Solving Player Behaviors: Hobbitism

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If your players won’t open a door, have something scary open it for them

Way I heard it: Shire Frodo is your backstory, Rivendell Frodo "I will take it" is your current character, an adventurer

I tell my players when I start a campaign "Make sure your character is an adventurer that will be able to work with others". Worked well enough this far.

Slight adjustment: "No one's fun is wrong (unless its purpose is to take fun from others)." People have fun stealing the spotlight. People have fun derailing game sessions. People have fun actively trying to frustrate the DM. People have fun being contrary. It's why they do these things. But in a social setting, fact is, these types of fun are Incorrect. Because they aren't personal fun. They are engines that require The Fun of Others as fuel. I can't have fun unless someone else isn't. I can't gain fun unless someone else loses some. Like "fun" in some finite resource for which we're all competing. Yeah, that kind of fun is wrong.

I'm an advocate of session zero character building. We set the expectations for characters and the degree of realism to expect. This is the kind of adventure we are having, let's build characters that work for this adventure. Works exceedingly well. I also encourage players to watch the details of the story closely. Helps me keep the facts of the story straight. Almost never have these problems with players.

One of my past games slowed down to a crawl once because we ended up settling down in the DM’s sci-fi fantasy capital part of the world because most of the people who were driving the party sorta just died. We stayed there until the end of the campaign where we ended up with a confrontation with an evil organization which essentially told us to “Split and retire or die” and because none of the characters had any attachment to the party we chose the former. It was still a pretty fun campaign but it’s a shame it had to end in such a way.

I've never been a DM, but as a player, whenever I feel like my character wouldn't do something, I turn to the other players and say "convince my character" It almost always leads to good conversations in character, and I can just roleplay changing my mind without breaking my own immersion

It CAN be fun to create a Hobbit-Type character who gets dragged along the adventure, don't really want to be there, and constantly asks questions about how silly everything is. But not only everyone at the table has to be on board with having that particular character, you as a player have to work together with the dm and the party to move that character forward. Sounds risky and tiring, but in the proper hands it could be phenomenal.

One of my favorite moments from my last campaign: We were tasked with climbing a mountain to slay a white dragon. We knew that there was a high priority that the BBEG, who had an Orb of Dragonkind, was on that mountain. Knowing the danger, my character did NOT want to climb the mountain, and actively tried to convince the party so. The one thing my character valued more than money was his life. So how did I work around this? My character knew if they did not get the Orb for their master, they would suffer a fate worse than death. So, begrudgingly, up the mountain they went. An in-character solution for an in-character problem!

Even Bilbo went out into the world he grumped the whole time but had a adventure! sometimes people need a "nudge out the door!" As Gandalf explained to Frodo

5:46 I deliberately made a character who would push the story forward, it seemed my playgroup needed it. Even when I as a player was nervous, I would say, "Um, Augustus is going to jump through the portal to another world unless someone stops him..." give the players a few seconds to think about it, try to get a reaction to see if it would make someone upset for any reason, and do it.

There's a 4th reason players do the 'nitpicking' thing: Strategy. Resolving ambiguousness about a universe's physics, biology, and society can open up entertainingly surprising yet still consistent solutions to encounters. The problem is a DM will have to have thought about these kinds of fundamentals or be quick on the draw to be able to provide satisfactory emergent solutions. That's a huge amount of work for a DM to potentially go unused in a campaign (though an opponent could potentially use these emergent effects against the players as a way to signal that they can think outside the box).

Something that’s worked well for me is a session zero discussion of “tell me why your character decided to be an adventurer.” I’ve found that this question often makes players realize they’ve created a Hobbit when they don’t have a good answer, and it’s an opportunity to help them tweak their character into someone more willing to go on an adventure. And when they DO have a good answer, I can better craft my adventure hooks to appeal to the individual characters. If the Rogue is in it for the money, I promise a substantial gold reward for this quest I really want them to do. Character is lawful good and powerful and believes that with great power comes great responsibility? Include a danger to innocents if they ignore the hook I really want them to bite. One player is on a revenge quest to get the guy who killed his dog? Name drop them as being associated with this quest. Get by the “my character wouldn’t go” excuse by understanding what makes your PCs click and specifically designing quests that they WOULD go on. On the flip side, I’m currently going through a campaign as a player, and my character’s entire reason for adventuring was resolved. I’d been clear with my DM that my character didn’t really care about the larger war, but there was one particular thing he was looking for, and… he found it. So, rather than bog down the campaign by becoming a Hobbit, I suggested that I could roll up a new character who’s motives were more central to the campaign and let this one just retire. I think that was better for everyone in the end

Given the name and how you describe it, I'm imagining Mary and Pipen's scene with Aragorn when they are complaining about not stopping for breakfast and "second breakfast". When we as players choose to speak up about random things we don't like about the fantasy world, we are bringing other's down, rather than focusing on the good. Let's let our characters have time in the spotlight, rather than being the group out of immersion to put ourselves (the players) in the spotlight.

I just found this channel and it is helped alleviate some of my anxiety of running my first game with some of my friends, your content is much easier to understand to a noob such as I. Thanks and keep it up

I appreciate your example of how you’ve changed in time by remaining self aware of your actions. I think a great point Sly Flourish mentions in The Lazy Dungeon Master; ‘have players add to the description in as much as it wouldn’t effect gameplay’; It may help immerse newbies and perhaps put the ball in the Ego court and let them add to the theme as a cooperative group instead of a singular finger pointer.

Great troubleshooting video, but I'd personally confront a problem player directly than sending them a 9-ish long video that gives them a multiple choice on what beef I could have with them. Again, I like the word you made up and I hope it helps gives the TTRPG community a name to some of their issues.

A little kobold child, pushes past you and flings the door open calling out "mommy we've got cowards". DM choice whether mommy is a goblin cupcake baker in a pinny who tuts at them or an ancient red dragon.

Refusing to adventure is a standard step in the Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey. So you've got 2 separate pressures on player behaviors, the direct threat of adventuring being risky and bad things likely happening to their character, but also there's a cultural pressure. We were raised on stories where the hero is called to adventure, and they immediately refuse to go, and then something happens that compels the hero to move forward. So many players might subconsciously believe they're playing their part correctly by refusing to bite the plot hook, because that's how these stories are supposed to go!