D&D 5E Share examples of return to simplicity and/or return to analog solutions from digital

[Brotton Goodfellow]

The table I run has 7 players on a full night. Asking them for initiative scores and plugging them into order takes too long. So what I did last session, and I plan on using this from now on, was have the players roll and remember their scores. I then call out the following ranges of die rolls: 20+, 16-20, 11-15, 6-10, 1-5. When a players range is called, they get to go. If more than one player occupies a range, the two or more players decide who goes first, second, third, etc. I roll initiative for the monsters, and if they occupy the same range as players, they get to go first no matter what.

Even simpler, get a player with the highest initiative score to roll for the party. This roll is contested by the monsters initiative score. Whichever side gets the highest goes first. During the PC's turn I will simply ask who would like to act, and keep doing so until all the players at the table have gone. I then have all the monsters act out their turns. Rinse and repeat until one side is defeated.

This all sounds far more complicated than "write down their scores in order," but honestly it saved me a lot of work as DM and made the rounds of combat go smoother and faster. I love my players, but they can get pretty distracted at the table with small talk, which translates into not being prepped for their turn, which translates into a lot of himming and hawing when it's their turn, which translates into a huge time suck. By me asking, "Who wants to go next?" has sorta put the ball in their court. If I don't get an answer in a timely fashion, I move on, or give the monsters a free turn as incentive to pay closer attention to the game.

As for digital aids, I use http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/ for all my random generation needs, and that's pretty much it. I went out and bought The Deck of Many Conditions recently as well and its saved me from having to constantly explain what the effects of conditions are to players. I simply hand them the card and tell them to read the card. It's also a nice big reminder to the player that they are suffering from a condition.

We use a battlemap and minis for 90% of combat encounters. A lot of my players need to know distances for them to imagine the world around their characters. I also enjoy drawing the dungeons/environments. But sometimes its more of a hassle to get into the details of a place, especially for small, easy encounters.

An idea I am working with is taking out the pages of the Monster Manual and PHB, three hole punching them, and then sticking them into a binder. That way if I can simply take out the page I need instead of having the entire book in front of me taking up space.

 

[oreofox]

I am only able to play online at the moment, so I just use roll20 (gonna be switching to fantasy grounds once I get the money saved up). So everything is rather easy to keep track of. Other than that, I use this computer to keep notes (which I really need to keep up on instead of pulling everything out of my kiester), photoshop for map making/editing/minis. I use physical books instead of D&DBeyond.

 

[ArwensDaughter]

Being a pretty techy person, I played around with Fight Club and one other iOS app to build encounters and use for tracking combat, but I found it to be a lot more work and pretty fiddly. So I went back to lower tech options for that.

For initiative, I picked up Matt Mercer's approach of having people roll, then asking "any one above 20?" "15-20" and so forth; it's faster for me that going around the table to get numbers, then reorganizing the list in order. I do this on a small wipe erase board that I also us to track monster HP.

I'm not good with spatial relationships in my head, so we use a grid and "minis" for most combats. My husband got me one of the Pathfinder Bestiary pawn boxes, and I later got a batch of "hero" Pathfinder pawns. Most of my players use a pathfinder pawn for their character, although a couple have their own mini (one a custom 3d printed mini, one a lego figure). I use the monster pawns a fair amount, but for medium sized creatures, I'm just as likely to use pawns I scavenged from our Sorry game. If I need more than 4 (Sorry pawns come in 4 different colors), we put small colored hair ties on some of the pawns. We use those same hair ties to mark things like concentration, hunter's mark, hex, etc. [As an aside, that's not why I bought the hair ties; My daughter needed some, but didn't specifiy size; so I bought several kinds and took the ones she rejected to use for DnD!]

I do use my iPad at the table; my prep notes are in DnD Beyond, with links to the monsters, maps, descriptions, etc. I also use it to look up spells, etc. But some things seem to just work better for me more "old school."

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Then I read an excellent article by The Angry DM called How to Manage Combat Like a Motherf$&%ing Dolphin, https://theangrygm.com/manage-combat-like-a-dolphin/

The Angry DM slapped my dumb ass back to old school. It was a moment of enlightenment. Initiative is NOT hard. Have blank sheets of "scratch" paper available and just write down the participants in initiative order. You can mark off round on the top if needed for spell effects, etc. You track hit points next to the participants' names.

Consider me slapped, too. Such good advice. Ran initiative the Angry Way today and enjoyed a much better session as a direct result. Going to take some more practice to bring it to the next level, but that's part of what we're doing here, right?

 

[pogre]

I have never delved to heavily into the tech side of prep or gameplay. I did however do maps with CC3 enhanced with some GIMP for a while. I went back to drawing and painting my own maps. I don't use any tech at the table these days.