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

[Neonchameleon]

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

"Nobody important? Blimey, that's amazing. You know that in nine hundred years of time and space and I've never met anybody who wasn't important." - The Doctor

 

[Gammadoodler]

"Nobody important? Blimey, that's amazing. You know that in (thnine hundred years of time and space and I've never met anybody who wasn't important." - The Doctor

It's a nice sentiment...

..from a nigh immortal dilettante who makes use of all of time and space, with near zero resource constraints or external responsibilities

(This may not be the only way to view The Doctor )

 

[Lanefan]

Another thing would be tracking ammunition and food/water. Unless there is a reason like being stranded in a desert or some massive wilderness where there is no resupply, I can assume crossing off a few gold in a town would buy me some basics like arrows and food, clean the armor, sharpen the blade, patch the hole in the shirt, shave, etc... Like what some of the others say about roleplay, it is not bad, but there should be a reason. Maybe you roleplay with the smith when you go looking for new armor and he talks about a possible bad guy place or how the Duke is not from these parts and is not to be trusted.

Largely agreed, other than at very low level where every copper piece matters, as long as players remember to knock off those few g.p. when in town. My own trick is whenever a treasury share gets finalized I round it down a bit* for my character(s), with the rounded-off bit going to minor supplies, inn fees, beer and ale, and so forth.

* - for example, if my share comes to 5235 g.p. I'll write 5200 on my character's finances page. with the leftover 35 assumed to be burned up in resupplying myself with trivialities like bowstrings, rations, arrows, etc.

The key point to remember, for both DMs and players, is that even though many if not all of those seemingly minor interactions with shopkeepers, tavern staff, and so on get hand-waved, every one of them is an opportunity for either PC-side info gathering or DM-side info dissemination.

 

[Lanefan]

Also builds. Builds are fun. But builds are most fun when tested; I get the same fun out of a build for an MMORPG or a Roguelite like Hades or Slay the Spire as I do out of a 3.5/PF build and I can test it much more easily and much less obnoxiously.

Thanks for reminding me of another aspect of the game I find boring as hell: pretty much the whole "character build" aspect that's become so front-and-centre in the WotC editions. Just let me roll some dice, dammit; I'll come up with a name, and let's get the thing in play!

 

[Lanefan]

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.

I very much agree with this.

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.

If the combats are swingier, for example everyone (including the foes) has way fewer hit points than 5e gives but stil does lots of damage each round on average, then the battles are a) way shorter and b) force you to pay attention because, even though your options may be limited, every choice you make might represent the difference between your character living, dying, or suffering some unpleasant in-between fate.

Also, the use of crit-hit and fumble mechanics tends to spice things up.

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.

If the outcome is predictable even before the combat starts, it's likely to be dull no matter what amount of time the battle takes.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Thanks for reminding me of another aspect of the game I find boring as hell: pretty much the whole "character build" aspect that's become so front-and-centre in the WotC editions. Just let me roll some dice, dammit; I'll come up with a name, and let's get the thing in play!

Though it's worth noting that the former can still support the latter, but not the other way around.

That is, a game that includes a character-building aspect can (at least potentially) offer options that require no "building" and do just get to the dice rolls immediately. A game that has no character-building elements cannot do the same, as there is no room to offer a few build options for those who want them.

I strongly suspect this is why the character-building side of things will always remain the more prominent form. Of course, this then implies a significant duty on the designers' parts, to actually give the "no builds please, just let me roll!" crowd stuff that does, in fact, actually suit them. Not just token efforts either; full-throated and well-made support is non-negotiable if the strategy is "we will include builds because people can choose not to build if they want."

It's one of the reasons why I am rather annoyed that D&D ties simplicity to only select classes. Surely there are folks like you, but who want to play Wizards or Clerics! Yet they have been criminally under-served. Even 4e, which made the biggest strides here (the Elementalist Sorcerer is the only truly simple D&D caster I've ever seen), only did so a couple of years into its run.

 

[wicked cool]

Spell components-pretty much removed. Haven’t played with a dm who required them

Long combats with lots of enemies are boring. I’m not throwing 50 zombies at a 5th level party. I’m throwing a more powerful undead

Duplicate type encounters. So if I’m running say phandelver I’m not running bandit room 1 2 3. I’m combining and once again adding in a bandit captain. What that means is one of those rooms is empty

I may cut an entire area of a module if it adds nothing as that’s boring. This is sort of a duplicate to above but I’ve done this in several wotc adventures

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I very much agree with this.

If the combats are swingier, for example everyone (including the foes) has way fewer hit points than 5e gives but stil does lots of damage each round on average, then the battles are a) way shorter and b) force you to pay attention because, even though your options may be limited, every choice you make might represent the difference between your character living, dying, or suffering some unpleasant in-between fate.

Also, the use of crit-hit and fumble mechanics tends to spice things up.

If the outcome is predictable even before the combat starts, it's likely to be dull no matter what amount of time the battle takes.

Except that I dislike swingy combat and frequent character death at least as much as I dislike overly-short rounds, so that path leads to no better results I'm afraid.

And there's a reason I spoke of flowcharts rather than predictability per se. That is, a flowchart is about determining what I (or any particular player) should do on any given turn, not a perfect map of each combat. The combats will change, but if the system is too simple, it becomes trivial to set up a decision procedure that automates combat decision-making. At which point, "strategy" has ceased to exist; it is mere tic-tac-toe/noughts-and-crosses writ large. My experience of both Labyrinth Lord and Dungeon World combat (as a player) was in this vein. It's why I always work to make my DW combats interesting in ways that break such SOP/flowchart stuff, set pieces or complications rather than the painfully dull drudgery of Yet Another Goddamn Kobold Fight.

I guess more simply put, I don't know how any given combat will play out in OSR-like/ultralight gameplay. But I can set up a procedure that, with a handful of yes/no questions, can pick either the optimal action, or a near-optimal action, in the vast majority of cases. It may end up that the optimal choice is to run, if a fight goes unexpectedly poorly. It may be that the optimal choice is to stab the balrog, if a scary fight goes shockingly well. But the actual involvement of my brain in the process of deciding what to do is damn near zero. When I don't have to use my brain as part of play, I get bored. Roleplay uses lots of my brain, because I'm having to keep in the headspace of someone who isn't me. Combat doesn't have that element, generally speaking, so it needs to provide something else to keep my brain engaged or I get bored.

 

[Andvari]

Crafting, complex character building and players taking long turns in combat.

 

[cranberry]

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.

Spending 10 minutes talking to the NPC you're buying boots from is one thing, spending two hours talking to that NPC is something else...

Ahem, no, I don't railroad. But are you seriously OK with the PCs going off and doing whatever? Really?...

And IMHO, anyone who GM's a pure sandbox campaign like you're suggesting, has a lot more time on their hands than I do...