The Birth of a World - part 4
Now how do you all go about speeding up your games?
Seriously, I’d like to hear what you have done to increase your game’s speed.
For us, we’ve tried a few things here and there, some worked well, some failed, and some changed nothing.
It’s all a matter of trial and error. Oddly enough, the simple things worked the best.
Here’s a short list with long explanations:
First – When in combat, have your action planned before the initiative comes back to you. You’d be amazed how much a high level fighter can slow your game down. Thanks to buff spells being added and wearing off, a person playing a melee-freak may have to do more math than the guy playing the wizard. Our solution was to get the people playing the fighters into being ready before the action gets back to them. Also, I created a chart with MS Excel that does the math for you.
(I’m really quite proud of that chart. It’s unwieldy, but it gets the job done quicker than using your fingers.)
Second – Know your spells. For a DM, this part isn’t so easy, but a player has less of an excuse. If you have to look up a spell during your round, then you find out it doesn’t do exactly what you need it to do, so then you look up another one and you’ve spent 5 minutes of everyone’s time for 6 seconds of your PC’s life. The solution is to know before memorizing. Aaron does a lot of preparation for any spells his character has. He has several sheets, also using Excel I believe, that list all of his current and future spell choices. This can save a lot of time and works for both combat and non-combat situations.
Third – Take the average when rolling a lot of dice. This one could send some hard-core dice monkeys into shock, but at high levels when the spell slingers are whipping mass damage spells left and right, you’ll be rolling more d6’s than all of the other dice combined. So when this gets to be a bother, average damage might be a good call. Since the average roll of a d6 is 3.5, average damage for a 10d6 Fireball spell is 35. I would suggest only doing this when you have a lot of spells being used, the roller can’t add his dice very quickly, and all of this is hurting the pace of your game.
(If the player has to count the “pips” on the dice, I would strongly suggest using this.)
Here’s a cheat sheet, for those of you born in Arkansas:
d4 = 2.5
d6 = 3.5
d8 = 4.5
d10 = 5.5
d12 = 6.5
Multiply that value by the number of dice you need to you use, and round up if you need to.
Fourth – You have to know the rules. Ok, I am by no means and expert on the rules. And it chafes me when a player tries something new that is covered in the rules. The player isn’t doing anything wrong; it just shows my lack of knowledge of certain rules and brings the game to a screeching halt. And I have no one to blame but myself. Any amount of time I can save by being able to quickly add dice is lost by a single attempt to perform a bull rush.
And don’t get me started on Polymorph. I get around the whole nightmare of Polymorph by asking Aaron for his input. I’ve basically given up on even trying and gone with the simple concept of “If it feels overpowered, it probably is.”
I read somewhere that the PHB II has fixed it in some way or another. I’ll have to ask Aaron about it.
Fifth – In any campaign I’m playing, leveling does not come as a surprise to me (usually). Therefore it should not take an hour to level your PC. Choices for your PC’s feats, skills, and spells should be loosely planned out. And I mean that as a minimum. Barring changes in the way the campaign is heading, a fighter picking a feat should not be an hour long agonizing decision at the game table. Those decisions should have been made already. All you should have to do is change a several numbers, officially write your new spells down, and roll a hit point die.
(Yeah, I know that’s an over-simplification, but I don’t think leveling should your PC should take more than 20 minutes for an experienced player.)
(Over-simplification is kind of a long and complicated word huh? Quite the opposite of the word’s meaning.)
Sixth – The DM has to be ready for his job. Dale has done a good job of this, in spite of his tendency to lose things. When it comes to game time he has everything he needs for the evening ready. Now he doesn’t have every iota of information at hand. That is too much to plan for given how often players never go where you thought they were going to go.
Any half- decent DM should be ready for something the players do that is unexpected. Being able to “wing it” is a valuable tool that every DM should become proficient in.
(Note to DMs: If you do a whole lot of work and the players just go crazy by not following the plot, put away all of your stuff and sit there with your arms crossed and hold your breath until they agree to follow your carefully designed plot train. They will either agree to your demands and play, or you will pass out and they will draw on your face with permanent markers, wrap you up in shrink wrap, duct tape you to a wall, and then take pictures of it. At least that’s what I see them do on the internet. Or you could just be ready for what they do. It’s your choice.)
There are probably more, but all I’m coming up with now is even more rehashed stuff you have probably read before.
