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lytokk
2014-09-04, 06:59 AM
So in my last session I noticed that there were a lot of distractions at my table and far too much crosstalk. After the game I told my players we really needed to cut this down and limit this. 5 players plus one DMPC, a 7 round combat took about 2.5 hours. That in my mind is pretty bad. I told them that we need to stay off of our phones unless we're specifically looking something up pertaining to the game, and we need to limit crosstalk to breaks. But the thought dawned on me, what if people are distracted because I'm not engaging enough or running the table well.

First step I'm taking is getting rid of the DMPC. On the trip home I told my wife that I'm just going to kill him, which she really didn't like. I was talking more out of frustration than anything, but the conversation did give me a good idea on how to get rid of him without killing him, and keeping him around in case the party actually needed him. Basically having him stay behind, but retaining the ability to converse via sending spells.

Second step is using music in my game. I hadn't before since it was just a pain to get enoguh music for different scenes, but as everyone in the game has played more than their fair share of final fantasy games, battle music may do a great job of keeping a rhythm, as well as ambiance to keep people immersed.

Third thing I intend to do is somethign I was doing at the beginning but fell out of practice with. When initiative is coming up, announcing who's turn is up, and then who's turn is next to make sure they think about what they're going to be doing. Something like Player A is up, Player B on deck. Player B up, the Goblins are on deck.

Any other suggestions? I know I'm not the perfect DM, and I really want to keep people immersed, on track and in the game. The players have talked about what they want to play when this game is over, but at this pace, the game won't be over for a few more years, esp since we've had to cut our sessions down to once a month.

Yora
2014-09-04, 07:18 AM
People distract themselves with other things because they are bored while they have nothing to do when combat takes forever. Things get a bit more drawn out when people don't pay attention, but I think the main source is usually the combat system itself.

If you have to play a game where combat is slow and players have a huge number of options to consider, a makeshift fix that somewhat can reduce the severity of the problem is not to give every player all the time in the world to brood over the situation before announcing an action. If the player is asking questions about the situation to be clear that things are really as he thinks they are, that's alright. But once such questions have been answered, players have to declare their action for their round within 10 seconds. If they can't make a descision when asked after that, their character loses the turn. Simple as that.
That means less waiting for everyone, and also that everyone has an increased incentive to pay full attention to everyones move. Because if you don't, there will be no time to get an overview of the full situation when it's your turn.

some guy
2014-09-04, 08:24 AM
Building a phonestack helps, first one to take their phone from the stack buys snacks for the next time (exception for valid reasons).
Sitting in initiative order helps but is a bit of a hassle (but it works wonderful), our group uses initiative buttons, they work alright.
Casters need to know what spell they gonna cast and how it works.
Don't be afraid to list options to your players if they are indecisive, they probably won't have as good an overview of the situation that their characters would have.

Garimeth
2014-09-04, 08:33 AM
If the player is asking questions about the situation to be clear that things are really as he thinks they are, that's alright. But once such questions have been answered, players have to declare their action for their round within 10 seconds. If they can't make a descision when asked after that, their character loses the turn. Simple as that.

I'm a fan of this.

I also use the "who's up next" and battle music. Also, don't have combat for the sake of combat, if it doesn't add to the narrative it doesn't belong.

Lastly, maybe they are bored with the campaign? If they are already talking about what they want to run next they may just not be that interested in the current game. Maybe find out what they'd like to see more of and try and include more of it. If that IS the case don't take it personally either, I sometimes get bored of my own campaigns and the players are loving them lol.

EDIT: also...have you seen roll20? I play on Roll20 now because my group all moved to different areas, but even before that happened I would use Roll20 sometimes for the macros and initiative posting. Alot of time can be saved when people aren't adding up die rolls and stuff. Its not for everybody, and some people feel wierd about using something like that when we're all sitting at the table, but if you guys all use digital character sheets and the like anyway then its not a huge step.

lytokk
2014-09-04, 08:43 AM
Part of the problem has been my wife. She's a first time player, and playing a druid. What I've been working on is notecards for her summons and switching her to spontaneous divine casting instead. She's picking up on how attacks work, slowly, but its going.

