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8 minutes/turn - is that very slow? slow? average?
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<blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6118053" data-attributes="member: 27160"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Balesir, post: 6118053, member: 27160"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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