Deadhouse Gates

As a P&P RPG enthusiast I’ve met a fair share of other players who actually don’t bother to listen in to the whole game. They’re there during exposition, they’re there during their combat turns, but the moment the focus leaves the group as a whole and their character, they zone out.

These are the guys who drift out of the scene, crack open a book, start chatting up a fellow player outside of the scene, or even starts to fiddle with their mobile phone. I know I can’t blame these people since they’re really free to do what they want. However, they’re often missing out on the important narrative.

Sure what happens to the other characters technically falls into the “things my character shouldn’t know” category, but anyone with even a little sense of OOC and IC knowledge should be able to listen in and see their fellow player’s character’s trials and tribulations with the eye and attitude of an audience.

Just what is it that makes me say this? Well, as a player, I don’t have the privy to the whole picture like a GM has most of the time, so when I actually play, I can’t help but feel that I’m missing out on something very important if I don’t listen in to everyone. It’s like being given a book with selected chapters ripped out. Sure your favorite character’s storyline is whole, but the narative is incomplete, and diminished because of it.

Listening to the game as it is being run, even when it is not my turn, is FUN!

I’ll be honest, listening is sort of a masochistic thrill. Sometimes you get something, understand a clue, pick up on what’s going on and you’re helpless, unable to say anything, do anything since you’re technically not there. And I love that. It’s part of what makes it fun for me. Realizing that there is a plot twist that’s headed my way and I can’t do a thing because my character is unaware of it.

Most rpg books open with a short paragraph or two about how rpgs are part of a storytelling oral tradition. I’ve never quite forgotten that claim and I’d like to add that in order to tell a story, you need an audience. So whoever my GM is, as long as I get a chance, I will listen, because I want to be a witness to the entire thing, not just my slice of the pie.