Impatient Players Who Search

[Thunt]

One pet peeve I have is when players declare that they're searching a room. An exercise that takes the character some time. Then, 10 seconds later, while the other players are doing things, the searching player asks "Do I find anything?".

"No. You just started searching."

"So anyways, Gilgirth the elf, you were saying that your sword is sheathed because..."

"Do I find anything now?"

"Jesus, you haven't had time to search anything yet!"

This is just one of those things that has always happened I guess.

 

[Crothian]

its quite simple, tell them you will get back to them when and if they find something.

 

[Wycen]

Searching is one of those things that I don't think needs suspense. Well, ok, if you want the players to stay interested then maybe a pause and flip through your notes or a book, but when we play, we pretty much assume everybody is involved at some point in the searching, so it just boils down to who finds the item/clue/feature.

Now if you throw in players who like passing notes, in my experience to steal what they find, that can be different. Possibly annoying.

 

[IronWolf]

I would just make sure they know how you like to handling. It sounds like once a player declares they are searching you take that time to handle any other questions or actions the other players are doing before telling the results of the search. I see no issue with that, it might just take a OOC advisement of how you handle it to help keep everyone in your group on the same page.