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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8000119" data-attributes="member: 18">Very much agree here. I feel like the first two suggestions make Very Specific Assumptions (ahem) about what kind of game you're playing, and what's going to be going on. That kind be a fun kind of game, but it can also get pretty tiring in a bad way, after a certain number of sessions, I speak from experience of a game which sounded precisely like what is being described. It definitely wasn't a bad game, but eventually I was just a bit bored of that approach. I don't think either "rule" actually speeds things up, as a matter of fact - they merely force a particular style of play.And all the players being on roughly the same page about style of play tends to speed things, but it doesn't have to be that style of play. And I know a lot of people are eye-rolling on your point re: Tom, but I've seen that work out, I've seen "Tom" convince the other PCs to do it his way, and it's been fun. What is a real problem, and isn't a speed problem, is when one PC (or more) is either an outright non-adventurer in an adventure-centric RPG. But that's extremely rare in my experience, particularly in D&D.As you say, the other two suggestions are much stronger.Personally I tend to focus on DM-side preparation, because I find my main group aren't too bad for time, and if they're "wasting" it there's usually a good reason.DM-wise, I always do a few things:1) Make sure I have quick access to the statblocks of every monster or NPC I believe may be relevant in the current scenario. In 2E, er, well I wasn't good at this, but I tended to end up putting sticky notes in the MM or writing out monster stats on paper. 3E was somewhat similar though with photocopies, extracted pages from PDFs, and so on, getting into the mix. In 4E I actually got good at this. I had all the monsters printed out for pretty much every session, and could access the stats near-instantly. In 5E, I use a laptop I bought specifically for running D&D, and just keep every monster open in a tab on Chrome (on Beyond), though I sometimes use a Chrome extension or even the new beta Encounter Builder to store them.2) With home-written stuff, re-read your notes ahead of time, because if anything remotely complicated is going on, you're going to have forgotten something, and players being players, it will come up in some big way.3) Again with home-written stuff, keep all your notes and pictures and so on in some kind of tool or folder-structure. I use Microsoft Note. I don't actually love Note, it but works much better, ironically, than the stuff I've used like Obsidian Portal.4) With published stuff, always read all the way through the entire adventure/AP at least once (even if you're not going to run it all immediately), and make notes. Lots of notes. If it's a physical copy, bring a highlighter and sticky arrows or the like. If not, work out some other solution. Most published adventures, even good ones, are downright badly organised. So make a bunch of notes and highlight stuff.Then before the actual session, go over what you're expecting to run.5) Don't ask for unnecessary rolls. Remember that it's fine to let PCs auto-succeed at stuff if their description is correct and failure isn't interesting or consequential, or even if it failure would be, but their description and abilities are a perfect fit. Do make sure they know that they auto-succeeded because of these factors, that it wasn't just random, but nothing drags down and drags out a D&D session like endless, largely unnecessary rolls.6) You don't have to draw out every combat until every enemy is dead on the ground. If you've got to the point where the PCs are no longer really using resources, it's fine for the enemy to be fleeing, or even to just say that the PCs cut them down. This doesn't work for every group, but I've operated this way for decades and it's saved a lot of time over the years and even tends to increase immersion/sense of verisimilitude. Equally sometimes maybe a combat doesn't need to happen. If the PCs are doing great, and basically one encounter from a long rest, and that encounter isn't going to particularly add to things or test them, does it have to be there?This may seem basic, but I've seen an awful lot of DMs not do it. Particularly 5. My experience is that perhaps the majority of D&D DMs (certainly 3E or later) have an issue with just asking for lots of checks for things that really shouldn't need checks.</blockquote>

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