Creating a Safe Space

I really planned on working on my term papers that are due in t-minus three weeks. Yet I keep seeing things that pull my attention away from the papers. Sure, I probably didn’t need to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race this week, but it helps me unwind and switch gears. And I will admit that I should probably just turn off my FaceBook account when I am in crunch mode. The real distraction comes from various posts and articles I read where women continually get treated as outsiders in fandom.

What do I mean? I belong to various gaming communities on FaceBook where we share ideas about the game, as well as problems we encounter when running/playing. Recently, a female player was discussing actions in a game that were forced on her. Now, similar discussions have been had by male players and they are generally met with comments like, “I would talk with the GM and tell him that it wasn’t cool to force your character to do something like that” or “You should probably just leave the group, it doesn’t sound like it is a very good space.” Yet, this time, voiced from a woman, she was met with comments like “You shouldn’t whine so much” and when she voiced that she would probably kill off her character and leave the group, she received responses like “Killing yourself and ragequitting a group isn’t attractive.” The fact is, this player was expressing the fact that her character had been impregnated against her will, which amounts to rape, and rape isn’t attractive. When the player attempted to point out that the people making these comments were being sexist, they attempted to again silence her using shame tactics.

When I have seen various posts about the terror of white males in gaming, I have generally cast them aside. I fell into the trap of “This hasn’t happened in my games and it must be really isolated.” The reality is that MY games are really isolated. The games I have run with female players have generally been pretty great and I didn’t think they had really had any situations like this. In retrospect, I realize that one of my games did have a female player that felt uncomfortable and she left, though it wasn’t because of something that had been done to her character and more about how over-the-top one of the players was in his playstyle. As a player, I have certainly been in games where things like pregnancy has been forced on female players and it made me genuinely uncomfortable in the moment (and still bugs me years later). Because of the group I play with, we don’t have many people that play across gender lines, so I have been trying to think if I had ever encountered a male GM doing the same to a female character run by a male player—I can’t think of any. Even if there had been, it would have been equally frustrating, unless this was something we had agreed when we began or with discussion between the player and the GM.

I can’t know what it is like for each female player out there. I can only come at it from my own experiences as a gay male. After I came out, I always set my characters as gay at creation. Most games, it wasn’t discussed because we weren’t really exploring romantic or sexual situations in our game. When it did come up, the GM would just default that all characters are heterosexual and assume that all of us would be beguiled by them (which in and of itself is a terrible trope to use, but not the point of this discussion). Once they started to realize that my character was gay, they slowly started figuring out that perhaps male prostitutes should be seen in taverns, but it generally stopped short of the GM having to act out male-on-male flirtation.

In the game that saw our female companion get raped, the GM was very tactful with my gay character. The game was set in the 20s and he had spent time researching what gay clubs were like at this time. When we would have dream sequences and such, he would discuss both the happiness of me dreaming about my partner as well as the agony of nightmares of losing him. Certainly, there were plenty opportunities for this character to experience horrific torture and sexual assault at the hands of the cultists, but that line was never crossed with me.

Now, the important thing to consider isn’t just the ways that we treat women inside the game, where all too often they are treated as objects to be played with in ways that we generally don’t with our male companions. We also need to consider how we treat them in our community. I have tried very hard, especially as an adult, to make the gaming environment and geek culture an inclusive place. I remember feeling like I was the only gay gamer at our local convention. But, at no point was my identity as a gamer/geek questioned. I acknowledge that other gay gamers and geeks may have had other experiences, but I have generally been accepted into the boy’s club. But, I have watched as women have had to prove their geek cred, by discussing at length how they got into fandom and being tested about various games. When you watch the body language of the questioners, you can see they are ready to pounce on anything that they could use to discredit her. Or they make assumptions that her geeky shirt, “must belong to her boyfriend.”

We are cultured to be dismissive, which is rather unfortunate. This comment shouldn’t be read as affirming of male behavior, through justification. Rather a simple statement of how we tend to react. Our parents, mothers and fathers, dismiss our playing pretend and sometimes dismiss the way we are feeling as ways of helping us grow up. I dismissed the various posts by removing them from my feed or ignoring them without a real thought. Others have verbally dismissed women by trying to silence their complaints. But these dismissive actions serve only to perpetuate the problem. If someone like me, or you, dismisses this type of behavior, we can’t stand up for our fellow games. This means that we aren’t actively working towards an inclusive environment. Maybe we justify our dismissiveness because we don’t want to but it or we don’t want the negative attention we know we will get. When we do that though, we are resting all of the burden on the woman who spoke up and the negative feedback towards them is meant to silence them and force them to put up and shut up or get out of fandom. If we really want to put an end to this type of behavior and work towards inclusion, then we need to be willing to step up and help shoulder some of the attitudes people will throw out there.

