Some days are harder than others. Some days leave us more tired. Some days we just want to laugh and joke and to hell with whatever the normal plan is. Some days it is really hard to keep your focus on the game table.
My question to you today is this: How do you keep your focus when everyone - even yourself - is just so damn willing and ready to be distracted by every little thing that goes on? What helps you keep centered and on point? Or do you just give in to the madness, whim, and whimsy of the moment?
This actually happened in yesterday's session. I noticed that no one was really focused, including me (I had a very busy day and I was actually still finishing something, dualtasking while playing online). So... I threw a monkey wrench in the session. Idid something no one expected, and even better, because I was really struggling for focus myself, I gave one of my players the control over the NPC who was going to help the party.
ReplyDeleteAt the start of the session I realized we were in the area where one of the former PC's of the group came from, so I threw my prepared-NPC out of the window and asked her if she would be willing to try and play 2 PC's at the same time. This is something I've done before but she hadn't, so she preferred to shift focus from one PC to the other instead, but she really liked the idea. :)
The funny part was, this player disconnects so often no one really noticed she was in the chatchannel twice, and I think it would be difficult to pull this off when sitting around a table, but she was suddenly talking with 2 voices and the confusion of the moment really pulled everyone into the game again, while I had a short moment to fix that other thing I was dealing with.
So the morale of my story is... do something unexpected! Maybe even something you yourself wouldn't epect, like giving a player a part of your DM-power and see what happens.