As a DM, I use a lot of hours each week to try and create a memorable adventure for my player, throw encounters on them and hand them some cool magic stuff to use. Just reading about everything lore-wise and getting to know the rules is intoxicating.
I love doing it, simply put.
Still, I feel that a lot of times the overall atmosphere at the table is getting rather dull alot of times.
I know I need more training trying to describe what they see infront of them, what they can do and how to give each player their space to make an action.
I DM over 5 players almost each session. Every session is about 3 hours long (mostly because my players can't handle longer hours), and frankly, I can never plan to have more than 1 encounter each time (one encounter usually take 1 hour). Is that normal? I find myself that sometimes, I need to end the session beforehand, since I have an encounter planned ahead for my PC's, but I know it is only 40 minutes left of the gaming session...
Sometimes I read that some people have 3-4 encounters each session (most of them don't specify how long they play, but still)..
I know my PC's like playing the game, and how I made the setting and all that, and most sessions have really good stuff from both me and the players...
I just feel a bit disheartened when I put so many hours into it, and some sessions ends in something near boredom...
I feel I would like more tips and tricks on how to speed things up, and evolve myself as a DM in its storytelling.
- If you guys feel that you got a good vibe and speed most time during your sessions, can you share and set a few examples on how you describe certain situations and how you give your PC's their choices and keep them engaged in the situations?
- Can you also share how long a "normal" set of encounters usually is at your table, and what you have done as a DM to speed it up?
Here - read some of my game transcripts. Each session is two hours long and done entirely in text format via Roll20. This means we're typing the whole time (no voice chat). Some of the players have said they still get more done in these games than they do in voice/in-person games with longer session times. A reasonably complex encounter in these games can take an hour. In a voice game I'd expect it to be half that time or less.
In my in-person or voice chat games, we get through a ton of context in three or four hours. I ran this entire adventure in less than 3 hours at a gaming store and there were multiple battles. Small, less complex skirmishes tend to be 15 minutes or so. Bigger "set piece" battles can last twice as long. To be honest, I don't concern myself with how long a battle lasts. I concern myself with making it freakin' awesome for however long it happens to last.
Tell us a bit more about what you mean by some of your sessions ending in boredom. It sounds like there are some underlying issues here with regard to game tempo and player engagement that need addressing before specific techniques can be advised.
Table management is work. Instead of the cool stuff like writing adventures, it's all about time and personnel management.
My sessions are 4-6 hrs depending on the group's. I can fit probably 4-5 fast/trash encounters and 1 set piece big encounter in a session. 4-6 players.
But this kind of thing has roots in your prep. For one, each encounter must have a purpose and a dramatic question, which, once answered, ends the encounter. Such as "will the PCs get the pie before the Orc escapes and eats it?" That encounter (and whatever is in it) ends once that question is answered.
Most encounters are not "to the death" affairs, though they can be. And sometimes the "answer" avoids combat entirely.
Next, our job as DMs over all. Keep in mind that you are supposed to find out what the players want, and then put something in the way of them getting it. That's the crux of the drama that keeps things interesting.
And that brings us to real time table management. It means stepping up your human interaction, framing scenarios and asking for action. In essence, on your turn, I look at you in your eyes and say "Doc, the Orc had the pie in both hands as he runs like mad for the closing portcullis. Meanwhile, your cleric friend is being strangled by a Naga. What do you do?" Then before I have an answer I turn to the next player and say "you're next, think fast." Keep this pace and always frame, reframe, and load the next turn.
Use maps and minis to track position. Not as absolute, but relative. If you're counting squares, you're wasting time. It doesn't matter. You may wish to count squares and be very precise, and if you do, the cost of that precision is time. If you want faster play, the cost for that speed is precision. You may do both fast, but it's rarely done well. (Personally I value time over precision).
All spells must be kept in a spell book with the character sheet. There are no lookups during play. All dice are rolled simultaneously. All actions are adjudicated quickly based on the player's intent and their approach to making that intent happen. All communication is as unambiguous as possible and for me all ambiguity is resolved in the players' favor.
Where possible, we eschew questions of precision (how many feet away is that orc?) and answer in kind (he's far but you can get him of all you do is run).
these are some of my practices. You might find some work for you and some don't. Largely the biggest time saver is clarity when you frame a players' turn. It cuts down on their waffling.
Dr. Fresh, when I run an online session, we generally have 2 or 3 combat encounters per 2.5 or 3 hours.
In order to keep it fresh, I try to mix in a balance of exploration, interaction, and combat. Some sessions may be more tilted towards one pillar over another, but then I make sure I tilt back in another session. Also, I vary combat so that there are some 15 min quickies with an occasional 30-45 min larger one. Additionally, I make many combats that can turn into interactions or I give players other ways to avoid or change the encounter so it doesn't always become fight to the death.
