Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="BlackMoria" data-source="post: 2927489" data-attributes="member: 424">General observation - rules are no good unless consequences are outlined.  Else they are simply rules which can be broken.I have no problem with your article 1.Article 2.    Rules alone may not work.  Actions need consequences.  Tell your players that dice are only rolled when called for because rolling dice for no reason is distracting.   If someone breaks that rule, then that person, since they are so driven to roll dice, can roll to see if a random monster encounter happens.  After a few random monster encounters, the compulsive dice chuckers will get the message.Article 3.  Introduce a timer.  Allow the party to disuss their plans.  After  a few minutes, take out the timer (egg timer is good) and announce to the party has until the timer runs out to decide their course of action.  If at that time there is no consensus, you will call for each person's individual action and the game will proceed at that point.   In character discussion (any planning has to have a component of in character discussion) that is long, loud and protracted will result in potential alerting of enemies or a random monster encounter.   After a few times of losing the element of surprise, being surprised themselves or fighting a random monster encounter, they will clue in and get more decisive.Article 4.  There is lots of initative aids out there.  Use them or make up your own.  Don't change the intitative system simply because the current method of keeping track isn't working the way you want.Further, inform each player that they have a max of one minute to declare what they are doing (1 minute is lots of time.  Try talking about a topic for one minute .... it seems a long time to the speaker).  At the end of their time, if they still have not decided, they are considered to be taking a defend action and do nothing else for that round.  After a few rounds of not doing anything, the problem players will clue in and will declare actions within the time limit.You want to modify their behaviour without be draconian about it.  Keep the rules simple and have consequences and after a few consequences, the players will come around.</blockquote>

Verification