My at home players either have been playing for awhile or, in my new group, are teachers who are already comfortable with performing. So they all naturally want to tell a story when it's their turn. My my spouse's goblin artificer doesn't just shoot their pistol, they scurry to a better vantage point, ducking the mayhem around them before lining up a shot and almost being knocked over by the recoil, and so on. And then it's their automaton's turn.
At school, I just prompt players: "Okay, I guess I cast a sleep spell." "Awesome - describe what that looks like. How do you cast it?"
Depending on how they did that, it could drive me NUTS!!!
Perhaps it's because I've had some bad experiences with a few players like that. One player I had I was an older Teen (over 18) while the rest were kids around the elementary age and such. The Older kid thought they were a drama master or something and would get mad "in character" at the other kids for being...kids. Tried to kill other PC's finally.
MASSIVE headache.
If one player is trying to take all the spotlight, it also kind of irks me off. Maybe if all the people I played with were being Drama Queens in that aspect it might be different, but I haven't ever had that.
Perhaps it's due to who I game with (almost every gamer that I've gamed with outside game stores are ones that I've recruited myself and taught how to play).
We DO have brief descriptive play many times, but nothing that takes long.
I can't figure how people don't understand how a game flows as quickly as mine. I think I'd go crazy if my players were taking 5 minute turns. It would drive me nutty I think.
I DO run larger groups at times, and it would pose SERIOUS problems if players were taking even 3 minute turns. For a group of 8 to 12 players that would turn into 20 to 30 minutes between turns where players wouldn't have ANYTHING to really do.
I try to keep the game moving (especially if I have any kids younger than 14 playing) because most of those I game with would get absolutely bored to tears if they had to wait that long to talk or do things.
How do you keep your players engaged when they have to wait over 15 minutes just to play?
Even a minute would seem extremely long for a player to do their thing for us. That's why we have a timer in case we ever get a player that is like that.
I know many seem boggled by how fast I run my games, but I have to admit, I'm boggled at how long people are saying turns are and then how they have players that invested that those players don't get bored between turns!
Different game styles for different groups though.
I guess I'm the oddity on these boards. Ironically, I've never met a group that took that long for players to choose to do things in real life. Anecdotal...of course, but outside of 4e I've never had a group taking that long of time to make choices and roll.
I've seen players at a few gameshops do that, but generally I don't go to the groups that have such players as much. The shops normally have groups that don't take that long to get through things either.
As I already wrote though, Different game styles for different groups. I just game different from many of those in this thread it sounds like.