I have and probably continue to run into this problem, but any suggestions to dealing with an adventure which is constrained by time (such as a con slot) and how to get through various encounters within the realm of the DME?
Cut short fights that are clearly over. If there is only one guy left I will often drop him at just past bloodied if the whole group is on him. Another round or two isn't normally going to allow him to do anything, but it does suck up time. If things are running late when I hit a skill challenge I will give broader hints than I normally do to speed the challenge up. Not as good for Roleplay, but like the shortened fights I will try to do only when required. Otherwise making sure people know when they are likely to be next up in the initiative order often helps speed things along. If they can be ready to go when it is there turn rather than thinking it all out then the game moves much faster.
--When you prepare the adventure, make notes for each encounter in the adventure: most importantly, make a note on how much each encounter should take. Do your best to keep encounters within your predetermined time frame. Cutting all encounters a little short means you don't have to skip any encounters completely.
--Keep a watch or clock handy to keep track of time.
--Let the players help you during combat by keeping track of initiative, keep track of marks and conditions, etc.
--If you ever get a chance, watch an experience convention DM do her thing. During one convention when I was the coordinator, I pretty much spent the entire convention watching DMs do their thing. It was an incredible learning experience for me.
--Of course, even when you play, you can take some notes on how the DM handles things. Now that replaying is allowed, it is more likely that a DM will get a chance to play an adventure after having read it. Seeing how another DM interprets the adventure, uses DM empowerment to smooth the rough edges, manages the table, etc. is a great learning tool.
I'm sure other people have more suggestions.
Shawn
LFR Global Admin
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To resolve that - and in the interest of time - I will occasionally let players RP their way through a potential combat encounter, providing of course that they are doing a great job at it! I ran the Special at DDXP and my players took what could have been a 100% TPK encounter (they had no surges, and were faced with one of D&D's biggest, baddest iconic creatures) and proceeded to RP like madmen... then grab their target object and run like mad. It was *awesome*, and took about 1/3 the time of the combat version of the encounter.
I will also cut combat short if the party obviously outclasses the foe(s), allow or encourage intimidate checks or even have intelligent NPCs attempt to surrender if possible. I've even had players use knowledge checks to find what could cause an enemy to be rendered inert/ unconscious.
In the end, it's up to you - keep the game moving, but most of all keep everyone involved and having fun!
Use initiative cards - these make turns go almost twice as fast. Pass every one out a card have them write the name and initative of the character and have a player put them in order while you put the monsters in order and draw/assemble the map. This also makes the grinding rounds go very fast
"Fighter(puts card in the back of line)" - I dual strike (attacks and damage while you say "Warlord your next"
Simply put it allows the DM to do more and do it faster. But dont fight to the death is such a perfect logical rule that helps the flow of the game.
a) pace them. If a player can't come up with a reasonable idea of what they want to do inside 30 seconds or so, then move on to the next player/monster. This doesn't mean have to articulate or take their entire action within that time, but rather at the very least indicate what they want to do in loose terms.
b) someone other than the DM tracks initiative (this is a massive time saver).
c) in the case of rules arguments, the DM makes a quick ruling and it can be looked up later. As long as the ruling is fair and reasonable, even if it is slightly incorrect, and the DM is consistent, then there shouldn't be a problem.
d) (Edit because I forgot but it is important) Don't fight to the death. As soon as a fight looks reasonably over, call it and move on.
On skill challenges:
d) don't use an initiative order. encourage a more organic freeform approach to them.
In general:
e) draw maps out in advance if you can.
f) keep track of the important PC stats, e.g. AC, Passive P/I etc. Always confirm if there is a hit or not, but know the rough figures, e.g. if a "20-something" will always hit.
If there are any potentially troublesome spots, come up with your own solution and make note of it.
Review any obscure rules and note page references. (e.g., off the top of my head I'm not sure how drowning works [and no y'all don't need to tell me, I can look it up
])If the adventure has more than 4 major encounters, beware! Think about trimming or combining some of them.
In terms of pacing players, unforunately with some of my regular players that would severely handicap them because of their own difficulties in making quick decisions in combat. I might be able to run them under a few -minutes- not for some it takes them 30 seconds to spell out the sentence of what they are going to do.
I am an experienced DM (experienced to a point anyway) and in this case it is a matter of which group of players I have (I run games for a wide variety as opposed to going with an exclusive set) each with their shortcomings as it were that I have to basically work through instead of simply booting them out for them.
I think cutting combat short would have shaved a few minutes here and there, which accumulates definitely. I try and avoid this if I can normally because I have several players who get their satisfaction from the combat and what their character build can do in combat. However I might give this a try next time to see if I run into any complaints.
