Tricks of the Trade

[0-hr]

I know it's not everyone's style but when I GM, I freely tell the players what they need to hit: ie; "The thug has a 14 AC.". That lets them tell me if they hit or not - which speeds things up, especially in subsequent rounds.

Now I'll usually not let this info out until the fight is under way, and I'll try to be descriptive rather than mathematical up front. But once a few blows have been exchanged I figure a seasoned adventurer can guage his opponent well enough to warrant this bit of metagaming.



(not to derail, but can you actually draw a weapon as part of a charge?)

 

[Someone]

(not to derail, but can you actually draw a weapon as part of a charge?)

No; you must have quickdraw for that.

 

[Stalker0]

Roll attack rolls and damage at the same time, speed things up a tad. Also, I have a little die box that contains 10d6, so I can roll a fireball or such quickly when needed. At higher levels, have a calculator.

 

[XCorvis]

My players have someone watching the init order, but I don't tell them to. Unfortunately, it is the one player who has too many options (friggin druids) and is never ready. Ever.

Egg timer. Someone is taking too long, whip out the (1 minute or 30 second) egg timer. If they don't pick something by the time it runs out, they hold their action until they do decide.

Someone else mentioned writing up a cheat sheet of the character's options. That's a great tip for inexperienced players or people with too many options. With druids and other shapeshifters (yuk) make them pick a limited number of shapes they can take, and then have them write out all the stats for those shapes in advance. Most people, even experienced gamers, have a hard time choosing the perfect shape for that combat and getting all the stats right on-the-fly. Same goes for summoned creatures. Write up the stats ahead of time. Have them make notes on the sheets for the best situations to use them in - hard to hit, does lots of damage, ranged attacks, etc...

 

[Wonko the Sane]

Egg timer. Someone is taking too long, whip out the (1 minute or 30 second) egg timer. If they don't pick something by the time it runs out, they hold their action until they do decide.

Hehehe...you're way nicer than me - if a player takes too long for their turn, I start counting down from 6. If they haven't started doing something by the time I hit 0, they lose their action.

Mind you, I also use an Excel spreadsheet that rolls and sorts initiative and then displays that on the TV so that everyone can see when their turn is coming up well in advance.

 

[Demoquin]

Under the Quickdraw feat i think, there is text saying that Normal: You can only withdraw a weapon (free action) as part of a move action. Some thing like that.

 

[RigaMortus2]

We used to have an init board. Now our DM just writes down the init and let's us know whose turn it is, and who's next. The DM reminds us/tells us to think of what you want to do before it's your turn. Then when it is our turn, if we take to long to decide, the DM says (half jokingly) "You have 6 seconds" (referring to the amount of seconds you have in 1 round to react).

We also tend to roll damage at the same time we roll to attack. That must shave, what? Like .5 seconds off the time it takes between turns.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1) While I haven't done it yet, I have often toyed with the idea of using an hourglass (1-3 minute) to put time-pressure on the players. Most don't need it, really, but I do have the fortune/misfortune to play with some inexperienced/casual players who are not as familiar with RPGs as the bulk of our group.

Of course, I wouldn't do that on the 1st round of combat, because everybody is switching mental gears...but after that, you have the luxury of using all the time all of the OTHER players are using to plan THEIR actions to plan YOURS, so I wouldn't feel particularly sorry if someone lost an action because their sand ran out.

2) I try to have most of the minis needed for a particular evening's gaming set aside ahead of time.

3) The Bucket 'o' dice- a big clear bucket of dice (all kinds) for those who can't find theirs, for whatever reason.

4) The wire wrappers for champagne corks (the ones that help keep them in the bottle) are perfect for putting over 28mm or smaller minis to depict NPCs/PCs under persistent spell effects. Ditto plastic dice block containers from companies like Chessex.

5) The Star Fleet Battles Character Sheet technique: Use plastic sleeves for PC sheets and use "wax"/china markers mark off the temporary stuff- which spells are memorized or cast, HP damage, ammo use, negative levels, poison effects, etc. You'll never erase a hole in a PC sheet again.

6) Concerned about fudging/cheating on die rolls? Buy some medium sized clear plastic boxes and put the dice in them- people roll dice by shaking the box. All you need for higher level PCs is more rolls or a bigger box. Such boxes can be found in all kinds of shapes and sizes in stores like Target, Wal-Mart, or if you must be fancy, the Container Store.

Additional benefit- die never roll off the table or land -eyed.

7) Translucent hex or square area-effect templates make figuring out who you can hit with a spell or grenade speeds things up a lot.

8) A laser pointer is perfect for determining LOS.

9) Toy stores are full of plastic animals- especially dinosaurs and "life sized" insects (that scale to Huge vs 28mm minis)- perfect for use as RPG minis. They already have color and are much cheaper than normal minis. I personally have acquired hand sized spiders, scorpions and many others for @ $3USD each. A buddy of mine bought a bag of Amazon poison tree frogs for about $5USD, each the size of the giant toad mini in the DDM game.

The explosion in fantasy-related toys has also resulted in a bunch of things we gamers could "subvert"- a local Toys-R-Us had McFarland dragons on sale for $10USD each, and there is a big playset of quasi-bionic dragons out there as well.

Heck, you could even use the Lego medieval/fantasy sets to game with! Additional benefit- because they lock in place, characters don't slide around!

 

[RigaMortus2]

Hehehe...you're way nicer than me - if a player takes too long for their turn, I start counting down from 6. If they haven't started doing something by the time I hit 0, they lose their action.

Well, I wouldn't force them to lose their action. I would force them to delay.

Player: I, ahh... Ummm...
DM: Can't think of what to do? Think about it some more and tell me when you are ready. Next!

 

[Nail]

I keep all of my monsters, NPCs, etc. on separate pieces of paper.

Me too.

I use full sheets of paper, rather than cards. That way I've got plenty of space to organize and group the important stuff, while maintaining room for a few of the important details. Frankly, I'm puzzled why people think a bunch of small cards with even smaller writting will make the game better.

I also use these same sheets as initiative markers. I include in the stack a sheet for each of the PCs, with just a tiny amount of PC info on it (Listen, Spot, and Sense Motive scores, mostly.) Then after we've rolled init, I order the sheets.

And just for KarinsDad's benefit ( ) I'll share this: If I have a group of 12 identical orcs, they all go on one sheet, and all go at the same initiative. No individual inits of mooks for me!