D&D General What wastes time at your table?

[MichaelSomething]

the players are trying to avoid what they should be doing which is saying what they want to do. In some cases, it's a way to corner the DM into agreeing that something is going to work before the action is declared.

Still describing "skilled play" to me. Correction: "skilled Gygaxian play."

While it does exist, this type of play seems to have largely fallin' out of style due to being obnoxious.

 

[iserith]

Still describing "skilled play" to me. Correction: "skilled Gygaxian play."

While it does exist, this type of play seems to have largely fallin' out of style due to being obnoxious.

It's not skilled play. It's an attempt to circumvent play.

 

[MichaelSomething]

It's not skilled play. It's an attempt to circumvent play.

Would you prefer the term "combat as war instead of combat as sport?"

 

[iserith]

Would you prefer the term "combat as war instead of combat as sport?"

I don't believe any term is needed to understand what I was talking about is not what you're talking about.

 

[Malmuria]

That's skilled play for ya...

via The Alexandrian:

Here’s Gary Gygax giving some of the worst GMing advice you’ll hopefully ever read (Dungeon Master’s Guide, 1979):

Assume your players are continually wasting time (thus making the so-called adventure drag out into a boring session of dice rolling and delay) if they are checking endlessly for traps and listening at every door. If this persists, despite the obvious displeasure you express, the requirement that helmets be doffed and mail coifs removed to listen at a door, and then be carefully replaced, the warnings about ear seekers, and frequent checks for wandering monsters (q.v.), then you will have to take more direct part in things. Mocking their over-cautious behavior as near cowardice, rolling huge handfuls of dice and then telling them the results are negative, and statements to the effect that: “You detect nothing, and nothing has detected YOU so far—” might suffice. If the problem should continue, then rooms full of silent monsters will turn the tide, but that is the stuff of later adventures.

Uh… yeah. Do literally none of that. But you can feel Gygax’s palpable frustration with the style of play his own killer dungeons had created boiling off the page.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, it's also stuff like "Is the door locked?" To which I can only respond, "How do you check?"

My response to that is usually to tell them whether or not the door has an obvious lock or locking mechanism, and if there is one I'll add "...but you've no way of telling from here whether it's locked or not".

The first question is a way to avoid consequences. By stating how they want to check to see if the door is locked ("I jiggle the handle to see if the door is locked..."), there may or may not be consequences.

Exactly.

 

[Lanefan]

Would you prefer the term "combat as war instead of combat as sport?"

Unless you're seeing something I'm not, I'm not at all sure how this relates.

 

[iserith]

My response to that is usually to tell them whether or not the door has an obvious lock or locking mechanism, and if there is one I'll add "...but you've no way of telling from here whether it's locked or not".

Whether the door is obviously locked will have been in my description of the environment up front, since it's a good idea to highlight the basic scope of options.

 

[prabe]

Whether the door is obviously locked will have been in my description of the environment up front, since it's a good idea to highlight the basic scope of options.

Someone asking if a door is locked, then, must drive you nucking futs.

 

[iserith]

Someone asking if a door is locked, then, must drive you nucking futs.

I try to be charitable in case they didn't hear me or forgot what I said. But certainly I cringe.