Gaming Efficiency: do you get a lot done in a session

[Ringlerun]

I just spent all day playing Skyrim. I completed 2 quests, got 2 levels and training in smithing for both levels.

That process made me think about efficiency as it relates to the gaming table.

When you sit down for a 4-6 hour session (maybe longer for some groups), how much are you really getting done?

The bulk of my goal in Skyrim today was to get the 5 ranks per level in Smithing training. I needed about 2k per rank, and I had to hunt and scrabble for it. I hunted and killed deer for leather across miles of Skyrim, I went through 2 "dungeons" to kill people and take all of their stuff. Etc. It seemed a lot of my time was spent walking slowly back out of the dungeon so I could fast travel, and then walking slowly in town so I could sell. All because I'd filled up on loot and faced ZERO threats on my way out.

If there was a GM, he wasted my time making me "play" through walking out fully encumbered. He wasted my time making me "play" through selling to each vendor.

While there's some times its good to take your time, smell the roses and talk to the gate guard, once it gets repetitive, time is being wasted with no real value.

For Skyrim as a GM'd game, that means let me fast travel from inside the dungeon if I'm "safe" and let me quick sell my loot without having to actually go to each individual vendor (like a menu to pick a vendor and then start selling, skipping the walking and finding of shopkeeps). Either that, or actually make some monsters ENTER the dungeon behind me after I start killing my way through, so I actually have something to worry about on my way out.

I already use a lot of "fast" combat tricks to make combat go faster and run efficiently.

I advocate skipping useless scenes to buy/sell stuff, enter gates, especially after the second time (you've already met the NPC, unless he has something special to say, just finish your business).

I hand out a rough draft of the player's version of the dungeon map, to expedite navigation, rather than doing the traditional dungeon crawl and make the players map everything.

If you look at your own game, is there anything your group is doing well? Anything that your group could be more efficient at.

I would never advocate adopting practices that "speed up the game" to where even the fun is skipped. But given how our time is valuable, are we spending our time in-game on the stuff our players really want to be doing?

You can not equate the game experience of a computer game with that of a table top rpg. The computer game experience is scripted with only a few outcomes. Thats why after you have heard what npc x has to say it just gets annoying having his speech bubble pop up every time you want to trade or sell. Tabletop games are dynamic, not scripted and anything is possible. Why would you want to fast track through important roleplaying elements. Trying to get your ill gotten loot from the dungeon to the town could be an adventure in itself. If your going to go so far as to skip what you class as useless scenes you might as well skip the whole adventure add a bunch of xp and roll loot.

 

[Water Bob]

Fast or slow, I just try to keep it interesting. We've had all role-play sessions where weeks and years passed, and we've had all combat sessions where not a complete minute passed between game sessions.

As long as the game is fun and feels well paced, I don't really care how much we get done. It's not a race to the finish. It's about the journey.

 

[DragonLancer]

Depends on the individual session. There are some nights my group sits down and is in the zone, and we get shed loads done. Then there are other nights where people are tired or something, and we struggle to get far. Thankfully most of the time we hit a happy medium.

 

[Janx]

You can not equate the game experience of a computer game with that of a table top rpg. The computer game experience is scripted with only a few outcomes. Thats why after you have heard what npc x has to say it just gets annoying having his speech bubble pop up every time you want to trade or sell. Tabletop games are dynamic, not scripted and anything is possible. Why would you want to fast track through important roleplaying elements. Trying to get your ill gotten loot from the dungeon to the town could be an adventure in itself. If your going to go so far as to skip what you class as useless scenes you might as well skip the whole adventure add a bunch of xp and roll loot.

It was an analogy. If Skyrim was really being controlled by a real GM, that GM chose not to make leaving the dungeon be dangerous or interesting, merely tedious. He also chose not to make the town or NPCs more variable or interesting.

Since nothing happened on the way back to the dungeon entrance and my horse where I can fast travel, and nothing happened in town as I slow walked to each shop-keep to sell, that was a lot of wasted time.

It's really not about Skyrim. It's really about observing your own game and seeing where you waste time and deciding if that's worth fixing.

