How do I encourage roleplaying without being a jerk?

When I DM I try to create a mood. I have a vision in my head of the character's surrounding environment and the NPCs they are interacting with, and I'm trying my best to convey what I've imagined to my players.

My players, for the most part, listen when I describe things, ask relevant questions to better comprehend the scene, and wait patiently while I fuddle through my notes.

When I am interacting with them through NPCs they stay in character, however, some of my players have a habit of squeezing in metagame or off-topic comments if I am not specifically talking to their characters. For instance, sometimes when I'm roleplaying with characters A & B, the players of characters C & D will quietly talk to each other about a rule or a spell, or tell a joke, or discuss their next combat maneuver (even though their characters technically can't be having such a conversation), or even discuss something wildly OT (baseball comes up a lot). Oftentimes, when I am done talking to part of the group and ready to address the group as a whole, I have to wait for some players to stop talking before I can continue. Sometimes they are so engrossed in their whispered conversations that I have stood there for up to a minute before they realized I was waiting on them to shut up so we could continue the game. Over the course of a session this grates on my nerves.

Now, the general player mentality among my friends is if their character is not in the scene, then they don't have to pay attention to the game, because they're not supposed to know what's going on anyway. My general goal, as DM, is to make the session interesting enough that everyone wants to pay attention just so they can find out what happens next, even if their character is missing, unconcious, or otherwise occupied.

Is it unrealistic to expect everyone to pay attention all the time? Is it unrealistic to demand that players do not speak unless it's in character or are asking the DM a question? Our monthly sessions can last as long as eight hours with occassional breaks for food or leg-stretching. How do I encourage people to stay in character? Should I bother? Do you?

Among my friends, it is tough to enforce staying in character. Players can end up resenting a particularly demanding DM who constantly tells players to stop talking unless it's in character (then again, the DM resents having to constantly enforce that players stay in character). Not to mention, we have a large group of knowledgable people familiar with the rules, and when there's a rules question everyone's first instinct is to debate it, and pull out rulebooks, and come to a consensus, nevermind that the DM might just want to arbitrate it off the cuff and find out the actual rule later.

I'm as guilty as the rest. I am both a player and a DM among my friends, and the things I've described above happen across all three of our campaigns. As a player I try to stay in character at all times, but I often find myself frustrated with the other players (especially the ones who aren't DMs), and consequently find myself telling people to shush so the DM can talk, or telling people to talk about the ballgame later, or telling people to let the DM make a decision so we can get on with things. In short, I'm just as bad as everyone else, despite my good intentions.

Does anyone have any suggestions to encourage people to stop table-talk, metagaming, and out-of-character conversations? More importantly, should they be encouraged to stop? Is this much ado about nothing, or a problem you struggle with too?

Let's hear it.

The larger the group the bigger a problem this is in my experience. However, you can't expect players whose characters aren't present to pay rapt attention to what's going on, there's no point and they'll get bored because they aren't involved. It's like the difference between playing poker and watching people play it.

One of my old dms back in the day used to kick everyone who wasn't there out of the room if the scene was going to take more than about twenty minutes.

Try to set the mood.

For example if its a "horror" game, take the players to a graveyard, stand next to a pominant grave and say, "this is what happend to the last guy who metagamed in my campiagn."

Heh. Just kidding.

Its axiomatic that the players won't pay as much attention when its not their "turn". Gaming is as much a social event as anything else. I personally don't mind this kind of behavior in my games. But I walked out on a DM who once attempted to handle social talking by saying "Shut up! We're not here to have fun, we're here to play the game."

firstly, these answers are based solely on my own particular style of gaming.

ForceUser said:

Is it unrealistic to expect everyone to pay attention all the time?

Click to expand...

yes. as the Jester and BG said, it's the difference between watching an activity and performing it. you can't expect their full attention unless they are fully involved in the process.

Is it unrealistic to demand that players do not speak unless it's in character or are asking the DM a question?

Click to expand...

yes! firstly about not speaking in character, not everyone is good at talking in character. i know i'm horrible at it. if a player isn't all that eloquent, why not let him just sort of narrate what he wants his character to get across?

i am a fairly socially-inept person -- i'm very shy and don't like speaking in public. i once played a character with the D&D equivalent of an 18 Charisma and maxed out social interaction skills. if the GM had forced me to speak in character all the time for this PC, he would have sucked at the very thing he was supposed to excel at. so normally, i'd just paraphrase what my character was trying to say, and then make a skill check. worked for us. we don't make people with characters in combat actually swing real weapons around and base their chance to hit on how well they do it. we don't make people with rogue characters actually try to pick a real lock, etc. why do so many people assume we have to do the same thing for the interaction skills?

secondly, about not speaking out of turn: this isn't elementary school. gaming is a social activity. at least with the groups i've gamed with, we're there as much to hang out with each other as we are to play the game. conversation outside of the game has its place. also, if you really, really, have something you want to talk about, it's hard to stifle it for the four-to-eight hours that a typical game session lasts...

Our monthly sessions can last as long as eight hours with occassional breaks for food or leg-stretching. How do I encourage people to stay in character? Should I bother? Do you?

