Some unsorted questions

[Delicious Taffy]

As stated before, I'm completely burnt out on being a DM for a while, and I'm going to be focusing on being a player. So, I have a few questions, and I'll try to keep it reasonably organised.

• The players in my group have what I'm assuming is an unusually-high energy level. They're impatient, loud, and tend to steamroll through everything as quickly as they can. What are some ways for me to avoid doing this, without seeming standoffish or dragging down the pace of the game?
  
• How much difficulty did you have, the first time you transitioned between player and DM roles? I'm sort of worried I'll have trouble switching out of DM Mode, since that's the only role I've really been able to play for the last few years.
  
• Should I hold off on taking the lead in my first real party? Since I'm the one in the group with the most system knowledge, I have some concern that the others may defer to me by simple virtue of seniority. Thing is, I'm not a particularly good decision maker when I'm sat in the hot seat, and just having more system knowledge doesn't necessarily translate to better judgement.
  
• What's the best way for a party to go through character creation? When I was DMing, most of my players basically made their characters in a vacuum, without consulting each other. With some of them, that worked out fine, and they wound up having a decent dynamic. Most of the time, though, the party was sort of just a group of people with no interest in each other, with a wide variety of incompatible (or even nonexistent) motivations.

This isn't so much a request for objective data, as it is a request for your personal perspective.

[Ninja_Prawn]

1) First, is this really a bad thing? To reduce the steamrolling issue make challenges harder, introduce waves, add puzzles that force them to stop and think. Loud and impatient, eh... maybe a little discussion with them before hand if either (both) are out of hand.
2) Me? None. And this day and age with encounter calculators it is even easier then ever before. The real difference is, you got to do some homework before hand when making the adventure/world.
3) Nah, don't be afraid to get your feet wet. Sooner or later you will anyway and who knows, you may discover you actually like DMing more than playing.
4) My group is usually making their toons in a vacuum. I will try to set perimeters like 'make sure your back story ends you in such and such city', or explain that the game has a specific orientation or leaning so players can have some kind of unity (or at least they don't make something that is really unfitting, (like playing a flyer in a game set in the underdark- they still can, but they will know up front that they may not get the use their flight as often as they might want if they go that route).

Have fun!

...the OP is transitioning from being a DM to being a player.

1. You probably don't need to think too hard about this. If you just be your normal self, while the others continue being energetic, the game won't get dragged down much.

2. It's not too hard, really. I do both sides, and at the end of the day you're still playing the same game. The main difficulty is actually...

3. ...this one. It can definitely be hard to restrain yourself from doing team leader/party face roles, because in many situations you'll see exactly what the DM is going for and know exactly what questions they want your characters to ask etc. My solution has generally been to make characters for whom that kind of behaviour isn't out of character. Sorawyl, a wizard I've been playing since last January, was intended to be a one-woman steamroller to get the party back on the rails (I joined the game late, as a replacement). She's bossy, assertive and decisive, which allows me to play as a sort of 'mini-DM' by motivating the party and self-generating plot hooks. In another game, we are playing as a special forces unit and I volunteered to be the most senior officer, since my character is very simple mechanically and the leadership role makes him more interesting.

4. Depends on the game, probably. I prefer character creation to be as vacuum-y as possible in D&D, but sometimes it might be more appropriate to work together on a shared backstory. The DM should decide how characters are generated though, so that's not your problem anymore.

[Erys]

...the OP is transitioning from being a DM to being a player.

/sigh...

I really can read. Just not right when I wake up, lol.

Ninja_Prawn covered it well. Nothing more I can really add.

[Remmirath]

I'm afraid that, at least in my experience, number one is actually fairly typical. Assuming that it bothers you, I would recommend calmly going a bit more slowly than they are, by taking more time to interact with various scenarios. Most of the loud and impatient groups I've seen tend to be that way because not very much roleplaying is being done, and they tend to slow down and quiet down somewhat when somebody in the group is giving them the cue to interact in character more frequently.

I've been switching between playing and DMing for basically as long as I've been playing D&D, so I don't have much advice on this one. My normal group switches DMs in the same setting with a primary DM for each system, so what I'm most used to is playing in two campaigns and then DMing one.

I don't see a problem with advising people on the system if they would like advice, but that's out of character stuff. I'd say make whatever character you're most interesting in making, and if they naturally gravitate towards a leadership role within the party, I don't see a problem with that -- unless you actively want to get away from such a role, in which case the best thing to do may be to make a character who would definitely not work out as a leader.

As far as party creation goes, I tend to think it's best to talk it over in a group at least a little bit. That makes it easier to get a reasonable variety of characters together, and it also helps with figuring why exactly these people are travelling together in the first place (assuming they start out that way, of course). Since you're not DMing, the DM will probably have already made that decision, so you'll just be going along with it. You shouldn't have to worry about this one much as a player.

[Darth Ultron]

1.Well, if your players style is ''loud and fast'', then that is what they like...in general trying to change that is a bad idea. The real question is: can you game with it? They might not be the group for you.

2.Depends on the person...not everyone can make the change. You can't change who you are. There are sheep, wolves and dogs....and you only get to be one of them.

3.Maybe. But if others ''think'' you know more, you might get ''pushed'' into the lead. Again, this is basic human nature: there are leaders and followers. And it can be hard to shake it off. There is noting wrong with being leader if you want to be, but you can also be the ''trusted second'' too.

4.No ''best way''. I think the random group works just fine. It's up to the players to play together. You could take eight hours and write up complicated, interconnected backstories for each character and build characters. But if a player is just going to ''act however they want too'', then 10,000 pages of story won't change that. And the ''crunchy rules'' balanced party is a bit of a myth, a group of anything can still play the game and have fun.