What am I, as this campaign’s creator, going to do to speed up the game?
I’m doing quite a bit really.
We’ll start off with combat actions.
Think about this through your PC’s eyes. Every combat round is only 6 seconds long. And that is a period of time in which everyone and everything is doing something. The fighters and running up to the dragon trying to pierce its hide while it swipes at them and shoot flames everywhere, the cleric is running up behind those fighters ready to heal at a moment’s notice, the wizard is shooting a lightning bolt across the room, and the rogue is trying to get behind the dragon to find that ever elusive weak spot.
That sure is an awful lot of things happening in a mere 6 seconds. And even though your PCs are trained to think in the heat of battle, that doesn’t mean you should get all the time in the world to determine your PC’s action.
I’m saying that the players should have a little bit of pressure put on them.
In other words, put a time limit on how long a player gets to decide his actions and get them done.
For low levels, I would say 30 seconds is plenty of time to decide what to do. And 1 minute is plenty to resolve those actions.
And if someone wants to help that player decide what to do, it had better be stated in less than six seconds of time. This isn’t a comic book where everyone is carrying on a full 2 minute conversation in the same span of time it takes to punch someone.
The helpful comment should be something like “Bob needs some healing” or “Magic Missile that orc” and not a minute long dissertation on the proper way to attack the dragon. Something like that should be done afterwards, when the heat of battle no longer applies.
What do you do if the player takes too long?
Simple, the PC delays his action until the player is ready.
At lower levels this should not be that big of an issue, but at higher levels the time limit needs to be increased. Take it easy on some players, especially the new players.
And for crying out loud, don’t hammer it down the players’ throats. They’re at the game to have fun, not be lectured.
What about the DM, shouldn’t he be under the same restrictions?
Well yes and no. DMs have a lot or work to do and they should feel the pressure too. But players have the benefit of knowing their PCs quite well.
So a DM needs to keep the same pace he is pushing onto the game, but not at the cost of something important.
And no, I’m not saying that you need to have a stopwatch ready for everyone. Just keep the game flowing and moving at a good pace.
This is D&D, not chess. Magic: the Gathering turned into chess, that’s why I stopped playing it.
Well that and the money thing.
And finally this is possibly the biggest and most interesting change I’ll be making to the game; spell casting is going to be drastically changed.
This is still in the “alpha-stage” of development. So I’m interested in opinions for possible tweaks, loopholes, and so on.
Every single spell caster is going to be a hybrid caster. They will have the spell versatility of a wizard while getting a potential large number of spells per day. But they are also limited in the number of spells they know.
That sounds a little screwy doesn’t it? Well just sit back and read.
At lower levels, choosing spells is a simple affair of picking less than a dozen spells to memorize. But at the teen levels it becomes a tedious affair of looking for just the right combination of spells to memorize for what the party expects to face that day.
As I’ve said before, this can sometimes take an hour of game time for some of your more research-happy players (ahem Aaron).
But if they have a limited number of spells to choose from, and they can cast them spontaneously, this cuts out the memorization time and puts it onto the player during the time when they are leveling their PC.
Now you’re probably thinking, “Limiting the number of spells a PC knows makes that class less valuable.”
Oh contraire, I’m not limiting them to that small list of spells a sorcerer gets to choose from.
They list of spells they get to choose from is going to be 3 times the number of spells they can cast per level per day, base stat modifier included.
So now a first level wizard gets a base of 2 first level spells (1 plus 1 more for a high intelligence). This means his list of spell choices for first level is 6 spells. When he reaches level 2, he gets another spell per day to cast, and thus 3 more spells are learned. When he reaches level 3, he gets no new level 1 spell choices because he doesn’t get any new spells per day for level 1 spells, but he does get a new level 2 spell per day to cast, so that means he gets 3 level 2 spells in his spell list.
This works the same way for paladins, rangers, and so on.
For clerics it works a slight bit differently because they receive one more spell per day that would normally have to be a domain spell. Well they still get that one spell added to their daily spells, but they don’t get to choose 3 spells of that level to add to their list, they instead add their domain spells to their list and their cure or inflict spell. So at level 1 they receive 2 spells per day, and a list of 6 spells to choose from, 3 of their own choosing, 2 from their two domains, and either Cure Light Wounds or Inflict Light Wounds.
