5 Tips to Keep Players Engaged

From time to time, a game can grow stale, and players might struggle to get into the action when they sit down at the table. Game masters might struggle over the next opportunities or story arcs to present. With that in mind, here are five tips for adjusting your roleplaying campaigns to keep your players engaged with the adventure.

1. Mix up Your Story Arcs

Sometimes, it’s nice to sit down, tackle a challenge, and find a resolution in one to three game sessions (depending on how long you play each time you meet). But short arcs that feel like serial monster-of-the-week episodes can leave a world and campaign feeling stale and flat. It limits the dimension, which can make it challenging for players to buy into the game.

To add depth, design an arc with an end goal that requires the party to solve multiple problems along the way to get the tools needed to reach that arc’s conclusion. If the party needs to defeat a monster, perhaps they need to first journey into an ancient mine filled with dangers of all sorts to reclaim a legendary weapon. Then they could take out a weak ally of the ultimate monster to weaken the antagonist. Of course that lesser enemy may force the players to spend a session or two figuring out how to defeat it, but these steps alone could give players eight to ten sessions of story to keep them involved in the world, invested in the setting, and giving them agency because they’re having an impact. After they complete the smaller tasks, they can take on the big bad and discover how the world changes as a result of their efforts (and it must change!).

2. Mix up the Challenges

It’s all well and good to give players combat challenges to increase the stakes. In many game systems, combat adds a lot of excitement and can take a decent amount of time, which makes planning easier. When I’m running a session, I know two combat sessions will likely fill up the entire three to four hour game session, even if the players roll really well and I roll very poorly. Sprinkling in some skill challenges makes sure we run out of time before I run out of content most of the time.

But giving your players real-world puzzles to solve mixes up the type of challenge and forces the players to work together in a different way. Their dice rolls won’t influence the challenge, so they have to approach the challenge with a different mindset. This also changes the stakes because bad dice rolls from one player can sometimes be overcome by good dice rolls by another player whereas a puzzle (like a brain teaser, math challenge, or one of those fun wooden and metal puzzles you can pick up at game or toy stores) can stump the entire group for long enough to give you a break. Or they could solve it right away, so be prepared with other challenges!

Another option is to give the players carnival games that may rely on dice rolls but change the flavor of the action. So instead of defeating monsters, maybe they’re trying to knock over bottles or guess how many beans are in a jar. Other games of chance can be simulated, as well, and a quick internet search will probably provide you with dozens of ideas you can adapt to your campaign.

3. Side Activities

Some game systems provide rules to allow players to roleplay activities they might perform when they’re not adventuring. Running a business, throwing a party, or crafting items gives players something they can do for their characters. But they have to have an impact. In one of the games I’m running, the players have to manage a business, which could require them to spend money from the party funds. But they’ll sometimes do well enough to be rewarded with a profit. Other activities resulted in new allies who helped them succeed in later game sessions. And one non-player character became infatuated with a player character, ratcheting up the story tension.

4. Bring in a Guest

Guest players, or a guest game master, bring something different to the table that can break up a stalled or stale campaign arc. Sometimes, as a game master, I need a new player, or at least a new player character, to give me story seeds that will spark the next story. This summer, a friend of our group, who is typically too busy to regularly join us, stepped in as a guest character for a special event in the campaign. Her playing style, and the character I created for her, shifted how the other players engaged, and they tackled the story event in a way that drastically shifted the direction the story is going. It’s a notable transition in the direction the world is headed.

5. Let Your Players Fail

I’m the biggest fan of each player character at the table. I want them to succeed. Every attack should be a critical hit, every skill attempt a roaring success. But adversity forces players to get creative. No, I don’t want the characters to fall in battle. I don’t want them to get stonewalled by a puzzle. But, as a player, every time my character dropped below zero hit points, it was the best session I’d played in that campaign.

If one or two player characters fall to zero hit points, and then the remaining characters defeat the bad guys and revive their comrades, it feels like an earned victory. Depending on how hard they fought, it’s as rewarding as completing a marathon (from what I’ve heard. I don’t run). But the point is, success is fun, and it’s great to experience even from behind the game master’s screen. But success after failure is empowering!

And that’s it! Five tips keep your players engaged.