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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 4958428" data-attributes="member: 61155">You keep saying this, and keep being wrong. Time spent 'doing what Hussar enjoys' comes at the expense of time spent 'doing what that player enjoys'. Because keep in mind - 30 seconds might be enough to give one small tidbit of info, but it could grow into much larger amounts of time when other people ask for clarification, and gets multiplied by all the tiny elements you feel the player should make known - and gets further multiplied by each player at the table providing their own similar descriptions.  They could instead spend that time roleplaying about the plot, or engaging in discussions that focus on the more important elements of their characters, or any number of other activities. They key is, they should spend that time - however brief - doing what they enjoy, not what you enjoy.  I mean, I think you have good intentions at heart, here - you feel that if more people played this way, it would improve the quality of their game. What I can't understand is how you refuse to accept that other people might disagree, and might have good reasons to want to spend their time focusing on other elements of the game, or other aspects of their character.  Here's an example. My friend is running a game in which I'm playing a character who was an Eladrin, who left the Feywild to help share his culture with the developing human civilization. He ran an academy in the human capital, offering courses in the arts, studies of history and arcana, and similar.  But the game, from Day 1, pretty much cast the party directly into the wilderness and had them vanquishing evil in the wild. Because of that, there hasn't been as many opportunities to focus on certain aspects of his character. I'm sure the rest of the group has an impression of him as a cultured individual, and he has certain habits that reinforce that point (always trying to talk enemies into surrender, waxing eloquent about his many former experiences across the planes, etc).  But there are also many, many background elements that have never come up. Things I wrote up in my character background, thought were cool touches for him, but have never had reason to mention in play. By your argument, this is an issue - why should I come up with such things if they never see the light of the day? The thing is, I'm certainly still aware of them - they still inform how my character behaves and acts. And while I'm sure I could have found reason to bring them up, there are many times when it would have actively hurt the game for me to do so - in the middle of a session, I could certainly take advantage of a momentary pause while the party rested to start a conversation with the bard about music and the arts. And the two of us might banter back and forth for some time, roleplaying to our hearts content - while the rest of the group had little to contribute and the game session slowed to a crawl. Because we could also be spending that time doing something we all could enjoy or participate in, or advancing the plot, or whatever. I've seen plenty of RPGA games where a player comes in and has come up with all sorts of background for his character... and runs rampant over the rest of the group as he tries to bring up all these intricate details, and ends up monopolizing much of the roleplaying and character interaction. I've been that player, and realized that there are times when you can be perfectly content knowing your character background and being satisfied with it on your own. Look, I don't have an issue with you preferring this style of play and feeling more people should try it. My problem is that you genuinely seem to feel it is the only acceptable way to play, and that not doing so automatically means a group is missing out on roleplaying. Can you truly not accept that some people might feel that time is better spent focusing on more important aspects of their character, or roleplaying about the world around them or the plot, rather than about character details that are not important to them?</blockquote>

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