Tips and Tricks to speed up any game you play.
One of the biggest challenges to any game master is time management. You may have a great story, interesting NPCs and a finale that will blow your players away, that is if you can get to it. Employing the shortcuts below will speed up any game system you play. (If you’re not a fan of reading and just want a quick pro break down, scroll to the bottom.)
The biggest slowdown of any game is combat and that’s the main focus of this article today, how to speed up combat. Where players are, where the bad guys are, who’s on fire, who’s on a ledge, there’s a patch of ice there? All these questions can be answered in a few seconds without a word said by the storyteller. Although you will need to be a bit, crafty.
First you’ll need a fold out dry erase mat. I use foldable grey scored map, 1”by1”, squares for easy tracking of movement. No ever asks “Could I make it this far?” They just look at the map and can count it out. I draw out the terrain, the ice slicks, the trees, and I have several wooden blocks, cheap at any hobby store, if i want elevated terrain. This one marker and mat can easily transform into any terrain for any game. A dark warehouse, a sewer, a church, a castle hall, a dock, a oil rig, a office building… I should stop or I could go on forever. No digging through bins for trees, or cottages. No wasting time finding that one perfect treasure chest tile. In the end that’s all fluff and fluff that wastes game time. This also gives you flexibility in your games because now if the players go in a different direction it’s easy to change things. I know that when I prepped an hour before a game and the players went somewhere else I might have to spend five minutes digging up the right tile sets. NO MORE!
Second thing you’ll need are pieces to represent your players and npcs. This is really up to the group. It can be coins or dice, or colored stones. In my group we actually have numerous miniatures on hand so we went a little extra on this part. We used miniatures and hard scored plastic squares, to match our map. We super glued the miniatures onto the bases. Now you could use thick cardboard as well for this and glue your token onto it. Now that’s all basic stuff, but now it gets to the next level.
The next level is straws, toothpicks, and masking tape. We glued 1” cut outs of straws onto the bases of our miniatures so that they could hold up toothpicks. We now have a quick and visual way to mark npcs and players with conditions on them. If a player is knocked out or prone, it’s easy to pick up a toothpick write “prone” on a strip of tape and tape it around as a little flag. This opens up the door to much larger fight sequences in games because now the work of tracking monster conditions isn’t yet another burden on the storyteller.
Which brings me to my final tip. Get the players involved in what’s usually considered GM stuff. If you’re tracking monster conditions, health points, movement, and events you might be doing a lot more than you need to, and all that time you spend tracking every little thing eats away at game time, while everyone else is waiting on you. By using the toothpicks and straws the players take charge of putting condition markers on monsters instead of just telling the storyteller. So why not have them track monster damage too? It spreads out some of the math and constantly reminds the players how much damage they’ve inflicted on the big bad. This also helps players stay active and involved when it’s not their turn. I give each player a monster or group of monsters damage to track. So if player A hits a monster player B is tracking, player B is involved instead of sitting around waiting for his turn. This also means player B is more aware that the monster is about to die and might make his actions change. Note that I said damage, not health. The only person who should know a creatures full health is the GM.
I’ve never really considered going to all this effort before Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition came out. Now that I have i’m very happy to have such a versatile toolbox for any system.
Now the breakdown in a nutshell.
Items needed
Dry Erase fold out mat
Superglue
Toothpicks
Straws
Scissors
Masking Tape
Dry Erase Markers, I recommend a few colors and a large eraser.
Tokens of Players and NPCs
Use the mat to create any area you desire.
Use Flags as easy visual markers that players make as their abilities cause buffs or debuffs.
Have players assist in tracking monster damage taken(don’t tell them the monsters health) by assigning them each different creatures to track.
Should easily be able to have everything, including character sheets in a shoe box. By reducing the number of items needed for a game, it cuts back on game prep, and travel difficulty.
