Dungeons And Drag-Ons

(A few online friends and I get together once a week over Skype to play Dungeons and Dragons. For the most part it goes smoothly, but there’s been a little bit of irritation building up behind the scenes, and since I’m the Dungeon Master of the group, I ask about it.)

Me: “Hey, guys, I noticed when I give out the rewards every week everyone seems kind of upset. What’s going on?”

Friend #1: “Well, it’s just — it takes us, like, a month and a half to level up, or to get anything worthwhile.”

Friend #2: “Yeah, I don’t get why you’re so stingy with everything! This module said we should get through it in, like, just a few sessions!”

Me: “Well, remember when we started, and our sessions were about five to six hours long, and everyone was really focused, and we rampaged through content?”

Friend #1: “Yeah, that was great!”

Me: “And you know how, over time, we now have between two and three hours per session, with maybe half of it cut away because you guys constantly stop to chat about OOC stuff and then get mad at me when I try to bring the focus back to the game?”

Friend #2: “Um…”

Me: “And how I asked you guys to pay a little more attention, because one fight, that should have been over in a round and taken ten minutes, ended up taking over an hour because everyone spent ten or more minutes on their turn umming and uhhing because they didn’t listen to what other people were doing and weren’t watching the [virtual tabletop] to see what moved where?”

Friend #3: “So can’t you, like… adjust the XP we get per fight?”

Me: *getting an outright slasher smile* “SURE! You guys ready to fight four encounters at once!?”

(They started to focus a bit better after that, and stopped coming late and leaving early and then complaining about how little we did.)