A great column

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Post originally by Anders Russell at 2005-12-06 16:45:33
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Wonderfully done - having hosted gaming at our house (by my girlfriends request) for the past eighteen months, this is the best list of complaints and requests that I have seen. Remarkably comprehensive. I shall be printing it out and forcing the players to sit down and read it.

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Post originally by Walt C at 2005-12-06 19:25:09
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Thanks!

Walt

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Post originally by Rob Carriere at 2005-12-07 00:17:19
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I agree.
SR
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Post originally by Steve Mading at 2005-12-07 11:05:20
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I liked it too, but one caveat I'd have with it is that you should take care to recognize the source of the boredom when some player is being inattentive in the group. Realize that the culprit of the problem might not be the person who's not paying attention, but rather the person who is unfairly increasing the level of boredom, and thus driving the other person to stop paying attention.

In one game I'm in there's one particular problem player who speaks with an excessive amount of "uhhmm. Ahhhh... Let's see here. Uh. Let's see, Uh...." For about a minute before finally deciding on an action. There's also a GM who feels compelled to re-explain everything from scratch about the scene whenever someone asks a question about the scene. A question like "were there curtains over the windows?" (Because the player was going to make use of those curtains in some type of cool flourishy action) is met with a three-minute-long re-description of the room from scratch, with the answer about the curtains buried somewhere inside. When that kind of thing starts happening, and I realize that I'm not going to get to act until at least 4 other people go through the same arduous process, then yes, I do sometimes bring out another game's book and start reading, and yes I do stop paying attention, but no I don't think that I'm the one being rude in that situation.

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Post originally by walt c at 2005-12-07 17:43:43
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Thanks for the kind words, Steve!

I did say in relation to boredom that "there are better ways to express it than to let the GM guess." It sounds like you have a real problem with the redescription (I would also), but I think a better solution would be to let the GM know it bothers you.

If you already have, and nothing's changed, I think there are probably better ways to spend your evening than going through the pretense of playing.

Good luck,

Walt