Click to expand...

i don't think you should, and i definitely don't. i don't mind a significantly high "signal-to-noise" ratio. in one group i played in, we would meet for about 10-12 hours every two weeks, and get maybe 3-4 hours of gaming in during that time. there was always something else cool or too important to talk about! no one really minded, and we all loved the campaign anyways.

Does anyone have any suggestions to encourage people to stop table-talk, metagaming, and out-of-character conversations? More importantly, should they be encouraged to stop? Is this much ado about nothing, or a problem you struggle with too?

Click to expand...

i don't think you should even try to make them stop. it may cause resentment, and i don't think it would necessarily improve your game overmuch.

Lead by example. The ones who enjoy that sort of thing will loosen up and do it more often if you are doing it most of the time. The ones who hate that sort of thing, may come to enjoy it or they may not. Can't be helped, really. Wish I could help you more but different people just like different things about the game...

Talk to them about it, and see what they think. I don't know if that'll actually accomplish anything, but it might.

I'm in three gaming groups right now - A wednesday night game that meets for 3-4 hours (Wulf Ratbane's Lazy Days campaign for those that read Story Hours), a every-other-Sunday game that meets for 8 hours (Kid Charlemagne's SH), and a Saturday game that meets for 6-8 hours (no SH).

The first two groups keep pretty focused. In Wulf's game, we're there for a short time, so we want to make sure we cram as much game in as possible. Even the 8 hour Sunday sessions are pretty high signal to noise ratio, with relatively few digressions. And its not like we're massive role-players, either. We just are all focused on being there for the game.

The Saturday game is problematic at times. The noise level is significantly higher, and as a result, I get less enjoyment out of it. I can't even imagine a game where we got together for 10 hours and only got 4 hours of gaming in - that would drive me nuts.

In short, try and talk to the players and see if they would prefer a game that is more focused, but there may be no way to do it with the same crew of players. I could get the Saturday group to be more like what I want, but 2 or 3 players would have to go, and I don't think that the group wants that. I'm not sure I do either.

i know that personally, game night is really the only time i get to talk to my gaming friends because of conflicting schedules so we do alot of this sort of thing. if that is even remotely similar to your situation such things are to be expected. you mentioned multiple campaigns so you might spend more time but if it's all at the gaming table it's really not realistic to expect stieve to roleplay Gronk the"destroyer of worlds" 24/7.

What are you "complaining " about?
Your players tend to interact with your world, stay in character, llisten to your descriptions, and whisper when not active?

That's the nearest to perfect group I have seen described for a long time.

You can't - and imo, shouldn't - totally block OT talk, because most likely your players will see the game also as a possibility to meet and socialize.

Try to see it from a different p.o.v.: When they whisper among themselves because they aren't active at the moment, they will probably miss what's going on.
Thereby, they don't know what their characters don't. Metagaming becomes harder. The other players need to inform their friends - have fun with misunderstandings!

All in all, your group sounds extremely enjoyable,

B

I understand WHY you feel as you do. People should pay attention. If they want to socialize, then I have a "Hour of Power" at the beginning where we all just shoot the crap about our week. I take frequent breaks to people can talk and smoke or whatever. STILL it's never enough. They just want to yack and yack... and I say "Why don't we just hang out and talk?" to a Resounding "NO! I'm here to play!!!" followed by dirty looks and hurt all around. Then they ignore me as the DM and just start talking again. heh.

I'm starting a new game, with people I barely know, who SAY they want to just play. We will see, maybe if they are more focused I will be less irritated by my friends who just "want to have fun."

Fun is different for all. For me FUN, when playing D&D, is about playing D&D. When I want to just goof around, I don't play D&D. We can get together and just watch movies, or play video games, and a whole lot of other things. When we play D&D I want to Freaking play D&D... why is that so "bad." Just remember, one persons FUN is another persons Ulcer.

Compromise.

If they're not involved in the scene, send them out of the room. That's what I do in my game (which is also 1/month, 7-8 hrs.)...if you want them to stay in character, it's better for them not to know what their characters shouldn't know, IMO. That way, you have the good in-character interaction and people get to hang out as well.

The thing about whispered conversations going on while you're waiting for them to stop...that would drive me crazy. If they can leave the room to talk baseball or play a video game or whatever, they shouldn't need to do that at the table.

But it seems like your players want to "hang out" as well as play. So work with that and choose your battles, or just suggest that everyone go out after the game to hang. That's what we do, when we can.

I guess I'm just lucky to have a really focused group, some of whom I've been gaming with for about 8 or 10 years. They have no problem talking in character, and when I send them out of the room they're always poking their heads in and asking to come back!

I don't agree with bwgwl's claim that you shouldn't ask people to speak in character. Socially inept or not, it's all make-believe and all you have to do is try your best, not be a brilliant orator (at least in my game). Just my opinion.

Let the good games roll.

EDIT: Oh yeah, we also have the running joke for this sort of thing. When OOC or OT comments are made, the DM (me) makes a hand motion as though clicking an automatic counter, while going "ka-ching! ka-ching!" Newbies immediately ask, "What's that?" whereupon the rest the players answer, "The sound of you losing experience points."

Which is why they call me the Magnificent Bastard!