Attention Economy
Our attention -- as a variation of our time -- is a very real commodity that we spend foolishly or wisely, but based on our own values and desires. Everyone has a different set of needs and attention spans. Some of us -- me especially, developed coping mechanisms when we're trying to pay attention to something that isn't holding all of our interest -- we doodle. Doodling doesn't mean I'm not listening or paying attention.
Are you a doodler? Or build towers of dice? Do you fiddle around on your phone? What's the difference?
View attachment 56934
Keep in mind that, especially if you're playing 4e, a player can go 15-20 minutes between taking turns, especially at higher levels. That's a long time to sustain interest without resorting to some sort of fiddling or distraction. Even games that play faster -- Savage Worlds, for example -- still can leave a player sitting still a lot of the time.
Think about this way: At a table of 5 players, during combat action each player gets about 20% of the attention & activity -- either acting or being acted upon. Frontline melee guys get a little more, on average, because they soak up more attacks, but still, as a ballpark, 20% is about right. That means that 80% of the time each player is not active.
We don't expect inactive players to drop off the face of the earth -- we hope that they engage enough to pay attention to other players turns, keep up with the action, plan their own next turn, but that might be a lot to ask in some games.
Not yours, of course. Your game is always exciting for everyone. But those other guys, they've got a problem.
Off-turn engagement
So, in that 5 player game, 80% of the time, you're not directly engaged. Sure, it might be good to pay attention to what's going on with everyone else in the scene, but some classes have more reason to do that than others. A healer has to keep an eye on everyone else's health, for example. And some games tend to have longer turns, so longer periods of inactivity between turns.
4e has some design elements that try to improve off-turn engagement by giving the players the ability to take actions when it's not their turn -- a wide variety of opportunity actions and interrupt powers scattered through the powers library are a direct response to that need to keep everyone paying attention.
The side effect of that has been to further slow down the game -- all those interrupt powers an actions keep getting in the way and slowing down the steady march of action.
An alternative is to keep turns fast -- Savage worlds does this. It's a fairly simple system, with very little bookkeeping to worry about, so combat action can move very quickly, and attention has very little time to wander. D&D Next is clearly trying to move in that direction, too. The sacrifice, there is complexity and choice
I'd argue, though, that there aren't just two choices here -- either complex actions with interrupts or simple action with turns that move quickly because the range of choices are limited.
Environmental Engagement
One of the great innovations of 4e is the power system that is behind all classes. It presents a fairly standardized system of character based action choices. Even a first level character has a decent handful of options on any given turn.
An unintended consequence of that system seems to be that we as players have become so focused on the choices we find on our character sheets we stop looking for things that we can do based on the world around our characters.
When we play simpler game systems, if we don't want to boil our game play experience down to taking turns rolling dice and adding up numbers, we need to take the time as DMs to really develop that game environment and help the players find or invent things that they can do with the scenery.
An interesting -- and troubling -- phenomenon at my game tables has been the growing lack of interest my players have in the "boxed text" -- especially when we're playing 4e and it's the transitional information between scenes. Because 4e has trained them to look for all of the answers in their character sheets -- and taught them that the encounters are what matters, not the connecting information -- the players don't have a compelling reason to do the emotional work of listening to what the DM is saying and imagining the scene themselves.
To turn that around is going to take some concerted efforts where description and detail are concerned. The exercise of playing a "theater of the mind" game is really about trying to get back to a play style where that description and scene detail is important. I'd encourage everyone, even those of us who are dedicated to maps and minis, to try running a few scenes without the props -- and don't do it only with easy scenes.
When you take the maps and minis away, you put yourself back in a position where you need to rely on description and detail to paint vivid pictures in the minds of your players. These are skills some of us need to dust off and revive.
Group Engagement vs Individual Engagement
There's an interesting side effect of relying on that kind of imagination and detail. When a player's choices and leverage on the game world is based on the options presented in his character sheet, that engagement is individual. The player reads through his options, ignoring what's going on with everyone else, rereading powers and abilities looking for the option that has what he needs.
But when we look for options and choices in the environment, we're engaging in the shared imagination of the group -- players and engaged with each other, not on their own.
Imagine two musicians. One knows that he needs to play a particular phrase, and watches his conductor for the cue to come in and play his part. The other, playing in an improvisational jazz band, has to be listening to the action going on around him -- listening to what the other members of the band are doing so that he can build on top of the variations they've been coming up with. That improvisational player is paying very close attention, especially when he's not playing -- really appreciating what the other members of the band are doing.
So, we need to strive to run those sorts of games -- games that play a bit more like jazz, and a bit less like musical piecework. And the payoff is fewer players burined in their character sheets, their dice towers, their doodles -- and their phones.
Next week, we'll look at some tips and tricks for trying to build engaging scenery for your players to chew their way through.
