Slightly delayed gaming report

[breakinglight11]

The tabletop games of this past weekend all went well to varying degrees. I enjoyed the prewritten World War I Call of Cthulhu mod, but the pre-generated characters were a bit too bland. I like pre-gens as a concept-- in fact, I may actively prefer them, since I think the GM tends to be able to integrate them better into the world --but these didn'

Comments

[valleyviolet]

I run a game of D&D in the Eberron setting and I tend to find that my players latch on to all sorts of things that I don't expect them to including NPCs, bad guys, world details, particular loot pieces... you name it and they tend to either totally ignore it or give it overwhelming significance and read too much into anything I say about it.

To some degree, I think it's kind of arbitrary. They're trying to find meaning in a world that they can only interpret from limited information (the best I can convey of their character's experiences). To some degree I think what they latch on to reflects what they want. It can reflect their expectations for the kind of story they're playing or what their characters want or fear.

If I included frescoes of elves building tree cities in the ancient ruins purely for color but the players obsess about who they were and why they left the place behind? Probably there are themes and adventures in that they want to play. If they constantly call "that" plucky urchin who they saved from a street gang to run messages for them, probably she needs a more significant part in the story at some point in the future. ;)

[breakinglight11]

I like your way of thinking of it of as cues as to what the players find interesting and what directions to take the campaign in. That's a really good idea for keeping them engaged. Thanks!