When your group is large, and when encounters are complicated, it's easy for groups to get distracted. Constantly repeating what's going on, calling people back into the room... and asking some players to stop hitting one another can slow down the best of campaigns. Then, it's time to learn from your third grade teachers.

Threat Detected's campaign includes ten players (more in future episodes) and suffered from these problems (except the hitting). We put new table rules in play to maximize the storytelling and keep the fun and socialization.

Go to Threat Detected Podcast for Game Master Teacher Ed 101 at threat-detected.com

Garrett

I have discovered that a cattle prod works nicely.

Can you do something about that whistle? I had to stop listening because it was painful. and louder than the talking.

I was thinking perhaps your theme song could be a bit longer.

My friends, have you not yet discovered the magic of beer? Sure, it doesn't actually prevent tangents, but it provides a mechanism to feel okay with that.

We get our GM drunk, and she gives out gobs of money for quest rewards. All the alcohol means a five to six hour gaming session covers two encounters, tho.

You win some; you lose some.

The whistle is an unfortunate effect of the classroom lighting we had to game-record in. It is noisevremoved enough to not distort the voices. I agree with beer, but the campus rules frowned on that in the classroom.

garrett

i wonder of you could record the whistle invert of and use it to subtract out the whistle. like noise cancellation.

I tried that. The frequency range covers a lot of the range in most vocals and kills understandability by making everyone sound like a cyborg. Trouble was ee eere many sessions in when we noticed this and forced everyone closer to the mic to overpower the whistle

garrett

The solution is probably balanced inputs on your mic.. They should not behave like an antenna ant not pick up the whistle. If you would like I can ask someone I know who is an audio guy.

I recorded digitally, so there should not have been balance issues, right. Ask sound dudes. Any tricks to salvage quality from the recordings much appreciated

Balanced cables make it so that your microphone cables do not behave like antennas and do things like pick up the fluorescent lights ballasts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_audio