Iserith and Bawylie have great ideas too.
It sounds like combat is your slow point. If so, here are a few things that can speed things up.
One thing I started using recently is something called initiative tents. Take notecards and fold them in half so they stand up like so /\ On the player facing side, put the PC's name or the monster group's name. On the DM facing side, put relevant stats/attacks for your monsters. When everyone rolls initative, order the tents in order of their intitiative. Now everyone sees the initiative order and will be prepared when you call on them. Also, you'll have access to all the monsters stats without having to lookup any info in books. This takes a little more prepwork on your part, but it saves quite a bit of time.
If your players are the slow ones, I'm guessing its a caster? Spell cards can speed them up quite a bit. Similarly if a player has to keep looking up their special class abilities, get them to print them off.
If there's a question of rules, make a judgement call instead of looking it up. Ask the player to note down the question and review it after the game. So long as a character's life isn't on the line it shouldn't be a big deal. Between sessions, lookup the rules and email out how the rule is supposed to work.
Roll your damage dice and your d20 together. Have the stats for your common attacks already calculated.
Once it's obvious the PC's are going to win the encounter, don't feel obligated to play it out. The monsters can flee, or they can surrender, or you can hand-wave away the rest of the encounter and tell them they manage to finish off the rest of the foes.
If combats are a little boring, spice them up. Instead of "The goblin hits you for 4 damage." Try "The filthy goblin stabs at you with a rusty blade. Luckily your armor absorbs some of the damage and you only take 4 points." This will actually slow down your combats a bit, but they will be a lot more interesting. If you can't be spontaneous with flavor text, spend a little time between each game session coming up with a few phrases. Encourage your players to describe their attacks as well.
Fighting on a rickety bridge over a pool of dark water is a lot more fun than a 20'x20' dusty room. Put terrain in there for your PC's to interact with like aisles of old book shelves. They'll be climbing over them, pushing them over, or attacking monsters through the shelves.
Hopefully this gives you some good ideas. If you have more specific questions, I'll be happy to post more. 
- Eck
bawylie wrote:
My players would kill me if I took away counting squares. 
Seriously, reading the OPs post, I'm wondering why the table feels "dull". Other folks gave great tips about combat, here are a few other things that can cause dullness, see if any apply:
- Extensive descriptions by the DM. It's possible to over-describe things. It's nice to open up a scenario with a mood-setting description, but don't ramble. The PCs want to play, not listen to the DM describe every tapestry. Learn to chop it up: set the overall mood in a couple of sentences. Leave off details until a player asks for more. Say simply "you enter a grand, tapestry-covered hall with a large table, obviously set for a fine affair". Don't go into the details of the tapestries or the insignias on the cutlery unless specifically asked.
- Similarly, large narrations of the plot. Summarize, summarize, summarize. Figure out the plotline for that specific game session, or even for that specific encounter, and focus on that. Keep it simple. Again, players want to play, this isn't Story Hour at the local library ...
- NPC abuse: do you overuse NPCs? Do you let NPCs solve every problem or devise every strategy? Do you use them to railroad players? Do you have any NPC-to-NPC conversations? Remember the players are the center of the universe, make the game about them. If they wanted to watch NPCs talk to each other, they'd be watching TV. Consider eliminating ally NPCs entirely.
- Keep it interesting. Throw the players curveballs. Mix-and-match monsters. Maybe the goblins have a symbiotic relationship with a family of grell. Maybe the wizard figured out how to create a new ooze monster. Maybe a manticore is looking to pick up an easy meal from the chaos of a bandit raid. Think of it like cooking: yes there's a chicken breast, but you have to season it to make it tasty.
- Maybe you're taking too long to figure out what enemies are doing. For each encounter, have a list of tactics prepared in advance. Then you just have to pick a tactic you've thought through instead of dreaming up something from scratch. I advise this for all but the most experienced of DMs. People complain about players taking forever to act, DMs can have that problem, too.
- Organize! Make cheat sheets to help you. Use highlighters, make stat blocks, etc. Nothing worse than a DM who fumbles around, looking for stuff. Sometimes an off-the-cuff ruling is better than the official one, especially if it keeps the game moving.
Good luck!
Some great advice in this thread, and I'll add a few ideas.
First, I generally run for 6-8 players and a bigger combat encounter lasts about 40-60 minutes. This, to me, is on the long side but my players really enjoy the combat and they like big drawn battles. Since everyone is having fun for the duration, I've not been motivated to shorten them further but it can easily be done using the techniques that ECK mentions above.