While there are those that will read this as me taking up the torch of social justice. And perhaps I am, but I want to be able to be in a fandom where we are all accepted— a place where we can just connect with one another and enjoy the company and the awesome discussions that are possible when we gather with people with similar interests. It shouldn’t matter what gender or race you are or what your background is. While our little playful tests to see how much we have in common can be great, they shouldn’t serve as some sort of sorting hat that determines who gets to be included and who gets to be excluded.

I want to belong to a community where mutual respect is central. This means that we aren’t purposefully trying to create situations where we can make one another uncomfortable just because we can. And if we have made someone uncomfortable, they are empowered to tell us and we are respectful enough to accept the criticism and apologize. I know this part can be difficult. Sometimes, it can feel like the criticism is targeted at us and telling us that we are bad people and that hurts. Getting called out as sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, abelist, sizest, etc., can hurt. We may not realize that what we are doing or saying sounds like that because it isn’t our intention. Or maybe we don’t want other to think poorly of us. All of us ultimately want to be accepted. Labels that “Other” us hurt, which is precisely why we use them. That little face slap can be a good wakeup call. Too often, unfortunately, it can backfire and cause people to push harder against the issue and ignite bigger fires. However, another one our social methods of behavior correction can be beneficial when a person digs in their heels and refuses to change and escalates—avoidance. We don’t like to be cut off from things, but it can be better in the long run to cut someone off and isolate them than to give tacit approval of their behavior because we don’t want to lose friends or have difficult conversations.

Whether we want to accept it or not, white males (especially heterosexuals) have power in the community as a whole. For way too long, fandom has been a boys club. And certainly those of us that have been in it for a while have endured some knocks from people outside of fandom. They teased us and questioned our manliness for playing make belief. We have been torn down and Othered for this thing we are passionate about. Those of us who have experienced that, probably hated every minute of it. It sucks to be belittled. Some of us banded together even tighter because the community we created was a safe place for us to talk about fantasy, science fiction, and all of our favorite characters and games.

It may have felt like this special safe place was invaded when women and non-white men started to find their ways into fandom. But it wasn’t. We were gaining new friends that had the same things in common. Instead of recognizing kindred spirits, some of us recognized that we had the ability to turn the tables. The powerlessness we were made to feel by the “cool” kids was ours to inflict on these new folks. And in doing so, the much coveted sense of power and control was ours to take back. Somehow, in the moment, we forgot what it was like to be the Other--- we got drunk on the power and didn’t care. This was our domain and you needed to earn your way. But no one needed to. All of it could have been so much different. While we can’t change the past, we can damn well make the present a much better place.

It starts by speaking up. Now, speaking up doesn’t mean start a flame war and it doesn’t mean we need to troll everyone (my genuine apologize to any of my readers who identify as a troll). It does mean recognizing sexist/disrespectful behavior. Whether it is inside your game or in various real or virtual spaces where our community comes together, we need to speak up and help put an end to it. While most of this post has been directed at disrespectful behavior towards women, the same is true for speaking out against people being disrespectful towards people of color as well as all of the various diverse personas we find in our community.

Also, recognize that someone may interpret your action different than you intended and they may call you out for it. I know it can be difficult, but put aside your ego for a moment and try to figure out where the miscommunication came from and work together to create a safe space.

Be sensitive and recognize that sometimes folks just need someone to listen. Don’t try to justify what the other person did or said, but recognize and validate the experience. We may not understand where they are coming form, but we can probably find some sort of experience where we can relate. Clarify if the person needs back up or if they just needed to vent. Sometimes, once we get all of the emotions of frustration or anger (or other emotion) out, we recognize that we may have over reacted and just needed to get it out. But, other times we may need some back up to help us stand up for ourselves.

