So, I understand that there is such a thing as a new player who does not really get the idea that you are a part of this world and as such need to interact with it (this is my disclaimer as I intend to be one sided for the rest of the post).

Lets assume that three things are true for most gaming groups:

1. You do not have any players that have never played a RPG before.

2. Everyone is there to have fun.

3. People discuss things like what the campaign will be and character concepts.

Now there are 5 or 6 people sitting around a table on a Thursday evening pretending they are in a galaxy far far away. The GM sets the scene provides an NPC to give some starting direction. Introducing more as the game goes along to provide more information and help shape the story.

(rant on)

At this point it is the responsibility of the player at the very least pay attention to what is happening. Unless the player has an eidetic memory it is likely a good idea for him to take notes about places, NPCs, and information given. Then wonder of wonders it is the prerogative of the player to player to either engage or disengage from what is coming. If you disengage from a situation it can be played just as much as engaging (stand behind someone, don't make eye contact, talk hesitantly, and even use bad accents). Talk to your fellow players IN CHARACTER about how you want to see things resolved.

My point boils down to this. If your character is already engaged in the story there is no need for the GM to find a way to make you shine because you will find a way to make yourself shine anyway. If you are unable to find a way to make you character shine then you probably did not talk out what the campaign would be about or how the characters would interact.

(rant off)

On that point, I would say it is the GM's responsibility to make sure he is engaging the players. This could mean...

1) Providing opportunities for them to use their skills

2) Directing events or questions to them if you notice they're being quiet

3) Talking with a single player outside of gametime, or to the group in general before a session, to outline your expectations as to your respective roles as players & GM.

You can't control what other people do...but you can control what you do for them.

On the comment about note taking...

RANT ON

I find 99% of my players in my almost 25 years of gaming do NOT want to take notes and then rely on me to "remember" details all of the time. Sometimes, I have no problem with them prodding for information again... sometimes I do... when they hear the name for the 10th time, they should remember it. Ugh...

RANT OFF

1) Providing opportunities for them to use their skills

This. Many i times i saw GMs discard completely the charisma/stealth character and just throw face-on combat.

A very good player can still finding creative ways to use his abilities but will be much more harder and a new player will probably just get bored.

OP: One thing i really piss me off sometimes is when i go, speak in character as a NPC, deliver a line full of lore and the PCs just look each other and go like "uuhh.... sup?". Luckily this don't usually last long and by the end of the session everyone is more confident.

I hear Satchmo's complaint. Another friend I have GMs a different game, but there is one player in both our games who is always asking "what's my character's motivation, why am I here?" It can get annoying. If you've taken awayputurwpn's suggestions, there's really not much more you can do.

Certainly players should pay attention to the game and do their best to remember who is who, what is what, and why they're there.

In my opinion the GM doesn't have so much of a responsibility to hand-hold each player, but it's definitely part of the GM's duties as I see it to consider the nature of each player AND character, and do their best to provide hooks in the game for that player and character to shine.

I take notes and write the game blog. I also handle group inventory and accounts. I remember rules and give suggestions to the other players about how to accomplish whatever it is they're trying to achieve (and, yeah, I also bring up the rules that will dump us in a river of hurt).

My memory for real life stuff is ****. But I can remember the make and model of the guns my character was using while fighting giant robots eight years ago (Caliban Model X [sigh]).

I get that the other Players aren't me, but reminding them of the same rules every week can be a drain, even if it is understandable. If they don't know who our black market contact is after a month of play or if they ask the same question another player or the GM has just finished answering I really wonder why they bother showing up. [shrug]

More than anything else, all Players (GM included) need a desire to play. If the GM doesn't like the adventure they're running, they won't put enough energy into it and the whole thing will fall flat. If a Player doesn't find a way to enjoy the work of other Players and the GM they'll likely disrupt the game's flow for everyone. A motivated Player finds stuff to do. A motivated GM sees what you're trying to do and builds off of it.

On the comment about note taking...

RANT ON

I find 99% of my players in my almost 25 years of gaming do NOT want to take notes and then rely on me to "remember" details all of the time. Sometimes, I have no problem with them prodding for information again... sometimes I do... when they hear the name for the 10th time, they should remember it. Ugh...

RANT OFF

Had a great example of this with the AoR beginner's box. I was playing it with a group of players who knew the system, so it was much more 'off the rails' than it would be with new players.

