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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 7650241" data-attributes="member: 8835">This is something you touched on in reference to getting 20% of the attention in a 5 player game.I've long had the theory that players have a tolerance for waiting for about 5 "other player" actions before their turn.  This is one reason many simple games top out at 6 players.  More than that, and one of the obvious drags on game-fun is "waiting for my turn" starts to feel interminable.I'd seen a variation of this pattern in a D&D session where my friends from MN were all in town in Austin.  We drove 3 hours to meet them, where they were already in progress.  We got slid in as a cut scene in another part of the castle with our fighter-type characters.  We'd get one encounter of attention, which we completed for 4 characters (2 players, a PC and henchman pair each) in about 15 minutes (as in killing the giants in the room).  Then we'd nap for an hour while the pokey party got through their one encounter of giants).to sum up, our local play-style was combat centric and focussed on speedy resolution.  Theirs was focussed on planning out the best spell load-out for buffs and such to take out the next encounter.  We basically buzzed through monsters, while they were actually more lethal (more damage dealt), they took forever to resolve.I've also seen where battlemats helps speed up game play.  When player fatigue sets in, they stop paying attention.  The mat, helps snap their focus on what's going on (see monsters, move to one, and kill it).  Rather than repeatedly asking the GM for a description of what's where and such before declaring an action.I don't discredit the "not using the game world to get creative" problem, but I don't play 4e, so I don't see the "if it ain't on my sheet, I can't do it" syndrome as bad.I think a battlemat helps.  But I also think every room (aka Encounter) should be shaped and populated with objects to open up possibilities.  Ledges, tables, ropes holding chandeliers, etc.  It is so easy to forget to do that, and just draw another rectangle with 2 doors on the mat.</blockquote>

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