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My Beloved Spouse (Kobold Chorus: "We love you!") and I have been gaming fairly often on my days off. As I get three in a row each week, this means we game about 2-3 days out of 7.
Christmas was 4, New Years 4, then 3's again.
Which is all a set up for explaining that since New Years, we have covered less than 48 hours in game time, despite putting in about 15-20 hours of real time.
Most of this was spent with the crew of a starship docked at a space station making friendly with the locals. Meetings with people, time spent on the planet below recruiting new PC's, diplomatic flaming hoops, that sort of thing. It just went on, and on, and on. I had a chat with the spousal unit after the game-before-last and asked "Ok, as one GM to another, what would YOU do?" She replied that perhaps a bit of combat would help kick things back out of inertial damping.
And so it was that this massive time dilation ended when a period of MAYBE 6 combat rounds took nearly 5 real hours (+/- 1 hour) to complete. It also ended with the deaths of 3 characters.
All of which brings us to my question, dear readers.
What's the longest amount of real time you've put into the shortest amount of game time? Why?
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Most recently, 1 hour and 20 minutes to get through a minute or so of combat to pass a portcullis.
Party was 9th level and encountered closed portcullis. When the eladrin character finally went incorporeal and passed through, he was confronted with a hill giant. He then proceeded to do nothing.
Meanwhile, the rest of the party is unable to Escape Artist through the 2ft. wide hole over the portcullis. Until the warlock dimension doors through the wall.
The portcullis took two more rounds to open, then the party managed to get through the fight with the backup giants.
Most of the time was wasted with spell research and player indecisiveness.
I would like to emphasize that the eladrin could turn incorporeal and charm/hold monster at will, and the warlock could dimension door at will.
Main issues were the eladrin players not knowing his characters abilities and lack of party communication.
We spent about 6-8 hours playing out a gods war which lasted around twenty rounds (though no time in game actually happened since it was on a plane with no time) basically we had a handful of gods on each side battling each other.
On the other hand the shortest was about 12 seconds of the DM explaining that several years had passed between certain events...
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We spent about 6-8 hours playing out a gods war which lasted around twenty rounds (though no time in game actually happened since it was on a plane with no time) basically we had a handful of gods on each side battling each other.
On the other hand the shortest was about 12 seconds of the DM explaining that several years had passed between certain events...
Yeah, shortest recent for me was "You spend most of a year in the phlogiston en route to your destination. Nothing goes boom."
One time, years ago we took two entire sessions to play just one fight against a dragon. Back then we had super long sessions too so maybe as much as 16-20 hours real time for something less than 20 min in game.
It wasn't tedious though, so a bit off topic.
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One time, years ago we took two entire sessions to play just one fight against a dragon. Back then we had super long sessions too so maybe as much as 16-20 hours real time for something less than 20 min in game.
It wasn't tedious though, so a bit off topic.
Ah, and this is "streamlined" combat. Every time I hear "Simple combat rules" in the same sentence as "d20" I laugh my t+%! off.
Any time my fellow players pipe up with wanting to craft items.
If you want to have a rules session on crafting and how long and how much X will take, and if it can get done... or how much to build item A, TAKE IT OFFLINE!
Ah, and this is "streamlined" combat. Every time I hear "Simple combat rules" in the same sentence as "d20" I laugh my t&%# off.One time, years ago we took two entire sessions to play just one fight against a dragon. Back then we had super long sessions too so maybe as much as 16-20 hours real time for something less than 20 min in game.
It wasn't tedious though, so a bit off topic.
It's all relative. I've played games that make d20 combat look very, VERY streamlined. Of course I've also played Jade Claw which makes it look idiotically complicated.
My worst was about 4 or 5 hours real time for about 15-20 second game time. GURPS combat rounds are very short in game but frequently very long out of game.
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I once played in a melee that took roughly fifteen hours of play--it started with a large number of demons teleporting into a good temple and ended with the appearance of a large number of angels...fifteen seconds in-game later. The system was extremely fine-grained, though. It dealt with actions by the number of tenths of seconds they took instead of breaking time down into rounds.
Some of our players once spent about one whole hour of game time deciding which direction to take at a crossroads.
Best I got is 6 hours for 13 rounds.
Unfortunately this happens in my group fairly often. There have been many a 4 hour session where we get next to nothing accomplished. TheWhiteKnife and I actually text each other at times griping about how it's like pulling teeth with either the DM or other players to get on with the game.
