D&D General What wastes time at your table?

[Azzy]

Too many players.
Combat with too many players.

 

[Lanefan]

Too many players.
Combat with too many players.

True.

A game with no players goes at the speed of thought.

 

[turnip_farmer]

Then They suddenly say they do it and never move near the object with which they are interacting with. I just sit there quietly until they get a move on.

I'm struggling to understand this bit and wondering if it might be some sort of misaligned expectations going on with your players.

If you mean you have a little map with tokens, and a player's not allowed to interact with an object until they've moved their little token next to the picture of the object on the map, then you need to make sure you've clearly explained to the players that's how things work. The games I play never work like this, so they might just not realise.

I would also consider why I was making them do this and whether it added anything to the game, but that's just me.

 

[Horwath]

Shopping has always been a time waster. 20-25 years ago we would take hours going on detailed and improvised shopping excursions. This was in an in depth Waterdeep campaign and our game style back then was to roleplay most every encounter. Sometimes it panned out and lead to cool encounters but most of the time it was a waste. Now weve streamlined purchasing equipment unless theres a reason to roleplay it. Matter of fact I created a table to handwave equipment and just make the assumption players take measures to equip themselve with mundane necessities.

We have good variant for magic item shopping.

DM decides, what is a max "level" or price of an item that can be bought.
Every player makes a short list, 4-6 items, and 1 or 2 of those is available in the shop.
List is made between sessions usually.

So in a large city, 5 player group can find 10 items of common, uncommon or rare quality. and buy few of them.

 

[R_J_K75]

We have good variant for magic item shopping.

Before 3E buying magical items was rarely allowed at our table. During the 3.x and 4E eras we allowed it as it was built into the rules. Now in 5E we've reverted back to our old stance, they are rarely available to buy except for certain potions here and there. Breaking down magical items into categories of rarity seems to cheapen them for me as finding anyone willing to sell, trade or loan them should be very few and far between. Solving a problem by throwing gold at it to procure a certain item is boring to me. Even then coming up with the "quest" to find an item for sale or trade is wasted time as is coming up with a table, etc to determine the price and what's available to the PCs in a given area. This is just how we generally handle this and there are exceptions if theres good reason.

Two cases in point. In our last session the players had to steal Roc eggs from a nest on the elemental plane of air. Which they were successful as the party wizard gave the fighter a potion of invisibility they found which allowed him to sneak up to the nest and grab a few eggs while the rest of the party distracted the Roc. If I'd just let them buy the potion to pretty much circumvent the encounter what's the fun in that? In another 3E campaign I ran a series of adventures where the party was diving on a shipwreck for sunken treasure. From the start because magical items were for sale per the DMG the players whined that I should just give them potions of water breathing, necklaces of adaptation, etc and we ended up wasting a ton of time arguing our cases back and forth and got little done for a good hour or so as the players just expected they could walk into any store and buy whatever they wanted.

 

[univoxs]

I'm struggling to understand this bit and wondering if it might be some sort of misaligned expectations going on with your players.

If you mean you have a little map with tokens, and a player's not allowed to interact with an object until they've moved their little token next to the picture of the object on the map, then you need to make sure you've clearly explained to the players that's how things work. The games I play never work like this, so they might just not realise.

I would also consider why I was making them do this and whether it added anything to the game, but that's just me.

This is indeed the expectation of the table. Not even laid out by me but the other players at the table. This one person just isn't really playing is the gist of it.

 

[jasper]

Reading Enworld

 

[jasper]

Most of those non joking posts have covered my major issues with wasting time. Others have been solve in Adventure League by me just banning or shadow banning a player. Now if you want my solutions. That is another thread.
Clever Nick Name. NICK NAME YOUR TURn.

 

[CleverNickName]

My turn again already?

 

[MichaelSomething]

When it comes to playing with my regular johns, I have to say there really is no wasted time. We've sort of all figured out how to avoid those sorts of issues.

With a pick-up group, the time wasters are typically going to be a lot of questions that players have instead of just saying what they want to do. A lot of them have been trained to ask 20 Questions before they commit to an action because it's safer (since a question can't have a consequence). I try to break them of this pretty quickly.

That's skilled play for ya...