Second, you as the DM, are often the catalyst for fun. You have to set up the situation in these cases. It's great when you have awesome players willing to really step up and be what I call, "a producer". Some gamers are producers and some are consumers. Your job in this context is to push the consumers to be producers. You want to get those gamers to be the ones making the game fun for everyone (the producers are already doing it), not just sitting their having fun because of someone else. I like to emulate this with envinonmentals. A quick and easy one is to DM standing up. Or at least stand up at points where it feels right for you. This imparts a sense of importance and will get a more focused attention on what you say and do giving you more authority over the emotional involvement of the group.
I also love to use backing tracks, music, to enhance what is happening. I use mood music for NPC interactions and exploration and often more intense and pumping rhythms during combat (one of my players loves metal so we get occasionally metal themed playlists during combat, others love bumping techno so we get some of that as well. The first notes of a good track will competely change the mood at the table, setting off a great combat session full of intensity and creativity).
I enthusiastically describe the scene with inflection being absolutely vital. You'll see a lot of DM advice to end your description to someone with "what do you do?" But could that possibly be more rote, uncreative or boring? If I hear/read "what do you do?" I immediately pass out due to formulaic boredom. I explain the situation with emphasis on the key part of what makes the situation important with the most urgent impact and would be more likely to say "Holy Correlon, what are you going to do to deal with this?!" or "Yikes, what actions can you take to handle this!?" You create a sense of urgency, or fun, or comedy, or whatever with your tone and enthusiasm, and then you pass that sense onto the player with your word choices. Whatever you do, don't just say "what do you do?" Or at least say it with conviction. This is a common mistake for new DMs to just drop the lame "what do you do?"
Another technique I use is tailored content. You'll want to pay attention to (or just ask) your players what elements they enjoy the most, whether broadly (combat, RP interaction, world building) or more specifically (feeling like their character is at risk, meeting odd NPCs, defining their character in the world) and then try to include those elements and present them in interesting fashion to those players. You can even add a sense of urgency by referencing the desire. If one of you players says something like "The other night, when I thought my character might die, it was super intense and exciting" then when you have the opportunity to put them in the spot later, you might say, "Hey you said this was exciting, nows your chance to prove it, let's see how you handle this!" This will reinforce the fact that this thing they liked is happening now. It can lead to them channeling the emotions they had into the present. In these situations it's extra important to give the player some leeway with rules and stuff so they can fully realize what their imagination does with the scenario.
Lastly, make sure you end on a high note. Many sessions have a tendency to drag at certain moments. Try not to end on those moments. Don't be afraid to wrap up a few minutes early or late if there's a cool moment that will leave the players wanting more. Even if a session is generally not whizz bang throughout, if you end at a point where things are good, the takeaway will be that it was a great session. Likewise if you have a whizz bang session but end at a lull, the takeaway will often be one of lower impact.
The fact that you're noticing this and wanting to correct it means you have the eyes and ears and nose of a good DM. Some people run games and never smell this stuff cooking. Listen to your DM sixth sense and use it to feed your players the delightful meals of RPG you all hunger for and you and your players will leave fat and happy. Good luck!
I have six players & my sessions are usually 6-7 hours long. Sometimes that includes only one combat; other times it might include five or six. It all depends on what's happening in the story and the world around them. The longest combat I've see, so far, in 5e was about 45 minutes; most are over in 20-30 minutes. With fewer players, it goes even faster.
I spend about 6 hours preparing for each session. Most of that time is spent creating (very detailed) maps for Roll20. For games that are primarily theater of the mind, I spend an hour or two at the most (thinking about possible contingencies, naming NPCs, placing appropriate treasure, and so forth). I have set-up entire one-shot adventures in less than 10 minutes.
Tips for speeding up play.
- Ask the players to roll before their turn comes around (based on what they plan to do). If something happens that renders their intentions moot, just discard the roll.
- Ask the players to roll all of their dice (both d20's and their damage dice) all in one throw.
- Avoid leafing theorugh the book. Just bookmark, photocopy, or just type-out all of the stats you need for advesaries and magic items. If the party finds a cool item, feel free to read whatever flavor text you've added ... but don't read the stats outloud. Just hand them a paper copy (or paste it on screen). Then, continue on. The player who has the item can copy the info without halting the game.
- Ban distractions. Nothing slows a game down more than a player who thinks he can multi-task. No matter how much he likes your game, if a player is surfing the web or watching a football game, drawing him back to the game will eat-up precious seconds.
Tips for speeding up preparation.
- Have a plan. Before you even start writing the adventure, you should have some idea of where the story is headed.
- Recycle. Anything that gets skipped or bypassed in one adventure should be re-skinned and re-placed in the next (provided it still fits the story).
Tips for story evolution.
