If people are zoning out during a RPG session, is that the players fault for having short attention spans, or the DMs fault for not keeping all the players equally involved and focusing on too many one on one interactions that last too long? How would you address this kind of issue?
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Could be one of those, both, or neither.
Don't do individual one-on-ones, just focus on things that the whole party can engage with. If players are still zoning out, you have your answer.
I ask because I'm a bit new to RPGs and have played a few sessions with some online groups so far, the GM has a very story based RPG, we've done like 3 sessions with no combat now, and he has a lot of story focused moments where he goes from one character to the next or one group of characters to the next just doing story interactions with them and I constantly start zoning out. I don't know if its an issue of me having a short attention span, or if its the GMs fault for doing so many story related interactions without involving everyone. I would like to GM myself one day and want to avoid my players ever feeling like they want to zone out.
>3 sessions with no combat now, and he has a lot of story focused moments where he goes from one character to the next or one group of characters to the next just doing story interactions with them
From this description it sounds like more of a GM problem than a player problem. The GM is supposed to wrangle everyone into a unified game that involves the whole party, and often involves combat. Which game are you playing, btw? If it's D&D then this is unusual to have 3 sessions with no combat. If it's FATE or World of Darkness vampire then... yeah, it might focus more on personal PC stories than combat.
I type notes for the entire session. It keeps me thoroughly engaged and the GM uses it to make APs. We just got a new player and he does the same thing.
>online groups
Found your problem. Online games aren't even really games. Play in person with your actual real life friends, and not terminally online mentally ill spergs. It's a completely different experience.
That GM should just do the story parts between sessions and 1 on 1. Bringing the players together just for 1-2 players to be engagaed at a time.
Pretend you are an adult and talk to them about the situation.
well the thing is, I'm new to this hobby, I don't know if this is just a matter of me being a bad player, and this hobby not being for me, or if its a matter of his GM'ing style. I don't wanna approach someone and ask them to change how they play, when I could be the one in the wrong.
Are you new to talking to human beings? Part of "pretend you're an adult" involves actually discussing and listening rather than just accusing him of being bad or passively accepting whatever the frick happens.
If you're getting antsy because you aren't the centre of attention for five minutes, then yes you're at fault you stupid homosexual. If the GM is basically running a one person game with the rest of you sitting around spectating for an hour then yes he's being shit. How the frick are we supposed to know what's actually happening? We weren't there.
>I'm new to this hobby
Being engaging and interesting is a skill that develops with experience. You can still talk to your players, though, and ask them directly how you can best keep their attention
Take my sarcasm-free response to your thread in return for me yoinking the OP picture
Having instant dopamine distraction boxes in our pockets has fricked us. Implement phone jail. Seriously.
Phone jail doesn't stop me from being bored. You've just removed an easy, nondisruptive focal point for my unmedicated ADHD. Be prepared for me to eat way more than my portion of the snacks, for the frequent clattering of collapsing dice stacks, for me to start quietly humming to myself every time your words remind me of song lyrics and makes the song get stuck in my head, and for my character sheet to be absolutely smothered in off-topic marginalia same as my notes back in highschool.
Literally all of that is better than having a player completely vegged out because they're shitposting during game time. You're an adult and you need to act like it. I've got severe ADHD too, and I don't make it everyone else's problem. It's called coping mechanisms - look them up.
You're an outlier, most people are just frazzled by being able to scroll social media on demand.
And even then I'm putting your phone in phone jail, you can make dice towers like we used to in the olden days.
I would simply not have you at the table, you sound like an overgrown child.
If you kick me out ill have you cancelled buddy dont frickin test me
I'll just tell them about all the offensive things you said about [insert group here] and plant a hard right bumper sticker on your vehicle.
Damn. Guess you got me there.
Boomer post.
Depends on what's causing the zoning out.
It's generally both, to be honest. People are being trained en masse to expect high activity, rapid engagement which is making attention spans shorter. But it's not like DMs are immune to this, they're not inhuman creatures. They're not engaging properly with the other players either.
>run online dnd campaign
>play hand-selected music for different parts of the city/world the party is in
>two players mute the discord music bot and listen to their own spotify screamo "frick rape murder" music playlist
>another player is playing league of legends
>the only guy not playing his own music or playing video games is arguing with me over every rule
i do not understand zoomies
Frick GM selected homosexual 'fantasy ambiance' music. I'm listening to actual appropriate music and you can't stop me.