If I can think of too many problems with this, then it’s out the window. But there’s another problem if I do that; there will be no wands or scrolls on the magic item list (potions will fill the gap and not be limited to level 3 spells). This makes it very hard for a wizard to learn new spells. But I suppose I could think of a way around that (like more spells per level).
I have plenty of time to think and rethink all of this through. And I’m interested in hearing the opinions of others.
Seriously, I’d like to hear what you have done to increase your game’s speed.
For us, we’ve tried a few things here and there, some worked well, some failed, and some changed nothing.
It’s all a matter of trial and error. Oddly enough, the simple things worked the best.
Here’s a short list with long explanations:
First – When in combat, have your action planned before the initiative comes back to you. You’d be amazed how much a high level fighter can slow your game down. Thanks to buff spells being added and wearing off, a person playing a melee-freak may have to do more math than the guy playing the wizard. Our solution was to get the people playing the fighters into being ready before the action gets back to them. Also, I created a chart with MS Excel that does the math for you.
(I’m really quite proud of that chart. It’s unwieldy, but it gets the job done quicker than using your fingers.)
Second – Know your spells. For a DM, this part isn’t so easy, but a player has less of an excuse. If you have to look up a spell during your round, then you find out it doesn’t do exactly what you need it to do, so then you look up another one and you’ve spent 5 minutes of everyone’s time for 6 seconds of your PC’s life. The solution is to know before memorizing. Aaron does a lot of preparation for any spells his character has. He has several sheets, also using Excel I believe, that list all of his current and future spell choices. This can save a lot of time and works for both combat and non-combat situations.
Third – Take the average when rolling a lot of dice. This one could send some hard-core dice monkeys into shock, but at high levels when the spell slingers are whipping mass damage spells left and right, you’ll be rolling more d6’s than all of the other dice combined. So when this gets to be a bother, average damage might be a good call. Since the average roll of a d6 is 3.5, average damage for a 10d6 Fireball spell is 35. I would suggest only doing this when you have a lot of spells being used, the roller can’t add his dice very quickly, and all of this is hurting the pace of your game.
(If the player has to count the “pips” on the dice, I would strongly suggest using this.)
Here’s a cheat sheet, for those of you born in Arkansas:
d4 = 2.5
d6 = 3.5
d8 = 4.5
d10 = 5.5
d12 = 6.5
Multiply that value by the number of dice you need to you use, and round up if you need to.
Fourth – You have to know the rules. Ok, I am by no means and expert on the rules. And it chafes me when a player tries something new that is covered in the rules. The player isn’t doing anything wrong; it just shows my lack of knowledge of certain rules and brings the game to a screeching halt. And I have no one to blame but myself. Any amount of time I can save by being able to quickly add dice is lost by a single attempt to perform a bull rush.
And don’t get me started on Polymorph. I get around the whole nightmare of Polymorph by asking Aaron for his input. I’ve basically given up on even trying and gone with the simple concept of “If it feels overpowered, it probably is.”
I read somewhere that the PHB II has fixed it in some way or another. I’ll have to ask Aaron about it.
Fifth – In any campaign I’m playing, leveling does not come as a surprise to me (usually). Therefore it should not take an hour to level your PC. Choices for your PC’s feats, skills, and spells should be loosely planned out. And I mean that as a minimum. Barring changes in the way the campaign is heading, a fighter picking a feat should not be an hour long agonizing decision at the game table. Those decisions should have been made already. All you should have to do is change a several numbers, officially write your new spells down, and roll a hit point die.
(Yeah, I know that’s an over-simplification, but I don’t think leveling should your PC should take more than 20 minutes for an experienced player.)
(Over-simplification is kind of a long and complicated word huh? Quite the opposite of the word’s meaning.)
Sixth – The DM has to be ready for his job. Dale has done a good job of this, in spite of his tendency to lose things. When it comes to game time he has everything he needs for the evening ready. Now he doesn’t have every iota of information at hand. That is too much to plan for given how often players never go where you thought they were going to go.
Any half- decent DM should be ready for something the players do that is unexpected. Being able to “wing it” is a valuable tool that every DM should become proficient in.
(Note to DMs: If you do a whole lot of work and the players just go crazy by not following the plot, put away all of your stuff and sit there with your arms crossed and hold your breath until they agree to follow your carefully designed plot train. They will either agree to your demands and play, or you will pass out and they will draw on your face with permanent markers, wrap you up in shrink wrap, duct tape you to a wall, and then take pictures of it. At least that’s what I see them do on the internet. Or you could just be ready for what they do. It’s your choice.)
