How to handle a player who asks me never ending questions about roleplay things

Question

Recently I started up a new game. I recruited players, got them to make characters, and was ready to have some fun with them.

One of the players keeps asking questions. They ask about every detail of their character, they ask about other roleplay systems, they ask about other characters they're generating, they ask about games and movies they're playing, they ask questions about the rules. It's a long, never ending barrage.

I regret inviting them into the game now, because it's such a drain being asked endless questions. I've told them to ask questions in the public discord or online, they agree, but they immediately go back to asking me more questions, in private messages on discord when they get some new idea. There's a certain amount of, politeness in helping them with their character and understanding the world, but their sheer volume of questions is getting tiring.

It's made worse by the fact that English isn't their first language, and often their questions are vague and confusing and not easy to answer.

We're involved in another game, and I need to remain reasonably polite, so saying "Go away and shut up." isn't a good option. What's a reasonably polite way to stem the tide of questions?

The game we are playing is Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition, so there are many knobs to tweak and play with on characters.

Answer 1

Text chat for question answering is a great opportunity for 'later'. You don't HAVE to respond immediately, but sending answers at a later designated time for yourself is a great way to both reduce the amount of time you spend, and have time to think about the questions.

If the player has a hard time with that (presses for an answer RIGHT NOW), it's perfectly fair to reply with, "This is not a good time, I can address your questions later X as right now I'm focusing on what's going on now." And by that I mean, say those words out loud (if playing in live voice games) or in public channels even though there's no questions there.

This has worked for me in a few other games, as well as in my day to day work.

The most important thing is to actually address them. Doing it all in one go will save you time, and probably reduce the amount of 'pressing' questions they have. It also helps them understand when the right time to ask the questions are.

If they keep pressing, ignore them for the extraneous questions. I know this isn't the nicest feeling, but you have X other players to interact with, which is presumably greater than 1. If this frustrates them, cheers, not your problem anymore, you have given your answer. Probably only do the ignoring for that sessions, and in later sessions use the same 'I'm busy' line, if they don't catch on after 3 or so, eventually nix the line and go strait to ignore until 'later'.

If they respond poorly to this, it's probably going to be a public display and other folks will have noticed so you can probably expect some support.