Re: Frustration with inaction
I have personal experience of your impatience, engine, but rest assured it hasn’t placed you on my blacklist. As Steelsmiter says, we could do with more active and straightforward players. :)
The situation you describe is the bane of my gaming life - trying to get players to suggest activities or make a decision. Once one or two have made suggestions (such as a boat trip or a roof scramble), it becomes possible to push a choice, but if there are no clear suggestions at all, which is all too often the case, it’s near impossible to move the game forward, short of railroading the players into what becomes almost a GM narrative.
Unfortunately, I think flutsman has summed it up pretty well: “Get used to this happening all the time.” It’s human nature. I suppose that’s another way of saying ‘chill out’. The biggest job I have as a GM is kicking peoples’ backsides to post, particularly regarding options and decisions, but if you let it get under your skin, as you say, it ruins the game - for you if not for everyone.
There are three difficulties with the shot-caller or group leader: firstly, players will often see this as ‘unfair’. They’ll see it as favouritism on the part of the GM, and will see the frustrated player as ‘pushing themselves forward’ rather than seeing him/her as moving into a vacuum created by their own indolence. Consequently, either the game will degenerate into an OOC argument, or, rather than stepping up and offering IC challenges or alternatives, the other players will often sit back and let ‘Mr Mouth’ do what he likes, resulting in a game with one GM, one player, and a bunch of NPC-equivalents.
Secondly, if the GM makes the impatient player the party leader, but they are too impatient and leave the game, the GM then has to deal with not just an absent player, but an absent group leader, frequently leaving the game dead in the water.
Thirdly, as Kessa suggested, once a player with an impatient personality is given a degree of free rein, they can often take the bit between their teeth and start dictating the course of the game in the GM’s stead, which never ends well...
It has just occurred to me that perhaps we could take a lead from Ian Livingstone’s book(s). The GM could offer a set of options which the players vote on. That way, all you’re waiting for is a vote, rather than a suggestion. ‘Other, please specify’ could remain an option, to make the choice more open, but specifying an alternative idea is an essential part of that option. If nobody votes by Tuesday, the GM rolls 1D(number of options offered).
I suspect, though, the GM might end up rolling a lot of options dice, and we're back to the GM narrative or solo game...
Unfortunately, engine, there is little or nothing you can do about this phenomenon as a player (and not a lot as a GM). Try to lead by example, by all means, but “Get used to this happening all the time.” You can’t control other people’s actions, but you can control your reactions to their actions.