How many RPG quests do you know start in a tavern? The barkeep offers a job that involves saving a local NPC’s sheep from wolves (or maybe there’s rats in the basement). And your players just don’t care. It’s a quest for quest’s sake.
One of the biggest things I think about when I write a scenario is how to suck the players into the story. You can have the world’s best story, but if the players aren’t motivated to jump in, they’re never going to leave the tavern. Why would you? Taverns are warm, cosy, full of drinks and sweet rolls! In this video, I’m going to give you advice that you can apply to almost any game system, whether it’s a TTRPG or a video game.
Here’s the harsh truth. Your players are bored with cookie cutter quests. This plays out at table when you can tell they’re disinterested, checking their phones, not engaging with the other players. And, truth be told, you’re probably a bit bored running this scenario.
You need to think like a player and ask yourself: why should I care?
Think about it in the context of the previous example. I don’t care about Farmer Brown. Who’s he to me? I’m probably just going to get a couple of wolf pelts and some gold out of this quest, while I risk life and limb. Or I could stay in this warm tavern and drink mead and not get bitten by a wolf.
So the real question of how to hook your players, is actually how do you motivate a player care about your quest?
For me, there are five key ways to get a player to care.
1. Appeal to their self-interest
The number one, easiest way to get your players to care is self-interest. We care about things that affect us and our characters.
Imagine you’re not hearing about the wolves second hand. A pack leaps from the bushes as your adventuring party is travelling down the road. The alpha wolf locks its teeth on one of the characters’ leg, leaving it with a ragged bite that slowly develops into a strange infection…
If you’re that player, you’re going to care a hell of a lot more about those wolves if it’s affecting both your story and your stats. You’re also going to motivate the people around you to assist with helping you, building camaraderie and engaging the players at the table without the GM having to lift a finger. So you can see why having the world and its events affect your players is one of the best ways of hooking them into a game.
2. Threaten what they value
The second way to hook your players is related to the first. It’s about value: we care about things that are important to us, whether that’s people, NPCs, pets, places or the world state. And so, to make the players care, you have to threaten the things they value.
If a member of the adventuring party you’ve been journeying with for months starts growing hair and howling at the full moon, then you’re going to care about what’s happening.
A vague threat isn’t compelling to a player, but a threat against their loved ones absolutely is. Or perhaps there’s a beloved NPC in your campaign that your players would die for; well, you know what they say about killing your darlings…
The scope of the threat can be as low stakes as someone has stolen a turnip that the party were going to eat for dinner, or world-shattering, like civilization itself is going to collapse if you don’t stop this evil power. Threaten something or someone your players value, and let me tell you, they’ll be engaged.
3. Appeal to player ethics
The third way to hook your players is really interesting, because it relies on a knowledge of player psychology and metagaming. It’s leveraging the ethics of play. We care about things that demonstrate we are ethical people to others. This is not meant as a creepy player manipulation, but good people don’t like doing bad things – as the game writers have talked about with renegade playthroughs in Mass Effect, or the small percentage of players who have achieved the trophies for evil endings in Baldur’s Gate 3.
I’m going to give an example from one of my own games to illustrate this. In my Regency Cthulhu game, The Well of All Fear, players receive a letter from a friend begging them for help in finding her missing brother. If players don’t find her brother alive, Miss Millwood will become homeless due to the laws of the day that didn’t allow women to inherit property.
What are you going to say to this? Sorry, I don’t care, see you later?
Even if one person at the table says no, or the rogue asks what’s in it for me, when you get a group together there’s bound to be at least one person whose existing ethical beliefs override their characters’ beliefs, and feels compelled to help. Then this becomes a matter of peer pressure at the table; even if there’s an outlier on the party decision, they’ll usually fall into line with the majority of the party.
4. Add a mystery
So you can hook players by appealing to their values and ethics, but this next hook is actually external to the players’ motivations. And that’s giving them a mystery.
As humans, we don’t like uncertainties, and we don’t like things being left open ended. So, if you give your players a mystery, there’s a natural human compulsion to solve it. The more WTF this is, the more curious they will be.
Let’s play with that first example again. Your players are enjoying their drinks at the tavern, when a scream cuts through the night, drawing the attention of everyone in the bar. They rush outside to see what’s going on. They find a bloody trail leading into the forest, the only clue a broken necklace marked with an occult symbol.
While this is a pretty cliched opening, it’s still WAY more compelling. Is something hunting villagers? Will the adventurers be next?
One of the most common ways this hook is used in the commissioning opening: where an NPC commissions the players to investigate a crime, such as a stolen jewel, missing book, lost child… the reason this kind of opening is used so much because it works. It appeals to players’ care for the NPC, their ethics, curiosity, and often their own self-interest in increasing their wealth.
It’s even better when there’s a shred of incredulity in the opening. How can this money be missing from a locked safe? How can this person be in two places at once? It’s impossible! The players will immediately set about trying to reconcile their need for a logical explanation to the situation they’re confronted with.
The best thing about creating a mystery is that you can just keep them coming. Once your players get close to the answer for one mystery, use that answer to open up an even bigger conspiracy!
5. The Carrot Method
Finally, there’s a really powerful method of compelling your players to join the story. I call it The Carrot Method. In this, you promise your players something really big if they do a certain task. It might seem like you’re bribing the characters with loot, but it’s far more complex than that.
Because you have to be careful when you’re offering loot as a reward. In and of itself, loot isn’t meaningful. Oh cool, more junk in my inventory. Let me just do some inventory management to see who can carry this heavy magical axe.
No, what you need is an object or thing that speaks to your players’ motivations.
Gold doesn’t matter unless you need the money. A magic sword is all well and good, but a magic sword that determines the ruler of a nation is going to really motivate a character who dreams of power.
The carrot doesn’t have to be a physical object. It could be information they’re searching for.
You see, if Farmer Brown offers a shiny sword, it’s not very interesting. But if Farmer Brown tells the orphaned sorcerer that this sword is a clue to the identity of their real parents, and he’ll give it up in exchange for killing some wolves, those players are sure going to want to go hunt some wolves.
What you’re offering here isn’t loot. It’s story.
Conclusion
There are plenty more ways to hook your players in roleplaying games, but the key question you should always ask yourself: Why should my players care?
If you give them a reason to care, if you offer them story rewards, if you pique their curiosity, then you’ll have them hanging off the adventure from the very start. And I won’t need to dress up as a bar wench ever again…
Now I want to hear from you: what’s your favourite way to get players in? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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