Last session (I GM Traveller, a hard science fiction rpg) I realized my lack of skills when I found myself willing to spend some minutes in playing a scene involved a 3 years old child causing trouble while in the spaceship and getting measles and passing it to all the spaceship crew.
It went this way:
during the takeoff
Me: "The girl feels sick, she vomits your bridge."
Captain: "Ok, we get to clean it."
Result: no fun
later, while in jumpspace for a week
Medic: "Since she felt sick while flying I check her health status."
Me: "You find she has measles." "Everyone, roll to see if you get it too."
roll roll everyone but one is infected.
Me: "… Everyone feels weary during the trip…"
Result: no fun
after a week, exiting jumpspace
urgent stuff with dice rolls involved is going to happen
Me: "After a week you are no longer ill but cince you are still weary you get -1 to rolls"
Result: lame
And I really don't know how to do this better.
Related to this but not sure how much is a scene involved the crew joining a Imperial Navy Officers (plus an Admiral) dinner.
It went something like
"You see it's a less formal dinner than you thought, the food's good, you start chatting and relaxing thanks to the wine."
"You, Chris (ex diplomat), meet an officer who serviced with your father back in the days, he remembers him fondly but did not sees him since years ago"
Player: "Ah, good."
"You, Lucien (the medic), get to talk with the First Medical Officer, you star talking about medical topics and he tells you he'll like to show you the ship advanced infirmary"
"You, Vincent (the ship Captain and ex showman/artist) make everyone laugh and friendly with your charm."
It went more or less like this, with me incapable of make happen something interesting and causing me to skip this scene… while I would have liked to add some interesting moments.
And I realize that this kind of problem could happen many more times if I don't get better at this since this is a high-roleplayed campaign.
Be aware that I know I could give them hooks or useful information during this type of scenes, but right now I'm more interested on the mundane aspects of the scene.
Now I must point out two things: the first is that I feel partly is cause for my lack of experience of being a player (I've always been only a GM and I'm still quite newbie) so I don't really know how a mundane scene could be interesting for players.
The second is that I've very little to no time to prepare my sessions, and because of this I'd prefer answers focused in improvisation.
Question: how can I improve this kind of scenes making them playing worthy and interesting?
Thanks!
Best Answer
Involve the players
What strikes me as I read both of these situations is that the players seem only tenuously involved in the events that occur. The major action seems to be on your side of the screen, or in the hands of the dice.
In any game, this will tend to make players dissatisfied, because there seems to be little reason for the players to actually be there. This is why combat is usually very exciting: game systems bake in a formula that ensures everyone at the table is involved during the scene. The good news is that you can make some simple changes to your style that will put your players in a more active position.
Add opportunities for the player characters to shape events
A lot of the examples you presented were of the general form:
Setting the scene this way keeps the players only reactive to the game's events. You want your players to be proactive shapers of the game world. So give them those opportunities.
Worked example
This example doesn't give the players the opportunity to address the situation in any more interesting manner. By the time they get to make a choice, there's already vomit all over their control panels. Instead, you should present opportunities to the players:
You can now pause just a second here to give the players the opportunity to comfort the girl. Maybe the medic gives her a sedative, maybe the party's friendly face sits down with her and talks about something. If they don't do anything to help the girl, then sure, let her vomit on the bridge and they'll clean it up. But they had the opportunity to avoid it.
Don't rush to summarize social exchanges
In the dinner party, you seem to quickly move past all of the opportunities for character interaction. Instead of immediately telling the players what happens, leave it up to them.
At the beginning of the dinner, tell each of the players which other guests they would recognize. Ask each of them to play an exchange with somebody at the party; it could be one of the people they know, or some arbitrary person who would be there.
Let the players discover leads organically, and maybe they'll miss some of them, but they'll have more connection to the ones they find. If there is a lead that you absolutely have to give to the players (and there shouldn't be more than one, or you'll have the same problem we're trying to solve here), have that lead rudely interrupt another conversation. If something is important to you, it should be important to somebody in game as well.