8 minutes/turn - is that very slow? slow? average?

[keterys]

Eh, anecdotal but some stats from recent play and DMing with three different groups:
Playing (Part of a Playtest, so we actually timed - we actually also chatted quite a bit, but usually while the DM setup stuff or in ways to not derail acting PC) - 5 PCs, level 12, 5 combats took 4 hours (for clarity, the RP + SkCs were another 4.5 hours), with about 4 of those hours being combat. I believe the average was 2 full rounds per combat, with the biggest delay coming at the start of each combat as the DM setup. So, 10 PC turns + DM actions & setup at 48 minutes each => 2-4 minute turns. That does include some amount of RP (we tend to try to capture NPCs to talk to them), and at least one combat we avoided attacking an NPC for 2 rounds because we were trying not to fight him.

DMing, I DMed groups of 6 and 7 through a level 26 adventure with 8 combat encounters. Average of say 2.5 rounds per encounter. Both groups did about 10 hours of combat (so 75 minutes per encounter). (I increased tempo for the group of 7 because they had a short cut off point and they had a ton of people) So, 6 person group was 15 player turns + DM turns + setup => ~3-4 minute turns. 7 player group was 17.5 player turns + DM turns + setup => ~3 minute turns.

Anecdotal, of course, but that's 3 separate groups (with me as a common element, of course). I'll admit I'm a much faster DM than the one I was playing with.

 

[Blackbrrd]

What I have done and what I plan to do next time I DM:
Firstly, I want to try a initiative tracker that is visible to both me and the players. Probably some stiff cardboard figures or something.

When it's somebody's turn I will tell that player he is up, and say who's next. If the first player hasn't declared his action within 10-20 seconds I will jump to the next player - or monster. I will continue down the initiative order until the slow players declares what he wants to do. To start with, I won't change the initiative order, it isn't meant as any punishment, but just a way to speed up the game.

Maybe you should make your players create a cheat-sheet for their character? The character sheet from the character generator will fast become 5 pages long. A typical cheat sheet could have a line for each power with to-hit, vs defense, damage and a note so you remember special effects and such.

Cheat sheet example for my current character:
At-will
Magic Missile 20 range 9 damage auto-hit
Scorching Burst 10 range, burst 1, +14vs will, 1d6+9 dmg
Arc Lightning 10 range, two targets +13 vs ref, 1d6+8 dmg

Encounter (utility)
Shield interrupt +4ac/ref until next round
Infernal Wrath free reaction to being hit, 1d6+6 damage

Encounter
Glorious Presence Close burst 2 enemy, +13 vs will, 2d6+8 dmg, push 1sq, +1 tmp hp.
Fire Shroud Close burst 3 enemy, +14 vs ref, 1d8+9 ongoing 5 save
Lightning Bolt 3 enemy 10 range +13 vs ref, 2d6+8 dmg/miss half

Daily (utility)
Summon Iron Cohort minor burst 2, same defences (AC+2), bloodied hp, interrupt range/melee and take the damage if hit
Healing word minor burst 5, healing surge+2d6

Daily
Fountain of Flame 10 range burst 1 enemy, +14 vs ref, 3d8+9dmg/half, zone 5 damage enter/end.
Stinking cloud 20 range, burst 2, +13 vs fort, 1d10+8 dmg. Zone (sustain minor) 11dmg enter/start full concealment -5, edges partial concealment -2.

 

[Balesir]

I'm just "cooling down" from a weekend run of the campaign I DM for 7 players that is currently at late-Paragon. Our pace tends to be slow, partly because we have all weekend and the aim is part socialising because we are all old friends who live somewhat dispersed around the country.

We had a ~4 round combat-that-became-a-negotiation that took ~1 hour in total (including setup and in-character conversation), a brutal 15 round under-boss fight that took ~6 hours (roughly 20 minutes per round, I guesstimate, with folks sometimes out getting drinks, meals etc.) and another fairly tough combat that took 7 rounds and ~4 hours including a break for lunch.

I think the key thing, as [MENTION=336]D'karr[/MENTION] already said, is whether folks are engaged. Your problem is not so much the time per turn as the folks drifting off/unengaging when it's not their turn. The players in our game are generally continuously engaged, whether it's their turn or not. Some of them have interrupts/reactions to spend, some are marking enemies, all are suggesting synergistic moves that could be started or at least responding to questions about intentions/desires ("I was gonna move back, but do you want a flank against this guy on your turn?"). AS GM I try to help this engagement by making sure the monsters act such that the situation is always changing, always fluid. This weekend, for example, the party was getting well settled with a line of defenders (2 fighters and a paladin) in front and the wizard and 3 strikers behind in a cave/dungeon room, so I had the flying artillery from the nest-ledges fly over the "battle line" to engage the "soft underbelly" directly in the most constricted, most claustrophobic battle of the weekend.