So the PC's hijacked one of the AT-ST's near the beginning and caused a ruckus and a massive amount of destruction, completely missing the "infiltrate" and "the Rebel's want the base" aspects of the intro.

So I decided with this amount of chaos the commanding officer would just go straight for the shuttle and get out of there.

So when they reach the landing pad, it's empty. When they took the command centre, they said "Ok, we'll get the Imperials to contact their base and say that the Lt is a defector and arrest him". "Good idea. Who's defecting exactly?" "You know, the C.O. Lt whatsisname". "Lt who?"

Yeah. Not only did the main target get away, but the base was in ruins. Alliance Command was not happy, and grounded the whole squad.

It takes both sides to make a great game. I am very lucky to GM for players with a high level of skill and commitment, friends with who I have gamed for years.

It's an 'unspoken covenant', as I like to call it. Both players and GM need to understand the needs of the other and be open to new ideas.

A GM has to manage their players ; calm the rowdy ones down, bring the shy ones out sometimes. Players need to be respectful of others, even when their characters are disagreeing.

Players need to help the GM be interested in their characters, but a good GM takes aspects of them to add to the ongoing story and make them a part of the game, in a living breathing world with consequences.

Players need to trust the GM and know when to reign it in sometimes, which can be hard. They must learn that the time to argue a GM call isn't during the session, but over the pub afterwards. And then the GM needs to take that on board.

A GM needs to put in different challenges, with an eye on what the players like doing and are good at doing. In return, players need to show commitment to the world, remembering NPC names, goals, etc in interacting with them.

At its core, this is a narrative game, where the players have a great deal of freedom in interpreting their roles and driving the game. It's not a solo video game, you have to work as a team, and you shouldn't want to win at all costs.

In my experience, these problems usually arise when there are a lot of players in the group. The more the merrier, I always say. But for a GM to deal with so many things at once.... someone is bound to start looking for other things to do while they wait for their "turn."

And then there is the unspoken rule - "Don't split the party." For the most part, if something isn't directly happening to a player's character... it usually isn't that interesting to that player. There really isn't much you can do to change that fact. The best a GM can hope for is to find a way for the story to always include circumstances pertaining to each player simultaneously. This isn't always going to happen, though, because it's hard to weave a story together that encapsulates every character equally... especially if you're having to do some improv to the story.

This is also an issue with how RPG's have generally been designed in the past, and feeds into the unspoken rule above. I've noticed that EotE and AoR have done a really good job of not falling into this trap, but I think so many people have grown into how D&D typically deals with character classes and roles and abilities. Generally speaking, the Fighter was not the Face, the Mage was not the Meat Shield, the Rogue was not the Healer, and the Cleric was not the Nuke (unless it's 3.5 or Pathfinder and the Cleric is BROKEN!) At any rate, my point is, I often times played a Rogue in D&D. I enjoyed the RP aspect of it as that class generally gave me the most options outside of combat. In combat... I could sneak attack and do wands... and that was kind of it. Other classes, like the Fighter, perhaps, generally had one thing he was good at - swinging a sword. And in the later levels, that really became obsolete.

My point is that people got into the habit of letting other players deal with different types of challenges while they sat back and ate some cookies and caught up on their text messages, primarily because their class simply wasn't designed to participate in that type of challenge. A great example is the Fighter. No one makes a Fighter as the party Face, precisely because the class was not designed to do fun things in a social encounter. It was designed to do fun things in Combat. This is something of a pet peeve of mine, really. I refuse to play any new RPG's that do not give a well balanced field of play in all challenge areas for every class.

At any rate, it's going to take some work and patience to break these habits. As a GM, you need to try and understand why your players aren't paying attention, and then apply discipline where it will count.

Lastly... sometimes the GM just isn't that great, or the story sucks, or any number of things. A lot of times... GM's just need a general attitude check.

On the comment about note taking...

RANT ON

I find 99% of my players in my almost 25 years of gaming do NOT want to take notes and then rely on me to "remember" details all of the time. Sometimes, I have no problem with them prodding for information again... sometimes I do... when they hear the name for the 10th time, they should remember it. Ugh...

RANT OFF

Had a great example of this with the AoR beginner's box. I was playing it with a group of players who knew the system, so it was much more 'off the rails' than it would be with new players.

So the PC's hijacked one of the AT-ST's near the beginning and caused a ruckus and a massive amount of destruction, completely missing the "infiltrate" and "the Rebel's want the base" aspects of the intro.

