Advice Needed--too much roll play

By swrider, in Game Masters

It's Star Wars! If they're sitting around eating breakfast discussing the day's agenda for too long, bust a squad of goons in on them! The goons may happen to know just the thing they need to move them forward. It works like that in the movies, too.

They could trek through the forest and encounter the ewoks just fine without any sort of action or push to make things exciting but just as it looks ike the heroes are going to trudge on, they get into a speeder bike chase. A leisurely departure from Mos Eisley turns into a firefight and escape from Star Destroyers. A boring flight to a repair station becomes a roller coaster ride through an asteroid field.

It doesn't have to be quite so action-packed. When Luke and Ben first meet Han Solo, they could have spent hours getting to know one another with a q&a but Stormtroopers showed up as if the GM was saying, "Get a move on." no fighting ensued but, just by showing up, the heroes got off their butts and moving.

Edited by PrettyHaley

First I would say distinguish in the thread title between Roleplaying (the problem you described) too much and Roll playing (your title which implies the players are relying too much on dice to make all of thier decisions) too much (Two completely different problems). The Storm Troopers Bust Down the Door is always a good tactic to get things moving, (and one mentioned in the CRB) a better way is to never say "So what do you do?" If you have not offered the group choices they are going to do mundane stuff. It sounds to me like your group is begging for information. If you start your session with, "You wake up after a good night's rest, now what do you do" There is no story there, no conflict. If you start with "You wake up in a strange one room flat lying on a dirty pallet with six other people whom you have never seen before, with no memory of the prior night's events, and notice a dead Rodian on the floor," now you have added drama to the player's situation and if they decide "Nice to meet you, let's go get breakfast," then you have a real problem, because your players are obviously rebelling against your game.

If they start discussing too much in combat, I've simply stated, "You just lost the current initiative point". They get the hint quickly.

This. Also, if they start talking a bunch, I treat their conversation as (roughly) in-character. "Danube the Beast Rider hears you talking in hushed tones about throwing him off the nearest cliff, and he is not happy."

Also, in-character after much back-and-forth table-talk trying to determine the angle they want to take to buy a particular item, "Sorry—just sold it to that gentleman over there, walking out of the store."

These I use sparingly, as my group tends to not overcomplicate things or take too long making decisions.