ElenionAncalima
2014-09-04, 08:54 AM
Second step is using music in my game. I hadn't before since it was just a pain to get enoguh music for different scenes

I would recommend finding YouTube videos that run for a couple hours. There are lots of "6 hours of epic battle music" type videos out there.


Any other suggestions?

On the DM side:
-Streamline initiative. I like to keep an Excel sheet with initiative sets. Each initiative set has the enemies and ally NPC's initiative already pre-rolled and the names of the PCs with blanks next to them. That way when initiative starts all I have to do is get scores from the players, add bonuses to enemies if combat was unplanned and use excel to automatically order the set. This method may not work for you (if you don't use a computer or have Excel), however, I would figure something out to make initiative as quick as possible. If you are taking a long time to start combat, you may be losing player attention right out the gate.

-Make sure all enemy blocks are close together and easy to reference. Whether than means having stats on the same printout or having them open in adjacent tabs, make sure you can get to the numbers your need, when you need them. Even attentive players will start to zone out if you are spending a long time flipping through notes.

-Lead by example. Fast combat usually means that players are paying attention and have already decided what to do by the time their turn has come around. Make sure that you are playing this way with NPCs and enemies. If you are playing an enemy with lots of spells and abilities, make sure you know which ones you are using by the time their turn comes around. This usually requires either prepping before combat or the ability to multitask (looking over ability descriptions, while still being attentive to what players are saying and doing).

On the player's side:
-As alluded to in the point above, make it clear you expect them to be ready at the beginning of their turn. This will require them to be paying attention during other turns. Your "next on deck" plan should help with this. If you really want to buckle down on them, implement an "if you are not ready you get skipped" rule. Just make sure you are playing your NPCs at the same pace before implementing this rule.

-Have players with multiple attacks rolls all the dice at once, preferably color coding the dice. Tell them how many hit, then get the total damage from all the attacks. I have several PC with natural attacks in my game and this saves us a ton of time.

lytokk
2014-09-04, 09:33 AM
I'll have to check out some of those youtube videos. What I was going to do was try and cut some songs from final fantasy sountracks I've picked up over the years to just loop the battle music for as long as the combat takes. At work right now so I can't actually listen to any of whats on youtube, making a note to do it later.

I'm getting rid of the DMPC because it splits my focus too much, which may slow me down in combat on the enemies turn. And I want to throw some undead at the party and thats hard to do when I have a cleric DMPC.

I've been hesitant to use a laptop at the table, relying more on pads of paper to track things. Using the pads of paper I can look back at a session, and reliably figure out what was going on. Now I can type faster than I write, so maybe its time to make a switch. And I'm going to need it for music anyway.

bjoern
2014-09-04, 09:55 AM
Check with your group. Maybe they just enjoy getting together and socializing while they play. That's how our group works. We all chit chat about sports, movies, books, and also play d&d. If we were forced to eliminate social interaction, we would probably drop the group and play WoW.

Trebloc
2014-09-04, 10:39 AM
My group uses several things to help pay attention:

- Ban electronics from the table. Stops people from texting, facebooking, surfing, playing games...etc. We are fine with the occasional lookup or if there is an important call that needs to be made.

- 15 second count down for your turn. Make up your mind, or lose your turn. This encourages people to pay attention to what is happening, so they'll have things looked up on their end if needed.

- Prerolling for combat characters. We are ok, with the fighter types to preroll their attacks before their turn. It doesn't always work out, but it helps.

- Initiative board that is visible to everyone. Usually one of the players updates the board to help the DM who has other things to take care of.

- Players keep track of Monster's HP. Not always, and not in boss fights, but when you're fighting Goon #18, it's not a big deal for a player to tally up how much damage it's taken.

- We talk about it. Usually once a year we need a friendly reminder across the table to keep the out of game talk to a minimum. We're all adults, we're all busy, and we all agreed to show up Friday night to play D&D, not to BS or youtube or whatever. It's already hard enough getting 6ish adults in one place once a week without extra distractions.

- Players look up their own skills/feats/spells for common things. Instead of asking a DM what the jump check is for a 15' pit, they look it up themselves since the DM is usually busy with something else.