Finally, on the "cheat sheet" - not a bad idea, but I would categorise the powers by action type, not by daily/encounter/at-will. We generally use power cards as separate cards, in Magic-card style wallets; this allows discarding the 'used' powers (or just turning them over) and the cards can be organised into "Standard", "Move", "Minor" and "Triggered" classifications, which makes finding/checking them quicker and easier. Actually, we handle resources with props a lot; glass beads for healing surges (red), action points (silver) and magic item uses (blue), coins for 'healing word'-type uses, item cards for mundane gear and so on. Some of the later dungeon floorplan sets had pogs for marking spell effects on the battlemap, too, and I use Monster Vault pogs as bases under the minis to mark bloodied status and number multiples of monsters.

In a way, I think using minis and 3-D battlemap setups (using Jenga blocks and 1" wooden cubes from handicraft shops with dungeon floorplans) helps keep the players engaged. The eye-candy helps visualise the scene from their character's viewpoint and the players keep thinking about the situation they are in and what they plan to do next as a result.

 

[Quickleaf]

My first question on this would be, "was everyone still enjoying themselves even with the long turns?" If the answer is some were looking for something else to do, then you have an issue that should be addressed. If not then carry on, and keep enjoying the game at whatever pace it's progressing.

Yes, there's an issue. At various points players were away from the table, the player connecting via Skype was playing Star Wars simultaneously, one of the players was constantly checking his facebook on iPad, another was playing Magic Online on iPad. I had to repeat myself a lot, fill in players who were away from the table what was going on, the leader's benefits didn't get applied a couple times because others forgot and he wasn't present to remind them, and conditional "I forgot" modifiers were being tossed at me left and right!

For what it's worth, here's my "analysis" of the players:

Parent 1, experienced player/DM - Cavalier/Vampire, Actor, an insane amount of conditional modifiers that slows things down
Parent 2, experienced 4e player/DM - Elementalist, Watcher/Storyteller, often suffers from analysis paralysis, and usually tending to the newborn
Experienced player/DM, couple - Wizard, Actor/Thinker, takes a bit longer for being a controller & trying outside of the box stuff (which is usually quite fun!), he helps his partner when he can
Chinese-Native Speaker, couple - Barbarian, Slayer, still shaky on the rules and sometimes unsure what to do, but has translation of 4e barbarian which has helped her, and played this PC at heroic tier before
Wizards of the Coast Rep, host - Bard/Warlord, Instigator/Power Gamer, very savvy player but at the same time he's playing a build which requires him to pay lots of attention to other players, and he's one of the guys getting bored and distracted cause of long turns
Moderately experienced player, host - Fighter, Thinker/Power Gamer, pretty efficient on taking his turns except he's playing a multi-attacker build which can get complicated on nova rounds, not as into the role-play side of things, getting bored with long turns
New Guy on Skype - Paladin, Actor?, This campaign is his first time playing D&D in any form, and while he has taken to the role-playing quite naturally, he is often unfamiliar with the rules and spends a lot of time making decisions, getting bored with long turns

Other time saving tricks I've used: Have PC defenses listed on a page behind my DM screen, so I don't have to continually ask "Your AC is...23, yeah?" Write out monster defenses on index cards and have players pass them around as they take their turns, so they don't have to continually ask whether they've hit. Have everyone roll attacks and damage at the same time. (I actually need to remind myself of these for the next session!)

This is a view "from the player's side" of the monster/PC defense cards listed in initiative order from left to right. I've been doing this consistently in this new campaign. Guess what? After 12 sessions, most of the time players still ask "does a 27 hit?" No one has any major vision problems and I know the defenses are legible because when I remind folks to look at the monster defenses written on the card they go "ah, yes that hits". Old habits die very hard it would seem. I've gotten tired of reminding everyone.

We also have other external factors causing slowness in our group, most noticeably the presence of young children in the immediate environs (our sessions double as "D&D creche").

Just one newborn in our group, and the parents do a great job of swapping off between turns, so the long turns can't be blamed on the baby

I don't have a lot of suggestion for actually speeding thing up. Good character sheets are one pretty important tool, I think (and this is where controllers make it harder, because their often fiddly details are harder to reduce to a single sheet). Deeming a PC to have delayed if his/her player is absent from the table is another thing I do from time to time. And once a player has moved his/her PC and taken a standard action, if s/he is still wondering about whether or not to take a minor action and if so which one I will generally move on, and let the buffing/healing be resolved by that player with the other affected players.

A good step towards the distracted players issue is to ban smartphones at the table.

So, suggestions like egg-timers, auto-delays, and banning smartphones I may end up using, but I'd rather try a carrot before a stick approach, or rather, address the problem at the source rather than doing something top-down with limited effect. Also, myself and one of my players are strongly opposed to egg-timers because it changes the vibe from "game" to "something else" (for us).

Also, I think some kind of compromise is needed between different play styles - the power-gamers aren't as interested in other peoples' turns, whereas the more narrative-players are. No judgment, just a fact. For example, one of the power-gamers felt it was more rude for others to take 8 minutes on their turn than it was for players to get distracted when bored. On the other hand, getting so distracted that it disrupts the game could be construed as rude. I understand both sides.

