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

[Rogue Agent]

Is there a reason combat is taking so long?

I would guess either inefficient record-keeping or analysis paralysis or both.

Actual mechanical resolution in 3E increases slightly in the case of iterative attacks, but otherwise remains essentially unchanged at higher levels. Meanwhile, actual encounter length in terms of the number of rounds is generally decreasing for a number of reasons. So the only possible explanation for high-level combats taking more table time to resolve is that the players or GM are taking longer to make their decisions and manage their character sheets.

This type of stuff all boils down to variations of the perfect being the enemy of the good.

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.

To generalize that: It's the GM's responsibility to identify the next meaningful interaction and/or choice and cut to that point (at most summarizing the transition).

This is not an easy skill to master and is as much art as science, but it's essential to effective session pacing. (One of the advantages of a good dungeon crawl for newb GMs is that it provides a sufficient density of meaningful choices that it doesn't require them to think about pacing.)

 

[Janx]

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.

I'd point you to my blog article, but the whole blog sub system has vanished.

I see a couple of things from this block I quoted.

Yes, spell casters do slow down combat. Between deciding what spell to cast, looking up rules, handling buffs, it all adds up.

But 60-100 options to choose from each round? I smell hyperbole. Your actual choices boil down to:
You can swing a weapon
cast your best offensive spell
cast a helpful spell to solve a problem
get creative with a tricky spell to totally hose the enemy

The latter being the hardest to decide on because it's a matter of finding a use for a wierd spell based on the unique situation.

tracking templates, abilities, bonuses is all static information that should have been calculated before the game ever started. If you have a player adding their BAB + racial bonus + ability bonus + weapon bonus before EACH attack roll, SPANK them.

Add up that static crap before the game and write the number next to EACH weapon on the character sheet and CIRCLE it. Use that number to make your attack roll, at worst case adding in the current situational bonus or buff in effect.

I can't say if any of my statements fully apply to NewJeff's group (don't actually spank your players, that's not nice). But if they help , great. I wish I had my whole article, as it was chock full of techniques I use, stolen from a lot of threads.

My group does not tend to use a lot of buffs. Our combat goes fast. When somebody has slow combat, I suspect its the process. If Buffs aren't helping, consider making it so Buffs don't stack. It will simplify the dynamic variables and probably re-balance encounters (buffs tend to make combats heavily lopsided if one side buffs heavily).

 

[NewJeffCT]

I'd point you to my blog article, but the whole blog sub system has vanished.

I see a couple of things from this block I quoted.

Yes, spell casters do slow down combat. Between deciding what spell to cast, looking up rules, handling buffs, it all adds up.

But 60-100 options to choose from each round? I smell hyperbole. Your actual choices boil down to:
You can swing a weapon
cast your best offensive spell
cast a helpful spell to solve a problem
get creative with a tricky spell to totally hose the enemy

The latter being the hardest to decide on because it's a matter of finding a use for a wierd spell based on the unique situation.

tracking templates, abilities, bonuses is all static information that should have been calculated before the game ever started. If you have a player adding their BAB + racial bonus + ability bonus + weapon bonus before EACH attack roll, SPANK them.

Add up that static crap before the game and write the number next to EACH weapon on the character sheet and CIRCLE it. Use that number to make your attack roll, at worst case adding in the current situational bonus or buff in effect.

I can't say if any of my statements fully apply to NewJeff's group (don't actually spank your players, that's not nice). But if they help , great. I wish I had my whole article, as it was chock full of techniques I use, stolen from a lot of threads.

My group does not tend to use a lot of buffs. Our combat goes fast. When somebody has slow combat, I suspect its the process. If Buffs aren't helping, consider making it so Buffs don't stack. It will simplify the dynamic variables and probably re-balance encounters (buffs tend to make combats heavily lopsided if one side buffs heavily).

Well, a high level caster is going to have 5-6-7 spells per level, not counting bonus spells for high prime requisite stat. Once you get up to casting level 9 spells, that is 45-63 spells, not counting bonus spells, plus metamagicked spells, plus any bonuses granted by a prestige class or template. Not to mention spell-like abilities, and extras granted by magic items or feats.

And, it's not just one buffing spell, it's often 6-8-10 buffing spells per side in a big combat. Then, if you dispel a buff that grants a +4 bonus to AC, it's not just subtracting 4 from the PC's AC, you have to then determine if another buff that is still active now takes its place, so maybe there is now a new bonus that is +3 or +2 to AC from a different buff, or maybe the ring that grants a +1 bonus to AC can now be used. It was originally superseded by the +4 buff, but now may work.

And, then what happens if anti-magic shell is cast and its up for a round, and then the person steps out of the anti-magic shell? (that happened several times) So, you have to not only take off the buffing spells from the anti-magic shell, you take off bonuses for magic armor, magic weapons, etc. Then, the next round, everything comes back. But, maybe one of the 7 still active buffs has expired?