Player suggested music is fine too
Don't play online. Its an absolute nightmare.
>playing music during session at all
Of course I’ll fricking mute it, that shit’s distracting and kills immersion.
Oh look, another top quality thread to have a discussion in...
OP asks a pointlessly broad question because why someone is zoning out is a case by case basis that doesnt have a universal answer since everyone is different. That being said, i am saving his attached picture because i really like it and i am probably going to show it to my mom later.
It's the DM's fault for running D&D.
It attracts the ADHD Adderall addicts and is such a slog that anyone looking for an engaging game is going to be bored out of their skulls.
As a DM that's dealt with these chronic problems, I don't bother trying to assign blame. Find solutions instead, rather than trying to make it someone's fault. Some of the solutions I used are already in the thread, but I'll just list them here for the sake of being thorough;
No phones at the table/other devices. Answer phone calls if they come in, we'll take a collective break, but otherwise frick them off. Lost count the amount of times I'd clear my throat, tell someone it's their turn and then they say 'okay so what's happening???'
Don't use D&D's built-in initiative system. It's designed to make turns reliable and therefore predictable; if it takes a full five minute rotation for each individual player to make choices, that's five minutes to tune out. D&D has optional rules for both rerolling initiative every round and adding optional modifiers, like your weapon adding specific dice to the initiative roll (daggers end up being faster than greatswords for example). Cannot recommend these enough; use a tablet and dice roll/tracker program to streamline this and the +15 seconds it adds pays dividends in player attention.
No rules lawyering unless you literally have the page open, ready to point out the specific rule and how we amend it. Otherwise, make a note of it, then we deal with it post-session and make an effort to not repeat the mistake. Pausing the game for 5+ people for the sake of getting a rule perfectly correct completely sabotages any hope of people being invested and paying attention. Moreso if it happens multiple times a session.
Frequent enough breaks. Make sure your players are getting a 5-10 minute break every hour and a half or so, giving them time to take a piss, go have a smoke or just chat some shit and vent some of their intrusive thoughts without it derailing the game.
Snacks/food. This will vary heavily, but our group's tradition was to order pizza and normally take our first big break when it arrived, roughly an hour and a half into the session. If everyone's drinking alcohol, that's fine and can often improve things somewhat, but if people start getting absolutely shitfaced your game is going to go out the window. This would usually happen one out of ten games in my prior group, which I considered acceptable losses since everyone had fun and we'd all just chat shit anyway. For snacks, suggest stuff that isn't going to sugar crash people. Popcorn works well for that, assuming they don't smother it in extra shit.
Plan ahead. Have a clear idea of what you're doing as a DM. Don't allow your players to sit at the table expectantly while you fumble through multiple books. Take 30 minutes through your week to paw through whatever campaign you're running and attach sticky notes for easy reference, or do up a summary in a scrapbook.
That's all that comes to mind for me. If all of the above doesn't work, consider that not every TTRPG group is going to work. Sometimes the people at the table are just incompatible with one-another, or are just plain disruptive frickwits in any game they're in. It's not the DM's job to live other people's lives for them; if they're incapable of dropping 4-6 hours into the game without derailing it, even with all the above measures, move on. Find new people.
If the entire group is zoning out, it's probably a GM issue.
It's usually the fault of the players
>Question 1: Do they have ADHD
If so, 100% on the player. For solution unironically just give them a figget toy or something.
>Question 2: Are they just sitting there on their phone, or just occasionally checking.
If the ladder, try phone jail and see if that fixes the issue. If so it's the player, if not it might be GM.
The DM is given all of the power in an RPG, so all problems are the DMs fault.
If your players aren't paying attention, stop being bad and be a better DM. If you were good they would pay attention to you.
If they're bored, try making things go along faster. Make enemy turns faster, and encourage the players to go faster as much as you can.
Don't force them to go faster if they're engaged and seriously discussing their plans, but if one guy is just staring at his character sheet like an idiot, get out the hourglass.
And try to make sure that the players are always able to do things. In combat, this means avoiding "lose a turn" status conditions. Cutting off some options is fine, but cutting off all options means there's no reason to pay attention between turns.
Out of combat, this means discouraging splitting the party. Don't force them to stick together, but if they want to split, give them the "Are you sure you want to do that?"