Cool. I'm gonna try the pictionary timer. It's a 1-minute thing, eh?
All I had to do was just set that little 'hour glass' out and flip it over and suddenly eyes went wide and things started happening, it was like... well magic!
Lucky you! This is probably where my group is the weakest. They are no good at planning/tactics. They just blunder from one encounter to the next and just plan things at the spur of the moment depending on how badly things are going for them (which is usually the case).
My suggestion then would be start with just 2 things: 1) A stndard marching order and 2) A standard way of dealing with a door. In my group the best listener always listened, the best spotter always checked for traps, one guy alway opened the door while 2 others always had weapons ready to deal with what was on the other side (or so they hoped). We jokingly refered to it as "SWATing the door". They may not be very good at it now, but encourage them to try and they will get better with time. Also, as DM you could make their plans work better than they really should to boost confidence if necessary.
What do you mean by tracking it on your own? Do you mean that each player keeps track of it themselves or that the players as a group keep track of it on their own? If you mean the latter, my group is supposed to do that already -- one guy takes responsibility for the initiative whiteboard each session, and that guy is supposed to be the one who calls out who's up and who's up next and so on but I usually find myself doing it anyway because the others are too slow.
What I mean is we essentially abolished the "Dave, its your turn what do you do" either from me or another player because Dave knows he goes after Bob, who goes after John, etc. Everyone rolls initiative, it gets recorded. However if your init is 12, you know that you go after 13 and before 11. So when Bob gets a 12 and John gets a 13 and Dave gets an 11... they just know the order, or figure it out spontaneously and then remember it. I have always played this way, and always DM'ed that way also. Occasionally somebody gets distracted and may forget and that is why I still track it and remind them, but it really is not that hard for them to remember.
This is an interesting one. I'd love to be able to get to this point, but I don't think my group is quite ready for it yet.
We actually did not have this rule, and I allowed several supplements, and our game really bogged down (one round took an HOUR!), and I proposed and they grudgingly accepted that we cut back on the supplements to the core, psionics, and a couple of others and I gave them 2 weeks to "learn or burn". In other words read it and learn it in 2 weeks or stop using it until you do. I then 'interviewed' each player in character to see if they knew their stuff. I did not learn all of their stuff, but I read all of it once or twice to get a feel for it and then made them explain it to me in their own words. Any disagreements that we had we resolved during the interview and then allowed it in game. Many players do not know the full depth of their characters potential until they are forced to learn it, but after the initial grousing they all took to it.
Again, this isn't really a problem for my group. It's more tiredness and indecision that slows things down. People either don't know what they want to do, don't know what they
can do because they still haven't learned the rules properly (and, for most, it's simply because the game isn't the most important thing in their lives -- fancy that!), or aren't really paying attention because they're trying not to fall asleep or because they
are asleep.
Work with them to NOT learn every single rule, just the rules that are most important to them. The DM is the sucker...I mean dedicated individual
who has to know everything. Does the tank who doesn't even own a bow need to know ranged combat rules? Does the wizard really need to memorize melee rules? It helps to know these things, but the tank mainly needs to know how to tank! The wizard mainly needs to know to cast, and what to cast, and where to cast, and so on. As above, have them focus JUST (for now) on their PC and not the grand scheme. If they get comfortable in their PC (like a second skin, or true alter personality) then the other stuff will fall in line on its own... and they will enjoy whatever they are doing much more because it will be a natural extension of themselves.
I always try to be democratic about things with my group. Funnily enough, they seem to prefer just being dictated to, though ...
This is often true, and although I always offered things to my group the traditional answer was "Hey, your the DM, do whatever you need to do."