- Use the Internet away from the game. We hand out XP and Loot when away from the table on our forums. We ask rules questions on our forums. We get DM rulings on our forums. We do shopping (when able to) on the forums. We make plans on our forums. We level up and post up our PCs on the forums. They're free, and help alot during the week so that Fridays are game time, not PC secretary and update time.

Nagash
2014-09-04, 11:04 AM
Check with your group. Maybe they just enjoy getting together and socializing while they play. That's how our group works. We all chit chat about sports, movies, books, and also play d&d. If we were forced to eliminate social interaction, we would probably drop the group and play WoW.

This.

Your players may not want a deeply immersed serious game. They may want more of a background activity while BSing with friends. If thats the case then your never going to force them to change and will just wind up frustrating everyone if you try.

Garimeth
2014-09-04, 11:10 AM
My group uses several things to help pay attention:

- Ban electronics from the table. Stops people from texting, facebooking, surfing, playing games...etc. We are fine with the occasional lookup or if there is an important call that needs to be made.

- 15 second count down for your turn. Make up your mind, or lose your turn. This encourages people to pay attention to what is happening, so they'll have things looked up on their end if needed.

- Prerolling for combat characters. We are ok, with the fighter types to preroll their attacks before their turn. It doesn't always work out, but it helps.

- Initiative board that is visible to everyone. Usually one of the players updates the board to help the DM who has other things to take care of.

- Players keep track of Monster's HP. Not always, and not in boss fights, but when you're fighting Goon #18, it's not a big deal for a player to tally up how much damage it's taken.

- We talk about it. Usually once a year we need a friendly reminder across the table to keep the out of game talk to a minimum. We're all adults, we're all busy, and we all agreed to show up Friday night to play D&D, not to BS or youtube or whatever. It's already hard enough getting 6ish adults in one place once a week without extra distractions.

- Players look up their own skills/feats/spells for common things. Instead of asking a DM what the jump check is for a 15' pit, they look it up themselves since the DM is usually busy with something else.

- Use the Internet away from the game. We hand out XP and Loot when away from the table on our forums. We ask rules questions on our forums. We get DM rulings on our forums. We do shopping (when able to) on the forums. We make plans on our forums. We level up and post up our PCs on the forums. They're free, and help alot during the week so that Fridays are game time, not PC secretary and update time.

One thing I like is that Roll20 helps with the admin kind of stuff automatically. Initiative gets automatically tracked to a chart. Math for die rolls are automatic, and the players have a macro for all their commonly used stuff. Damage is tracked by simply typing (-26) into the mobs hp. Comes with a group forum. Character sheets are all stored on the site, so if somebody can't make it i can give the permissions to another player. I do have a problem player who is easily distracted, but another player caught him playing league of legends once while we playing and I had a Big Boy conversation with him, and we haven't had a repeat issue.


This.

Your players may not want a deeply immersed serious game. They may want more of a background activity while BSing with friends. If thats the case then your never going to force them to change and will just wind up frustrating everyone if you try.

The flip side is that the OP is under no obligation to run a game he doesn't want to. I run a handful of certain styles of game, and if my group doesn't want to play those - then that's fine, but somebody else can DM, not me.

lytokk
2014-09-04, 11:15 AM
My first guess would be that they want this serious game. I can ask them about it to clarify though. I think they want this because they've talked about how much they're enjoying the story and the world, how much the groups coming together and RPing off each other. Some of them are putting serious character development into their characters. Story flows well, its just combat thats taking forever.

LibraryOgre
2014-09-04, 11:21 AM
One thing we did was have a player whose job was the poorly named "init bitch"... their job was to take down the initiative of the entire party, with the GM providing them some abbreviations for unknown parts of the battle (so the ghouls that were going to come in might be in as G or H or whatever the DM called them). The orcs we can see? They're down as Orcs. The orc leader who got a different init? He's down as OL or something.

Everyone rolls initiative, and the init bitch goes around the table, getting numbers from everyone (including the DM) and writing them on the mat. This keeps the initiative clear. Changes in initiative (delayed actions, etc.) are reflected on the board.

