Common Aggravating Table Behaviors

[Professor Chimp]

Guess I'll throw in my 2 cents. Some of these have been mentioned in some form already, but these really grind my gears as a DM.

• Players who don't do the effort of reading up on their class features, feats, skills and other abilities. Knowing what your character can do and how to it goes a long way to making your character more effective. I understand a tabletop rpg can be pretty overwhelming for a beginner and I'll happily coach them, but there are limits. For example, a player in the group I've DM'd for 3 years now was new to the game when we started and while he has improved a lot since then, he still needs to ask questions about some pretty basic mechanics. Questions which could've easily been avoided by a good read of the appropriate section in the PHB, something I've pointed out to him quite a few times.

• Players who arrive at the table unprepared. I'm all set up as DM, the players are all there, we get seated, ready to go, when suddenly "Wait, I still need to update my character sheet" or something or such. Everything grinds to a halt. I don't think I'm unreasonable in asking players to be ready before sitting down at the table, so they don't needlessly waste my time and that of players who did do the 15min homework.

• Players are busy on their phones when it is not their turn or are otherwise not paying attention. Common during larger, more complicated battles or longer talky bits their characters are not directly participating in (through their own choice or not). It's rude towards me who spent a fair bit of time preparing that session, rude towards other players who are paying attention and likely also a timewaster if the unattentive player needs to be brought up to speed with what's been going on.