Comments on: More Tips for Speeding Up Your Game

By: Tiers Of Play: Epic — Dungeon's Master

Tiers Of Play: Epic — Dungeon's Master — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:02:02 +0000

[...] With the increase of HP for both monsters and PCs, encounters were longer and more drawn out even with the increases in damage done. While some players complain about the length of encounters others find a way to speed them up. [...]

By: Uma solução acidental para o problema de combate lento

Uma solução acidental para o problema de combate lento — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:17:55 +0000

[...] combates no 4ª edição. Nós compartilhamos nossas idéias para Acelerar seu jogo e fornecemos Mais dicas para acelerar seu jogo. Mas ao longo das últimas semanas nós descobrimos o que eu acredito ser a solução para o [...]

By: Month in Review: September 2009 — Dungeon's Master

Month in Review: September 2009 — Dungeon's Master — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:27:34 +0000

[...] More Tips for Speeding Up Your Game - We share a few of the tips that have helped speed up our game. [...]

By: An Accidental Solution to the Slow Combat Problem — Dungeon's Master

An Accidental Solution to the Slow Combat Problem — Dungeon's Master — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:08:25 +0000

[...] being too slow in 4e D&D. We’ve shared our ideas for Speeding Up Your Game and provided More Tips for Speeding Up Your Game. But over the past few weeks we discovered what I believe is a solution to the slow combat problem: [...]

By: Ameron

Ameron — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:23:48 +0000

@Chase_Dagger
We welcome your feedback. Don’t shy away from asking questions. If our experience can help you then we’ll share our thoughts. You can always email us directly if there’s something that we haven’t covered in one of our articles that you’d like to know about. We’re always looking for good ideas.

@Wimwick
Thanks for jumping in whale I was on vacation.

By: Chase_Dagger

Chase_Dagger — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:43:34 +0000

Oh that’s interesting, I’m glad I asked. My group has a really hard time getting together too; we manage eventually to find the time, but I doubt that will last forever.
No one has to answer the other stuff; I’m was just commenting some of the tasks being streamlined seem pretty fast to me already, and the calling the fight thing to me is a big problem for the game.

I see that I did ask a few questions, but they aren’t very good. In hindsight the answers are pretty obvious (you must keep track of hp somehow.)

PS – Wimwick: Sorry for calling you Ameron in that other post.

By: Wimwick

Wimwick — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:57:56 +0000

@ Chase Dagger
Thanks for the feedback. I’m only going to reply to your last comment about what we use instead of minis. I’ll let Ameron reply to the rest when he gets a break between movies (he’s currently enjoying TIFF).

The team at Dungeon’s Master uses Map Tools which you can find at rptools.net. We’ve been gaming with the same group of players for about 20 years. As family and careers have taken a larger stage in life we’ve found that the ability to play online has been key in keeping the group together as we can’t always show up in person. We currently have one player who lives 4 hours from the rest of us, but is online as often as possible during our regular gaming session.

By: Chase_Dagger

Chase_Dagger — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:25:45 +0000

A few “in my opinion” type of comments:

Condition tracker: I don’t understand why this is needed; don’t DMs keep track of monsters on paper already? Don’t you leave space to write in conditions?
I don’t see why I would print out all those conditions only to use 1 or 2 per monster; I just write the conditions on the same thing I track HP. I never considered this a significate time waster.

Advanced Initiative: I don’t see how this saves any reasonable amount of time, we’ve got what we call the Initiate Template, and it takes about 60 seconds for everyone to roll [monsters included] and for the initiative to be added to the sheet.

Calling a Fight: Like everyone else; “fights that drag on” are one of my biggest criticisms of the game. My goal is to run a game that entertains both me and my players, and this problem really gets under my skin.
Currently I agree that you’ve got to call the fight if you expect your players to remain entertained. I call the fight, but I’m disappointed each time it has to happen.
I think Wizards should highly consider a fix for this problem. I believe the healing surge thing is not a good workaround for my group, but I respect all ideas on how to deal with this.
I have different methods to calling the fight; some are ok, but they are conditional and can’t be used all the time. I feel that monsters should try to flee but if a monster flees; and the PCs don’t stop it, I don’t give them XP for that monster. How do you guys handle a monster that escapes, do you just hand over full Xp?

P.S. Ameron, what do you use instead of minis? Maybe you could explain why? I mean anyone can say they are too expensive and that is a perfect reason, but at the same time I find it super hard to resist especially since you can get some really good deals on used minis. Also I feel they add a lot to the game, not in functionality but in flavour and fun.

By: Kaetel

Kaetel — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:33:11 +0000

To speed-up combat, I use initiative cards. I order the cards per initiative order and flip the current player’s card to the back of the pile at the end of turn.

The card is also used as a condition tracker as all conditions are noted on it. I simply put a tick against the condition to remember it and voilà.

By: Ravenous Role Playing » Blog Archive » Friday Five: 2009-09-11

Ravenous Role Playing » Blog Archive » Friday Five: 2009-09-11 — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:06:29 +0000

[...] More Tips for Speeding Up Your Game Who couldn’t use a faster running game? I’m not talking about speedballing through every encounter and role playing opportunity. I’m talking about making some of the more laborious and boring parts run a little smoother and faster. Go check out what Ameron has to say about the topic! [...]