It takes a lot of hard work, passion, and time to get a campaign up and running. But it's worth it to sit at the table and see your players explore your world and get really invested in the adventures you send them on. So it's understandable why it might be particularly heartbreaking when you look across your DM screen and find one or more players on their phone, not paying attention. It can really sour the experience of playing Dungeons & Dragons.
But don't worry, dear DMs, there are quite a few ways for you to keep your players interested and deal with distracted players. Here are just a few ways to keep their eyes on the board and not their phones!
Updated July 13, 2022 by Lucas Olah: D&D has increased exponentially in popularity over the years, with no signs of backing down. With that said, more new DMs are around, doing all they can to keep their players engaged. While all advice here is still relevant to today's scenario (and will likely continue to be indefinitely), some extra entries were added to talk specifically about how to engage your players into the narrative that you're presenting them, regardless if it's an official campaign or an invention of your own.
14 Use Your Players' Background Stories
One thing a lot of players like to mess around with is creating their backstories and motivations. Some like to keep it simple, while others can write quite a lot of pages when it comes to their plots. It is crucial to motivate your players to do so (though maybe, not too many pages).
Not only they will help you with your job, creating characters and even places for you, but when things get personal, it gets a lot more interesting for them. If the mentor, the person that needs saving, or even the BBEG is in fact an NPC created by one of them, it shows that what they created mattered for the campaign, and it makes them engaged with what is going on.
13 Make Interesting NPCs To Motivate Your Players
Keeping with the whole "make the plot personal" thing, another thing that gets your players attached to what is going on is the NPCs. After all, they're the people your players will interact with. A lovable NPC, regardless if intentional or a person you created on improvisation, always get the players' focus, and it's incredible how far people can go for someone they like.
It is not such an easy thing to do. Your players will likely get interested in NPCs you weren't expecting, or not care about the ones you wanted them to. But keep an eye on which characters they like, and give them more importance in the story.
12 Have NPCs Care For The Players' Opinions And Inputs
Now that NPCs, both new and from players' backstories, have already been discussed, there is a problem you have to be careful with when it comes to them; They're still side characters. Don't go too overboard and make your NPCs matter even more than the players themselves in the story.
Not only you'll have the annoying situation of interacting with yourself if only NPCs are talking, but your players need the agency of making decisions. Sure, they can ask NPCs' opinions and all, but the choices are still theirs to make, and they should only blindly follow NPCs if that was their choice.
The only NPCs that should force players to do things are villains, and even that shouldn't be done too often, or there should be always for them to circumvent the bad guys.
11 Make Multiple Solutions And Still Allow Yourself To Improvise
Sometimes, you have to compromise with your players, especially when your ideas don't seem to engage them all that much, and they want to do something else. That not only is true, but it can also be applied to the narrative of the game.
It is important to not create a single solution and force your players only to advance if they do that exactly. Remember, you may think you've come up with the ultimate solution, but it's multiple minds against just yours, and they may come up with something that makes equal (or more) sense than what you had in mind. Let your players try their crazy ideas; you can even create multiple solutions to the same problem, even if that means they won't learn something in the epic way you were expecting them to. That also means you may have to improvise, in case they do something way beyond all your already establish solutions, and that is okay.
10 Simple Is Better
Most DMs are very excited to show off the world they created and the urge to provide as much detail as possible is strong, but it might be best to hold off. You might find your players losing interest in the game if you tend to take a good chunk of game time describing environments and other things. A good way to keep players engaged and not overloaded with too many details is to start by giving only the necessary information and let your players ask questions.
Of course, you can always encourage your players to seek out more information and use NPCs to deliver more details in interesting and engaging ways.
9 Teamwork Makes The Dream Work
A lot of DMs might unintentionally find themselves giving their players adventures that are exclusive to certain classes or require certain skills. For example, you may task your players with infiltrating the secret stronghold of an enemy. While that may give Rogues their time to shine, it might leave Barbarians at a lost of what they could do. When it comes to making adventures, create ones that focus on using the skills of every member of the party and not just one. It isn't fun to just sit there and feel excluded from RPing as you watch others play.