There are probably more, but all I’m coming up with now is even more rehashed stuff you have probably read before.
What am I, as this campaign’s creator, going to do to speed up the game?
I’m doing quite a bit really.
We’ll start off with combat actions.
Think about this through your PC’s eyes. Every combat round is only 6 seconds long. And that is a period of time in which everyone and everything is doing something. The fighters and running up to the dragon trying to pierce its hide while it swipes at them and shoot flames everywhere, the cleric is running up behind those fighters ready to heal at a moment’s notice, the wizard is shooting a lightning bolt across the room, and the rogue is trying to get behind the dragon to find that ever elusive weak spot.
That sure is an awful lot of things happening in a mere 6 seconds. And even though your PCs are trained to think in the heat of battle, that doesn’t mean you should get all the time in the world to determine your PC’s action.
I’m saying that the players should have a little bit of pressure put on them.
In other words, put a time limit on how long a player gets to decide his actions and get them done.
For low levels, I would say 30 seconds is plenty of time to decide what to do. And 1 minute is plenty to resolve those actions.
And if someone wants to help that player decide what to do, it had better be stated in less than six seconds of time. This isn’t a comic book where everyone is carrying on a full 2 minute conversation in the same span of time it takes to punch someone.
The helpful comment should be something like “Bob needs some healing” or “Magic Missile that orc” and not a minute long dissertation on the proper way to attack the dragon. Something like that should be done afterwards, when the heat of battle no longer applies.
What do you do if the player takes too long?
Simple, the PC delays his action until the player is ready.
At lower levels this should not be that big of an issue, but at higher levels the time limit needs to be increased. Take it easy on some players, especially the new players.
And for crying out loud, don’t hammer it down the players’ throats. They’re at the game to have fun, not be lectured.
What about the DM, shouldn’t he be under the same restrictions?
Well yes and no. DMs have a lot or work to do and they should feel the pressure too. But players have the benefit of knowing their PCs quite well.
So a DM needs to keep the same pace he is pushing onto the game, but not at the cost of something important.
And no, I’m not saying that you need to have a stopwatch ready for everyone. Just keep the game flowing and moving at a good pace.
This is D&D, not chess. Magic: the Gathering turned into chess, that’s why I stopped playing it.
Well that and the money thing.
And finally this is possibly the biggest and most interesting change I’ll be making to the game; spell casting is going to be drastically changed.
This is still in the “alpha-stage” of development. So I’m interested in opinions for possible tweaks, loopholes, and so on.
Every single spell caster is going to be a hybrid caster. They will have the spell versatility of a wizard while getting a potential large number of spells per day. But they are also limited in the number of spells they know.
That sounds a little screwy doesn’t it? Well just sit back and read.
At lower levels, choosing spells is a simple affair of picking less than a dozen spells to memorize. But at the teen levels it becomes a tedious affair of looking for just the right combination of spells to memorize for what the party expects to face that day.
As I’ve said before, this can sometimes take an hour of game time for some of your more research-happy players (ahem Aaron).
But if they have a limited number of spells to choose from, and they can cast them spontaneously, this cuts out the memorization time and puts it onto the player during the time when they are leveling their PC.
Now you’re probably thinking, “Limiting the number of spells a PC knows makes that class less valuable.”
Oh contraire, I’m not limiting them to that small list of spells a sorcerer gets to choose from.
They list of spells they get to choose from is going to be 3 times the number of spells they can cast per level per day, base stat modifier included.
So now a first level wizard gets a base of 2 first level spells (1 plus 1 more for a high intelligence). This means his list of spell choices for first level is 6 spells. When he reaches level 2, he gets another spell per day to cast, and thus 3 more spells are learned. When he reaches level 3, he gets no new level 1 spell choices because he doesn’t get any new spells per day for level 1 spells, but he does get a new level 2 spell per day to cast, so that means he gets 3 level 2 spells in his spell list.
This works the same way for paladins, rangers, and so on.
For clerics it works a slight bit differently because they receive one more spell per day that would normally have to be a domain spell. Well they still get that one spell added to their daily spells, but they don’t get to choose 3 spells of that level to add to their list, they instead add their domain spells to their list and their cure or inflict spell. So at level 1 they receive 2 spells per day, and a list of 6 spells to choose from, 3 of their own choosing, 2 from their two domains, and either Cure Light Wounds or Inflict Light Wounds.
