ClaytonCross
Kinder reader Inflection wanted
I have spoken to a couple of my GMs lately about why the ended campaigns abruptly or early before end of the story arch. The common thread I got in their answers was basically "it got to be a grind as the party got higher levels." Then I asked, "the players didn't mind, what why was it so boring for you?" their answer was basically "too much to tracking and waiting for NPCs to die before we could get back to the story".
This was months ago and I have been thinking about it a lot. Then I thought about other GM I didn't talk to but played under. I thought about when I GM'd, Eventually two things became clear to me.
#1 Many GMs only see combat a necessary wall between plot points. GMs often don't truly engage themselves in to combat and so are indifferent to it other than waiting to get past it so they can get back to telling the story they want to tell and roleplay they enjoy. This is especially true with story GMs but could in party be what drives many GMs to become story GMs after years of play no longer caring about fights and only the story which is often the GMs story and not group story including players and the GM. This leads to games on rails etc. Players on the other hand invest in their characters so PC death is huge for them and any fight pushing them even remotely close to death get them engages immediately.
#2 Lack of engagement breads lack of investment which leads to less engagement. I haven't GM'd a lot, but when I GM'd I always enjoyed the battle and I think most GMs do. The reason for this is simple. You don't have a formula. CRs and encounter calculators are not accurate at all and you don't have the experience to fix it all on the fly. As a result your engaged because your half afraid you made the encounter too easy and the players will get board and your half afraid your party wipe the group and be blamed for it. More experienced GM's start working out "their formula" then they adjust here or there to make it fit the story. They know how to read the party and they know how to fix things on the fly that are not working. The problem is they tend to stick with formula. They want to stay there and avoid any fear of the unknown or losing control. This leads to simple fixes like picking monster they party could easily beat and just adding enough hit points to make it a challenge, or discreetly take some extra hp away from an enemy who is has pushed players to the ropes and things are starting to look dice. The worse offender however is the ready to die through away encounters. Usually these are some mob out numbering the party of low maintenance 5ft melee enemies. 20 goblins with swords, 10 thugs with bats, or 8 dire wolves. Something simple so the GM can use as little effort as possible tracking little more than HP. Very little strategy will be employed large number of dumb enemies and the only important part the GM is that they out numbered the party enough to be considered a threat, as the GM fully expects the party to wipe them out or escape. The second big offender is the HP bag boss (or mini boss) who similarly doesn't have much to track but HP usually fights in melee range and has almost no way to actually use a tactic but has some massive damage attack he can use regularly or every time he roles a 6 on a 1d6. GMs will often turn interesting boss into these unintentionally to avoid the hassle of actually playing something interesting. An intelligent dragon is apparently so blind in their rage that they decide to fight on the ground in a cave instead of flying, while it waits for its fire breath.
I don't think these are slights to GMs. I think its just the nature of building something for others, finding your comfort zone, and responding to the stress and effort of being a GM. I think anyone who GMs enough is likely to end up doing some level of this. But then who suffers? Not the players, they are still invested in their characters and still afraid of losing them. The horde of goblins or the HP packed dragon works for them. It doesn't work for the GM who gets board with the encounters they create for their players. So I have been determined to make prevent this in future games I run. I made rules to that effect and if other people see similar problems at table and ether have see other GMs solutions to it or have some suggestions of there own please feel free to help me out.
Edit: Revised the rules. I get long winded and as I was adding things people were missing and/or losing the intended points. So rewrote them to be more clear and concise. I also merged some of the rules because there was a lot of intent overlap and I could create example lists for ideas without needing multiple rules.
Considerations to keep tactical combat encounters from Boring to the GM (and better for players)
#1. Rules are meant to be broken. They are more of guidelines really. Following all the rule as much as you can should be to your benefit but fallowing all of them all the time is not the intent. The intent is to make your games more enjoyable as a GM so that you don’t burn out and continue to provide the game your players love. If something is causing you problems with D&D or the suggested considerations... just remember you do have the power and right to through out anything that means the players at the table are not having fun... and that includes the GM.
#2. Consider team monster’s motivation. Roleplaying them will change how they act and its possible some members of your encounter have different motivation’s than others. Thinking about motivations and allowing outcomes based on motivations opens up options other than “fight the party to the death” every single encounter. Capture, drive away, detour, steel from, escape from, delay, eat, and run from your party at different times. Player vs GM information disparity can cause stress for one and not the other. You can keep these motives secret to stress them out when they are safe but you can also let them know so you're on the same page.
