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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6743463" data-attributes="member: 4937">I wish more players understood this sort of thing.  On forums there are always tons of GMs asking, "How can I be a better GM?"  It's so rare for people to ask, "How can I be a better player?"  RPG players act like playing an RPG is just something you just do, and not something you should be trying to get better at.   To the extent that they think about skill, it's almost always something like, "How can I abuse the system more?", and not, "How can I be more entertaining at the table?"   And, there are tons of player-centric objections that form the basis of classic game arguments like, "Why should it be any different playing a high charisma/intelligence character when IRL you have low charisma/intelligence and playing a high strength/dexterity character when IRL you have low strength/dexterity", that I believe no one would even bother to ask if they were experienced DMs and not merely players.  If you are a DM most of the time, the reasons why they are different is obvious.But in particular, in any scene, you generally have 3-8 PCs (depending on the group), and you have the DM trying to run all the NPCs.  In my experience, there are certain scenes that a DM can't run effectively because he's limited by the fact he's a single actor.  The most obvious one being you can't really effectively run a scene with a large number of NPCs.   And you probably never should try to run a scene that involves heavy interaction between NPCs.  As much as possible, I find it works better to have one NPC on stage at a time (with possibly some extras standing around in the background).  But that means that a rather large percentage of the sort of scenes that can be staged require players to take the part of directors and play an active role crafting the scene by interacting with each other.  Some of the most enjoyable times for a DM is when he doesn't even really need to add to the story, because the PC's are entertaining both him and each other through their play.  And it's sadly so rare, and arguably for me its mostly been inexperienced novice players that demonstrate that skill.  If someone tells me that they've been playing D&D for 20 years, I could lay money on them being unable to actually RP intraparty communication effectively or dramatically.  Or that most of the time when they do address another player in character, it's going to be implicitly or explicitly a threat.</blockquote>

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