However, it only works in static initiative situations. When initiative changes round to round, or there are no rounds, this system doesn't work. BUt I find Hackmaster's roundless system keeps everyone involved, anyway, since any given second they can move or whatever.

lytokk
2014-09-04, 11:24 AM
In an addition, the next game was brought up because one of the players wanted to run a game. He was going to run it after this one concluded. The problem arose that two players in the current game were unable to make meetings every other week, which dropped it to once a month, with a set schedule. This gave the player the opportunity to run his game whenever the rest of the group could get together. Before the last session of the main game, it was brought up that we were doing this secondary game. This got the players who would normally be left out, thinking up what they'd want to play in that game. It is possible that my game is destined to burn out before its conclusion, and that these two players are feeling a little bit of a burnout.

I can't force a re-energeaztion, But I don't want the game to die without trying.

lytokk
2014-09-04, 12:59 PM
I think I'm going to try and use my laptop more for the game. Will try and put together a word document with an excel table inside of it that I can use to keep track of initiative, bad guy HP, and use the word document for notes. That way I can still save every session and keep a good running track of whats going on.

Another thought I had, the druids turn seems to take longer, just because of her summons and the animal companion. I think I should split her AC off of her initiative turn, that way her turns are spread out more reasonably.

icefractal
2014-09-04, 01:51 PM
Since you mention a Druid, I'll note a couple tricks that sped things up when I was playing one:

1) Make a palette ahead of time, stick to it. For both Wildshape and Summoning, you can cut it down to a few good choices at each level. Find those choices (there are many Druid guides to consult), stat them up ahead of time, and stick to them unless there's a really strong reason to do otherwise.

2) Summoning - less is more. Summon 1-2 strong creatures instead of many weak ones. Summon things with one big attack (Dire Wolf for example) instead of things with a bunch.

3) Always have some 'default' thing to do. Often, your summons / companion are kicking enough ass that it's not clear what you really need to do. But doing nothing seems wasteful, which can lead to indecision. Have some kind of basic support action you can take when nothing better presents itself. At low level, I find that throwing Produce Flame works well. At higher levels, Mass Snake's Swiftness is almost always welcome, or just being Wildshaped and attacking the nearest foe.


And a general one, as GM, for when you have a prolific summoner and it's slowing things down - let the summoner control one creature, give the rest to the other players to run. Doesn't change the overall time taken, but it evens out the per-player time a bit.

ElenionAncalima
2014-09-04, 02:24 PM
I think I'm going to try and use my laptop more for the game. Will try and put together a word document with an excel table inside of it that I can use to keep track of initiative, bad guy HP, and use the word document for notes. That way I can still save every session and keep a good running track of whats going on.

If you are thinking of encorporating your laptop, I'll put in a good word for OneNote. Its free and I use it for all my gaming notes (both as a player and a DM).

I basically have a OneNote notebook for each game I am in. For my own game I have a 6 tabs. Main Plot, Side Quests, Locations, Characters, Random Encounters and Other. Personally, I feel like I can find whatever I need with that set up with very little delay. YMMV.

jedipotter
2014-09-04, 03:17 PM
Any other suggestions? I know I'm not the perfect DM, and I really want to keep people immersed, on track and in the game. The players have talked about what they want to play when this game is over, but at this pace, the game won't be over for a few more years, esp since we've had to cut our sessions down to once a month.

I do the no electronics. For the people that (unfortunately) need it, I have two baskets, one for phones and one for phone batteries. And I do the ''you have ten seconds to take an action'' or you just get skipped.

You might want to consider some social time. Say your normal game is 8pm-12pm, minus the half hour or so it get ready and goof off, of course. Well, back up the start time to 6pm or 7pm. That gives everyone two full hours to talk and talk and watch stupid You Tube videos or whatever. For my main once a week group, we have a cook out. So starting at 3pm everyone comes over and hangs out and we have food and have a great time. Then by 7PM everyone has all that ''stuff'' out of their system and they are ready to play.

Nagash
2014-09-04, 10:54 PM
I think I'm going to try and use my laptop more for the game. Will try and put together a word document with an excel table inside of it that I can use to keep track of initiative, bad guy HP, and use the word document for notes. That way I can still save every session and keep a good running track of whats going on.