8 minute turns is really long. That means a 6-PC group is taking 2.5 hours to do a 3 round fight.

Without factoring in the monsters

There's plenty of ways to make people play faster, but the important way to do it is to make them actually want to do so. Whether that's via carrot, stick, shame, whatever you got. And, yes, that means some people aren't allowed to play certain types of PCs. Or do crossword puzzles off-turn. Or on turn. Whatever is somehow making that happen.

My most important "job" as DM is pacing. As a DM I "MUST, MUST, MUST" regulate pacing. If the game is bogging down it is my "job" to correct the issues causing it. Sometimes the side conversations are because everyone is having a good time. The game is a social experience after all. So you have to be cognizant about that. We have about a 30-45 minute decompress time before starting to play to let everyone socialize. After that we're usually in the mood to play. BTW, there have been a handful of occasions where we simply decided to do something else because we were just "not in the mood" to game that day. It's good to play with friends because we enjoy each others company even when we're not playing the game.

Right now, I'm just reflecting that there's an issue, and letting the players come up with solutions.

I'm not sure what else I can do as DM that will constructively address the source of what is, essentially, a player problem.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I used to go with all sorts of aids and whatnot, markers and cards and etc etc etc. Now I just have a pencil and lots of blank paper. Forward velocity is the key element. I make the players all track everything that impacts them in a positive way, if they have a buff or another pc gives a buff for some reason, they know to call it out when it comes into play. likewise for debuffs that help them, they need to call them out. We don't go back for some missed reaction or whatever, we just go forward.

MOSTLY though the forward momentum is in terms of narrative and plot. If things EVER start to get slow or dull, then something new happens. The situation gets resolved somehow or changes or a new threat appears, or whatever. The deadly part is that glassy-eyed state that could set in, even with 1 minute turns per player 45 minutes into a fight that still has 20 minutes to go and you know one way or another you're going to win and not much is really happening. The thing is in that situation the players start getting wrapped up in resource management and such, which is OK, but too much of it is just deadly.

Keep it new, keep it fresh, extemporize, create plot twists, disasters, etc. Once I had a boring bit where a party was slugging it out with an elite bad guy in the top of a tower. So I had the tower collapse. All of a sudden it went from "there are going to be 4 more rounds of this guy all surrounded and slugging it out" to "oh crum! We gotta run! Don't let that guy get away! No no watch out for that falling block of... oh ouch!" Clearly that's a strong reaction, clearly collapsing the dungeon on a fight isn't going to work every time, but you CAN find a lot of variations of that, plus maybe just having surrenders, a few 'early deaths', some "reinforcements arrived!" (maybe they're just some minions but they can spice things up) or the enemy retreats, the party discovers a need to hurry on to elsewhere and breaks off, etc.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I was gonna suggest a solo monster that punishes players when they take too long. For example, a solo creature could have powers like

Stop taking so long
Interrupt, Trigger: The player turn is longer then 45 seconds.
Attack vs. AC
Hit: 2d8 +5 damage
Effect: This power refreshes whenever a player's turn is longer then a minute.

My 4Eisms is off but you get the idea

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Other time saving tricks I've used: Have PC defenses listed on a page behind my DM screen, so I don't have to continually ask "Your AC is...23, yeah?"

How can that work?

In our group, we have so many freaking conditional bonuses, PCs' effective AC and other defenses shift from turn to turn.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

From personal experience, the problem that we found was that everyone wanted to get the most out of their turn and they would discuss strategy amongst each other because they found out the hard way that if you don't communicate then you can find yourself in trouble. We would have guys come up with elaborate plans on their turn, only to find that it was screwed up because a few enemies were forced moved by another player on his turn so when that person's turn came around they had to think of something else. Sure combat go faster if everyone just 'pew pew' with an at-will but that became even more boring.

Another thing was all the 'floating modifiers' that everyone was trying to keep track of. The game is notorious for it's slow combat so it's not that you are doing anything wrong.

 

[Quickleaf]

How can that work?

In our group, we have so many freaking conditional bonuses, PCs' effective AC and other defenses shift from turn to turn.

While I do display PC defenses on cards, my group has the same issue with conditional modifiers. I kind of wish players would not pick feats/traits/powers which boost defenses because of the tracking headache, but I'm not going to dictate to players how to make their characters.

Another thing was all the 'floating modifiers' that everyone was trying to keep track of. The game is notorious for it's slow combat so it's not that you are doing anything wrong.

Well, while that may be true, 8-minute turns is *way* longer than what other groups experience. So there's definitely something "unique" to my group going on.

 

[pemerton]

I provoke attacks of opportunity, and trigger combat challenge with impunity.

Likewise. But not so much with impunity as with forgetfullness - after GMing a fighter for 4 years I still get caught without thinking.