Spotlight hogs wasting the tables time while they just HAVE TO role-play buying something to the most ridiculous extremes. It's a no-name NPC and you're buying some wine... GET ON WITH IT!
Discussing what our next move should be (to an extreme) even though the "hook" has been expertly placed by the DM. Or even worse, we get to town, do our shopping and find an inn. The DM seems to be waiting for us to tell him what we're doing and we're all expecting a hook to come because we have no idea what we SHOULD be doing...
DM who comes ill-prepared for the decisions we make in game and he rifles thru the published adventure trying to find out what page he should be on now... Spends 10 minutes reading and believes himself ready only for it all to happen again when we ask him a question.
Now, I'm certain that I have tendencies that my group might not appreciate. But, I despise having hours of my day wasted sitting at a table doing nothing when I'm there to have fun. I like keeping a fast pace and I really don't mind role-playing, I just wish the role-playing would stick to when it's crucial to the adventure.
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I once played in a melee that took roughly fifteen hours of play--it started with a large number of demons teleporting into a good temple and ended with the appearance of a large number of angels...fifteen seconds in-game later. The system was extremely fine-grained, though. It dealt with actions by the number of tenths of seconds they took instead of breaking time down into rounds.
You were playing Car Wars?
<blink>
2 combatants, 3 combat rounds, 8 hours real time.
The DM asked me to help him playtest his 'extremely accurate' (obsessively anal) new combat system... Here's what I remember of it:
NOW it is the other player's turn! Rinse and repeat forever.
2 combatants, 3 combat rounds, 8 hours real time.
The DM asked me to help him playtest his 'extremely accurate' (obsessively anal) new combat system... Here's what I remember of it:
Roll to hit (after factoring in every conceivable variable) -
Roll for hit location on the opponent's body (I think there were 11 of them)
Roll to see if the armor in that location deflected the blow -
Roll damage to that part of the body minus the armor's absorbing capability -
Update your overall HP
Update the HP of that body part
Update the condition of your armor on that part
Determine the % of damage to that body part -
Roll to determine what kind of disabling factor you suffered as it would now effect subsequent rounds of combat... NOW it is the other player's turn! Rinse and repeat forever.
Ludicrous... No way I could handle that.
Yeah, I called it quits after round three... the battle wasn't done. :)
It was the only system I've seen that made a calculator mandatory. Something else I forgot, I remember praying the second blow didn't hit in the same location because, with the weakened armor, the weapon penetration was now greater so you had to figure out the increased % effectiveness of the blow to get the adjusted HP damage to the part...
You can see how the whole thing would quickly spin out of control.
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I once played in a melee that took roughly fifteen hours of play--it started with a large number of demons teleporting into a good temple and ended with the appearance of a large number of angels...fifteen seconds in-game later. The system was extremely fine-grained, though. It dealt with actions by the number of tenths of seconds they took instead of breaking time down into rounds.
You were playing Car Wars?
<blink>
Nope, oddball D&D variant developed in the mid-1970s by a math PhD with too much time on his hands (his wife was wrapping up med school, he'd finished before her, and they had a 2-year-old--he was a stay-at-home dad for a while). It was quite a system. Actions (draw weapon, strike with weapon, throw weapon, etc.) had maximum and minimum times, characters had mental and physical reflex times, and spellcasting generally took rather longer than attacking with a weapon (and after you cast the spell you had a recovery time during which you were unable to act, and a longer recovery time before you could start another spell). It actually balanced magic-users fairly well, because your character was basically defenseless while casting a spell *and* while recovering.
Oh, and he took an old OD&D rule element--you can't advance more than one level per adventure--and turned it into a probability that you'd go up a level after an adventure. Level rolls at the end of the night were a big deal. Of course it was nothing so simple as a percentage of the experience needed for the next level. He developed a function that gave a 50% chance of advancement at the level boundary, never went to 0% chance regardless of how far you were from the level boundary, and never went to 100% chance regardless of how far over the level boundary you were.
I remember the system fondly because there were a couple of really excellent DMs who ran it, but in some ways it was a real headache to deal with. Learning curve was pretty steep.
A year and a half ago I joined an ongoing high level Spelljammer game. At present we are spread between levels 15 and 19 with 7 players. We run about 2 or 3 sessions of planning and checking on NPC's for each session of combat.
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A year and a half ago I joined an ongoing high level Spelljammer game. At present we are spread between levels 15 and 19 with 7 players. We run about 2 or 3 sessions of planning and checking on NPC's for each session of combat.