We may also need to recognize that folks who are feeling alienated need a safe space where it is just folks like them. So this may mean and all female-identifying group or a queer group. This gives them that same safe space that many of originally created in response to the experiences we had. Seeking or creating a group like this does not equate to sexist or racist or any other ist (including elitist). It just means that they want to have a safe space and they may not feel like they are getting that. Also, if your immediate reaction is that there needs to be a men’s only group, remember that we had it for a long time and there are groups within the community who are actively trying to make this a men’s only group. This one especially gets me as a gay man, because this mentality is the same as folks wanting straight pride celebrations or white pride marches. Support our friends who feel they need a safe space by empowering them to do what they need and that you are always willing to act as go between or work with them when the deal with the community as a whole.

We need to recognize that there is a problem. There is this pain in our community and we all need to work together to create an inclusive space. One where people of all agents, shapes, sizes, ethnicity, races, gender identity/expression, orientation, and really just all of the things that make us unique, can feel safe and enjoy the company of people who have the same passions in common. All of the things that make us unique mean that there are all of those great experiences that we can explore and play with in our games and all of the different backgrounds mean endless points of discussion. The problem isn't going to end over night. But together, we can make this right. 

Tech at the Table: Hi or Low?

I will admit that I was a slow adapter to the use of computers at the game table. In high school, I was the primary owner of “The Library”—our group’s collection of gaming books. Each time we got together for game, I brought the bulk of them to each game. Once I moved out and had my own place, I could host the games there and the library could grow beyond what would be feasible for me to pack up and carry on a weekly basis.

The most frustrating part of a physical book was trying to track down specific rules. You could guarantee the game would come to a screeching halt, as players were trying to remember which book the rule came from. Admittedly, if you are only using the core books for any particular game, this might be easy enough. Still, there is nothing worse than stopping the game to find a specific rule.

The thing that really changed gaming for me was the laptop and my external hard drive. Between the two of them, I have been able to radically cut down on the number of books that are cluttering the table (or that I need to carry with me). I have invested a pretty good chunk of money changing out my hard copy game books for digital versions, thanks to sites like DriveThruRPG. Most companies make their PDFs searchable, which means a simple CTRL+F and you can search the whole document and have it in no time.

Beyond the digital library, I also like the laptop for a number of other reasons. I can keep all of my game notes in one place. I usually have my digital notes set up through OneNote, with individual “notebooks” for each game and sections for each player/character. This lets me quickly make notes of how they are reacting to individual storylines, short-term and long-term goals, enemies they acquire, as well as any other little tidbits that might be usable in future chapters.

Another useful tool I use is a simple Excel spreadsheet.  I usually have one tab set up to handle combat, keeping track of initiative and quick reference information for NPCs, and a running tabulation of XP earned for the session. When I do my initial prep work for the campaign, I will also set up a tab t

hat has a set of random names, and a few random generators for race, class, gender for NPCs and another tab to let me keep track of any NPCs I had to generate and which PC they are attached to for ease of reference. Especially given the number of times my players like to go off the beaten path of an adventure, this lets me quickly provide them some defined people within the game world they can interact with and gives the game a bit more life.

I also use instant messaging with my players. This has eliminated note passing and allows me to copy and paste their notes and ideas directly to their notebook pages. Between game sessions, I also use instant messaging to conduct one-on-one sessions with my players and plan for any activities they might be interested in doing if they will be absent from a game. I can keep annotated transcripts of these with the rest of their character information as well and try to weave pieces of these side stories into the main narrative when the opportunity arises.

With sites like Roll20, we have also been able to use the computer to connect with players that would otherwise be unable to join. Additionally, we have also made use of Roll20 even with all of the players in the same room, using a projector to put the game map up on a wall, instead of drawing it on a map pad. The one drawback I found with Roll20 is making sure that all of the players are familiar with how to use the built in character sheets and the various macros the system supports for dice rolling and use of special powers. I imagine, however, once everyone is comfortable with the controls, this platform will meet many needs for groups.

I will be the first to admit, though, that the game can suffer with so much tech at the table. With access to instant messenger, you might lose a player to social media. Or another might disappear into a book. I know I have been guilty during sessions as a player of doing my homework during the game if I am not getting engaged by what is happening. Even if you limit access to computers, the ubiquitous cellphone presents many of the same problems.

