D&D General Seeking DM Advice: Managing Extroverted Players

Various tidbits of table management, in no particular order.

Structuring exploration into rounds of some length is probably a good idea.

Specifically asking each player for their input personally, rather than waiting for them to speak up and interrupt, is another trick - very easy if you are using a turn structure, as you ask what each person wants to do.

Run a physical timer, if you need, so that nobody takes up more than a couple minutes in real-time at a shot. You'll probably find two or three minutes is a long time for people to talk.

When someone hogs the spotlight for a bit, announce, "Okay, now the scene switches over here to the other characters, to see what they are doing."

When you ask what they want to do, ask, "What do you want to accomplish?" Do this a few times over, and they should learn that they ought to name the goal, and suggest a path, "I want to see if I can remember anything relevant about such carvings - will Arcana do it?"

If they cannot think of what they want to do, ask them what they want to know more about. Find a way to get them a bit that might suggest an action.

When some folks end up sitting around, because there really doesn't seem to be much for them to engage with, change it up - throw some kobolds or ninjas or whatever is appropriate to change up what the scene is about for a while.

Or, when some folks end up sitting around, do a quick summary of the exploration, and move to the next scene. Rather than do a detail on each. and. every. sarcophagus. you summarize - "You go over all the sarcophagi, and overall, you find X, Y, and Z. Nothing bites your hear off."

When you are constructing your scenario, make sure your design already includes stuff that is relevant to the skills across many party members. If you are using a published work, and it doesn't seem to have that, then add stuff.

Remember some notions of character motivations. One reason for a scene to play out like you described is that some characters really did not want to muck with the dead, but the rogue insisted. The players, however, may not want to start a confrontation, and will then let the one character continue what they are doing, even though the characters might not.

Maybe run them through an old s

Xeviat said:

Hi everyone. Last night, my game ended up running short because someone had to leave early. No battles happened, and the session ended up mostly being the party rogue breaking into sarcophogi and taking treasure while the Barbarian complained he should respect the dead.

The bard player, who in the previous session had been very engaged with uncovering the history of the tomb they're exploring, seemed to have been bowled over by the rogue and barbarian player's mic hogging, and he seemed to have a real bad time and ended up giving up trying to contribute.

How can I avoid this in the future? I'm thinking of structuring exploration in one-minute rounds rounds just ask everyone what they're doing, so everyone has a chance to do something and someone can't end up doing everything and trying to input on everything.

I'm also struggling with how to get my players, most of whom are veterans but one of whom is very new, to tell me what they want to accomplish or try to do instead of what skill they want to roll. It's rubbing off on the new player really badly, to the point where they've asked "I use Arcana" and I have no idea what they intend.

The rogue and barbarian players are definitely the type who want to roll on every single thing, often even if their character isn't involved or even in the same room. I'm trying to cater to their playstyle, but I don't want it to get in the way of the other three players.

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Can you elaborate on that first problem? Did you have instances where the bard player tried to speak (assuming you're playing online) and the other two players interrupted and talked over him? If so, that seems like it's time for a sit down "let's be respectful adults" talk to make sure all the players are made aware of the issue.

As for your second problem, it's easy. Next time someone says "I make an BLANK check" without it being clear what they mean, simply nod, let them make the roll, and then call for the next player in initiative and ask what they're doing. Then, when the shocked player says, "Hey, but what about my check?" Tell them well your action was making a check, not doing anything. Hopefully that will be enough of a sour pill to snap them out of their habits. If you're not as much of a rat bastard as I am, you can always say, "What are you trying to do?"

Also, something about your example of the session being dominated by breaking into / looting sarcophagi and some moral commentary... that just doesn't seem right compared to my experience of dungeon-crawling. I know there are downtime sessions, but are you guys playing like 1-hour lunchtime sessions or something? I couldn't fill a whole session with what you described, so I'm curious what your sessions with these players typically look like.

Sometimes you really have to play traffic cop with overactive players.

1) Manage spotlight. That's, like, the most important part of your job. If someone hogs the mic, leave them on a cliffhanger and proceed to someone else.

— So, you pick the lock and when it clicks, you hear muffled footsteps inside... CUT TO: bard, you're standing in front of a wall with unholy sigils carved into stone. Just looking at them makes your head spin. What ya gonna do?

2) Well, any action needs three questions answered: What? How? (most of the time implicit) and, most importantly, Why?

— I ROLL ARCANA!
— What are you trying to achieve?
— I want to decipher these sigils.
— Ok. You pull out of your reference books or are you just searching in your memory banks?
— We need it fast, so I'll just try to remember.
— Ok, it won't take much time, but I'll not tell you much even on success. This naughty word is complex. Now, roll Intelligence, Arcana, please, DC 15.


If the answer for the first question is "I don't know", most people will just shut up. Those who won't are morons and you shouldn't play with them.

In short, ask questions and use answers.

Xeviat said:

How can I avoid this in the future? I'm thinking of structuring exploration in one-minute rounds rounds just ask everyone what they're doing, so everyone has a chance to do something and someone can't end up doing everything and trying to input on everything.

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I think that is often a good idea, although I would probably either use longer 10-minutes rounds, or not a fixed length. Have each player choose what their PC is doing for the next round a bit like you do in combat can definitely help avoiding someone falling out of the game.

Xeviat said:

I'm also struggling with how to get my players, most of whom are veterans but one of whom is very new, to tell me what they want to accomplish or try to do instead of what skill they want to roll. It's rubbing off on the new player really badly, to the point where they've asked "I use Arcana" and I have no idea what they intend.

The rogue and barbarian players are definitely the type who want to roll on every single thing, often even if their character isn't involved or even in the same room. I'm trying to cater to their playstyle, but I don't want it to get in the way of the other three players.

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This is a bigger problem. In many ways 5e allows different playstyles to co-exist at the same table, for example low-complexity vs high-complexity characters, but when it comes to heavy roll-players I am afraid it is impossible in every system unless all players are the same. Or at least it is so, if the roll-players start to step in with a roll every time the others have failed at something.

You can try to establish the practice of always explaining actions and attempts more in-character, before being allowed to roll. You can also of course just "teach" them by having most of their rolls simply fail, but I think generally heavy roll-players don't just want to roll, they want to succeed when rolling, and may start resenting you if it happens too rarely. I would still prefer to try and tell them "there's nothing you can do by rolling".

Perhaps you could consider a house rule, that a natural 1 is a critical failure on ability checks (or something similar, like failing by more than 10 points). This will punish players who want to roll significantly more often than everybody else.

We play online and at the start of the session we establish that session's talking order.

When a new situation arises I do a quick once round getting 'I want to do' statements from everyone, then the actual action resolutions.

Sometimes two characters conflict, like whether to kill a prisoner. In this case these two characters have their action resolution done together this round.

Regarding inter party conflict, the characters need to resolve it amicably or the offender becomes an NPC. Not joking, signed off in session 0.

I've had one player who would roll a skill in advance. In that case he was an experienced player who had gotten frustrated by a spotlight hogger and knew that I'd require that roll anycase. Yeah, it's generally bad form, but I'd talk about it beginning of next session to try and fix it.

I want to take a step back - having a scene where some characters (and therefore players) have more focus is not a bad thing.

It becomes a bad thing when it's not balanced over time. Sometimes even a full session is too short to look at balance if you are a lot happened with a particular character's arc.

Having players who take over every scene is bad. Is that's what's happening? Or do we have a case such as the barbarian talking more than normal because they don't like the idea of disturbing the dead. That's second one is okay - no, that's better than okay, it's good. Let people develop their characters when it's something meaningful to them.

It also sounds like a facet could be the bard character got a lot of spotlight the previous session exploring the history of the tomb and now the others want some time just to banter in character.

On the other hand, if those take the spotlight most scenes, that's a big problem. I'd start by talking to them - first a quick and immediate reminder about letting other people get a chance to play and then a bit longer after the session.

I don't structure exploration and other non-combat activities in distinct rounds of particular amount of time, but do make sure that each person announces what they plan to do (as they move into a room to search, for example) before those actions go off.

A player can say they do anything, but until I go around the table and everyone has had a chance to announce their intention, none of those actions go off. That way if X player says he is searching the trunk at the foot of the bed and player Y says the same thing, I can stop and ask, "So you both are doing that together, or does one of you want to do something else in the meantime?"

This allows the players a moment to decide among themselves who will do what and give you a sense of where people are standing and what they are doing if, for example, a trap goes off or a monster arrives (or a valuable treasure is found).

Another possibility (that maybe someone else mentioned?) is going old school and designating a "caller." A player who once everyone has decided (as a group) what they are doing, tells the DM what the group is doing (e.g. "While Ratchis searches the ground for tracks, Kazrack will stand guard, and Beorth and Jeremy will search the remains of the broken down wagon we found.")

That said, these solutions don't work if you have a "Chaotic Everywhere" player or players - in which case a conversation will be necessary.

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