4e / GSL Suggestions for speeding up our 4e game

[Sadrik]

Originally Posted by Mathew_Freeman

That's your problem right there, it seems to me. If you're stopping to ask "what does Dazed mean?" then you need to make sure that someone has a list of conditions printed out, or memorized, so that when the question comes up the answer is instant.

If you can nail that kind of talk by helping players learn this kind of stuff, you'll find everything goes much faster. And roll attack and damage together - I can't stress this enough. It makes everything go so much faster!

We have the DM screen, I was using dazed as an example but there are many conditions and effects that need to be looked up and then synthesized into the game.

[malraux]

You really need at least two copies of the DM screen. One for the DM and one for the players to reference.

[Ktulu]

I'm entirely too lazy to read everything in this thread, but I'll chime in with the BIGGEST time-saver my group has used:

Sheet Protectors - Binders and Accessories - Office Supplies at Office Depot

Place your power-cards (un-cut) and character sheet in the clear sheet protectors. Give every player a dry-erase expo pen.

They can easily mark off hit points, used powers, magic items, and the like. Erasing is easier than when pencil and only requires a paper towel or a finger.

Also, each player has their own binder for these character sheets, so no one's stuff gets mixed up at the table, and everything is nicely placed back on the shelf when they're done with the session. It also creates an extra dice-rolling area (lap) if you're limited with space.


Another thing I would stress is using the Character Builder. It calculates all the bonuses and adds all the extra modifiers on each power-card. This cut damage/attack counting time easily in half once we started using it.

[Pseudopsyche]

Here's an idea I would try if I were running a game at the moment: instinctive actions for PCs. Once a player's turn begins, he must immediately state what standard-action power he intends to use, otherwise he must use one of his PC's at-will powers (or a basic attack or some non-attack action). Intuitively, a PC reverts to her most familiar schticks when either she hasn't figured out what option is best or when recent events derailed her intended plan.

This way, players have a full turn around the initiative order to plan ahead. Turns will either be spent executing the plan or reverting to an at-will attack (or no power at all).

[jcayer]

I run a group of 6, so I understand the grind fairly well.
Some of the things we've done.
1. DDI Character Builder. Other people have said it, it precomputes everything - this was the biggest help to us.
2. In my group, everyone rolls their own initiative. We have post it notes that run down the side of a white board and one player drives it. Calling out who is next.
3. If someone starts counting squares or doesn't know what they are going to do, 30 second timer gets invoked. If they fail, they delay till the end of the round.
4. As the DM, I try to figure out the monsters ahead of time, sometimes even making myself a list of powers and the order to use them in.
5. Have copies of effects, etc at the table, not in the books.
6. I will often rule on something and then we look it up later. It makes combat much quicker and keeps everyone more involved.
7. The last thing is keeping everyone involved. Once a side conversation starts, it is much harder to keep the flow going. An excellent example of this is our wizard. He's recently retooled to be much more melee based. When he's in melee, totally involved in combat. When he's ranged, yapping away and distracting at least one member of the group.
8. Encourage the tacticians to discuss during someone else's turn, not during their own. That speeds things up a lot as well.

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Know when to end battles. If the monsters are clearly going to lose and it's just a matter of grinding them down, either hand wave it and say they're dead or have them run/surrender. There's no need to waste time needlessly.

[jcayer]

My players don't appreciate hand waiving it and never let anything escape alive. For them, I just make it look good. Apply double damage, etc. Just get through it quickly without being obvious.

[Agamon]

I just started a new campaign last night. I have a 6-player group, but 2 of them are taking the summer off. After playing with 4 players, well...poor guys may have signed their own death warrant....

[andrina]

Originally Posted by jbear

My group is large as well (7 or 8 players usually).

Combats are slow. Most of my players are totally new to RPG.

I have also offered personal 'tutorials' to each player outside of play. I go through their characters abilities and I explore how they can make the most of each power tactically in varying situations. I haven't seen the fruit of this as yet. Hopefully as the game continues to progress, their game agility will increase as well.

Being new to RPG myself I'd say that getting advice out of game is really helpful if part of why people are slow is because it takes them a while to process.

When I realized I was the person often holding my party up in battle on my turns I asked for suggestions from my group. From there I was able to get really good suggestions that as a new player really helped me to become quicker in battle - burn through encounter powers pretty liberally, be more cautious with daily powers, this power you're really only going to want to use in X scenario, etc..

If you have newer players I'd definitely suggest taking some time to give them even small tips just to help them recognize quicker which powers they'll want to use when.

[andrina]

Originally Posted by Sadrik

We have the DM screen, I was using dazed as an example but there are many conditions and effects that need to be looked up and then synthesized into the game.

To help with remembering conditions, one person in my group bought some cheap colored foam from Hobby Lobby, he then cut it into little squares that could be slid underneath a min or cut holes into it so that it could be hung off of a min's arm.

We have color-coded squares for everything, from blue for marked by the fighter, to pink for my hunter's quarry, a white square that goes under for the blind condition, etc.

He also created a nifty little sign which sits off to the side where everyone can easily glance at it which spells out which color = which condition, and then next to the condition has the affects of said condition listed. It helps quite a bit.

We also have wire frames which are the correct sizes for a variety of zones which may crop up during game play so that we can readily remember where the zone is and easily see which min's are within the zone.