If I can think of too many problems with this, then it’s out the window. But there’s another problem if I do that; there will be no wands or scrolls on the magic item list (potions will fill the gap and not be limited to level 3 spells). This makes it very hard for a wizard to learn new spells. But I suppose I could think of a way around that (like more spells per level).
I have plenty of time to think and rethink all of this through. And I’m interested in hearing the opinions of others.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 8:16 PM
6 Comments:
tip on counting up multiple dice when you don't want to use the average - group them in to 10s. You can even have 2 or 3 people involved in counting if there are that many dice to count. So the 10d6 fireball results in 6,6,5,5,5,4,3,2,2,1. Group the dice 6+4, 6+3+1, 5+5, 5+2+2 gives 39.
another speed tip that may be beyond some environments. Mapping can soak up a lot of time so I have scanned maps on my laptop, connected to a projector, and I use RolePlayingMaster to uncover portions of the map as the party progresses, displaying it on a projected player version. It means that someone can map if they want, but the others don't get bored while the mapper interprets descriptions of corridor lengths and branches.
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erucsbo
And for my 3rd speed tip.
As DM I have a single page with all the character stats, height, weight, saving throw bonuses, BAB, AC (normal/FF/touch) and skill bonuses for search, spot, listen etc (ones that the DM should roll). I get the players to roll a number of d20s to start with and I record those. When a DM roll is required for a player action (spot/search/listen/etc) I just use the next number on their list. I can also (at a glance) know if they are going to trip traps due to height / weight (within a margin for equipment), or make a save. This means that the storytelling aspect doesn't get interrupted and it is up to the player to let me know if there are any bonuses in addition to the normal that should be applied. If they don't let me know then they don't get it - gives them an incentive for quickly remembering what extra plusses they should have.
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erucsbo
Counting dice in 10s - We do that. I forgot to mention that though.
As for the projection mapping, I want that soooo bad, but the cost is too high to use for gaming. The cheapest we've found is nearly $1000. Not a cost we can afford, even if we were to split it 5 ways.
We do use some Lexan grids that we can dry-erase write on. This allows the DM to put the map on graph paper, and the players can then draw out the map. Or the DM could just do both.
The pre-rolling dice is a good idea that I have not thought to use with players. I did think about it for the DM so no one would realize I was rolling dice. My solution, just roll lots of dice, all the time, for no good reason.
Recording PC stats and such is something I don't worry about usually. More paperwork is just something else for me to lose in the pile of papers.
I would love to use a laptop, but they are noisy (fans), expensive, and not enough of the books I use are in a text file format (like the SRD) to allow me to edit freely. And I'm not about to type in all of the information from the Monster Manual III.
;)
Thanks for the suggestions Erucsbo.
we borrow a projector from work every weekend that we game. I suppose doing that depends on the people that you game with and where you game as well. Another alternative to a projector is to use a TV or spare monitor. Using a laptop and the online hypertext SRD (d20srd.org) also speeds up searching for rules and is easy to bookmark if you expect to visit it again. We have some cards with the character names on them that we can write on with a dry erase pen for initiative (so we can easily juggle the order, incl. delayed/readied actions) and a white board with squares scribed on it for drawing maps, and placing miniatures for combat (we don't tend to use it for all mapping, only when required). Hitpoints, buff bonuses, penalties and character conditions can also be noted on the white board so that things can be seen at a glance without rifling through a stack of paper.
I'd limit how many people are allowed to have laptops at the gaming table though, especially if there is internet access, as they can be a great distraction and slow the game down. In our game only me (as DM) and one player (who has all of his character info in a spreadsheet) are allowed to use them.
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erucsbo
It sure must be nice being able to borrow a $1000 piece of equipment from work... (Yes, I'm jealous).
We've looked for possible alternatives, but found nothing we think is usable.
Several of us have copies of the SRD available, though no laptops are used due to space and noise reasons.
We use notecards or something similar for initiative counts. That was something we first tried with the WLD and worked wonderfully.
And for buffs we both write on the dry erase and have note-cards with all of the important information written down. That has also helped quite a bit.
So it sounds like we've tried just about everything we can afford to try to speed us up.
So maybe I should just not worry about it anymore ;)
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