Our attention -- as a variation of our time -- is a very real commodity that we spend foolishly or wisely, but based on our own values and desires. Everyone has a different set of needs and attention spans. Some of us -- me especially, developed coping mechanisms when we're trying to pay attention to something that isn't holding all of our interest -- we doodle. Doodling doesn't mean I'm not listening or paying attention.
Are you a doodler? Or build towers of dice? Do you fiddle around on your phone? What's the difference?
View attachment 56934
Keep in mind that, especially if you're playing 4e, a player can go 15-20 minutes between taking turns, especially at higher levels. That's a long time to sustain interest without resorting to some sort of fiddling or distraction. Even games that play faster -- Savage Worlds, for example -- still can leave a player sitting still a lot of the time.
Think about this way: At a table of 5 players, during combat action each player gets about 20% of the attention & activity -- either acting or being acted upon. Frontline melee guys get a little more, on average, because they soak up more attacks, but still, as a ballpark, 20% is about right. That means that 80% of the time each player is not active.
We don't expect inactive players to drop off the face of the earth -- we hope that they engage enough to pay attention to other players turns, keep up with the action, plan their own next turn, but that might be a lot to ask in some games.
Not yours, of course. Your game is always exciting for everyone. But those other guys, they've got a problem.
Off-turn engagement
So, in that 5 player game, 80% of the time, you're not directly engaged. Sure, it might be good to pay attention to what's going on with everyone else in the scene, but some classes have more reason to do that than others. A healer has to keep an eye on everyone else's health, for example. And some games tend to have longer turns, so longer periods of inactivity between turns.
4e has some design elements that try to improve off-turn engagement by giving the players the ability to take actions when it's not their turn -- a wide variety of opportunity actions and interrupt powers scattered through the powers library are a direct response to that need to keep everyone paying attention.
The side effect of that has been to further slow down the game -- all those interrupt powers an actions keep getting in the way and slowing down the steady march of action.
An alternative is to keep turns fast -- Savage worlds does this. It's a fairly simple system, with very little bookkeeping to worry about, so combat action can move very quickly, and attention has very little time to wander. D&D Next is clearly trying to move in that direction, too. The sacrifice, there is complexity and choice
I'd argue, though, that there aren't just two choices here -- either complex actions with interrupts or simple action with turns that move quickly because the range of choices are limited.
Environmental Engagement
One of the great innovations of 4e is the power system that is behind all classes. It presents a fairly standardized system of character based action choices. Even a first level character has a decent handful of options on any given turn.
An unintended consequence of that system seems to be that we as players have become so focused on the choices we find on our character sheets we stop looking for things that we can do based on the world around our characters.
When we play simpler game systems, if we don't want to boil our game play experience down to taking turns rolling dice and adding up numbers, we need to take the time as DMs to really develop that game environment and help the players find or invent things that they can do with the scenery.
An interesting -- and troubling -- phenomenon at my game tables has been the growing lack of interest my players have in the "boxed text" -- especially when we're playing 4e and it's the transitional information between scenes. Because 4e has trained them to look for all of the answers in their character sheets -- and taught them that the encounters are what matters, not the connecting information -- the players don't have a compelling reason to do the emotional work of listening to what the DM is saying and imagining the scene themselves.
To turn that around is going to take some concerted efforts where description and detail are concerned. The exercise of playing a "theater of the mind" game is really about trying to get back to a play style where that description and scene detail is important. I'd encourage everyone, even those of us who are dedicated to maps and minis, to try running a few scenes without the props -- and don't do it only with easy scenes.
When you take the maps and minis away, you put yourself back in a position where you need to rely on description and detail to paint vivid pictures in the minds of your players. These are skills some of us need to dust off and revive.
Group Engagement vs Individual Engagement
There's an interesting side effect of relying on that kind of imagination and detail. When a player's choices and leverage on the game world is based on the options presented in his character sheet, that engagement is individual. The player reads through his options, ignoring what's going on with everyone else, rereading powers and abilities looking for the option that has what he needs.
But when we look for options and choices in the environment, we're engaging in the shared imagination of the group -- players and engaged with each other, not on their own.
Imagine two musicians. One knows that he needs to play a particular phrase, and watches his conductor for the cue to come in and play his part. The other, playing in an improvisational jazz band, has to be listening to the action going on around him -- listening to what the other members of the band are doing so that he can build on top of the variations they've been coming up with. That improvisational player is paying very close attention, especially when he's not playing -- really appreciating what the other members of the band are doing.
So, we need to strive to run those sorts of games -- games that play a bit more like jazz, and a bit less like musical piecework. And the payoff is fewer players burined in their character sheets, their dice towers, their doodles -- and their phones.
Next week, we'll look at some tips and tricks for trying to build engaging scenery for your players to chew their way through.
