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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9800994" data-attributes="member: 7006">Are you reading it, or are you scanning it?  To me they are two different things and it is obvious to me while playing when the DM is doing one versus the other.Scanning a module to remind yourself of information you already have a familiarity with takes a lot less time and usually can be done while the players are thinking and acting so that one is ready to respond when it is the DMs turn to act and react.  But when a DM does not know the information at all... their turn is spent with their nose buried in the papers and you can see the figurative hamster wheel spinning as they are not only reading aloud the parts the players have to know, but also are trying to absorb the secretive stuff around all that info that they need to know which they aren't supposed to tell the players about.  They have to spend all this time figuring out in the moment "Wait, do I tell the players this?  No?  Okay, what do the players have to do for me to then reveal this information?  Wait, what did the players already do?  Have they done it already?  No.  Okay."  Etc. etc. etc.  And this doesn't even include the very different narration style that occurs between a DM who has an idea of what the scene is about and can give the description and NPCs a bit of life... and the DM who falls back into an almost robotic tone as they talk because they are merely reading something out loud for the first time and thus have no idea what the proper tone and characterization is supposed to be.Maybe that kind of stuff doesn't matter to some players, but it does to me.  I enjoy D&D as a player when I can feel I'm in the hands of a DM who actually knows what the heck is going on.</blockquote>

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