- Use the characters' backstories (traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws) to guide your adventure writing. If the player writes "I am sworn to avenge the death of my mentor" on his character sheet, for example, then it probably means he wants to avenge the death of his mentor. Make it a focal point in your adventure.
- Create a living, breathing world. In other words, stuff happens in the campaign world, whether the PC's witness it or not. If enemies run away when they're defeated, have some of them turn up again (but not always as returned enemies, or the PCs will habitually "run down" everyone who tries to escape). If the PC's rescue a merchant from some orcs during one adventure, have them run into that merchant in the streets on a later adventure ... or maybe that same merchant goes back to torn and starts offering a bounty for every orc head turned in to him.
- When describing things, don't limit yourself to what things look like. Describe the smell, the background noise, the temperature ... anything to bring the scene to life.
Dr.Fresh wrote:
3 sentences at most, for an entire scene. 1 to frame a player's turn (followed by a "what do you do?")
I'll also toss in that Roll20 has disadvantages in this area. Between technical glitches and the ease with which one can talk over another, it can be hard to keep focus. Plus it's easy for folks to be distracted by the Googles and the YouTubes. Don't let "dead air" ruin the game, keep things moving, keep people talking, encourage them to talk amongst themselves. It's more important in virtual setups than real-world, so many social cues are eliminated. In some ways, it takes more skill than in a face-to-face game.
I have an advantage because of all the damnable conference calls I'm on in my real job.
I'm fairly new to DMing, but I can offer some advice to keeping things fresh with descriptions.
I personally suffer from a stutter problem, so I try to keep my descriptions of things short and to the point. If you focus on the key items and points of the area that the PCs are in, you should be able to have a fairly accuret description in only a short time. This leaves some gaps in the description for the PCs to explore and find so you can fill the gaps in on their turns. I've found it keeps things fresh because it encourages the players to describe what they are looking at and what they are looking for.
If your wanting some good advice on describing a scene, I recently read a great article by the angry DM over the the Mad Adventurers Society. Maybe itll provide some ideas for you?
http://www.madadventurers.com/angry-rants-box-text/
bawylie wrote:
I have ten players and we play three hours max. I would never last in a six hour game. I just don't get that. But I think I'm in the minority in that. A one hour combat is long for 5e in my experience. In three hours with 10 players we get about three combat encounters and about three are four social, exploring encounters in the same session. Most of our combats are resolved in 4 to 5 rounds and less than an hour.
For players who take long turns I start a countdown. I know different people have different ways of proccess info and making decisions. A player can spend the whole round thinking about what his PC will do on thier turn. Then go through the whole process again when it is there turn before they make a decision. I allow that. But when a player is stuck looking silent at the table indecisive I threaten a cout down. if that don't work i start conting down. That usually gets thing going.
On thing I do is have my players make initiative cards that I hang on the Dm screen. I use a cloths pin to indicate who turn it is, this allows everyone know who's turn it is, and who is up next.
Give your players the opportunity to describe things. Introduce an npc. have them describe magical effect. If they summon a creature ask them what it looks like. I gave a PC charge of squad of guards then asked the player what they looked like and thier names.
Great thread! As a brand new DM, tons of helpful awesome advice from all of you. I feel the OP on some of these problems.
I find that my biggest issue, besides balancing combat, has to do with the planning and trying to keep the game as open and organic as possible. For example, let’s say the players are attempting to do A, I want to give them whatever options that they can think of to complete this.
But maybe it’s because I am new to this, I would find it very very very difficult to come up with something on the fly mid game and make it as fun if I hadn’t at least planned some of it out ahead of time.
So most of the time I will hint (never tell or make) one or two possible choices they could potentially take via a NPC.
As a DM should I even be providing such information? For example, to potentially strike a favorable deal the pc’s have been asked to assassinate a noble. (My pc’s are jerks.) I had the person asking tell them he often comes home drunk after a weekly party and might be a good time to strike at his home. Is that ok to do? Or should I just be leaving it up to them and not even mention that kind of information. Let them ask questions and just kind of build a scenario on where they are headed.
Otherwise I just feel it might be too vague. Granted, they could do whatever they wish (This hasn’t happened yet. Mostly they go with it and seem to be enjoying it and our overall arching story.)
How do others deal with this?
Also for me creating interesting dungeon maps is tough and time consuming (between work and newborn I barely have time). If I had to make it up as I went I know it wouldn’t be that great. But if I make them ahead of time, story wise I would probably throw lots of indicators pointing them that way. Do most of you just do this on the fly or is everything pre-planned? Anyone have any good resources on being able to create quality dungeons/houses/castles quickly?
Sorry for all the questions. Awesome thread and advice all around.
Akrean wrote:
Akrean wrote: