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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Weregrognard" data-source="post: 5090995" data-attributes="member: 26396">I came across a slight revelation while analyzing my last game session.  In particular, I was pondering about an RP encounter I used to give some needed exposition and allow the players to get some spotlight time.  The encounter ended up rather lackluster, in my opinion.When I portray NPCs, I tend to hop from acting out the character (with voices, etc.) to describing what the character says and does (“he/she says”, etc.)  This usually happens when my throat is tired from the voice acting or worse, when I’m stumped for what the character says or does.So here’s my realization: the hopping around from 1st person to 3rd person is what hurt the RP encounter.  You see, when I was portraying the NPCs in 1st person, the players were engaged, directly addressing me as their characters.  The moment I switched to 3rd person, I inadvertently switched modes to “narrator”, which caused the players to switch into “audience” mode.  They were no longer active participants and therefore, ceased interacting with the NPCs.Has this ever happened to you when you DM?  What can be done to mitigate this problem?</blockquote>