Like most of my recommendations, I would talk it over with your players to see how much, or how little, tech you really need to have to make the game work for everyone. While it can be great to be able to have some ambiance-enhancing music playing from your machine, there is nothing more distracting than hearing the constant PING of an instant messaging program going off. And as wonderful as it is to have a library of hundreds of books accessible at any time, it can also lead to player disconnect. Plus, there is the making sure you have enough space for any maps, minis, props, food and drink, etc. on the table.

If you have enough space, I would recommend the GM have a computer. There are generally more Pros to this decision than Cons. From there, I would really consider what do your players need to have access to in order to facilitate easy game play? Now that most folks have smartphones, instant messaging apps are easy enough to come by, as are a number of apps for various games. This can help eliminate the clutter and help your players stay engaged in the game.

I have also been in period games where GMs have banned players from having anything other than their dice, character sheet, and a pencil with them. Having been a player in this style set up, make sure that you are watching your players for signs of boredom. I know that I was emoting pretty heavily, by repeatedly building towers with my dice, and my GM was oblivious of it. The benefit to not having any tech in front of your players is that it should make it very easy to watch their body language. In order for this to be a benefit, though, you have to be willing to look up from your screen and engage with your players.

What type of tech set up do you use in your home games? Have you run into any disasters in game because of too much, or too little, tech available? Share your experiences in the comments below. 

Reward and Response

For many of us, gaming is a pastime, something we can do to escape the humdrum quagmire of our rather mundane existence. For a few hours, we can sit down at a table—virtually or in real-life—and we can create fictive worlds and relationships with others. The idea is that everyone is doing this because they are having fun, but as GMs, how can you tell if your players are having fun? And if they aren’t, how can you fix that?

The answer to these questions may seem obvious. “I know my players are having fun because they are laughing and joking and smiling,” answered one DM friend of mine. The problem is that through these signs your players are not always telling the truth. Certainly, in that moment, they may well have been having fun, but for others this can be a social camouflage they use to avoid attention.

“I can ask them if they are having fun,” said another friend, who went on to say, “I have a good rapport with my players and they would let me know if they weren’t having fun.” Great rapport definitely goes a long way, but remember that most people do not want to hurt their friends either. I know for me, I have blatantly exaggerated the amount of fun I was having because I wanted to save my friend and myself the embarrassment of having to say, “Dude, I hate your game.”

Some of you may be asking, then, “ok, if I can’t trust what I am seeing or what they are saying, how can I tell if they are having fun?” The answer to this question starts before the game even begins. It starts with a pre-game Q&A that you do with the individual players.

This is something that I have been experimenting with for a little bit now. When I first started running games, it was all about me. I had a story that I wanted to tell and I wanted my friends to provide the characters. The problem for this was there would be times, and they were a plenty when I first started, when the characters would want to go one direction inside the story and I needed them to go a different way. Of course, as a GM I would force their decisions to still take them where I needed them to go. The harder they pushed, though, the less fun I could tell they were having and I know the frustrations were detracting from mine as well.

The answer to my quandary came about from my own academic interests in cognitive theory and roleplaying. One of the things that we know about aesthetics and the study of why we read fiction, it is that our brain likes response and reward systems. We even use it as a way to socially pattern ourselves, providing kudos and positive rewards for good work, and admonishing not so good behavior with criticism and negative responses. If we, as GMs, work smarter, by using a similar system, we can produce hours of fun for everyone involved alongside memories that will outlive the game itself.

The first thing we want to understand is what constitutes positive rewards for our players? We want to know what their wants, interests, and needs are. I generally hate this terminology, as it is also what many folks use to determine sales pitches, but the fact is that it works. A few things to consider are:

• What does the player want to get out of the gaming experience?
• What are they interested in exploring during the game?
• What do they need in order to have a fun experience?

Understanding what the player wants to get out of the gaming experience helps us put in perspective what the game means for them. For me, when I have the opportunity to game, it means that I am taking a break from work/school/personal life to get away and relax. This means that I don’t want my time wasted with unnecessary distractions that aren’t related to the experience. My frustration triggers are excessive out of character discussions during designated game time or when the story isn’t moving forward.

Taking a moment to understand what the player wants to explore recognizes one of the historic uses of roleplaying—a safe place to question and consider things that might be bugging me in the real world. Lately, I have been interested in exploring other genders and making sure that gender or race are actually important within the game. This does not mean that I need the games I play in to be filled with gender rhetoric or racism, but rather I want the choices I make about my character to matter within the story. If I am playing a bearded dwarven female, I am ok with being mistaken for a man and consider how that might affect me.