#3. Consider adding variety to your units. Zombicide is great game if you’re a player but I can’t imagine wanting to playing through campaign as the zombies mechanically moving pieces every round for the players and only attack with close melee and with no interesting decisions or tactics. D&D is not intended to be that painful for the GM.
#4 Consider Alternative threats to large piles of HP. Fighting a single boss with 1000 HP or 20 enemies with 50 HP but are threat because they are war on attrition has its place but is often the go to. Instead, consider means of making enemies dangerous without just stalling the fight.
D&D has a number of features/methods for this:
This was months ago and I have been thinking about it a lot. Then I thought about other GM I didn't talk to but played under. I thought about when I GM'd, Eventually two things became clear to me.
#1 Many GMs only see combat a necessary wall between plot points. GMs often don't truly engage themselves in to combat and so are indifferent to it other than waiting to get past it so they can get back to telling the story they want to tell and roleplay they enjoy. This is especially true with story GMs but could in party be what drives many GMs to become story GMs after years of play no longer caring about fights and only the story which is often the GMs story and not group story including players and the GM. This leads to games on rails etc. Players on the other hand invest in their characters so PC death is huge for them and any fight pushing them even remotely close to death get them engages immediately.
#2 Lack of engagement breads lack of investment which leads to less engagement. I haven't GM'd a lot, but when I GM'd I always enjoyed the battle and I think most GMs do. The reason for this is simple. You don't have a formula. CRs and encounter calculators are not accurate at all and you don't have the experience to fix it all on the fly. As a result your engaged because your half afraid you made the encounter too easy and the players will get board and your half afraid your party wipe the group and be blamed for it. More experienced GM's start working out "their formula" then they adjust here or there to make it fit the story. They know how to read the party and they know how to fix things on the fly that are not working. The problem is they tend to stick with formula. They want to stay there and avoid any fear of the unknown or losing control. This leads to simple fixes like picking monster they party could easily beat and just adding enough hit points to make it a challenge, or discreetly take some extra hp away from an enemy who is has pushed players to the ropes and things are starting to look dice. The worse offender however is the ready to die through away encounters. Usually these are some mob out numbering the party of low maintenance 5ft melee enemies. 20 goblins with swords, 10 thugs with bats, or 8 dire wolves. Something simple so the GM can use as little effort as possible tracking little more than HP. Very little strategy will be employed large number of dumb enemies and the only important part the GM is that they out numbered the party enough to be considered a threat, as the GM fully expects the party to wipe them out or escape. The second big offender is the HP bag boss (or mini boss) who similarly doesn't have much to track but HP usually fights in melee range and has almost no way to actually use a tactic but has some massive damage attack he can use regularly or every time he roles a 6 on a 1d6. GMs will often turn interesting boss into these unintentionally to avoid the hassle of actually playing something interesting. An intelligent dragon is apparently so blind in their rage that they decide to fight on the ground in a cave instead of flying, while it waits for its fire breath.
I don't think these are slights to GMs. I think its just the nature of building something for others, finding your comfort zone, and responding to the stress and effort of being a GM. I think anyone who GMs enough is likely to end up doing some level of this. But then who suffers? Not the players, they are still invested in their characters and still afraid of losing them. The horde of goblins or the HP packed dragon works for them. It doesn't work for the GM who gets board with the encounters they create for their players. So I have been determined to make prevent this in future games I run. I made rules to that effect and if other people see similar problems at table and ether have see other GMs solutions to it or have some suggestions of there own please feel free to help me out.
Edit: Revised the rules. I get long winded and as I was adding things people were missing and/or losing the intended points. So rewrote them to be more clear and concise. I also merged some of the rules because there was a lot of intent overlap and I could create example lists for ideas without needing multiple rules.
Considerations to keep tactical combat encounters from Boring to the GM (and better for players)
#1. Rules are meant to be broken. They are more of guidelines really. Following all the rule as much as you can should be to your benefit but fallowing all of them all the time is not the intent. The intent is to make your games more enjoyable as a GM so that you don’t burn out and continue to provide the game your players love. If something is causing you problems with D&D or the suggested considerations... just remember you do have the power and right to through out anything that means the players at the table are not having fun... and that includes the GM.
