secret then that's like you know

that that's some real medi uh like engagement that you're going to get there you

know and it actually

agreed

kind of like um it kind of brings up something that i thought of which

was now letting players create and our control n p c s that's kind of

like one of the biggest forms of secret keeping in the game like period right

like

hm

you know sometimes i listen to a few like table top you know liveplapodcasts and

some of them you know they have like improve like people who are trained and

improve and what they're really good at is yes and you know where they're like

oh you know you go get a lot back and forth and kind of buying

into them imagination

oh

um

oh

and some

yeah

of them like the specific podcast called the campaign

ah

podcast

my

uh they are very good at like oh if there's just some random o n

p c they'll let a player like just jump in and pretend to be that

shopkeeper and it will be hilarious you know

m

and so like

m

i

ye

think that things like that or a more substantial kind of an involvement having the

player play kind of a rook purring side character

oh

you know in addition to their main character or even the villain you know uh

maybe not the huge villain because you know i know that's a lot but like

there's a lot of side boss many bosses along the way and having like a

player kind of like pitch some to you and then like oh you just everyone

ill pepper that in and they get to act like weird and maniacal and all

the kind of things that we kind of wish we could do with our players

but we don't with our characters i mean but we don't as we don't want

to ruin it for everyone else let them

hm

create an

uh

n p c with you know

yeah

ah you know and be creative as they want if you're worried do it on

a side arch you know it's like oh so they're having that they're making a

bakery and then the rival bakery that they're going to go to the fair and

compete against each other may be the player one of the players plays the the

baker and he like has an accent and all you know he's kind of goofy

oh

you know just play with it i think that's a great way to give players

some some change and also some creative license

i really like that to anything to help the d m out source is is

a good tip in my book and that that should take some time effort and

stress off of table and hopefully put it back in the players table the players

hands and actually make it more fun for them so

yeah

i really really like that type so in conclusion some tips to help you engage

those unengaged players there's probably a lot more tips uh and actually we'd encourage you

to send those to us and and open up a conversation you know you can

reach out to us on instagram at how to be a better d m which

is also the place where we will be having a give away coming up and

here so keep an eye out for information on that but thank you for being

here listener tanner any parting words for our wayward adventurer today

um honestly i just hope that you guys have the best campaigns and that the

players who are engaged you know are able to get that engagement and kind of

living up the game again because i think that will make everybody happier

m agreed make sure you have the best of campaigns the best of sessions will

be back next week for the best of episodes until then let's go ahead and

roll initiative