With the skill challenges, I think the issue was going off-topic. For example the skill challenge might to get some information from a given person, well the party would have a half hour conversation with the NPC and have a detailed party with him complete with the usual acting drunk, etc. Although this may be a factor of that group not familar with RPGA-format adventures and more experience with future adventures might fix that problem.
I have no other RPGA DMs in the area, so not really anybody else I can work with or under. The closest gaming store that runs delves, the store GMs basically take even longer then I do to run adventures so not too much help there. Basically I'm trying to introduce DCI and RPGA into my area, so I'm the pioneer as it were (and no real ability to attend conventions and what not). I do enjoy watching DMing though because you always learn something new, be it what to do or what -not- to do.
I got a handle on rules arguments fairly well, I use a two-fold rule where snap judgments have 30 seconds to make the argument in combat and even if I'm wrong we just go on and try and fix it next time. For outside of combat where a player might some off-time to read up, I extend that to about 5 minutes. I turned a fairly whiny rules lawyer into a fairly handy DM's assistant in the last year or so with this rule, since he enjoys the challenge of making his argument within the time frame in the manner I require it.
The biggest problem I have with maps is I can't draw them in advance, it'd be nice if adventure maps were in a printable format so I could print them out and put them together instead of drawing them.
The plus side though so far is my players enjoy the adventures, we ran CORE 1-2 earlier and they liked the story enough to be begging me to run the "next adventure" involving the major quest from the story awards. Even my players who aren't big on the roleplaying aspect were roleplaying alot in the final encounter.
Pre-drawn maps are in my book one of the biggest time savers, you can easily spend 5 minutes or more per map you need to draw, for some mods that is up to 5 maps for a 25-30 minute investment in time, if you have tiles pre-picked out or a map drawn already you can cut that time way way down.
Minis - Have the minis you'll need ready to go in baggies for the mod, bare minimum have them all in one bag, best case, have them separated per encounter in baggies or in cases that can have them sorted and ready to go as soon as the map is ready.
Pre-rolled initiatives for baddies. During your prep go ahead and roll initiatives for the bad guys.
Pre-roll initiative for the good guys. If you are using the cards with passive perception insight and init mod why not have the players roll 6 initiatives and put them down the right side of the card. You can even randomize it some by rolling a D6 to decide which initiative set to use. Some players don't like this though so I'd ask first if they don't mind doing it that way.
Printed mods - If you run from a laptop and are not doing it just to save printing costs/time/etc having a printed copy of the mod as well can be very handy, being able to have the paper in front of you showing 2 or more non-sequential pages at a time is often far more handy than having it open on a laptop screen where at best you can see 2 pages at a time.
Monster Cards - If you use cards for characters while playing why not print out the monsters statblock pages and cut them up so you can just mix them in with the players cards as you run through, then when a monsters turn comes up there he is, full writeup on a slip in your hand so you can decide what to do with him without flipping through the mod.
Encounter tracker sheets - what I mean by this is go through and setup a sheet before you start with the encounter name, and on it put the monsters that are in it, I tend to use excel and make columns, for skill challenges I just put it on the bottom or top of another's page and just put boxes check off for success or failure, for monsters I give each one a column and put it's name, HP Bloodied AC Fort Ref Will.. So when a player attacks a monster I don't have to check the mod page statblock or the card in my hand to see if he hit and I can mark damage right there on the sheet, crossing each guy off as he dies.
There are dozens upon dozens of little things that can be done to help keep things running fast and smooth, the best thing is to try out the suggestions you see from everyone here and incorporate the ones you like and ignore the ones you don't =)
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Pre-rolled initiatives for baddies. During your prep go ahead and roll initiatives for the bad guys.
*more good stuff snipped*
I like that idea very much, I hadn't thought of that but it makes perfect sense to have them pre-rolled. I wouldn't do it with players, they love their dice, but monsters don't care as much...
The module I have opened to the current encounter, the stat blocks, and the map.
The notepad window I use to run initiative and monster hit points and effects.
Works like a charm, at the cost of 3-5 min of prep time.
I use my laptop alot for gaming, I tried last time to do without but it would helped with initiative and what not if I had.
Prerolling initatives, good plan, I think I'll try that out next time.
I might even try and have the first set of inits for both players and monsters done, cause I know there it'll be some time as players arrive and setup.
Yep I had the minis preready, which definitely helped, I always try to have them ready as a rule unless its a home game where I'm inventing encounters off the top of my head.
I have been printing off the adventure, having the full monster stat blocks has been very helpful so I don't have to bring my MM with me all the time.