#2. Consider team monster’s motivation. Roleplaying them will change how they act and its possible some members of your encounter have different motivation’s than others. Thinking about motivations and allowing outcomes based on motivations opens up options other than “fight the party to the death” every single encounter. Capture, drive away, detour, steel from, escape from, delay, eat, and run from your party at different times. Player vs GM information disparity can cause stress for one and not the other. You can keep these motives secret to stress them out when they are safe but you can also let them know so you're on the same page.
#3. Consider adding variety to your units. Zombicide is great game if you’re a player but I can’t imagine wanting to playing through campaign as the zombies mechanically moving pieces every round for the players and only attack with close melee and with no interesting decisions or tactics. D&D is not intended to be that painful for the GM.
- Players are engaged by fear of losing their character or party members. GMs are not.
- There are at least 13 different unit types in D&D. 5ft melee try to use more than 1 just to make your discussions more interesting if nothing else.
- If managing them seems daunting use less units to offset the management needed for the greater variety.
#4 Consider Alternative threats to large piles of HP. Fighting a single boss with 1000 HP or 20 enemies with 50 HP but are threat because they are war on attrition has its place but is often the go to. Instead, consider means of making enemies dangerous without just stalling the fight.
D&D has a number of features/methods for this:
- Special actions legendary actions, opportunity attacks, shove, grapple, dodge, disengage, voluntarily prone, and simply waiting the right time to attack (or anything else you can think of for NPCs/monsters to do that is not in their block of actions but they could reasonably do.)
- Magic (spells, items, special abilities) that can make enemies hard to kill by preventing players from using their “standard formula”.
- Terrain lair actions, hiding spots/visibility/line of sight, cover/lines of fire, Restrictions of movement/separated forces/choke points/hindering terrain
- Weather hiding spots/visibility/line of sight, cover/lines of fire, Restrictions of movement/separated forces/choke points/hindering terrain
- Weak encounters free you do playfully try and kill your party because your going for high score not a Total Party Kill.
- Let players know this is not about PC death. Capture, steal, or stall is on the table. In a powerful story or depending what is stolen this could be worse than TPK or a good hook they can choose to fallow.
- Don’t cheat. If you are not okay with players fudging the dice and you wouldn’t tell them you did for or against them, don’t do it. Rivalries are built on shared rules.
- Feel free to root for the “Team Monster” … they were warned. Just remember standard good sportsmanship conduce applies.
- Consider giving your party an emergency escape button with the warning "I gave you this, but that means the gloves are off and your escape is in your hands not mine." A X of teleportation even if one use but they have some means of replacing it ... at a cost... as part there preparations for future battles. This can aid with GM strain of not being sure if they got encounter balance just right.
- Consider waves of enemies instead of single large encounters. This allows for the weaker encounters while not having a weaker force or giving short rests. The breaks between the waves should act as escape exits that players can choose to use if they don't think they can win it. this combines several of the rivalry options into one idea you might see in a dungeon or tournament.
- Universal homebrew - Making creative on the spot calls for "special actions" does not have to fallow the book ether. As well as giving home-brew powers or making home-brew NPC enemies, you can also adjudicate reasonable actions not covered by the rules on the spot, just remember if you use them the players should be able to attempt to copy them for the most part for the sake of fairness and not being a jerk GM. This also means if you adjudicate something and write it down to allow it to be something the players can do at will, then so can NPCs because doors swing both ways.
- Destructible terrain and hazards can make for make combat more interesting. A simple way is to assign damage to an item a player wants to attack then add all attack damage up until total is reached. Something like heavy armor master for metal items or similar where they ignore the for X damage means the weak attacks have no effects which is a good way to make it so you don't get mighty objects distroyed by an army of ant but though powerful blows.
- An NPC moral system is mentioned in the DMG but is not functional from the book. The simplest version of this would be basic point system where you assign the NPC team a random roll of point something like a D20 + the number of enemies +2 more for each leader or boss. Then any actions the GM considers to reduce the NPC moral like killing their team mates, particular displays of Player heroics, intimidation, persuasion, and deception checks would all be assigned points and removed from total. If the total hits zero the NPCs retreat. If on of those actions falls on a specific enemy they might also make a wisdom save to see if they flee before the rest of the group and if so them leaving would also count against the NPC team. This could create a snow ball effect where one enemy gets a crit chickens out then lowering the total, his buddy right next to the Player character is left alone so also rolls a wisdom save and fails, which ends up dropping the total to zero and they all flee. .... But this is rough suggestion for home brew. Your going to have to figure out the points on your own table or even case by case.
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