Balancing what people need in order to have fun helps to make sure that you are giving each player a little something that is just for them. One group I have been with does this by giving them some sort of in-game item on (or around) their real-world birthday. It is recognition that they are important. But also understanding what kind of situations are rewarding and fun for the player is useful too. I have friends that love riddles and puzzles, not something they can simply roll a dice and figure out, but something engages them as players to figure out. For others, they like role-playing scenarios where their choice of words can have direct impact on the game. For me, I want to feel like my character is real and my decisions matter.

A way to help figure these things out is working with each player during character creation. I enjoy writing character backstories, as they help set the stage for my character and help me figure out how they fit into the world. I recognize that not every player is going to want to do that, but if it is something you want your players to consider, look at giving them some kind of reward for doing it. An example can be an heirloom item—something they start the game with that comes from their background. The more information given about the backstory and how the character came to possess it, the more the heirloom can be worth.  Remember, rewards can encourage players. If you do this though, make sure to recognize that players are going to come from different comfort levels with writing. You might get someone like me, who details their character from birth to the beginning of the game, or a player that might only provide a list of events.

While they are generating their character, ask them about questions about what they, as players, want to get from the game. Remember if you ask make it relevant in the game. The worst thing you can do is ask questions and feign interest in the answers and then do nothing with them. I would also recommend asking what the character wants to get out of the story too. What sort of short-term and long-term goals do the players have for their character? Because I like to work with pre-generated adventures, these short and long term goals provides ways I can reward the players and provide experiences they will have that is different from what someone else running that game will have.

Keep notes about the characters and what they are working on. I have found that keeping a GM document for each player is useful. I can use this to create side events, vignettes, and long-term story arches for each player and keep them separate. I can also use those to keep track of how they react when they get to interact with their storylines. If I throw out an NPC name that they interacted with during a one-on-one event and they light up, I can make note of that. If there is no reaction or clearly negative reaction, such as body language shut down or aggravation, I can make note to adjust how I am presenting information. Be sure that you are sharing the attention across all the players—everyone wants some time in the light.

As discussed in a previous post, be sure to set aside time are regular intervals to take the pulse of the group. This is a great time to talk about what the character is doing inside the game. Have they met their short-term goals? Based on what has been happening in the game, are their new goals they would like to start working towards and are there some that they want to abandon? Because it can be easier to talk in terms of the character, versus the player, you can also ask if there are different things the characters might like to see happen in the story? This can be especially useful if you have players that can be non-confrontational, who might not speak up about what they need or want. Be prepared to adapt to the information you get and experiment with new approaches.

Most importantly, as the GM, you need to do these things for yourself too. Why are you running the game and what do you want to get out of it? Take some time after the game to reflect on what happened, what went well, what didn’t go well, and review the in-game notes you made. Find a balance that works for you and your players and you will find that each of you are getting the rewards that makes the game engaging and fun and driving you to look forward to the next game.  

Adult Situations and Game Dynamics

I have been playing various RPGs for over twenty years now. The games, and the stories we tell, have grown with me as I have aged. We started with simple dungeon crawls, hacking and slashing with the only motivator being “get the loot, save the girl (or village...).” As our games evolved, we put more emphasis on role-playing and less on roll-playing, as we added complexity and depth. My characters were more than simply a collection of numbers and statistics, but living, breathing, creations of my own imagination. As our games and stories developed, the maturity of the content did as well and without much warning or fanfare, I found myself in some fairly adult situations inside the game.

The first time this happened was when I was around eighteen. In my high school days, my game of choice was Vampire: the Masquerade and I had decided to run the Giovanni Chronicles with them—a chronicle released under White Wolf’s Black Dog Imprint with the clear “For Adults Only” tag at the bottom of each cover.  One particular character was run by a dear friend. He had wanted to play a child vampire, which I thought would make an interesting character. After the initial transformation, the characters have a few breaks to develop their character and when the child re-emerged, he was a rather twisted individual. Part of this could have been attributed to the character’s clan (link) and part of it could have been attributed to the player, but this character more than any other really squigged some of our players out. After some initial concerns were voiced, I asked him to tone it down a bit, but even at the toned down level we ended up losing two players.

