A bit too talkative...

[SquanderedSon]

So you have 7 players & only play once a month.
And your wondering why you've got all the ooc chatter/what to do about it....

Stop taking the game so seriously. Wether you RP or treat your character like a monopoly pawn, it's just a game & the real point of the exercise is to BS with your friends.

By April we will be playing every two weeks, unfortunately we are not able to play every week due to several players schedules. And I agree its all about BS, we certainly do that. But its harder to actively enjoy when you have some more serious players and some who are extremely relaxed. Just trying to get some help from more experienced players who have been in similar situations so we can have a little bit of a better and more balanced time, especially since its causing frustration amidst the group. But perhaps your right, messing around with mates and being relaxed could help and be the answer. But although its with friends it is a D&D session, not a meet up once a month for drinks and some games.

 

[Imaculata]

Some really good ideas here too, thanks. I guess it is personal preference, and does come with experience. A fair few of the guys have never really done any sort of tabletop RP or even RP in gaming format. So as it is many peoples first true d&d experience I guess its way more prone to the constant OOC talk. But I will definitely show these tips to the DM.

My group often spends the first hour after their arrival getting all the OC talk out of their system. They discuss politics, and the latest Star Wars movie, they discuss what happened in the last session, and they crack jokes, while unpacking all their stuff (snacks, drinks, dice, sheets, books).

During play there are often moments when the players exchange OC talk. These are either on topic (they discuss strategy, or talk about other information that they got earlier), off topic (they make references that have nothing to do with the game), or they are jokes. All of these are fine with me. To me, playing D&D is kind of like enjoying a movie at home. The players are supposed to react, not just as their characters, but also as themselves. I enjoy it when my stories provoke a reaction. I love it when there's a plot reveal, and the players put the pieces together during OC banter. That's great! I also love it when they really dislike a character who is intended to be disliked, and they make jokes about him. I want the story to provoke reactions from the players, just like a movie wants to provoke reactions from its audience too.

There's plenty of DM's that worry that all this OC gets in the way of role playing, immersion or storytelling. But I disagree with that strongly. Because during any session there are moments of strong and weak attention. The players don't have to be immersed fully every second, they just have to be immersed during the scenes when it matters. For example, when there's a sad scene, or a very scary/tense scene I want them to be in character, and feel the mood. As a storyteller, I am fully in control with that. I can control the mood with the way I convey the story, and as a DM I can enhance that mood even further with sound effects and music. So when I want them to be scared, they WILL be scared, because I know how to tell a scary story. And when it gets scary, no one is cracking jokes.

I'm also not worried about the players exchanging information with OC banter, because I know that I can rely on my players to play it out in a way that makes sense. For example, player 1 has some information, but player 2 has some information too. When they put those two bits of info together, there's a big conclusion. The players may have already reached that conclusion during their OC chatting, but I leave it up to them to play out how their characters come to share that info with each other.

It's also kind of great when one player has to make a tricky decision, and all the other players (whose characters aren't even there) are giving him advice, and discussing what to do. Because this means everyone is engaged by the story, regardless if they are there or not. This is why OC talking is something I encourage, and I don't understand why some DM's are so fanatically against it.

 

[iserith]

I've seen this sort of thing in other games before and it tends to come up in large groups or in any groups where the PCs are frequently split up doing their own things, like running errands in town. While Player A is haggling with the shopkeep over the price of iron rations, Players B and C are talking about their character advancement options. Frankly, I don't blame Players B and C - they're not involved in the scene and what Player A is doing is, well, boring. If Player A was instead trying to convince his or her criminal contact to give up the location of the murderer the whole party is looking for, it might be more interesting and Players B and C may pay attention or even make suggestions to Player A on how to approach the challenge rather than entertain themselves with side conversations.

So really this sounds like a problem of spotlight management, pacing, scene-framing, and presenting engaging challenges to me because that is common in my experience. Both of these are things the DM can work on by making sure everyone is involved in some way and by making a given scene an actual challenge (uncertain outcome, something to win or lose) rather than chitchat between PCs and NPCs. Good pacing and scene-framing also means making sure you're getting to the interesting or exciting stuff as quickly as possible and skipping over anything that isn't engaging.

The other thing is to just talk to the players and ask them for their help in solving the problem: "Why do you talk to each other about unrelated stuff while we're playing? What needs to be done to encourage you to pay attention?" Perhaps they'll tell you exactly what I have or something else that can be addressed.

 

[Janx]

This needs an out of game solution set.

a) talk to the players. Talking during somebody else's turn is disruptive. For example, I don't hear too well, so secondary noises make it harder for me to isolate what I need to hear. OOC chatter needs to at least be quiet enough to not disrupt the active scene.

b) talk to the GM. make sure he's not focusing on just the one player who is engaging his attention (by asking questions, stopping to talk to an NPC, etc).

c) talk to everyone. Roleplaying is kind of like impromptu comedy sketch. You don't put 7 actors on stage and only have 2 of them talk to each other while the rest just stand there. They need to actively involve each other into the scene, ex "You may have a point. Jim, what do you think about what Bob is saying here?"

d) set expectations of play pattern. With 7 players, you can't dawdle or get a lot of lone-camera time as it comes at everyone else's expense. The GM needs to run a game that keeps everyone moving together, and the players need to play in a way that keeps everyone looped in. No sneaking off in the middle of the night to explore for extra treasure by yourself.