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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 3659603" data-attributes="member: 18280">The following is my own personal opinion, and not to be taken as a univeral.Every game of D&D, when starting with new players, includes a learning curve.  The players are each teaching the DM and each other what they enjoy about the game, and what they hope to get out of it.  The DM is training the players in what he or she enjoys about the game, and what he or she expects to get out of it.  Talking about this is a big help, and the more the DM and players are able to articulate their desires and expectations, the better things are likely to go.As a DM who uses a lot of description, and has a lot of interrelated bits of history, lore, etc., I would agree with people who say that you need to avoid infodumping, and that you need to break down information so that the entire history of an object, say, comes about through multiple encounters.  The players certainly shouldn't learn it until the PCs do.When starting with a new group of players, it is important to teach them that, in your campaign, listening to information is important.  The easiest way to do this is to begin by keeping it short, keeping it relevant, and making it important fairly quickly.  Once the players have the hang of this, you can increase the length of some bits, add some bits of seemingly-extraneous info, and make some things important later on.  As they learn to trust that much of what they learn is actually relevant, they will be able to deal with -- and enjoy! -- learning more about the world.At the same time, the wise player is showing whatever interest he or she can in the things that person finds enjoyable.  If you like fight scenes, then make sure your DM knows!  Even if the fight scenes in the begining seem "basic" to you, you can bet that if you act bored your DM will be learning that you don't like fighting (instead of that you want more complicated fights, which is what you want the DM to learn).Player or DM, you should be expecting this learning time to occur in a new game, relax a little, and (as Kahuna Burger said in another thread) metagame a bit to figure out how to make the game more fun for everyone involved.As the DM, you set the rewards.  If you want your players to listen to information, then try having that information linked to some specific reward.  This needs to go "information > means to gain reward > reward" if you want it to work.  Giving the reward before the information is usually not as effective.Handouts that go to a specific player are a good means of infodumping, btw.  If you have a bard, rather than read out that history, hand a print out to the bard.  When one player gets information that the others don't share, interest is automatically piqued.  You might see that print out passed around, read, and discussed where before your players had nary a glimmer of interest.  I've done similar things with dreams, restored memories, and found letters, and I can say with considerable experience that if you have seven players at the table, and give a handout to one, the other six are almost automatically interested.  Just don't make that handout too long, and make sure that it adds something to the game for everyone.If the players are not interested, that's fine, too.  In one game, I had a ruined temple.  It included specific information about the divine statues that were there (several being able to grant special bonuses).  Clues about the bonuses, and how to get them were in the statues' descriptions.  When the PCs examined the statues, I began to describe them.  The players decided that they weren't interested in that level of description, so they lost an opportunity.  That's okay.  The temple is still there, and they or other PCs might use it in the future.For the most part, though, making information useful means that the players will often pay attention to -- and even seek out -- information.All of that said, any player who consistently damages the fun of anyone at the table, player or DM, is going to be shown the door if I'm running the game.  As a DM, I have the right to have fun or stop running the game.  As a player, you have the right to have fun or stop playing.  I expect all of us to have the maturity to accomodate each others' fun to a reasonable degree.RC</blockquote>

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