Needing some Ideas

[deckyon]

I ran my first session with FG this past Monday. The players have said they enjoyed it, I enjoyed it, and we have the basics down fairly well. My question is this:

What can we do to help speed up the combat sequences?

This seemed to drag a little, although it was not unmanageable. All the players did follow my request to only start their actions after I "Flagged" them, and typed "Done" when complete. It still seemed to take a little longer than I expected. I am looking for some advice from the more veteran users out there so that our game sessions move as smoothly as possible.

[Jozan]

If I recall correctly, I think some of us made some actions but didn't move our tokens. I think if we make sure we move our tokens and know we are were we should be this would cut down on some time.
Other than that I can't think of anything else we need to work on, other than speeding it up some like you said.

[richvalle]

Thats an excelent question. I wish I had some answers for you. I've had combats take 3-4 hours for one combat.

Given the above, I'm probably not the best person to give advice. But...

1. Ask the players to try and have their actions ready when their turn comes up. If they are going to cast a spell, have the spell details ready and not look them up when its their turn. If they are going to do something 'weird' like trip or bull rush, have them look up the rules before their turn so they are fresh and you don't have to stop and look them up.

2. I saw this suggestion but have not tried it yet... let 2 people take their turns at the same time if they are not going to step on each others toes. So if the bad guys go 5th in the order and you have a fighter going 1st and one going 3rd on other sides of the room who are both going to attack, them to do their thing at the same time.

3. As the dm, hot key as much as you can. I love rolling the die and so much of the time. I hot key the mods so I can hit f1 to get the + to attack and roll the die. You can do this pretty quick. But it would be quicker to hot key the whole thing and just hit F1 5 times for 5 attacks.

If you can, setup for the fight before hand. If you know a fight is coming start dragging things to the init tracker as the party moves or chats. You can even roll for init for them before the party gets there. Drag the party members to the init tracker as well. When combat starts, drag and drop each players init roll into the init tracker and sort.

All I got for now...

rv

[SurlyDwarf]

RV's suggestions are good ones and I can't really add any more. I have been through a few combats now myself and with six players! What I find is that it just takes longer than you would expect if sitting around a table. Period. I attribute this to typing vs. talking, not being able to see each other, etc. I think corners can be cut and time shaved here and there as RV's suggestions indicate, but it is always going to take a bit longer than you would expect or like.

The thought of people using voice-chat software is a frequent topic and one that could, I think, change this dramatically but I have not tried it yet. My group, being a large one, has not all come to a consensus and/or does not have the necessary hardware and so we are not using anything.

Anyway, Deckyon, I thought it was a great game and you ran it very well. I haven't been in a game where it goes much faster or smoother than that. And, again, it gets even slower with more players.

I'll try to be faster on Monday. :)

[ShaneLeahy]

Get your players to macro as much as they can. It speeds things up alot.


One thing my group just started doing for the casters is for their spell damage macros, they include the DC for the spell in the macro. So I get...

Lightning Bolt (DC 19) then the damage so I know what I need right away.

[Stuart]

I run groups of 7 through combat sessions ... the biggest drag is spell resolution and uncertainty over the finish of a round i.e ensuring a player has a Move Action or not in addition to any other action ...

1) Run two PC's thro' combat turns at a time if possible.
2) Have players type "done" at the end of their turn, especially impt if unusual activites take place.
3) Hot key (especially if you have NPC's as well) in advance.
4) Locking tokens is good - I have started doing this now my groups are large.
5) Having spell casters "remind" the DM what the save DC and possible effects are.
6) Clarifying in the House Rules what constitutes Flanking, who gets it and why !
7) Keep the number of "enemies" lower ... just increase their stats/lvls ... DM hordes should generally lose in any battle because it is tough for a DM to have them doing unique individual things ... my experience is that the more creatures a DM has to run, the dumber they get ! Does a party *really* have to face 20 lvl 1 orcs ? Why not face 10 lvl 2 ... etc.

Combat will be a little slow in FG ... now that I play I see the game from both ends; as a DM I tend to be very very busy ... as a player I have time in between my rounds to replenish my mug of tea !

I don't think there is an ideal answer ... that said, it is still quicker than a single round of combat using Rolemaster.

[deckyon]

Great suggestions. Also, SurleyDwarf, it wasnt that any one person was taking a long time, I was just hoping to streamline things. Everyone did a great job keeping the chatter to a minimum and stayed on target. It was kept on target as good as I could have hoped for from a group of people. I am thinking that 4 will be the magic number for this campaign, so that should keep things fairly quick.

I will have to look at the macros, good idea. I do have all the players in the initiative sheet when they get logged in. I also start dragging the mobs onto the init sheet as the players get close to the combat. I especially like the Spell macro listed above. I am going to get the guys to come up with some SOPs for breaching which should speed some play up a bit...

Like I said, no real complaints, just some streamlining.

[richvalle]

Heh. My 3-4 hour combat was WITH voice chat. :)

I agree about the DM being busy thing. I'm always doing something but feel for the plaers that are sometimes sitting for a while.

I still like the idea of putting up some sort of list so players know where they are at and when their turn is coming up in the init order. It gives them a better idea of when they have to have their actions ready by. I drag another player token for each one over to the side of the map and arrange them in init order.

I have a large battle happening tomorrow night... 15 Shadows, one Greater Shadow and one Large Shadow vs however many players show up (the chickens!), one NPC Bralani fighter and two Lantern Archons. I'm going to hot key as much as I can but I still expect the combat to take hours.

rv

[acmer]

I suggest you take a look at DM Genie. If the battles are large, saves you a lot of time. There's pretty much everything you need, but at first it might take some time to get used to the program. No need to worry too much about turns, limited duration effects, inits, and other stuff filling up your notes. It's all there. There's also the Player Genie if players have difficult time keeping track of their characters. Pretty helpful if you are not too familiar with D&D.

Oh, and the link of course:
DMGenie (https://www.dmgenie.com/)

[richvalle]

I'll hold off till 1.06 comes out. I think some of this functionality will be there (rounds for spells, ect).

Thanks for the link though!

rv

[deckyon]

I have messed with DMGenie a bit, but don't feel I can justify yet another purchase for my hobby to my wife. We are going to try out some of the ideas listed, thanks everyone!

[Toadwart]

Haven't had time to try and build this yet but maybe someone else has:
Anyone tried copying or modifying the combat tracker?

Was thinking that the existing one could be expanded to:

add a PC-friendly name for enemies (where you don't want to revel the actual name/creature type to the PCs)
have a tickbox to indicate which ones are 'active' (allowing you to prepare for upcoming battles without giving the game away to the PCsAnd have a smaller copy of it which shows only the PC-friendly name of 'active' participants (in initiative order). It would also be read-only so it can be shared with the players.