And, it wasn't a matter of people not knowing their AC or their BAB and their bonuses going into a combat, it's just that it was changing 6-8 times per round, and it didn't apply equally to everybody - if Holy Aura is dispelled (+4 deflection bonus to AC), maybe one PC can now use his +3 ring of protection deflection bonus, while another has a +2 ring of protection deflection bonus, while three other PCs have a +1 ring of protection bonus, and two others have a +4 ring of protection bonus, and are thus not affected AC-wise...or, maybe another buffing spell that is still active grants a +2 deflection bonus to AC, so the people with the +1 rings of protections still get a +2 for now.

Plus, with the way dispel magic worked in 3.5E, you had to roll for each buffing spell that was active, so you would roll 8 times if the person had 8 "buffing" spells on them. So, if all four party casters targeted BBEG with dispel magics in round 1, they would be making 32 rolls that round as their standard action, and then would still be able to cast a quickened spell or power.

 

[amerigoV]

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.

Some games are better than others. I dare say that in games like Skyrim I have much more of a feeling that "anything is possible" than at the tabletop. The tabletop constraint is a social contract vs. the scripting of a program.

Lets look at what the OP did in the game - he spend his whole "session" exploring the world to gather materials to improve a profession skill. One can argue the fun of that in a video game vs tabletop, but the fact is the group (DM and other players) is not going to sit there the whole session while one player kills deer, skins them, and runs back to town, and make new gear in order to get more proficient at the skill. You can become a werewolf or vampire (I presume, you could in Oblivion), decide what factions are meaningful to your character. Follow the main plot, or not.

You might get that stuff in a long-running PbP game or a small group where the DM can cater to you, but that is not the normal in a regular sized group. Not that it is better - Skyrim lacks the pure roleplay (there is some, and influenced by skills) and certainly lacks the social aspects of tabletop gaming, but lack of options to pursue is certainly NOT an issue in Skyrim.

To the OP's original premise - one thing to add is GM pacing. A group follows the facilitator (which a GM is in all reality). If the GM is upbeat and energetic, the group tends to follow. That helps get things done, IMO.

 

[Jhaelen]

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.

Yup, that matches my experience with a group of nine players.

We still had shorter combats from time to time, short meaning 1-2 hours for a random encounter involving only 1 or 2 enemies.

But the majority of combats took at the very least 4 hours, double that for large set-piece or BBEG encounters.
In-game time was short of course: most 3e fights were over after five rounds.

I was really, really relieved when our 3e campaign finally ended after 6.5 years with the pc's at level 15-16.

In 4e we've had the occasional long combat, too, long meaning about 4 hours, but they're exceptions. However, we're still in the low levels (4-6), so that might change again.

Somewhat more importantly my prep time as a DM has decreased by a factor of about 10. In the time it took me to prepare a single encounter for 3e I can now prepare a complete adventure!

 

[NewJeffCT]

Somewhat more importantly my prep time as a DM has decreased by a factor of about 10. In the time it took me to prepare a single encounter for 3e I can now prepare a complete adventure!

That has been the big change for me as well - my encounter prep time has decreased significantly. I can now spend more time developing NPCs and creating role playing opportunities for the players.

 

[Salad Shooter]

The group I play with online is oh so very slow...I think we're probably 9 hours into a 9 room dungeon that isn't really all that complicated. Still a couple rooms left.

We're working on it. Partially it's a rules thing, we've bounced between rulesets a lot, though we are now settling on a crazy mishmash of our favorite bits from a variety of D&D versions. It's getting smoother as the group gets more comfortable with the rules. Part of the slowdown is that the players get into these awesome In Character discussions, which we don't want to stop. The remainder of it is the fact that we are partially incapable of making decisions about ANYTHING. I trade of GMing with another guy, and we resort to all sorts of tricks to goad the players into action.

 

[Piratecat]

One of my challenges with my 4e games is that they're just plain slower than my previous campaigns. As a result, I take a lot of steps to speed non-critical, non-flavorful things along. Roleplaying never gets short shrift, but I handwave inventory management stuff completely.

 

[OnlineDM]

I'm used to D&D 4th Edition, and we get a good amount done in a session. But I was blown away this past weekend at Genghis Con when I played a session of Dresden Files RPG.

As I wrote here (see Saturday night), our group accomplished teaching the rules, world creation, enemy creation, character customization and a full adventure - in a THREE HOUR period (which started a few minutes late). Now that's getting a lot accomplished in a session!

I wouldn't want to play this way all the time, but it's pretty impressive from an efficiency perspective.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I fast forward the game for things like travel where I know nothing is going to happen, or for when players simply want to buy something ordinary like rations or some rope.

Where my game gets hung up is player indecision. So many times in my Shackled City campaign the players were faced with a situation where there were a number of ways to proceed. They would then spend an age discussing the pros and cons of each option.

I'm fine with the players thinking things through, but it would often get to the point where they had worked through all the options and were just repeating their possible options. Just make a decision and move on!

We've discussed this issue as a group a couple of times now, and they realise that they do it often. So in future I'm just going to be more assertive as a DM at getting them to make a choice and keep the game moving.

That is where I think my group is most inefficient.

Olaf the Stout