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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aristeas" data-source="post: 3069115" data-attributes="member: 41008">I run a fairly large weekly game (8 regular players). Five of them now have complained to me now about feeling unable to participate because two of the others are monopolizing the spotlight. Just one spotlight hog is pretty easy to deal with: make whatever she's not good at central to the story. But we have both a beguiler (call her Alice) who insists on controlling all the information gathering scenes (since she can sneak into anywhere invisible and silent and charm information out of people), and a diplomacy-and-bluff focused Akashic (call her Beth) who insists on running all the interaction scenes. This might not be a problem by itself, if all the other characters were combat-focused, but several of the others are Tactician and Story players in the Robin's Laws sense, who would all really like to be contributing something to the direction of the campaign. So a lot of each session is information gathering (preempted by Alice) and interaction (preempted by Beth), even though other people's characters are also focused on these sorts of things. Both also have a tendency to interject  with "While this is going on, I do X..." in scenes where their characters aren't present and others are acting. So, any thoughts, o Enworld collective brain?Parameters:1) I can't kick anyone out. We're all close friends, and actually ejecting anyone would put the entire group under strain.2) This would be easier to fix in a dungeon, but we prefer a very open, character driven environment where the players more or less decide the direction of the story. This is not to say I can't control anything, but it would be difficult to, for instance, create an adventure in which the abilities of the overshadowed characters were the only way to solve a problem. People will feel railroaded if there aren't multiple available paths.3) In-character bad consequences have been tried and failed. Alice in particular has been nearly killed three or four times after going off alone, but the lesson she takes away is "Be sneakier," not "Cooperate."4) Neither is aware that they're grandstanding. I've talked to both of them, and they agree with the necessity of sharing the spotlight, they always just forget to do it. They're both very reasonable people with bad habits. I'm hoping one of you has a more effective way of getting the idea across.5) I've debated explicit out-of-character spotlight sharing rules, but I'm concerned that too many rules will prevent people from enjoying the evening. Nobody really wants to be told that can't talk.</blockquote>

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