D&D General What are the “boring bits” to you?

[Arilyn]

Random encounters that don't advance plot or story -- basically any attrition attempts.

Yes! Random encounters should never just be more combat. They need to be interesting. I remember the crying ogre who lost his wedding ring and was scared to go home to his wife. I dont remember details of yet another bandit ambush.

 

[Quickleaf]

Good question! It's a tricky one for me because I have evolved a lot as a GM, so that now I use lots of tools to sidestep, house rule, or revivify boring parts.

I've been playing in another GM's online OSE run of Secrets of the Black Crag that involves frequent inter-island hex travel, with navigation checks, weather checks, and encounter checks (which seem to include either sub-tables or reaction tables). Overall, it's fun! However, at least with the implementation in this adventure, it's like 10-15 minutes per session that often ends up with almost these exact words...

It's a clear day, there's a light breeze. You travel... along your heading... and you arrive at Fire Island without issue.

Which has all the imaginative spark of chewing cardboard. Hah. To be fair, I don't think this is exclusive to the adventure or OSE, as when I compare it to hex travel / random encounters in many 5e adventures, they seem really similar conceptually.

I know there are workarounds some GMs (myself included) use like pre-rolling, but I feel like the system/scenario should be enjoyable and smooth running it en vivo without needing those workarounds.

 

[Laurefindel]

Echoing some poster above, the various-type spells and other effects that as a player prevents you from playing. "skip your turn" in a Uno or Skip-Bo game where a whole table round take 10 seconds is one thing. It's another when your next turn is in several minutes, waiting to see if maybe you'll succeed on your save this time or be out-of-play for another several minutes.

 

[cranberry]

PC's spending too much time roleplaying with unimportant NPCs.

 

[Tonguez]

Crafting/shopping/economics. I came here to play a fantasy adventure game, not to watch you set up a quaint little craft shop. It might be your fantasy, but it's not an adventure.

PCs engaging in the setting and roleplaying in the world is great, you just need to bring the adventure to their business.

I agree HP attrition and lots of empty rooms is boring, I’d much rather gloss over the empty rooms and minimise combat if it results in a session of entertaining RP and creative skill use.

 

[CleverNickName]

Another vote for combat. As a DM, if a battle scene takes longer than an hour, I'm bored with it. As a player, if it takes longer than 5 minutes between turns, I'm bored.

This has been true for decades, across every edition I've played, and across all levels.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

PC's spending too much time roleplaying with unimportant NPCs.

Doesn't their choice to roleplay with them make them important?

I feel like this is simply a problem of having too hard of, ahem, fixed-path adventures rather than allowing players the freedom to choose what is important to them and what is mostly set-dressing. If the players find some random NPC just too fun not to like, that's a clear signal to me to feed that genuine enthusiasm, not dismiss it as a boring annoyance that they have not gotten with the program and stuck to the ra--er, the right NPCs.

Another vote for combat. As a DM, if a battle scene takes longer than an hour, I'm bored with it. As a player, if it takes longer than 5 minutes between turns, I'm bored.

This has been true for decades, across every edition I've played, and across all levels.

Conversely, if the rounds are too quick I get bored. Quick rounds mean nothing actually interesting happened, it was just "I hit it with my sword" "you deal damage" "I throw a knife at it" "you miss" etc., etc. ad nauseam.

I'd much rather a battle where a person needs to make decisions. Yes, going too long is also a problem, but too short and battle is easily flowcharted. The moment I realized that that was what was going on in the old-school style fights I'd played, I finally understood why I hated "ultralight" combat stuff so much. There was no requirement for creative thought because 99.9% of situations could just be fed into a simple like ten-node flowchart.

Or, to put it into your terms: I realized that what I chose to do on my turn was basically fixed, so for the 10-15 minutes even a quick OSR-like combat would take, I'm bored out of my skull and desperately hoping some interesting roleplay happens to alleviate it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

PC's spending too much time roleplaying with unimportant NPCs.

Heh heh... well, assuming you are the DM... isn't that your fault for making those NPCs so fascinating that the players continue to roleplay with them even when those NPCs have nothing of worth to give to the adventure?

 

[Oofta]

Heh heh... well, assuming you are the DM... isn't that your fault for making those NPCs so fascinating that the players continue to roleplay with them even when those NPCs have nothing of worth to give to the adventure?

I hit this once in a while. Someone goes shopping and they want it to be more than just "I buy something" so we play it up a bit. Then someone else pipes up "Now I want to go shopping too!"

 

[Tonguez]

I hit this once in a while. Someone goes shopping and they want it to be more than just "I buy something" so we play it up a bit. Then someone else pipes up "Now I want to go shopping too!"

bloody DMs giving NPCs engaging personalities! What is the world coming too?
It would be so much easier if we could just stick exclamation marks on all the quest pointers