The joys of Skype gaming
Tonight while running Dark Heresy I managed to really press one of my players buttons without realizing, and that player eventually dropped out of the game for the evening. This was really discouraging and saddening for me - one of the main reasons that I run Dark Heresy is because it affords me an opportunity to game with this particular player (not that I don't love my other players too).
Without going into a lot of detail on the whole incident, this points up another problem with Skype gaming - you cannot read the body language of the players to see if they are having fun, looking bored, smiling, frowning, etc. This makes it a lot easier for misunderstandings like this to happen.
Nevertheless, it appears that if I am going to be gaming at all these days I am going to be gaming via Skype, so it behooves me to take note of this difference and plan on how to avoid it in the future.
It seems that the most obvious way to handle this problem is to make awareness of it more overt. SInce I cannot see my players, I am very limited in how I can read them, and I need them to be more vocal about what they do and do not like. If I know what presses their buttons, I can try to avoid doing those things. By the same token, I need them to be able to tell me "hey, I'm not having fun here, stop!" in time to diffuse situations before they become game killers. Because we have fewer methods of communication open to us than typical face to face gaming groups, we need to make maximum use of the methods that are open.
A list of hot button items might also be useful under certain circumstances, though of course this doesn't preclude problems arising from a player being tired or cranky that night. It does, however, help to know that a particular player isn't wild about certain types of scene.
Anyone have any other suggestions about how to improve communication and reduce the chances of this sort of occurrence in the future?
Without going into a lot of detail on the whole incident, this points up another problem with Skype gaming - you cannot read the body language of the players to see if they are having fun, looking bored, smiling, frowning, etc. This makes it a lot easier for misunderstandings like this to happen.
Nevertheless, it appears that if I am going to be gaming at all these days I am going to be gaming via Skype, so it behooves me to take note of this difference and plan on how to avoid it in the future.
It seems that the most obvious way to handle this problem is to make awareness of it more overt. SInce I cannot see my players, I am very limited in how I can read them, and I need them to be more vocal about what they do and do not like. If I know what presses their buttons, I can try to avoid doing those things. By the same token, I need them to be able to tell me "hey, I'm not having fun here, stop!" in time to diffuse situations before they become game killers. Because we have fewer methods of communication open to us than typical face to face gaming groups, we need to make maximum use of the methods that are open.
A list of hot button items might also be useful under certain circumstances, though of course this doesn't preclude problems arising from a player being tired or cranky that night. It does, however, help to know that a particular player isn't wild about certain types of scene.
Anyone have any other suggestions about how to improve communication and reduce the chances of this sort of occurrence in the future?