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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 5370889" data-attributes="member: 99">My group is composed of a bunch of friends who are right around 40 years old.  And we've known each other for upwards of 20 years.  When we get together to game each week we've got other stuff to discuss.  Bitching about work, talking about our kids and wives and the latest funny thing we saw on the internet.What we do is designate the first 30 minutes of the game session to just chatting and farting around.  Gaming WILL NOT commence before 30 minutes into the session.  That's the rule.At some point after that the GM will kind of signal the group by saying something like, "Ok...when we last left our heroes..."  After that we put away the cell phones, try not to get too far off topic with conversations, etc.  Usually around half way through the session we end up having a break where everybody gets beverages and hits the bathroom and we may strike up more off topic conversations.  But we again try to put that aside when it's time to get back to the game.Once in a great while we discover that it just ain't happening that night.  You can just tell by looking around the group that it's been a long week at work or something else fun has us distracted and our socializing at the start of the game bleeds into the regular game time and nobody seems bothered by it.  Those nights we just smile and say, "We'll get back to the game next week."I guess my point is that, if you build in time for the things that aren't gaming, then I don't think you should feel bad about saying, "Hey, you can dork around on your cell phone after you leave here tonight and for the rest of the week.  But right now we're gaming, ok?"</blockquote>

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