Another thought I had, the druids turn seems to take longer, just because of her summons and the animal companion. I think I should split her AC off of her initiative turn, that way her turns are spread out more reasonably.

If your okay with using a laptop you might want to try using this thing. http://combatmanager.com/

Combat goes way faster since I started using it. It tracks initiative and automatically calculates monster rolls. Its also hooked up to pretty much all the Pathfinder material, monsters, spell descriptions, its very thorough. And it lets you modify the monsters quickly and easily.

So for instance our characters who summon things have a some feats and class features that augment their summoned critters. So say they summon a wolf, you type wolf into the monster finder, hit customize, make the changes and then save it as so and so's wolf, then you can ad it to the initiative order with all its stats right there for you anytime you want. And its saved, so you only have to do that once.

I love it. And its free.

Curbstomp
2014-09-05, 12:31 AM
One other thing you can do is more fights against single opponents or fights against waves of attackers. This will mean less rolls to make on average in a given round of combat.

Also for fights with multiple (same stat block) antagonists consider 2-4 actual dice rolls to represent that percentage of those attackers for the round. For example if I have 12 level 2 Fighters with Longbows attack the PC's, I will usually roll 4d20 and have each d20 roll represent 25% of the total attacks I needed to roll. If the attackers had Rapidshot this would mean 4 die rolls instead of 24 die rolls. This can be a huge time saver. I do the same with weapon damage rolls.

Yora
2014-09-05, 04:46 AM
I'm currently playing a game where there are only two initiative counts: Party and Enemies.
At the beginning of each round, all the players say what they are going to do, and the GM decides what the enemies are going to do. Then both sides roll initiative for that round to see who goes first. In case it matters which player goes first, the order of action is 1.) melee attacks, 2.) ranged attacks, 3.) spellcasting, 4.) movement only, 5.) move and melee, 6.) move and ranged, 7.) move and spell.
This works suprisingly well and gets completely rid of having to figure out the turn order at the start of the encounter, and players being surprised that it's their turn again. It requires being a bit flexible. When a player says he moves to a goblin and attacks it, I allow him to move to and attack to any goblin that is still around for the action to make sense. If his original target gets killed or runs away before the PCs turn, the action is not lost, but the player may adjust where he wants to move and which enemy to attack. But if you declare you cast magic missle at an enemy, you have to cast magic missle at an enemy or do nothing. No switching to a different spell or trying to target an object.

lytokk
2014-09-05, 07:23 AM
If your okay with using a laptop you might want to try using this thing. http://combatmanager.com/

Combat goes way faster since I started using it. It tracks initiative and automatically calculates monster rolls. Its also hooked up to pretty much all the Pathfinder material, monsters, spell descriptions, its very thorough. And it lets you modify the monsters quickly and easily.

So for instance our characters who summon things have a some feats and class features that augment their summoned critters. So say they summon a wolf, you type wolf into the monster finder, hit customize, make the changes and then save it as so and so's wolf, then you can ad it to the initiative order with all its stats right there for you anytime you want. And its saved, so you only have to do that once.

I love it. And its free.

I'm going to have to try it out. We play 3.5, not pathfinder though. The general mechanics are all the same, and it shouldn't take much to switch it around mentally. Anything in d20srd is going to be in pathfinder right? It started based on material in the OGL right? Mostly just for the druids summons. Put those in this thing for it to auto-calculate could really speed things up.

Curb, I've rarely attacked them with more than 3 or 4 baddies at a time. The only exception was on the first session where they were up against 7 or 8 kobolds at a time, and they were able to get through their rounds quickly.

The more I look back at things, the more I think this slowdown has just hapenned over time. More and more distractions being allowed until it hit this point.

Segev
2014-09-05, 10:11 AM
6 characters, 7 rounds, 2.5 hours?

Assuming that there was only one really big enemy monster (usually a bad assumption for fights that take that many rounds, but it's the smallest possible value), that's 7 turns per round, for 21 turns taken. That comes to just over 7 minutes per turn.

If there were even as many as 4 enemies, that drops to 2 minutes per turn.

