Dm’ing

I thought I’d ramble on about DM’ing. I’ve been listening to some podcasts from gaming groups around the world and as a non-participant passive listener it really stands out when things slow down due the players and the DM action and inaction and reaction.

Listening to these is a very good way for any DM to have an opportunity to sit back and go, “yeah I do that and I can see it’s hurting the flow” or “I need to avoid doing that.” or “That’s a pretty cool trick, I’m going to start doing that.”

I know I and many others have posted tips on how to make game play faster but listening to others you can really see how those tips might help out. One thing that really stands out as a big time waster is players who aren’t ready on their turn and DM’s that spend time asking the same question over and over again. I hear it time and time again,DM: “Bob, what do you do?” and then Bob: “Uh who’s left? How many hit points does he have left? Is Steve bloodied?” and it’s obvious that Bob hasn’t been paying attention at all the 10 minutes prior to that because ‘it wasn’t his turn’ yet and DM: “Does a 12 hit?”

And that really needs to be worked on. 4th Edition is the best edition yet in terms of rewarding teamwork other than “We all hit the monster.” With all the ways a typical party has to move, shift, buff and debuff each other and the monsters it simply stands to reason that the players SHOULD be interested even when it’s not there turn but they typically don’t seem to be.

One cause of this is definitely the DM is just moving pretty slowly overall and to some extent that’s excusable because the poor sap that has to be the DM (present company excluded, I love DM’ing) is running typically a large handful of creatures with an even bigger handful of powers and with even more targets to deal with.

But in other ways I hear them doing things that slow the game down. Slow games lead to player in-attention which leads to slow games. A vicious cycle.

A DM really should never have to roll a die and then ask a player if it hit. Every DM should have their players defenses on a cheat sheet right in front of them. Preferably in large type and color coded to avoid mistakes.

As the DM takes his turn all the players should hear is *dice rattle* “Bob the two plate wearing guards both try to beat your head in with a mace, you notice they time their swings so that as you dodge one, you open your defenses up to the other but only one connects with you. You get hit for 8 points of damage.”. (The guards get an attack bonus when multiples of them are attacking the same guy and the DM is letting the player know that without just coming out and telling him). Instead what I hear over and over is DM: “I rolled a 14 versus your… AC Bob, does that hit?” *pause while Bob looks it up* “Yes? Okay you take… 8 damage.”  Subtle or not so subtle immersion breaker and definitely a time waster with the later scenario.

Part of the problem also stems from the fact that players do now have options in combat other than “I roll to hit.”  They now have attacks that do big damage, or small damage plus some benefit.  Attacks that help a team mate out by making them stronger or by weaking their target.  They have attacks they can use all the time and ones they should really be saving up for the Big Bad.  So their options and choices are extremely more varied with this edition than any previous one. And this leads to Choice Overload that ends up with a lot of “Should I use this and get this or use this and get that?” conversations.  Which slows things down.

So I’d like to offer the thoughts that the DM should keep the game moving every way he can and that he encourage players to stay focused on the game at hand by keeping his side of the combat as fast as possible.  I don’t recommend that the DM roll one initiative for all the bad guys but rather one initiative per type of bad guy or per group of bad guys.  This interweaves the DM’s actions with the players so they have less of a ‘down time’ as a group and he has to deal with fewer things at one time.

I also really encourage a timer much like in speed chess either real or just guesstimated.  The player gets X seconds to describe what their character is going to be doing at least in general terms, “I’m going to attack that zombie brute that’s after the cleric.” but if they were able to say, “I’m going to use my Reaping Strike on the brute.” even better.

If necessary encourage them with in game benefits: “If you announce your characters full actions within 30 seconds of my saying you’re up, you get a +1 bonus on your attack roll as your enemies have a hard time dealing with your combat speed. If you take longer than 60 seconds then you automatically reserve your turn and the next person goes.”

It’s not so much that I want to play the game as fast as possible but I think a smooth fast flow keeps everyone interested and involved and that alone is worth the being considered a bit of a PITA DM.

And it would make the podcasts more interesting to listen to…

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