Hi All,
I’m new to the game and been going over the rules. There is one thing I’m not sure how to deal with. When everyone talks at the same time. Very in often in combat I find all my players talk at once. Typically then I’d call for initiative. Anyone have advice for hire to mitigate that in DW? Thank you for your time.
You can still have your players take turns talking. When it gets out of hand I just say something like “okay let’s go around the table, say what you’re going to do but don’t roll dice yet. After everybody knows what everybody’s going to do, THEN we’ll figure out what order to roll the dice in and so on.”
Vincent Baker ya know that straight up never occurred to me.
I know, right? It’s kind of strange.
I tend to pick someone who is under threat or scrutiny right this exact second and say “okay, everyone shut up a second, we’ll get to you. Avon, what are YOU doing?” and then resolve that. Based on that, it’ll usually lead me to someone else, then to the next person and so on. If not, I can always say “okay Avon, who’s next?
I found I just focus my attention on one person at a time and sort of hand-wave the rest. I might do some sort of quick initiative sort of thing: “Joe, then Mike, then Steve” and then run it that way for a bit. It seemed to work ok the couple of times I did it.
Pick a player and ask that person, “who’s in the greatest danger?” or “who’s the first to react?” or “who does everyone look to in this situation?” Make that player say who gets to act first.
“Whose fault is this mess, anyway?”
I find this happens a lot in DW – it does take patience as both a gm and a player- as a player you have to let the gm decide the order part of their job- as a player I know that I am always wanting to do something and pushing for action for my dude. Others are more passive at times. If the gm didn’t say once in a while ok hold for a minute we will get back to you, then I would end dominating every scene. I like Vincent ‘s idea as well, but the lack of initiative in general is one of the items that takes the most getting used to if you come from other gaming backgrounds.
Hi All,
Thank you for the feedback and ideas. It looks like the solutions is the DM mediates and tries to make sure everyone gets a chance to react.
Not everyone needs react to each thing the GM says. Many times the first person reacts and that changes the situation and then another player reacts to the new situation.