7 minutes is a bit excessive, and implies difficulty decision-making. But when you factor in calculating situational modifiers to various rolls, needing 2-10 rolls per turn, counting up the results of those rolls, and writing down the results on various note pages to track hit points and other resources, 2 minutes is amazingly fast. 7 becomes merely "about half again as long as it should take to come to a decision."

Combat takes forever because of the system more than the players, in my experience. At least in face-to-face games. Online, it's often due to communication issues and the time it takes to type up a response to any question asking for clarity.

lytokk
2014-09-05, 10:49 AM
I really wish it was one big enemy monster. It was against a single ravid and its animated objects. I may have made the mistake in giving the party too many targets. Or that they were inside a library and the sorceress had no clue what to do since most of her attacks were fire based. The druid was flustered since she had so many options she really didn't know what to do. The rogue was trying to figure out why they were attacked as suddenly as she approached this desk. The bard, I think he was just stabbing away at an animated bookcase, but he was walking off because he kept getting phone calls. The psychic warrior was weighing options since he had a bandolier of kukris he had cast some ablative coating power on the night before and couldn't decide if he wanted to use one of those resources or not. I had the DMPC cleric turning undead since all counts before this point was that the library was haunted, and I didn't want to let on that it wasn't.

The only thing that ended the combat was the druid casting Detect magic, which found the secret magic door that lead into the next room. Once they opened it, the ravid jumped out of its hiding spot and ran away. Of course it took 3 rounds for everyone to exit the room since two of the players wanted to cover the escape and couldn't decide on who the last one out would be. But thats more of a character thing, so I can't fault them too much for that. Though the CN psywar may start shifting to CG if he keeps up this self-sacrificing stuff.

Nagash
2014-09-05, 11:23 AM
I'm going to have to try it out. We play 3.5, not pathfinder though. The general mechanics are all the same, and it shouldn't take much to switch it around mentally. Anything in d20srd is going to be in pathfinder right? It started based on material in the OGL right? Mostly just for the druids summons. Put those in this thing for it to auto-calculate could really speed things up.

Curb, I've rarely attacked them with more than 3 or 4 baddies at a time. The only exception was on the first session where they were up against 7 or 8 kobolds at a time, and they were able to get through their rounds quickly.

The more I look back at things, the more I think this slowdown has just hapenned over time. More and more distractions being allowed until it hit this point.

Yeah its pretty much the same. Some of the spells are a little different and the pathfinder SRD has a few 3rd party ones that 3.5 doesnt. But other then that the only real change will be enemies with class levels. Pathfinder gave a lot of classes extra class features. Nothing is stopping you from just ignoring those extra options or using the monster builder to create your own 3e version of them and then save it so you only have to do it once.

lytokk
2014-09-05, 11:36 AM
I'll have to convert on the fly. Or just spend my downtime loading in any monster that's too different to convert on the fly. I remember seeing this thing on the store when I was trying to find useful apps for my tablet, which had become my DM helper, but I don't like paying for things when I don't know if they're going to be a good fit. Nice to see the PC version is free.

Curbstomp
2014-09-08, 01:09 AM
One other thing-

Consider a ban on phones and laptops. I have done this at my own game table for years. There was one campaign where I made an exception and the slow-down crept in. For the next campaign the ban was re-instated and gameplay sped up again.

I also drop a player to the bottom of the initiative order if they are not ready with an action within 60 seconds of the start of their turn. When they are reached again at the end of the round if they are still not ready their turn is lost.

Seward
2014-09-08, 01:37 AM
I know it's far too late now, but oh god. Rant on.

Giving the new player a druid. It is a really common thing, I see it with parent/child teams all the time, with a teenage kid new to the game playing a druid because they want a nice pet and to be in tune with nature and stuff.

Complexity will overwhelm them by about level 3.

If you must have a new player do a druid, give them an animal with only one attack that's durable (a wolf or dog is surprisingly good, or a dire bat later, maybe a rhino), so its action is easy. (please don't give them a cat. Knowing how to do a critter with pounce, 5 attacks and, as they get larger, grapple mechanics is just asking for trouble). If they insist on summoning stuff, again encourage them to do the simple, durable, single-attack critters (again, something like dire bat, not hippogriff, or maybe an earth elemental later). Teach them a few spells that they can understand and have them prep those.

