Pacing and trouble players

[Andrew Morris]

So, in the games I ran, played in, and observed at Dreamation, I saw some things that I either addressed or am not sure how to adress.

In the InSpectres game I ran, players were taking too long to think things through, and, considering the late time slot, the pauses were making me nod off. To change this, I did two things. First, I stood up. It's harder to fall asleep on your players if you're standing up. I heartily reccomend not falling asleep on your players, as it will likely sap some of their enthusiasm. Second, I got into the habit of setting the scene, then saying, "Anyone going to do something? Three. Two. One. No? Okay, this nasty awful thing pops out at you. Make a Stress Check." They got into the habit of blurting things out really quickly after that. I also made the person who suggested an action roll for it, to avoid the "give it to the character with the 4" attitude that I'd been letting them get away with earlier. The game got much more enjoyable after that.

The other thing I noticed was the issue of how to deal with a trouble player. I saw a player in Tony's Capes marathon take up to five minutes to decide on a narration (I kid you not -- I timed him), despite encouragement and sugestions from the other players. It was positively maddening watching the game grind to a halt every time he wanted to do somethng. Tony, I'm sure you've seen this in all your demoing. How do you handle this?

Another kind of problem player is the one who just won't shut up. You know what I'm talking about -- the guy who just can't stop making cracks after every single statement, even in a serious game. Or launces into a long-winded and ultimately boring story at every opportunity.

If I have a problem player like this in my home games, I'd just talk to the person away from the others, and if they still couldn't modify their behavior, I wouldn't invite them back. In a convention setting, you can't realy choose your players. You also can't kick them out. Besides pulling them aside and talking to them, what can you do?

[Bill Cook]

I think you're correct to bemoan the format. You're not getting to choose your players, so worst case, you have to tough it out. Please don't take anything I suggest as other than a bootstrap.

For the "takes forever" guy, you can give him choices. You can also have other players narrate for him and have him sign off on it. (More philosophically, you can invest in his struggle to learn new things.)

(Kind of OT, but once a player of mine interrupted me mid-sentence, saying, "Hey! I brought this cool CD! Let me play this one song for you. I realy like it." So he did. He played it loud enough to make us worry about waking the host's mother. And nobody liked the song. And as the next one started, he was like, "Ooh! This one's good, too! Dig!" At that point, I laughed it off and said, "Let's get back to it." My assessment was that this guy was intimidated by all this RPG stuff and wanted some immediate reassurance that we cared about what mattered to him. So a little bonding seemed appropriate before I got back to cracking a whip and demanding scene requests.) So with the guy above, I know there's a limit, but you might try beaming your still and unhurried interest into him along with sprinkles of unqualified support. (e.g. "Ok, I get that. That makes sense.")

Another thing, especially if it's about getting narration under the belt, stop play and have a celebration if a player does spectacularly well. Tell everyone to stop talking. Embrace the guy. Raise one arm over his head and shake it, like a champion. (I'm being silly.) Tell everyone to "be like Mike." Tell him "he's a genious," and to "keep it coming." If he does it again, say "Do you see how he does that? Amazing." Everyone will start copying.

For the talk mouth, listen until you get it, summarize, if he says anything but "no," move on to the next thing. He'll keep talking. Try to listen past him toward the next part you're setting or getting a response to. Use eye contact to direct the other players in their listening. Something I've seen a lot of managers do in sales meetings is say, "Hold on, Shannon" or "Guys, hold on." I find that to be more congenial than, "Jeff, please. I get it. We all get it," or "Christ! Will you shut up?!"

[Krista E]

Another thing, especially if it's about getting narration under the belt, stop play and have a celebration if a player does spectacularly well. Tell everyone to stop talking. Embrace the guy. Raise one arm over his head and shake it, like a champion. (I'm being silly.) Tell everyone to "be like Mike." Tell him "he's a genious," and to "keep it coming." If he does it again, say "Do you see how he does that? Amazing." Everyone will start copying.

Andrew, especially with the player you were having trouble with in Capes, I think Bill's idea would be your best bet. Having played before with this person, I concluded that he was really shy and insecure, and this is what was causing him to take so long - fear of his ideas being rejected. I know I wasn't observing your half of the Capes tournament 100% of the time, but it didn't seem to me that you or the other players were giving a whole lot of applause when he put out an idea (it seemed more like "ok, great, now let's move on to to the next player"), whereas in the other game, he came out of his shell quite a bit when our reactions clearly showed we liked his ideas. Everyone likes to be told they're doing something well - and the more they're rewarded for doing something, the more they're going to do it.

As for the person who won't shut up, you can do it kindly too. If they're going too much into detail about how their character does something, you can always laughingly say something like "Are you sure you're going to have any ideas left in the future? man you're really going all out with this!"  or you can do the summary thing and push things forward (ie: "Throwing the villian down the stairs - wow that's genius! Alright, let's roll on it - I wanna see what happens!")   And if the player is going on about nothing relevant, you can always strike up a compromise ("Dude, I'd love to hear the heavy-metal polka song your band wrote, but can we do it during a break? There's only one session of this game and I'm really excited to play it"). Of course, that would mean you'd have to listen to his song during break, or hope to the high heavens that he either forgets about it, or that someone saves you somehow.

Otherwise, if you want to take a stricter, not as easy-going approach, you can always pull out an egg timer at the beginning of the session and explain to the players that since this is a one-session game and you'd really like them to get the most out of the experience, you'd like to enforce a limit on how much time they have to respond (explaining to them that "as anyone who has gamed for quite a while might have observed, some people occasionally take forever to come up with a decision, or spend too much time talking about nothing relevant"). Then again, I've never tried the egg timer thing myself, and it could end up just putting a stopper in the flow of things, but if that did happen, you could always scratch the idea and just go back to complimenting people.

[Russell Collins]

I had a similar situation running Capes! at the last Ubercon with a very young player. She had lots of ideas but wasn't sure how to articulate them, so the attempts of everyone else at the table to suggest or clarify were never "quite right." I actually broke the system a little for her, letting her take her turn out of order when she was ready.

This was a BAD decision. (I blame sleep deprivation and my own nervousness at teaching Capes!.) Without putting her on the spot to make a decision her input became more vague. It may be a struggle to keep everyone on track but in a game as structured as Capes! you can't defy the system hoping to smooth things over.

A better idea would be to get the player to focus on the character. If a player looks at you with no ideas, ask them about the powers they have, the skills, etc. Then ask them to think of something cool that they can do with those. (octaNe, anyone?) Hopefully they'll now have some cool stuff they want to have happen, and can either suggest events to make them happen, or just do it. If you can get them to think a few moves ahead, like a chess player, then I think they're going to have fun with Capes!.

So, learn from my mistakes if nothing else.