At that time, I didn’t realize how powerful imagination and roleplaying can be for some folks. Because our play is mostly in the mind, it can cause nightmares or trigger emotional responses that even the players were unprepared for. By this point, I had several years of gaming and game mastering under my belt, but I simply lacked the emotional experience of age to understand what a character like this could do to the group dynamics and the individual players. Additionally, I let my own personal feelings cloud my judgment. To me, this was all fiction and it was just a game and couldn’t understand why some players could even get uncomfortable.

Since then, I have found myself in a similar position a time or two. More importantly, I have had the opportunity to be the person who was deeply affected by things that were going on inside the game. One particular scenario involved the rape of a fellow PC and while the aftermath did lead to one of the most intense roleplaying experiences I have had the pleasure of being part of, the action itself (even staged off-screen) triggered in me a sense of helplessness that was utterly non-productive for the game. I felt violated and because it was inside my mind, I couldn’t necessarily leave it at the game table. What was more disturbing was that the game master insisted on us pushing through the events and continuing with the game, as it had happened very early in the session and we still had several hours of our allotted game time.

What these experiences have taught me is the importance of understanding and setting boundaries with the players. Roleplaying games, by their very nature, are creative acts that involve collaboration and sensitivity. I think many people forget that roleplaying has been actively used as part of psychotherapy for decades and we as game masters and players need to understand that we are quite literally playing with people’s minds. As such, we can’t simply assume that people will be able to leave all game elements at the table, any more than we can assume they will leave their real world stresses at the door. For this reason, I would always recommend creating open dialog from the beginning with your players.

What this means is that you will want to create a social contract with your players for your game play. If you are playing with the same group across several different games, you can set down some simple house rules that will apply to all games. One of the first ones I would recommend is the general “rating” for the game play. If the group really wants to stick in the realm of PG-13, don’t try to push an adult game on them. If they are alright with more of an “R” figure out what content they are ok with and what ones are firmly off the table. This can be something like, “I am ok with graphic violence as long as it doesn’t involve children, women, or sexual situations,” or “I am ok with sexual situations as long as they happen off-camera,” or variations of those. I would avoid majority rules situations—if three of the four players are ok with something and the fourth person isn’t comfortable, find out if this is a hard limit. If it is, don’t push that limit. Also recognize that people behave in unpredictable ways and you may need to occasionally re-negotiate if someone reacts in a way they weren’t prepared for.

After setting your base ground rules, the next thing I would recommend is setting up a system to deal with unintended consequences. This can include how to deal with unintended hurt feelings or player irritations with one another, to someone had an emotional reaction to game content that no one foresaw.  By setting this system up, you recognize that sometimes the player bleeds through into the character and you have a plan for how to handle it so that it doesn’t negatively impact everyone’s experience. In most cases, I would recommend some way for the player’s or GM to call a hold to what is happening in game and give everyone at the table some space. This can be a good time for a munchie break or for everyone to get some fresh air, but I generally recommend that this break not be used to re-hash what happened or discuss the game. Give yourself a break and talk about something else. When the break is over, as the GM, double check with the players if they want to continue with the game or break early. I have been in plenty of sessions where player frustrations with one another ran high and we should have just taken a break and played a board game instead of frustrations escalating multiple times over the course of several hours.

Another thing that I would recommend is a post-game decompress. Each game may not necessarily need this, but checking in every few sessions can be helpful. Depending on the dynamics of the group, this can be done as a note from player to GM or in open forum. If you are playing an episodic game, this can be done during the natural downtime between episodes/chapters and allows folks to bring up concerns. One of the hardest parts of GMing is needing to manage not only what is happening inside the game world, but also what is happening outside and between players. Make sure that you are open to revising the game to meet your player’s needs. This is our hobby and the last thing we want to do is create unnecessary stress that can detract from everyone’s fun. Some groups, especially if it is new, may need more hand holding while the dynamics are built. Others that have been long running may only need help when they add new players.

The biggest piece of advice that I can give is this: “Listen and Watch.” Listen to their vocal tone—are they angry, frustrated, or excited? Are they sitting forward in their chair? Are they pushed back from the table, with their arms across their chest? Are they quiet and just rolling dice and not really engaging? All of these are different tells that you can use to gauge the group and what they need and want in the game. Listen to these clues and work with your players to see what they need and you will find that not only are you having fun, but they are as well.