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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Phlebas" data-source="post: 4202677" data-attributes="member: 23810">nobody seems to have mentioned initiative cards yet - best timesaver my group ever adopted.: - Take index card or 1/4 of A4, write character / player name on, laminate if possible. sort into order at beginning of every encounter and cycle through. a few extra for NPC's, allies and monsters work well enough. for that extra time save give set to a trusted player so DM can concentrate on DM stuff. Speeding up combats is the main intent - combine this with a '6 seconds to decide or you delay' rule.(in one dragonwarriors where a player was playing several PC's he actually held up the specific card so we knew 'who' was talking - If you have recurring NPC's then that trick will work for Ref's as well)instead of mini's print little coloured circles onto card (or paper then laminate). few minutes with a pair of scissors and you have dozens of different colour / size counters. laminated is best as you can mark with status - speaking of whichstatus cards - when PC is shaken, toss him the card with the shaken blurb on. there was a nice pdf knocking around with all the conditions on if you want to save time. Some of the players have taken this idea to heart with cards for bless / prayer / bardic song or power attack which they can throw onto the table to remind everyone what to add. Long / high level battles now look like a game of snap, but it does make it easier to keep track of stuff. I use flip chart pads (A1 with 25mm grid) and marker pens to rattle off maps ad hoc. I do pregen major encounters area's but find that covering up the unknown area is just a pain - so its easier drawing what can be seen while i'm describing it.a world background printout is useful for everyone. i tried to print off a one pager newsletter for the local city every so often which i could use to update the background plus a bit of plot foreshadowing. Anything written that a PC finds i try to hand out as a printed prop (though using some wierd font, small size plus background to make it a bit of a challenge for the players - hint try to have a std font version for yourself especially if its a few weeks before they pick it up or you could find yourself struggling to remember what it is)real world maps are always useful - now you can internet search anywhere in the world its even simpler to get a non-recognisable area with wierd names - you can even use the same country if you want familiar names but just 'delete/demote' the recognisable large towns and promote the small villages to metropolis status. i'm starting to think about props for items / cash to avoid players losing track but thats even more work for a ref so .......as for other props - i'd ask Arravis what his hourly rate is  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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