So I decided with this amount of chaos the commanding officer would just go straight for the shuttle and get out of there.

So when they reach the landing pad, it's empty. When they took the command centre, they said "Ok, we'll get the Imperials to contact their base and say that the Lt is a defector and arrest him". "Good idea. Who's defecting exactly?" "You know, the C.O. Lt whatsisname". "Lt who?"

Yeah. Not only did the main target get away, but the base was in ruins. Alliance Command was not happy, and grounded the whole squad.

My first ever Shadowrun game for an entirely new group went very similarly. They were supposed to kidnap a guy from this big office complex. They went in and shot some guards, set off alarms. Their target waited until they'd blundered their way deeper into the building and then caught the elevator down to the ground floor and walked out the building having been watching them on the security cameras. Target then stole their van to make his getaway.

Player: "the Gm should find ways to make me shine."

Gm: * hands the player a tin of shoe polish.

I think it should be stated differently. It's not up to the GM to "make" the player shine, but to give the player "opportunity" to shine. If the GM's doing that, his job is done.

I'm seeing what could be a complete and total communication breakdown. I'll break down my thoughts on the matter:

1. Notes are fine if they're in moderation, but most players I know don't want to spend half the game searching through a pile of notes.

solution: I've found that having pictures with brief descriptions of characters they've interacted with laid out helps alleviate this problem immensely.

2. Players finding a way to make their character shine vs Gm helping their character shine can be a two-way issue. Players should know what kind of campaign their engaged in. Nothing is worse then to build a skill monkey, fighter, social, etc. only to find out that your skills aren't needed for the adventure. The GM should provide opportunity for those skills to be relevant. Just telling the player "figure out a way to make your character relevant" is bad GM'ing in my opinion. That said, if you provide opportunities to let them solve a problem and they don't, that's their problem. Furthermore, if you set the expectation for a combat heavy campaign and they make a diplomat with no combat skills, that's their problem.

3. Even experienced players don't always know how to "make their character shine" in situations they're unfamiliar with. Just having your character "I hide quietly behind the party face" will only engage a character for so long before they're bored.

So I guess overall, I'm in the camp that the GM should set the opportunity for all characters to be engaged in the story, unless they made it clear that certain types of characters wouldn't fit in. Once the opportunity is there, it's up to the player to take advantage of the situation. In the end I find the attitude "You figure it out" to be a way that doesn't allow all people to have fun at the table, which is the whole point of pretending to be people in outer space.

The game I play in has five or six regular players. Most of them engage in what is going on and really get into the mix. One person (whom I think I rub the wrong way) always has something going on and I find that I enjoy my character interacting with her character. Then we have a couple younger players who work at it and try but often seem they are uncertain what their character would do in a given situation.

The problem that I have in this particular game is that I take hold of what is going on and try to drive the story forward. I think this is viewed by some at the table as being overbearing. I guess this is the counter point to my original post.

I think it should be stated differently. It's not up to the GM to "make" the player shine, but to give the player "opportunity" to shine. If the GM's doing that, his job is done.

This was exactly my thought. SWRPG, as a narrative game, differs from other RPGs in that the players have almost as much ability to influence the story as does the GM. However, if they're not used to this style of play, they have a tendency to just sit back and let the story unfold without much participation. One key aspect of GMing this game is to provide opportunity for the players to change the narrative and think outside the box when it comes to playing their characters. Sometimes, it comes down to asking the players "How do you want to handle this situation? How do you want to use your skills? How do you want to use that Triumph that you just rolled, or those six advantages?"

GM Chris in the Order 66 podcast (which I never listen to) has a great piece of advice. If the players try to creatively use their characters, even if it might be a stretch, you should never say "No", you should say "Yes, but..." and maybe stack up the difficulty dice, add some setback, or do an upgrade or two. If it's at all plausible, let them try it! It gets the creative juices flowing, makes them aware that there's more than one way to use a skill or a talent, and gives them the confidence to add more to the narration of the game. And everyone winds up benefiting

I blame DnD, the GM has to do almost everything and the players are sometimes little better than spectators. My last two sessions has had the players do very little on their own initiative, even after a huge prompting and a destiny point flipped they just sat there.

I am starting to lean towards adding in more structure and maybe railroading them somewhat. Just start in medias res and throw everything and the kitchen sink at them.

I am also thinking of having the players GM for 10-20 minutes and then hand off to another player, I'll spectate and maybe guide or add some twists. The party walks into a bar and....