An essential bit of weirdness lurks at the heart of roleplaying games when we think about the engagement and attention that goes into a great RPG session. On the one hand, RPGs are the most engaging form of entertainment ever created (at least so far). But on the other hand, the complex nature of social interaction can lend itself to distraction and defocusing when you’re engaging in a three-hour narrative improv conversation with six other people.
During its best moments, a game session can make you forget that you’re a player sitting around a table, as you become your character and the story surrounds you. At the same time, all RPG players know the flipside effect of slipping out of the story from time to time as their attention wavers. However, thinking about why that happens is a great way to make sure it doesn’t become a problem.
Distraction Is Not the Enemy
It’s easy to think about the problem of players losing the thread of a game and respond by saying: “No distractions at the table (real or virtual).” No phones or devices, no distracting side activities, no reading the rulebooks unless you’re specifically looking something up in the moment. The problem with that approach, as so many players know, is that sometimes distraction is a useful tool for increasing our focus and attention.
Every gamer alive knows the experience of having a comedic digression take over a game for a short while and do absolutely no damage to the game in the end. Lots of folks know the utility of devices like fidget spinners for helping decrease the residual stress that can hinder concentration. Lots of players doodle or draw while playing, imposing a level of right-brain calm that makes listening easier. So rather than simply focus on distractions, think about the nature of those distractions and the affect they can have on player attention.
Avoid Other Stories
In my own experience, the common component of bad distractions at the gaming table is narrative. Because an RPG is a shared storytelling experience, the story centers of our brains need unfettered access to the moment-by-moment, scene-by-scene developments of the game story as it unfolds. And nothing messes that up faster than having another story intrude on the game story.
Back in my early gaming days, heated discussions would often ensue when some people wanted to leave a weekend football or basketball game on the TV in the background, just to keep up with the highlights and the score. These days, every player with a phone can have video running in their peripheral vision, and for folks playing online, having YouTube up in a side window can seem harmless. But if you find yourself missing details in the game story, or uncertain what’s happening in combat because you’ve tuned out during other player’s turns, that’s a sign that video is a distraction that needs to go.
Likewise with reading during a game session, whether that means looking up lore, mentally shopping for your next character upgrade or magic weapon, or scanning the news during what seems like a quiet moment. The focus required to read for information immediately shuts down our ability to listen for information. Outside of focusing on your own character notes or looking up rules in response to something that’s happened in the game, reading is something to avoid.
Make Note of that
Despite the best efforts of most GMs, the necessity of having to do occasional lore dumps during a game session can easily cause players’ attention to flag. On the GM side, always try to keep lore dumps as short as possible, and look for ways to make lore actionable. (Show, don’t tell, as the saying goes.) But on the player side, if you ever find yourself tuning out during a brief history backgrounder or an NPC’s revealing-the-secret-plot monologue, make notes on what you’re being told. Especially when making notes longhand, the process of redirecting what you’re hearing to make it something you’re writing forces you to focus on it a way that makes it all but impossible to tune out.
Just a Reminder
As the GM, never be afraid to catch the players up to make sure they haven’t missed anything. As a common example, in a complex combat scenario, it’s easy for players to miss details regarding enemy tactics and positioning that their players would absolutely be aware of, so fill those things in every round if you need to. On the player side, never be afraid to ask for a reminder of specific details you’re not clear on. Again, your character knows and remembers far more about what’s going on the story than you do, and no good GM will begrudge you asking to close that gap.
At the same time, if you find that you’re needing to ask for catch-up details more than you’d like, think about making notes while you play. Keep track of key details such as NPCs you’ve met or specific locations the party passes through during travel. Jot down rumors or clues as the GM presents them, and then review those notes each game session. Not only will doing so stick those details in your mind, it’ll remind you to engage more fully with new details as they’re presented.
Them’s the Breaks
It’s a rite of passage for many gamers to engage in marathon ten-hour straight-through RPG sessions. Even for those of us with regularly scheduled weekly games, the urge to want to get as much done in a session as possible creates a pressure to just keep playing. But ignoring this pressure in favor of setting up regular 10-minute breaks during your games is one of the best tools for focusing everyone’s attention.
Taking a break every hour or every hour-and-a-half does a number of positive things for your game. It allows people to get up and walk around for a bit, avoiding the sedentary mind slump that can accompany sitting for too long. It reminds people to hydrate, or gives the opportunity to unhydrate without having to step away from the game. And it also hard-wires into your gaming schedule the opportunity to engage in some of the attention-sapping activities talked about above without compromising the game.
During a break, you can check out that video that’s been calling to you, or you can look up esoteric rules that aren’t directly germane to the game session, or you can check the scores and highlights of your sports event of choice. A lot of the time, our attention as players can be hamstrung by a legit sense of needing to do something and feeling the pressure to do it right now even while the game is in progress. Knowing that we’ll have the opportunity to do the thing at the next break in the game can be a most effective relief for that pressure.