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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ArwensDaughter" data-source="post: 7049205" data-attributes="member: 6804968">My daughter "infected" her friends with the D&D bug, and she DMs a group of them on a semi-regular basis.   She's become frustrated lately, though with how hard it is to keep them focused and how much they self-distract.   I offered to ask here for advice, and she readily agreed.First, let me be clear that while these are teens, playing on their phones is NOT one of the issues.The core group of players consists of two girls and three boys.  I know for a fact that one of the girls has ADHD, although the fact that it's an official diagnosis means it is being addressed.  I suspect that one of the boys, does, too, but I don't know if there's an official diagnosis.  From my own observations, I will say that he runs roughshod over common conversational/interaction boundaries:  he interrupts others (without seeming to recognize that this is a problem), gets hyper focused on side issue or unrelated issues and then tries to draw everyone into his focus.  I've seen him insist that everyone watch and listen to a youtube video of a song he likes when the group is supposed to be setting up to play.  They are all bright young people, and good "kids" (even the interrupter), who honestly seem interested in playing, but then keep self distracting.The last time they were together, it took 2 hours do deal with two rooms in a dungeon.  While they were in the first room, having dealt with the encounters there, one of the PCs (a 2nd level rogue played by the most committed of the boys) listened at a door and heard the sounds of drow voices on the other side.  He opened the door and found 4 Drow guards.  He had killed 2 drow and taken 8HP of damage before any of the other players even noticed what was going on, and then only one of the other players picked up on it.  She sent her paladin in to help and the two of them dealt with the remaining Drow.  Meanwhile, the other two boys--one of whom is my daughter's boyfriend, the other being the "interrupter"--got into a playful fight of some sort  (the two are close friends) and the remaining girl (the one with ADHD, in whose home the game was happening) was trying to keep the two of them and the furniture from getting hurt.   My daughter decided that only the rogue and the paladin got XP from that encounter, and because of it, they leveled up while the others didn't.  A wise choice in my opinion.She's cancelled this weekend's session due to a combination of her frustration and her need to get schoolwork done.  She doesn't want to stop playing, but she doesn't want to continue to be so frustrated when playing.I've suggested she talk with them about her frustrations, and I will suggest she hold a (belated) "session zero."  But we'd both be interested in other ideas for dealing with the challenges she's facing.</blockquote>

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