Campaigns and PC memory

[Wooberman]

Alternatively titled 'Why are we doing this again?'

Over the 15 years I've gamed I can say that I have spent approx. 13 of those years as a DM. The cavernous frown lines, high blood pressure and receding hairline I have been afflicted with would be the testament to that. I've run a fair few campaigns including- Warhammer fantasy 'The Enemy Within', Call of Cthulhu 'Masks of Nyarlathotep', COC D20 Campaign 'Nocturnum', Dnd 3.X 'City of the Spider Queen' and Eberron 'Shadows of the last war' to name a few. Unfortunately however none of these campaigns reached their glorious finale as they seemed to fizzle out about half way through.

I have to admit as a player I have only played through the 'The Enemy Within' campaign till the end and that was only recently and i think about how that went and i just can't think how our DM got the game flowing so well.

It always seems to go around the same point, the PC manage to vanquish the Mega-mook at the end of one section and when it comes to moving on (In Masks moving from Egypt to Africa, Spider queen from the Vournoths mire to Maerimydra etc) the players seem to lose interest and ask 'Why are we doing this again?'. Previously I would get annoyed thinking 'Isn't it obvious?' but now I start to worry if that really is the case and whether it is what I'm doing that is wrong. I listened to RPPR episode 2 'When Games Implode' and that seemed to help me in the short run but I wanted to know if there was anything else I could do to stop these games just fizzling out.

To this day the phrase 'Why are we doing this again?' causes me to nearly shatter my teeth in rage, go purple and cover the floor in errant head hair...

...please help!

[clockworkjoe]

blackmail

[Murph]

Never tried this before, but maybe a after each session, assign one player the job of writing and preforming a recap for the next session.  If that player does it, give everyone in the party a small reward (action point, free reroll, whatever, depends on your system).  Peer pressure should keep people doing it.

[Shallazar]

Over the summer my group played through Shadows of Yog-Sothoth CoC. We played through every scenario except the two bonus ones.
At the beginning of each session I would ask if everyone remembered what happened last time, and if no one remembered then we started going back through the clues and a  sort of
"previously on Shadows of Yog-Sothoth" sort of recap.

This helped a lot because sometimes we didn't meet for a couple weeks and then would have a long session.
Recaps helped keep things on track, and since we only had the summer to complete the campaign everyone was pretty focused.

[malyss]

What Shallazar said.

[IDaMan008]

I think the recap idea is right on the money. I usually start my games off with a brief "When we last left our adventurers..." segment to put everyone in mind of the last story. If one of the regular players has been absent, I'll usually make the others explain to him what he missed in character. Another thing that I do (that I picked up from Ross in his Actual Plays) is to remind the players of their goals and their options when they get a bit stuck. Players' memories can get a bit hazy between sessions sometimes, and it usually helps when you can give them a nudge forward. It lets them make their own decisions that will move your story along without making them feel like you're leading them by the nose.

[TigerStorm]

blackmail

Surprisingly (actually, not so surprisingly), this works. In my Mutants & Masterminds game I've been running, I offer bonus character points at the beginning of each session for who can give the best recap (or split the points offered if they want to share the recap). You would be surprised how good a player's memory is when greed takes over... haha

[Wooberman]

I think the recap idea is right on the money. I usually start my games off with a brief "When we last left our adventurers..." segment to put everyone in mind of the last story. If one of the regular players has been absent, I'll usually make the others explain to him what he missed in character. Another thing that I do (that I picked up from Ross in his Actual Plays) is to remind the players of their goals and their options when they get a bit stuck. Players' memories can get a bit hazy between sessions sometimes, and it usually helps when you can give them a nudge forward. It lets them make their own decisions that will move your story along without making them feel like you're leading them by the nose.

I will admit that i have and still do use this method but unfortunately it take an awful lot of coaxing to kickstart their memories. Come to think of it maybe i was setting the bar too high, if they have trouble remembering what they did last session how the hell will they remember what they're supposed to be doing!

Almost drives you to running constant combat encounters because thats the only things they seem to remember (after coaxing).

'Oh man! You remember when you ran 20 yards across the compound and roundhouse kicked the guys head off?'
'...oh yeah'

In 20/20 Hindsight, I think you're right Ross. Blackmail is the way to go!
Now all I need is one of each of the player's relatives and duct tape.

[IDaMan008]

After rereading your original post, Wooberman, a question occurred to me: how long do you average between game sessions? If your players are getting confused as to what's going on, it could be because of the gap between stories. A couple of my friends have the same problem because they often go weeks or even months between games. They frequently have to explain to us what we're doing, who we're fighting, and why. Players can also become confused if they're involved in multiple games with different characters and storylines. If this is your situation, I'd suggest having a brief Q&A before each new session, just to clear things up. I might also start keeping a log of the previous sessions, or elect somebody to be the secretary and summarize events as they occur. That way, if there are questions, you can simply tell the players to look back over their quest log.

[Wooberman]

After rereading your original post, Wooberman, a question occurred to me: how long do you average between game sessions? If your players are getting confused as to what's going on, it could be because of the gap between stories. A couple of my friends have the same problem because they often go weeks or even months between games. They frequently have to explain to us what we're doing, who we're fighting, and why. Players can also become confused if they're involved in multiple games with different characters and storylines. If this is your situation, I'd suggest having a brief Q&A before each new session, just to clear things up. I might also start keeping a log of the previous sessions, or elect somebody to be the secretary and summarize events as they occur. That way, if there are questions, you can simply tell the players to look back over their quest log.

We usually game once a week on a sunday for about 3-5 hrs (depending on goofing off) for approx. 4-7 players. There are occasions where a week is missed due to poor attendance or 'not in the mood' but these are few.

Thanks for the Advise i do appreciate your suggestions, The next session I'm running is part 2 of FEAR ITSELF 'Ocean in the forest'. Part 1 which went really well as we are all  (EX-) Boffer Larpers and have a large pool of previous experience to pull out flashbacks and memorable asshat NPCs.
And thanks to your advise I'll be starting with the Q+A/Blackmail approach. Although what to give as a reward in FEAR ITSELF is another matter... Skill points are a HUGELY prized commodity in that game.

[Shallazar]

Like I mentioned with the CoC game,

it has many clues. So Many little pieces of paper.
That sometimes just going back through the clues  and remembering "Why do i have this list of names?" or "Is there a reason I have this strange poem?" can
jump start the game as the players remember that, "Yes! We were going to go kill all those people before we realized that they were actually buffalo ninja zombies!"

Blackmail has never worked for me.