8 Keep An Open Line Of Communication
One of the golden rules of being a DM is that you should talk to your players to get an idea for how they're feeling about the campaign. If you notice one or more players have become distracted, it wouldn't hurt to pull them aside and talk them about it during a break or after game time. Asking simple questions, like if they're enjoying themselves, is a good way to open the line of communication and figure out a way to get them invested in the game again.
And most players like to know that their DM considers their thoughts and feelings.
7 Include Props
Sometimes players might lose interest in a campaign if there isn't something there to make them feel a part of the world you created. One simple and fun way to help is by giving players props! Props are a great way to bring just a tiny bit of reality to the game as your players will have a physical object to refer too and look back on. It can be as simple as making scrolls or letters for things the players received in-game.
A prop is a good way to get everybody's attention, and they make for some pretty cool keepsakes for when the campaign wraps up.
6 Try To Compromise...
As a DM one of the things that should be important to you is trying to balance keeping the story going and keeping players interested and invested in it. Sometimes ideas you have seem good on paper, but it doesn't work well in progress. You should make an effort to compromise with your players in certain situations if they express having issues. If some players want more action, include more chances for combat.
Or if the party has been having a particularly rough time in-game, give them an adventure that's a little more laid back and light-hearted.
5 But Don't Disregard Your Own Feelings
While it is important to compromise with your players in certain situations and consider their feelings, your feelings are just as important and shouldn't be disregarded. Players have plenty of responsibilities on their part to keep the campaign fun and enjoyable for everyone involved, and if you feel as if your players aren't trying to be engaging, you can call them out for it. It doesn't hurt to remind them that the time you spend on running the campaign is just as important as theirs and that their distractions are also affecting your enjoyment of the game.
Being honest and blunt with your expectations about their participation can help discourage them from playing on their phones.
4 Don't Be Afraid To "Trick" Them
A good way to dissuade players from being distracted is to make them a little nervous. Not nervous in a harmful or particularly bad way, but nervous about what you could be planning for them. If you find your players focusing more on their phones (or other things) than the game, it doesn't hurt to trick them by, say, rolling some dice behind your screen to make it seem like you're planning something. Even if you aren't.
Sometimes you can even smile or give a small chuckle to keep your players on their toes.
3 Be Conscious About Pacing
Another way to help keep players engaged is to find the right pacing for your players. If it seems like you're losing your players during particularly long segments where nothing important is going to happen, it might be best to skip over the details of those scenes. Say for example your players are traveling, and it's supposed to take them several days to get to their destination.
Your players might not enjoy RPing every single day if they aren't encountering anything important or interesting. So "fast-travel" them to their destination or to a more engaging part of the trip.
2 Have Positive And Negative Consequences
Aside from situations where it's understandable for a player to be distracted when players come to the table they should have the common courtesy to pay attention to the game. A good way to give them more of an incentive to pay attention and dissuade them from not is giving out in-game positive and negative consequences. A positive consequence could be you giving them advantage on a roll that they wouldn't normally have, or even boost up the value of the loot they find.
And for negative consequences, say a player wasn't paying attention during a conversation with an NPC, you can make that NPC think that player's character was "rude" and refuse to work with them or even sell them anything.
1 Realize Your Limits
Though it's a hard fact to accept as a DM who is passionate about the game, once a player loses interest in the campaign there might not be anything you can do about it. Sometimes the problem isn't something that can be fixed with changing a few things or avoiding certain actions. Sometimes campaigns and players don't work out, whether it's because they aren't as invested in the plot or they're losing interest in D&D altogether. And honestly, that's okay.
If you've tried everything you could have to make things more engaging for them, and it still doesn't work out, then it probably isn't going to. You'd do better focusing on players who are invested and players who aren't would do better finding a campaign they are interested in.