Airtime over Balance

Game designers talk about balancing powers far more than airtime. In fact, I've not heard anything about balancing airtime in some years.

Balancing power restricts stories. We'd have to class Buffy the Vampire Slayer as 'unbalanced', even if all characters receive equal airtime in an episode, with equal decision-making abilities.

Balancing power demands we cross-compare making a source of light to inflicting a wound on someone. It's a fool's errand!

What people actually want, is airtime with good prompts, because RPGs are conversations.

Characters gaining extra attacks often become a source of problems, as people take too long with this, that, or the other. But the worst of the lot has to be the Celerity Discipline from Vampire: The Masquerade. Each level of the Discipline adds one action, so someone with 'Celerity 3' can add 3 more actions in their round, for a total of 4 actions. The designers either failed to imagine four people rolling the dice to resolve actions, then the Storyteller, then stopping while one person work out and resolve three additional actions; they failed to see that obvious result or they wanted it. This whole, awful, process might sound like a 'balance' problem, but the only thing off-balance is airtime.

The second-greatest use of airtime at the table is the rules. Every time someone asks 'how do I do this?', and 'where are the prices?', 'how far can we move in a day?', the question and result all mean more airtime for the rules. Despite having a blog where I mostly talk about RPG rules, I empathise deeply with everyone who hates RPG rules. They can really suck the air out of the room.

The rest of the airtime goes to players, and the more the better.