Tips for DMing: stuff to speed DMing/Gameplay

[Judging__Eagle]

I'm trying to brainstorm ideas for tightening game play in my own game since we have a pile of players and distractions are often the order of the day.


Combat

1. Keep initiative on a piece of paper, write down people on the paper in order that they go in a round.

2. Don't ask for initiatives, do a countdown and ask people to say when they go (this really beats having 5 people tell you their initative score at you). I ask if anyone has over 20, if people do, I ask if over 30; then count down until everyone is written down in order.

3. Roll attack and damage dice at the same time. That or don't take too long to roll; some people can roll nine rolls in the time it takes others 2 or 3.




Adventure/Dungeon Crafting

1. Use quadriculated (commonly called 'Graph') paper, it's just really good since it has lines that go up-down and side to side. Establish a scale that everyone can agree on; I use a 20 foot per 1/4" square on quadriculated paper.

Now, here's a trick that I figured out for setting up 'random' looking passages, tunnels or streets.

2. Grab a city map that you're not using, an old or partly broken map is ideal since you don't have to worry about returning it to where you found it.

This really saves on having to 'map' a city; I also use it for enemy 'camps' or twisting random tunnels; just use the streets that you feel like and don't use the ones that you don't want to use.

Don't actually show the map, draw the 'roads' on quad paper and make sure that you've got the scale down pat (you might need a small ruler that has the equivalent of 10, 20 or 40 foot lengths marked on it).

The benefit is that you have piles and piles of potential tunnels/streets/whatever all laid out and you can draw it as the party travels.

Map presentation

1. I don't know if people here use the roll-up battle mats or graph paper or what, but I've found that going away from drawing on my battle mat and instead using cut out squares of hard card (or the free dugneon tiles that I got for the last games day) to represent different objects has worked really well.

Often the group that I have will move so fast through an area that being able to remove all of the 'terrain' and refer to a larger scale map to see where they're going can save a pile of time.
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Anyway, what other stuff do you guys do?

[User3]

When I call for initiative, I tell everyone to roll thier initiative and add it up in their head. I then have them go around the room saying thier initiative scores and make one on my players write it down. He then announces the next person up each time somebody finishes their turn, even cuing my NPCs for me.

[Judging__Eagle]

I don't like to have my PCs know anything.

Initiative orders, enemy ACs, Enemy To-Hits. Pretty much anything that gives away what the monster can do.

[shau]

In one game we stopped rolling damage and just used the average (rounded down). It really helped when we were fighting a tiger or something with five natural attacks, both in that the game went quicker and there was less of a chance that a closet troll could do enough damage to kill absolutely anything in a single round.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

But Initiative order is largely static. Unless you have people regularly delaying or readying in combat. It is not really going to be feasable to keep that knowladge out of the hands of players.

As for the rest, well, it's also going to be kinda hard to truely keep things like AC secret from players, but by that same token, I know of no DMs personally who announce those things at the beginning of combat either.

-Desdan

[User3]

Generally speaking , only one player knows the initiative order, the one who does the work of maintaining it. THe others just wait for their name to be called. Ocassionally, to speed thigns along, I'll have him announce the current turn and the next turn, so people can prepare for their action.

It's a slight advantage, but one I'm willing to give as a reward for helping me run.

[Arturian]

See the problem with our group is that it is hard to surprise a few people because, they being the nerds they are, have memorized most of the MM and other books...so unless there are *surprises*, it's hard to catch anyone off guard. And once the battle is in full swing, everyone pretty much does their thing. Plus eagle likes to DM where everything is all ho-chi-min trail secret tunnel boobie trap fake wall wyvern out of nowhere battles. It makes it really interesting I think. Besides, what fun is a battle where the troll doesn't have a necklace of summoning?

[Judging__Eagle]

That was a hill giant, and he was a bug-focused druid. With Awakened fire beetles as his 'pets'. He burrowed thanks to a pair of cheapo 20' burrowing speed gauntlets.


As for people memorizing the MMs, yeah, Brobdingnagian, has read the MM's, and unlike me, he reads the stat blocks (I tend to read the flavour text and ignore the stats, until I need to use said monster).

On the other hand, he's going to be playing a lot more characters that can Identify a monster due to really high knowledge checks (and really, that's all his character needs anyway).

As for me pulling new stuff out of my butt or adding new stuff on the fly, yeah, I do that quite a bit. On the other hand, simply making battles take more time is probably safer on the PCs than having a tougher fight to begin with.

Adding is always easier than taking away and all that.