 

[steeldragons]

I was going to multi-quote people and agree with this and that.

But really, it's all been said. I'd be quoting pieces of everyone! lol.

Depends on the group, the playstyle preference, the DM, the weather and the moon.

There've been sessions that fly by with tons of action. Sessions that fly by with a single combat or challenge! Sessions that fly by with tons of RPing around the town/tavern/marketplace. Sessions that get bogged down in trivialities...but the players are really into it, not matter how much I want to get to the evil demon sacrificing the prince on a pile of treasure 50 feet down the next corridor.

Sessions that simply go nowhere because before we know it, 3 hours have gone by before we pick up any dice while we discuss our lives, philosophy, what happened last session, alignment definitions, what we had for lunch, you name it...and at the end of the session, "Well, that was great. We had one battle and moved two rooms further in the dungeon. See ya next week."

But everyone had "fun". And at the end of the [session] day, that's really all anybody wants or could ask for. [EDITTING clarification: "...anybody I would want to be playing with/have in my group wants..." /EDIT]

Now, if those "getting nowhere" sessions start becoming too-often-repeated...people generally know/"get it" and realize the fun is slipping and we get back on track. If last session was 95% RPing in the marketplace or talking to this particular NPC, then we're most likely "handwaving the rest of that afternoon", summing up what happened in two sentences and jumping into the next chapter/scene "later that evening...".

It's really just a matter of what the people in the group are looking for/to do with that session. There's really no "formula" for speeding up the game in a reliable/measurable way that is comparable to a computer game. These are free-willed human beings we're [personally/directly] interacting with.

--SD

 

[Balesir]

From the OP: "Are we spending our time in-game on the stuff our players really want to be doing?"

This is the real nub, I think. The trick to the question "how much stuff did we get done?" is to define "stuff". Thinking (and talking) about what it is about the sessions that you find fun (so that you can maximise it) and what it is that you don't (so that you can minimise it) is well worthwhile, it seems to me.

We spend much of our 4E sessions running combat, but since the group has always enjoyed running "action scenes" (with shedloads of roleplaying and tons of kibitzing and cleverness showing off going on) in RPGs, that works fine.

Our Hârn group, on the other hand, is much more focussed around exploring the world, the situations and the characters - a totally different aesthetic. A 3 hour combat here would be a "boring waste" - where in the D&D group it would probably be a blast.

 

[NewJeffCT]

We never get as much done as I plan out as DM - I had thought my 3.5E campaign would go from level 1 to around 14/15 and take 18 months. It ran from level 1 to level 18 and took almost 30 months.

In terms of individual sessions, once we hit level 9/10 in 3.5E, a single combat usually took just about an entire 4+ hour session, and once they hit level 13/14 or so, most of the climactic combats took 2 entire sessions to go through.

So far, we've been playing my 4E game for 21 months and the group is only at level 10, so we seem to be leveling more slowly than we did in 3.5E. However, we do seem to get 2-3-4 combats in each session, as well as skill challenges and more role playing. So, we get more accomplished in game, but the group seems to level up more slowly. (That's also partly due to scheduling - we have 3 players that are on strict every 2 weeks schedule, so if one session has to be canceled, we don't game for four weeks.)

 

[Janx]

In terms of individual sessions, once we hit level 9/10 in 3.5E, a single combat usually took just about an entire 4+ hour session, and once they hit level 13/14 or so, most of the climactic combats took 2 entire sessions to go through.

Is there a reason combat is taking so long?

Are there too many extraneous combats (if all high level combats last 4 hours, were all those combats necessary, or were some just filler)?

Speedy combat is one thing my group does well. We have a process that we follow and it goes quicker. Fast enough that our example was when I brought a buddy with to meet up with my old gang at a half-way point. We got there, and they were already mid-combat. We waited. we napped. and finally got our introduction combat scene. 15 minutes later, back to the other party. More napping, another 15 minute combat, and so on, until both parties met up in the middle.

Let's just say there was a world of difference in combat running approach. We did not dick around on our turns. They did.

