"Focus on shorter games"? I'm excited

[Rhenny]

Like the Op, I totally agree with this design goal. In my current online campaign, we play about every week for 2 hours or so. Some games we only accomplish a large encounter with roleplaying, other games we can accomplish some exploration, roleplaying and two smaller encounters. My players enjoy both, but they really enjoy doing more in 2 hours so games with exploration, roleplay and smaller encounters are the way to go.

With 4e it took me about 1 year to figure out how to design quicker adventures that still offer my players the sense of wonder and challenge. (and I've been playing and DMing for over 30 years). 5e should enable DMs to do it right from the start.

 

[Derren]

They tried "faster combat" in 4E already. Why should they succeed this time?

Imo "shorter games" will translate into more XP/faster level up.

 

[Lanefan]

The importance of combat or non-combat things should depend on the campaign. I DO NOT want to see rules that say "combat should take 5 minutes, exploration should take 20 and social 30." That is the rules telling me how to run my game, and that's not what I'm looking for in well, any game.

I don't want to see that either; nor the reverse.

What I'd like to see are guidelines that say something along the lines of "These are the three pillars of the game, and this book describes how they work. It's up to you to decide in what proportion they will factor into your particular campaign, but be advised the game is designed on the assumption that each will be approximately equal in importance."

This all plays into the idea of "shorter games" as well, the idea that there should be an hourglass slowly ticking away the amount of time you have to do something in. Time spent doing something should be a campaign decision.

Indeed.

The problem arises when you have a new DM running a published module, and all that module has in it are combats. There's nothing there to indicate there's things that can happen between the combats, and so nothing does; even if the players are asking for more depth. It's all combat, all the time. I've seen this happen in a campaign (3.5e) a friend started. It wasn't pretty.

Lanefan

 

[techno]

I love 4e but, man, can combats take a long time and require an overwhelming amount of condition tracking overhead. I ran a 4 hour session today and it took our group 2 hours per combat encounter. We have a player who is new to D&D and he told me, "I love this game but combat takes too long." We have several teenagers playing and they deal with the slowness by texting on their phones while others are taking their turn.

I am hoping that D&D Next will still offer a good selection of tactical options (I love using grids and minis) but somehow figure out how to streamline combat so it moves faster without losing any of the excitement. This would be a significant improvement.

 

[Zustiur]

I get the feeling that 'Focus on shorter games' is about time spent at the table, not campaign length.
In today's world of instant satisfaction, 9+ hour game sessions cannot be considered the norm. How many people would sit through a 9 hour movie? Sure there are movie marathons, but even those rarely last more than 6 hours.

I think moving in this direction makes a lot of sense. The game I run typically gets played for 2-3 hours on a Friday night, once every 4-6 weeks. I can't afford to have a single segment of the game last for too long. Regardless of whether that segment is combat or exploration or social.

 

[Lwaxy]

We usually play from 4 - 8 hrs. But that just means we could get more done if things run faster.

I definitely would not want all adventures to be slimmed down just because some groups can't play as long. And I rather want slower leveling than faster.

 

[Hal G]

I see shorter games meaning ability to play and complete something in a shorter session not no long campaigns.

If this is the case I am happy due to getting older we tend not to be able to run marathons like I used too . If it means shorter long term campaigns, well then this saddens me, being a player/designer/writer I thrive for the long term goals and attachments with my characters and leaving them makes me sad.

Some of the play shorter concept I blame on MMO's which I also play. It seems they are going to quicker shorter runs/raids in order to not have people trying to complete something over a period of days, this can also be a double edged sword were people may get bored too quickly or "finish too fast" and don't feel the drama, it will be interesting to see what is next.

MMO's started out by borrowing most of their stuff from PnP, now the pendulum seems to be swinging in the other direction.

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

I love the idea of being able to run a quick 1-2 hour game just for pickup games at cons or on nights a handfull of my buddies suddenly have time to do something.

 

[erf_beto]

This is why the idea of "shorter combats" are problematic to me, combats should take exactly as long as they're supposed to. Some should take a long time and be complex tactical battles between skilled opponents. Others should go quickly, the group of lowly bandits who thought your shiny +3 Mithril Plate of Shinyness would make them a quick buck.

I think you're on to something, and what you said made me think about something else.

What if instead of minion/standard/solo *monsters* they could shift design towards minion/standard/solo *encounters*?

A group who wants highly tactical combats throughout the session should have only "solo" type encounters, while those wanting faster combats would stick to "minion" encounters, maybe using a "standard" one for say, a boss battle. Maybe this would be regulated by the number of encounters between resting points... a DM would design an adventure based not on the number of encounters per day, but rests per day (I know, this sounds railroadier).

Even XP could be handled by this. A single big encounter would be worth 5 normal encounters, without necessarily being harder: by the end of the 5th normal encounter the party should be as exhausted as the one who fought the big encounter. And preferably, the same real world time should have passed...

 

[Mercule]

The importance of combat or non-combat things should depend on the campaign. I DO NOT want to see rules that say "combat should take 5 minutes, exploration should take 20 and social 30." That is the rules telling me how to run my game, and that's not what I'm looking for in well, any game.

My hope would be that there is more flexibility in the timing -- and predictability -- of combats. I do truly enjoy the occasional massively tactical fight with the BBEG. Unfortunately, my experience w/ 3e & 4e has been that sometimes the stupid side encounter with 15 zombies takes an hour to run and a huge number of rounds/die rolls, even after the outcome is assured. Meanwhile, I've had far too many boss fights that last 2 rounds, though they don't always take less than that hour to play.

What I want is the ability to turn that boss fight into an hour of active fun and pitched battle with none of the PCs (except those few nutty wallflowers) sitting around waiting for ten minutes. Wrap that up with having the 15 zombies take a minimal amount of time so that I don't feel I need to say, "and you run into some zombies, which you quickly dispatch" just to keep the game entertaining.

I don't know what the "right" answer is. I would lean towards having a pretty streamlined core combat system with a tactical combat module. Heck, that module might even be part of the PHB.