Dealing with Refusal

One of my players actually reads this blog. He considers it somewhat entertaining- mostly some of the comments I get. Being a theology major plus a professional (if part time) improv guy he often has insightful takes on various things.

Last Friday I did a post on the Hero's Journey and offered that perhaps players attempt to emulate elements of that unconsciously, including 'refusing the call to adventure'. There I make the statement that I haven't dealt with the problem myself or if I did I didn't notice.

So at this weekend's game he took great pleasure in do exactly what I describe, refusing the adventure and then stopping the game and pointing out that I was dealing with it as it happened. Rather embarrassing in it's own way. I'm told that it's actually quite common in my campaigns. So much for being aware of everything- at least consciously.

Reviewing my actions it seems that I attempted to engage the actual character's mindset. For example if the issue is character skeptism, I have in-game events undermine it (as in the game last weekend). These are often entertaining in and of themselves and are great for further exploring personnalities of both the PCs and NPCs involved.

One thing I would try to avoid is just burning down part of the character's background (like killing his family) unless I know I have player agreement for that. Some blockages are more tricky than others, and more care would be needed. Communication OOC between the player and GM are important in such cases.

In general however I think that a good player will work to meet the GM halfway. If it is a genre emulation issue- they are likely looking for its resolution as much as you are (even if they don't know it). Thus tossing something out there will generally receive as quick bite.

You have a completely different issue with those people playing the character 'because that's what the character is'. The only real way of dealing with that is to make sure at character creation that the players make characters certain not to refuse the call.

I've seen worse cases of this online, where the player states that can't pre-create a character- it has to happen in play. And the result in play can end up completely counter to goals and style of the campaign. In this worse case, you may need to get rid of the player. The ones I've seen online have never been able to resolved their problems.