D&D General What wastes time at your table?

[DemoMonkey]

Players speaking. It really gets in the way of the novel I'm narrating for them.

 

[mrpopstar]

Hanging out and small talk before the game - which is an important part of the socialization but takes away from game time.

It's amazing what half an hour can do! If your game starts at 8:30pm, it won't fire up until 9pm. If you acknowledge that and move the start time to 9pm, the game won't fire up until 9:30pm.

Players who aren't paying attention, forget their characters' names. ("It's Ragnar's turn. What's Ragnar doing? Jim! Jim, what are you doing on your turn?" "Sorry, I forgot I was Ragnar.")

 

[mrpopstar]

I slash him with my sword. I roll 12. I have a +7 attack bonus. That's... 16? Looks around, see other players making no with their head... Err.... that's... 19. I hit. Rolls his 3d6+5 damage. 4 and 5 that's.... 9 sighs all around and 3 so it's... 27, plus 5, that's 32. Other players interjects no, that's 17. Ah? Looks confused, concentrate on the three dice. Oh, yes, you're right, that's 17, sorry. Me: next player. Err, sorry, after rolling damage I can choose to add a maneuver dice... I decide that... rolls again...

My fights tend to last never more than 3 rounds, and one hour.

In defense of those who struggle with simple arithmetic, it's more about being on the spot than it is about not being able to do math.

I was a strong math student, but you'd never know it if you ask me to make change.

 

[Nefermandias]

Playing online introduced a lot more "dead space" in the game, and it took me a while to figure out why. It usually occurs after I describe a room or a situation, and wait for the players to react.

"What do you do?"

"..."

What I figure out is that at a table, the players can read each other's body language to see who is going to speak up, and online they can't, so they tend to wait extra long before speaking.

I've been trying to solve this by just calling out what characters I think would be most likely to react first.

"Paladin, you've seen interesting carvings like this before, how do you investigate?"

"Warlock, you're usually the first to speak, shay do you do?"

"Rogue, do you do anything before the barbarian opens the door?"

This. That's by far, the biggest issue we have had since we switched to online.

 

[Yora]

What used to waste a lot of time is me trying to figure out the initiative order for a fight since my brain gets overloaded with trying to put 8 numbers in order while listening to the players discussing strategy.

The even bigger time sink was players being surprised that it's their turn and taking two minutes to figure out what's actually going on in a fight and then another three minutes to decide on what they want to do with their turn, and consequently all other players getting bored and distracted and then being surprised that it's their turn... and so on until the fight is over.

The solution to both issues was to use group initiative, which has all the PCs go on the same turn, in whatever order the players are ready to tell me what they want to do. Not only are all players do their thinking time simultaneously, they also don't get surprised that it's their turn which cuts each player's thinking time down even more.

 

[Thunder Brother]

Self-inflicted red herrings. I don't whether I'm terrible at dropping obvious clues or my players just struggle with mysteries, but they will often come to downright strange interpretations of whatever is happening around them. To be fair, what's obvious to the DM is not always obvious to the players, even the simple stuff.

That and indecisiveness during combat. Just go with your first instinct. It'll probably work out fine.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I don't mind the small talk, especially right now, when people still need that socialization and connection. What bothers me is when people are routinely late for no reason. Especially right now, when we're gaming online and all a person has to do is fire up their computer or smartphone. But hey, it gives us all an excuse for said small talk while we wait.

Hanging out and small talk before the game - which is an important part of the socialization but takes away from game time.

The most damaging wasted time during a game is probably when a person's turn rolls around and they just sit there, cogitating and doing nothing while they come up with what they want to do right then and there. It might take less time than some other wastes, but it has a greater impact as it sucks out all the drama and excitement of the battle. People's phones come out, side-conversations start. All because one person couldn't figure out "I cast Eldritch Blast" before their turn came around.

 

[Zio_the_dark]

When playing with my son always going cinematics with all its characters moves and always trying to yell orders to all its companions ^^
He can't say "I attack the orc with my sword" but instead always in the style "I try to aim the eye of the orc with my sword and stab him through the eye in a fearless blow while I yell at Bob to target the goblin right behind the crate with his bow!", then throwing its dices...

Seriously I try to keep a quick two-page sheet with all rules I think will be useful to avoid looking through the books during gameplay and I always adjudicate an unattended situation on the fly and never get any complain about that but my players are more the type of "let the GM do the rules, I won't complain" rather than "Hey the rule says this so we should you're wrong about that".

Edit: I did not tell even half of what my son is really saying when he's taking his turn it was a shortcut

Edit: I also use a tool to roll initiative for monsters (only roll their attack manually)

 

[aco175]

Oh, is it my turn.

 

[el-remmen]

I have a dry erase board on the wall behind me with the initiative order clearly on it - so everyone can see when they act in the round. I also use this to track spell durations/concentrations.