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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6791029" data-attributes="member: 97077">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.</blockquote>

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