Seriously, giving a new player an archer or a barbarian is far more likely to end well. Prep casters are a PITA from complexity standpoint, prep casters with summons and pets are the worst of all worlds. Spontaneous casters are less of a problem if they get help at level-up time to choose spells they understand and can remember to use. (eg, making sure they have an option other than "burn them with fire" that's still fun for them to use when fire won't work)

Rant off.

Sorry. It's far too late, and maybe the stuff others said about helping her with the druid character will help, but it's going to be hard. Otherwise - yes, get rid of extraneous characters, a party of 5 probably doesn't need a DMPC. Encourage people to be ready on their turn, and back it up by showing when your bad guys take their turn that they have actions planned, do things like roll attacks and damage at the same time, or multiple attacks with multiple matching dice, etc...if you play slowly you set the tone for the table. If you play confidently and quickly, some of that will rub off.

And yeah. If you can't rapidly deal with swarms of monsters on your turn, reduce the size of the average encounter and just make the opposition tougher on a per-monster basis. Usually large numbers of weak monsters die quickly, but if your players are being especially inept it can drag a combat for a really long time. Having critters that run away or surrender after being clearly overmatched is also both realistic and speeds things up.

lytokk
2014-09-08, 07:28 AM
Believe me, I didn't want her playing a druid as her first character. When she said she'd like to try out D&D, I asked her to come up with a concept, and she came to mystique. We were talking about it, and the first thing that actually came to my mind was druid/master of many forms. It wasn't until I had touted the fun of the druid class that it sunk in with me that this may be too complex. Also, changeling didn't occur to me til we were talking about races. But, she wanted to play a druid and I've been trying to find ways to streamline the druidness. She was a lot better off when I was letting her spontaneously cast from the entire druid list, but I stopped that after a few sessions after she got a feel for the spells. Now we'll be switching her to the spontaneous divine caster variant.

She's got a wolf animal companion right now, but as she's approaching level 7, she's considered switching it out. She was thinking dire wolf, but she's also been wondering when/if she can get a dinosaur companion, but she wants something rideable. I saw the rhino was on the level 7 druid ACs, which statwise is pretty similar to the cave triceratops from the miniatures handbook. Cave trike is a little more powerful, but not by a lot. So she may be switching out to that.

The DMPC started as an NPC who endeared himself to the party, that the party insisted on keeping around. After he died, the party spent their 1 DM fiat to bring him back, and wanted me to play him like I would a player character. Now, he's distracting to me, and the party really doesn't need him around anymore, so I'm wanting him left behind. Party's got enough healing now to take care of themselves, and I don't feel like using him to spoonfeed them exposition anymore. Time to let them figure things out for themselves.

I was using the honor system to phones, hoping that people are only using them to look things up for the game. It got a little out of hand in the last session, but I've talked to them about it and reminded them that they should only be used in case of an emergency or to look things up. We will see what happens at the next game, which is in about 2 weeks. Hopefully things should move much smoother.

Demonslayer666
2014-09-10, 02:12 PM
Feel free as the GM to interrupt players and drive the game. Take charge. It's your game, you put in the effort to make it so they can play. They should respect that and keep the chatter to a minimum, especially when asked.

draken50
2014-09-10, 03:32 PM
So 2.5 hours for 7 rounds of combat is way way way too long.

I agree with the getting rid of electronics rule. Personally, I use an egg timer. A round in 3.5 is supposed to be like 6 seconds, having a full minute is more than fair. I run Earthdawn right now, and the initiative system for that is basically, declare all your actions before rolling imitative. My players take like a minute at most to decide and declare, and then roll initiative. In the Earthdawn system changing your action results in negatives.

Obviously you get that having new players play complex characters is bad. It's super common too so don't beat yourself up too much, but you're going to need to work with your wife to fix it. Have premade summon stats, and you may want to take control of the "AI" of those summoned monsters. Additionally, basic advice and directions help, if you can keep them clear and concise. Having something like, "If the character is hard to hit, use the single attack option, but if it's easy to hit you can do more damage using both the axe and armor spikes" ect.

