Hey guys, this is Jon here with some D&D DM tips. You might know me as the player behind Cyrus Greymalkin, but these days I spend just as much time playing D&D as I do on the other side of the DM screen. The cool thing about doing both is that being a player gives you the chance to think critically about what you might be putting your players through. This is the first post I’m going to write in a short series on how I think through my experiences as a player to help me improve my game as a DM.
Part 1: Tempo matters
Do you know what the most fun part of D&D is for most players? It’s not waiting for the DM to rifle through the Monster Manual to find stat blocks on the enemies. It’s not sitting in fearful anticipation as the DM unexpectedly rolls 30 d20’s behind the screen one at a time. And it’s certainly not cringing as the DM roleplays a love triangle among three NPC’s while the party awkwardly looks on. No, the most fun part of playing D&D is playing D&D. What this means for me as a DM is that if there’s anything I can do to keep from slowing down the game, even just a little bit, I’m going to do it. Here are some of the things I do as a DM to increase the tempo of the game, especially during combat.
Stat block cards: Use index cards or table tents for each enemy type for easy reference. For example, I might have a card labeled “Bandits” with their AC, HP, six ability scores for saving throws, and basic weapon attacks. If applicable, I’ll add resistances and immunities, special abilities, spells I’m most likely to use on the fly, but keep it as simple as possible for the sake of easy reference. If necessary, I might also include its page number in the Monster Manual—and probably have that page tabbed so that I don’t have to spend much time trying to find it.
Enemy initiative: Roll initiative for enemies before the session and put those on your index cards. Hey, doing it beforehand has the same probability as doing it in the moment! The only difference is getting from “roll initiative” to actual combat that much quicker.
Color-coded dice: Let’s be honest, you’ve already got a ton of dice. Why not justify that addiction by putting them to work? If you have three bandits in the same initiative slot (and I do recommend grouping enemies of the same type together), try rolling all their dice at once using dice colors to keep their attacks and damage straight: red d20 and d6 for bandit 1, blue d20 and d6 for bandit 2, and yellow d20 and d8 for the guy hanging back with his crossbow. You won’t need all those damage rolls, but you will at least have already rolled them and can narrate that round of combat all at once rather than breaking it up each time you roll a new die.
Flow chart: There’s no way to predict what your players will do. There’s just not. You will inevitably have to adjust for your players’ complete indifference to the bar fight happening all around them or their insistence on talking to the random guy with a funny hat rather than the mysteriously obvious quest-giver clutching a blood-stained note offering copious amounts of gold. But you can at least plan out the hooks that you give them, your contingency plan, and the contingency plan for your contingency plan, and it can be helpful to refer to an at-a-glance flow chart you’ve prepared in advance rather than frantically shuffling through pages of notes. But of course, at the end of the day a DM’s most valuable skill is his ability to improvise. Don’t be afraid to improvise and change your notes afterwards to line up with how things played out in-game!
I think it’s worth noting that none of these suggestions on their own will save that much time. But in my humble opinion, it’s not just about saving time, but also improving the pace of things for your players and reducing those awkward moments of fumbling through pages of notes. I think it’s important to be the kind of DM who can identify those “dead spots” in your typical game flow and work to improve them—for me as a player, that’s a quality I want in a DM.
Do you have other D&D tips for improving the tempo of your game? I would love to hear them!