Some good suggestions, thanks guys (as I mean this gender-neutral).
I got my next adventure (or two) coming up in two weeks so we'll see how it or they go, for my local gaming club's convention at SUNY Oswego.
1. I read the module several times before playing it. I work out regularly at the gym, so my treadmill sessions are always done with a module open in front of me to read through. While this may not work for everyone, reading the module at least twice and especially highlighting important monster powers helps me to run a combat smoother.
2. I have Campaign Cartographer and some dungeon tiles. I look at the maps in the module and decide whether to use tiles or make the map on my computer. If I use tiles, I separate the tiles for each encounter and bag them separately so I don;t have to search for them. Once again, this doesn't apply to everyone, but sorting your tiles ahead of time is a time-saver. Also, if you want to draw the maps on a mat, lay it out on a sheet of graph paper beforehand. Note on each wall the length in squares and you'll be amazed how fast you can draw it when not trying to refer to the color picture in the module.
3. As was stated before, I sort the minis I will need for each encounter and have them in a case with my dice. If you do not have the proper mini for the figure,the MOST important thing is to have alike creatures in the encounter be represented by alike minis.Even if this means you Kobold Archers are represented by a group of oozes, if they are all the same, players have an easier time of the combat.
4. As soon as the players sit down at the table I pass out the signup sheet and this little gem. http://dnd4.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/dm-reference.pdf
This will save you so much hassle when doing perception and insight checks. Also, for low-level parties it pretty much negates the need to always ask if something hits a person. If you play with younger players who don't always pay attention, it helps out too.
5. I keep track of initiative and the health of my monsters on a magnetic dry-erase board about 10" x 14". It is easy to hold in my hand, and I can keep track of initiate with little difficulty. You can write down the damage your monster have taken along with any effects that affect their stats.
6. I use condition markers that my father makes.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330309155675
Some of you may have seen me using them at DDXP or Con on the Cob. They are 1" square wood tokens 1/4" thick painted to reflect various conditions. It speeds up combat IMMENSELY when you can tell who is bloodied, unconscious, dazed, slowed with a simple glance at the table. Once my players got used to them, they found that playing without them was a hassle. Another DM at our store has used small clothespins painted to represent conditions, but I find for large fingered people it is hard to control them. Whatever you use, make sure that you don't have to constantly tell the players who is bloodied or what conditions each monster has on them Some people use pop bottle rings, and others use pipe cleaners bent into rings.. This is one of the biggest slowdowns to combat in 4E.
(as a personal opinion, I cannot recommend the laser-etched tiles that Dragonfire makes. They are barely larger than a medium mini base, are hard to read from across a table and very difficult to pick up if you have large fingers or short fingernails. Imagine trying to pick up a flat dime on a table without disturbing anything around it)
7. Poker chips in lieu of action points and healing surges. This is another lifesaver. Ask how many surges the players have at the beginning and pass out white chips. They toss them in when they spend them and it is easy for the DM to see if his players are getting creamed, or if everyone seems to have enough left to last them through another encounter. Also, red poker chips for action points remind players they have them,and help you keep track of who has used them. Not to mention, everyone loves to play with poker chips.
8. Leave the giant bag of dice at home. There is no reason as a DM to have 100+ dice spread all over the table. I keep 4 of each type in a container that also holds my minis. It fits neatly behind the table and prevents you from having to hunt for dice.
9. Roll damage at the same time as attacks. I am amazed at how much time this saves. Encourage your players to do it also.
Like I said before, this is just how I prepare. It will not apply to everyone out there. Please don;t take my comments as an attack on how other people DM, they are not meant as such.
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I do pretty much what he said.
I find delegating responsibilities helps, someone to place little ring thingamajigs, (coloured bottle rings, rubber bands, etc) someone to run initiative on the board, etc.
If I use tiles, I separate the tiles for each encounter and bag them separately so I don;t have to search for them.
Another DM at our store has used small clothespins painted to represent conditions, but I find for large fingered people it is hard to control them.
Pulling out the tiles in advance really does make it easy to set up everything, even faster than drawing a map most of the time and way cheaper than printing one out!
I tried the the small clothespins with my group and no one really had a hard time using them except one person (but he was against the idea from the start). They're great because you don't have to pick up the minis and fiddle with the stuff underneath them. You just clip them and go!
I like the clothespin idea. Set it and forget it. Ron Popeil might try to copyright that for another infomercial.
If dungeon tile maps are complicated, consider photocopying the tiles, and taping them together into a seamless paper map that you just unfold at the right time (or have covered on the table). Definitely a time saver.
Pacing adventures has always been a critical skill and prodding the players back on track and to keep focused.
Keith