The other thing you might have is too many players. I've seen people try to run games with 8 players and that results in a lot of boredom. If I'm playing a mundane character it's going to take me about a minute for my round, move, roll attack, roll damage, done. If each round is taking 20+ minutes, yes I'm going to find ways to entertain myself, rules, social contract, whatever else your trying to do be damned, that's too much time. I get that it gets worse when players don't know what's going on because they stopped paying attention but at 20 minutes a round no one will. Get a timer, and if the next players action doesn't require the results of the last, have them start rolling ect.

Oh yeah, you might have too few player's guides too. If there's a fair number of casters and they have to wait on a book to look up spell effects ect. that will drag things down.

lytokk
2014-09-22, 08:24 AM
So, the next session happened this last saturday, and I took as much of the advice as I could. If someone wasn't ready when their turn came up, I let them know I'd be coming back to them, while moving ahead with the next person's turn. The problem became people simply couldn't figure out things to do. It made me look at the encounter plan, and I realized that these last two encounters I planed (the first one I mentioned with the ravids, and the one that session with the scalamagdrion) were encounters designed to completely negate some of the abilities of players, without giving them anything else they could do.

With the ravids, the group was placed in a library, so the sorceress couldn't use most of her spells, as they would bring on a lot of colateral damage. She also couldn't do anything against the scalamagdrion, with its immunity to fire, silence aura and spell turning abilities. She had her acid arrow, but deemed it too risky with the entire party in melee with it. The silence aura shut down the bard. The druid takes a while to do anything, but thats part of being a druid, with her, her AC and summons.

I think I need to re-evaluate how I design these encounters. Since it seems what I've been doing has been to remove too many choices from players resulting in them pouring over their abilities to try and concoct a method of contributing. The sorc ended up going into melee against the scalamag since there was nothing else she could do. I need to make sure I design something so that everyone has something they can do, whether they do it or not is up to them.

Luckily I have a few weeks to plan the next session. I don't want to have a random group of something attacking them, just need to find out a story reason as to why they're attacked.

Also, using my laptop to track initiative rather than pen and paper was great. When I had to skip peoples turns it was much easier to adjust their initiative and just continuously sort the excel table.

Segev
2014-09-22, 08:52 AM
You may also wish to offer them some suggestions - overt or via treasure drops - for some ways to counteract these problems. Maybe a runestaff of ice for the sorceress, and a wand of Heroics and a decent ranged weapon for the bard?

lytokk
2014-09-22, 09:28 AM
The thing with the sorceress, I don't want her getting any more treasure. Shes already far ahead wealthwise than anyone else in the party. She picked up some gloves of lightening in the last game (ordered, but weren't ready by the time the encounter rolled around). Magic missile was one of her go-to spells, but the scalag just reflected it back at her.

I suppose a good ranged weapon for the bard. I was going to give him some magic instrument, but unfortunately his perform is in singing. A ranged weapon works, he is dex based and I have been somewhat light on handing out ranged weaponry.

Segev
2014-09-22, 10:21 AM
The thing with the sorceress, I don't want her getting any more treasure. Shes already far ahead wealthwise than anyone else in the party.Well, she probably just needs to invest in something that won't burn books and won't reflect back at her, then.


I suppose a good ranged weapon for the bard. I was going to give him some magic instrument, but unfortunately his perform is in singing. A ranged weapon works, he is dex based and I have been somewhat light on handing out ranged weaponry.

How about a choker or mask or rod of amplified voice? Use Ghost Sound and Ventriloquism as base spells, but its effect is to enhance the quality and increase the volume of sounds made near it, possibly with some minor dramatic flourishes (like a hint of harmony or backup music)? Stylistically, he might come up with numerous uses for it, but mechanically it's just a competence bonus item for Perform (singing). Maybe lowers the DC on Listen checks to hear anything done through it by 5 to 10.

lytokk
2014-09-22, 10:32 AM
Yeah, she needs to get rid of some of the extra stuff on her character. Her ring of animal friendship could come in handy to anyone who trains animals for a living. The thought just hadn't ocurred to her. And she forgot she had it.

Will have to look more into the bard list of abilities to figure out some decent items for him.