To their defense, we were running fighter-oriented PCs, they had a caster that buffed the stuffing out of them. But even they were shocked at how fast we plowed through the basically the same encounter they did.

Combat is only one part of the equation. In some ways, it's the easiest to "fix". Commit to acting quickly, follow some advice on speeding it up (my blog has an article on my process). It will at least make sure combat is going as fast as it can, per your gaming preference.

The other stuff is much more subjective. Like talking to gate guards. It probably DOES make sense to talk to the gate guard the first time. But that scene should impart something useful. If the next time is just a rehash of pretty much the same dialogue (like most CRPGs), sum it up and skip it.

Group chatter is probably another tricky topic. Hopefully, these are all your friends, so you genuinely do want to talk to them and stuff. But too much cross-talk gets in the way of the progress of the game, which should be just as much fun as just BSing.

This might be where the GM can reign it in, by realizing the game is breaking down and either call a break or keep the pace up so lulls in the game don't lead to chatter.

Group planning and decisiveness is another issue. Right before we break into the throne room to kill the king, we like to pause the game and plan out our strategy. Not realistic, but my group likes to be able to do that. If we did that before every fight, that's a problem. If we dither at the planning stage, we waste game time, and often times just repeat ourselves.

The GM is once again, in a spot to monitor and reign it in. Being able to pause and plan is sort of a GM gift, not a right. After all, planning takes time, and technically real game time should be going by and thus risking exposure to the enemy. planning breaks should be limited to "special" occasions. otherwise, plantime=gametime and the party is at risk of detection. If the party isn't getting anywhere in discussions (usually detectable because the conversation has repeated itself), the GM may need to call it to a close with a "you've used up your free pause, make a decision or what happens next happens in gametime"

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Depends on the individual session. There are some nights my group sits down and is in the zone, and we get shed loads done. Then there are other nights where people are tired or something, and we struggle to get far. Thankfully most of the time we hit a happy medium.

This is us, except our sessions are long ones on Saturdays, several weeks apart. The variance is almost entirely how much each player brings to the table that day, too. System has some minor effect, and if I'm really tired, I need more prep work done to keep it moving--but the rest is the players.

I used to get frustrated by this. Now if the players are tired but having a grand time socializing, I don't worry about it. I don't enjoy it as much, but it also means less prep work for me next session. It evens out.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Is there a reason combat is taking so long?

Are there too many extraneous combats (if all high level combats last 4 hours, were all those combats necessary, or were some just filler)?

My gaming group is very large - the 3.5E campaign was myself as DM and 8 players, a couple of whom were not very experienced players.

I was not able to run extraneous combats in 3.5E since combats took so long, there was no point in a pointless combat. I have been running some extraneous combats in 4E.

Once games got to higher levels, a lot of the spellcasters were focused on buffing themselves and the party, or debuffing the enemy, and that led to calculations and recalculations on just about every turn in the initiative order. It was often a lot of flinging dispel magics back & forth until everybody was completely debuffed.

And, with each PC spellcaster (a sorcerer, a cleric and a psion PC, not to mention an NPC sorcerer and a cleric/paladin NPC ally), they often each had 60-80-100 options to choose from each round - while my high level bad guys often did as well, and sometimes even more options. Plus, you had to track templates, class abilities, feat bonuses, skill synergies, magic item bonuses and a whole lot more.

Sometimes, I was the logjam as DM. The players would throw a curveball at me in game, and I had to decide which of 100 options my archmage or my lich or my rakshasa or my cleric had to pick, and since they were a lot smarter than me, I would then take a minute or two to decide.

Plus, since I had such a big group, they dished out HUGE amounts of damage each round, so I could not just put one monster on the table. I did that once when the group was level 13 and put a CR:18 blue dragon on the table and gave it MAX hit points (each hit die had 8 hit points per hit die, plus I gave it higher than standard CON as well) and it was fully buffed with surprise, and it was almost wiped out by the end of the PCs' first round. So, I had to put a bad guy, with some sub-boss bad guys and some designated healers and dispellers, as well as a bunch of tough guys on the table for melee damage and to block the PC melee types just to give the party a good challenge.