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Message: <blockquote data-quote="cougent" data-source="post: 4487501" data-attributes="member: 48665">The visual effect of the egg timer is great, I used one myself with great results.I was lucky enough to have actual military players in my 2000 - 2004 group, so planning in advance for SOP was second nature to them; but I highly recommend it for any group.  They had SOP for entering a room, marching order, attacking a group, attacking a singular enemy, search patterns, etc.  This made many situations progress very easily in minutes that otherwise could have taken hours.I did employ the roll to hit and damage simultaneously also.  If they hit they had the damage ready to go (subject to bonus rolls for crits); if they missed then we just moved on.As a player, I always track initiative on my own, and have ever since AD&D when it was initiative every round.  So the entire concept of the players NOT tracking initiative for themselves is just alien to me... So have your players track their own initiative and KNOW when it is their turn and be ready to go.  I also did use a whiteboard (when available) to record it for easy reference, I did it for myself but obviously it was there for all to see and probably helped the players as well.I also have a House Rule of "No books in the game itself".  No matter what they are pulling from (and I allow a wide variety of sources) they need to KNOW it forwards, backwards, and sideways IN GAME.  There is no "Let me look that up and check the damage" at the table.  That is what "prep time" is all about.Also try to limit sidetracking.  My group could easily launch off into 20 minutes of Monty Python, Simpsons, Family Guy, etc. and totally loose track of the time and the adventure.  As they were having fun, I wanted to just let it run its course but soon found that course could take quite a while, and then another 10 minutes to get reoriented back to the adventure and half an hour just disappeared.  So we decided to limit the sidetracks to whenever I detected we were off track, I just reset the egg timer and when it ran out we went back to the adventure.  This allowed 3-5 minutes of jocularity depending an my astuteness level for that night.Finally, everything above was discussed and agreed upon by the entire group so that none had any problems with implementation.  Whatever you do to speed things along, make sure your players are OK with it so they don't feel rushed or slighted by the efficiency tactics.</blockquote>

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