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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kaomera" data-source="post: 3289013" data-attributes="member: 38357">I don't really see it that way. Declaration creates (for me, at least) much more of a sense that everything in a turn happens at once, rather than everyone waiting their turn to act. It's the sort of thing that gets parodied in comic strips often enough, but in actual play it's usually not really noticeable.As to your example of play: I use cards myself. I don't (currently) force PCs to delay because the player can't make up their mind immediately, and I'm thinking this may be something I need to start doing to keep things going. Part of the problem is that with some players it comes up far more often than deciding on their actions, a declaration phase would cut down on the number of places in a turn that a given player has to do stuff, and therefore mean less places I need to slap wrists, or whatever... (But that doesn't mean switching to a declaration phase system is a great idea, hence this thread: I can sound out my crazy ideas here and sort the insane from the brilliant before I bring them to the table.)I wanted to post how my typical combat goes, but... I tried to make this as accurate and snark-free as possible, but I just ended up piling all of my frustrations at the last six months' worth of sessions on it...  :\   So the result was long and silly and I'm not going to bother posting it here... Only one or two problems really come up in any given session, but I ended up writing it like they all come up at once. I just got started and I couldn't stop. I was just venting a bit, I guess...Fair enough. I'm sure it's more of a player issue than a rules issue, anyway (it nearly always is...). I'm really just looking for a way to short-cut the process of speeding up the game, and maybe that's a mistake. When I was playing AD&D the whole game was fun (or at least supposed to be), not just your own character's actions. Cheering on the other players and seeing what they did was part of the game that you where denying yourself if you where not paying attention. I don't know how to recapture that feeling, or if it's even possible... One big problem for me is that I think this is becoming self-perpetuating. Lately, knowing that some of the players just aren't going to be paying attention and combats have seemed to drag on forever, it's become more of a chore for me to provide good descriptions during play. I want to avoid a situation where I'm really not giving the players anything to pay attention to...I do know how to recapture the other half of the equation ~ that not paying attention led to dead PCs. I'm just not sure if I really want to go there.Personally, I think I must have gotten lucky in that the way we always played the declaration phase this didn't come up all that often at all. If your action was pre-empted because everyone decided that taking down that enemy Wizard was number one priority and he dropped before you got to roll dice, well at least he was down! Or, if the party ran off half-cocked and more enemies appeared during a turn, well maybe you should have scouted a bit better? We "recapped" at the start of each round anyway, "Well, here's how the battle currently stands...", and we didn't really go back over stuff just because someone wasn't paying attention (although if there was any kind of excuse for the behavior I, personally, always let it slide and let another player clue them in).I've tried (not that I've tried enough, since the problem is still there...), but for the most part I don't think the players see what the big deal is. They're used to flipping open a book, or pulling out the magic cards, or whatever during everyone else's turns... And, yeah, by comparison to that my game is running pretty smoothly. But the delays and the distraction are bugging me, and I don't want this to turn into a game I don't really want to DM...</blockquote>

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