Active Listening Rant

As a GM, I’ve run into my fair share of players who “tune out” of a game, or otherwise pull their attention otherwise when the spotlight shifts to someone else and their character isn’t there.  While I understand that there isn’t an immediacy involved as compared to when they’re the ones involved, there’s still something to be said for paying attention even when it’s  someone else’s turn.

Whenever I play, I try to make it a point to focus my entire attention on what’s going on even if it’s not my turn.  The obvious benefit to this is you get to enjoy (or agonize) over what’s happening, even if you’re not able to act upon it.  I might be considered a masochist for this, but I do end up enjoying the moments when I pick up on a vital clue that another player hasn’t… even if I’m not allowed to act on it due to it being OOC knowledge.  Another reason is to enjoy the narrative as a whole.  GMs put a heck of a lot of work into a campaign, and tuning out of a game makes you miss out on the nuance and parts of a greater story.

In effect, it’s like watching a movie where you only get to see clips where a certain character is involved.  Imagine trying to watch Lord of the Rings and only seeing the parts where Gimli was in the scene.  I imagine it would have made a lot less sense.

Most GMs accept it as a normal occurrence, but what really gets GMs annoyed is having to re-describe a scene or an NPC all over again because the player could not be bothered to pay attention to any of the GM descriptions before.  I’ve had moments when a player would give me a blank stare after I mention a fact, or request for me to give an in-game recap of events that had happened right just five minutes ago while they were looking at a TV or a Laptop.

Active Listening isn’t difficult, and maybe it’s my Asian mindset kicking in, but in listening to the GM, one pays respect to the GM’s time and effort put into the game.  It’s a nonverbal sign that “Hey, I have fun in your game, and I want to be a part of it, even if my character isn’t.”  Tuning out on the other hand, sends the absolute opposite message, “If it’s not my turn, then I can’t really be bothered to care about your game.”

But why is this the case for some players?  Is it really that hard to care about a game when you’re not the active character in the scene?  Or is this an issue of being able to divorce IC knowledge from OOC knowledge?