How do you handle tactical combat in spelljammer? If you do. That's a big deal for the current game I'm running and I'd like some input on it.
Cheers!
M
An entire session waking up at an inn, having breakfast and going shopping for MUNDANE items, forced into roleplaying every purchase, with extraneous use of a homebrew bartering system based on diplomacy and counter-diplomacy.
All. My. Hate.
Yeah, I called it quits after round three... the battle wasn't done. :)
It was the only system I've seen that made a calculator mandatory. Something else I forgot, I remember praying the second blow didn't hit in the same location because, with the weakened armor, the weapon penetration was now greater so you had to figure out the increased % effectiveness of the blow to get the adjusted HP damage to the part...
You can see how the whole thing would quickly spin out of control.
That would be an OK system if all you had to do was roll to-hit, to-hit location, and damage then a computer does everything else.
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One of the biggest offenders for grinding combat to a the Attack of Opportunity. Every time someone does something, you have to check to see if it draws an AoO, you have to resolve the AoO, then you move to the next character in the initiate order and it starts again. AoO is a good idea, but I just don't if it's good enough to be worth the extra time it adds onto combats.
One of the biggest offenders for grinding combat to a the Attack of Opportunity. Every time someone does something, you have to check to see if it draws an AoO, you have to resolve the AoO, then you move to the next character in the initiate order and it starts again. AoO is a good idea, but I just don't if it's good enough to be worth the extra time it adds onto combats.
Oh, yes. I hates the AoO. The worst was when we were up against four four-armed creatures who each had multiattack and combat reflexes. Two hours into the combat and I was like, hey, great it's almost my turn...and then on his last hit the GM got a crit against me... and drew from the critical hit deck, and came up with 'you are stunned for 1 rd'. I looked at him in disbelief. And walked away from the table for a few to cool down since I wasn't going to be needed for a while anyways. That was not a good night.
niel wrote:
A year and a half ago I joined an ongoing high level Spelljammer game. At present we are spread between levels 15 and 19 with 7 players. We run about 2 or 3 sessions of planning and checking on NPC's for each session of combat.How do you handle tactical combat in spelljammer? If you do. That's a big deal for the current game I'm running and I'd like some input on it.
I joined at 15th lvl. By that time the PC's ship had an invisibility enchantment so I never saw a tactical encounter. As far as I can tell, previously, the tactical aspect was just handwaved. Sorry.
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My first game of D&D - nay, my first SESSION! The DM pretty much said "You're a Ninja Spy / Rogue from the OA book. You can pick whatever you want, but you're going to want spot and listen and hide and move silently and open locks and disable device..." Ah well. First time players need handholding. Funny thing was, we never actually got to roll perception checks. Everything was "You are surprised by the nightstalker! FIGHT!" @_@
It was also the group's first time playing with brand spanking new 3.5 rulebooks! And the spell changes pretty much turned a roadbump that used to be the expenditure of a couple of spells into a 3-4 hour long arguement over what to do.
We had to get a henge youkai ninja spy, an elf ranger, a useless bard (early OOTS Elan is a genius and masterful combatant compared to this bard), a godlike sorceror (let's just say he rolled multiple 18s on his stats, and had no stat lower than 15), some other elf I don't remember anymore and a GMPC (who was the son of the evil red dragon emperor, the only psionicist in the universe, and generally possessed GM immunity) through a drow city.
Under 3.0 spell duration rules, we just needed to disguise ourselves and we were good...probably. GIven the new 3.5 spell durations, that was NOT a possibility. So....
what do you get when you have three computer engineers and one mechanical engineer in a group? You get an hours long discussion into how long a sleeping humanoid can survive on the air in a closed portable hole, and whether the "extradimensional space" where a henge-youkai's gear goes when she transforms into a black cat will cause a bad reaction with the portable hole....
My poor little character had to run back and forth through entire city, carrying each character one at t atime through the city. But finally it was over!
I joined at 15th lvl. By that time the PC's ship had an invisibility enchantment so I never saw a tactical encounter. As far as I can tell, previously, the tactical aspect was just handwaved. Sorry.niel wrote:
A year and a half ago I joined an ongoing high level Spelljammer game. At present we are spread between levels 15 and 19 with 7 players. We run about 2 or 3 sessions of planning and checking on NPC's for each session of combat.How do you handle tactical combat in spelljammer? If you do. That's a big deal for the current game I'm running and I'd like some input on it.
I apologize for jumping in on this thread but I'm trying to contact Niel; sir, if you are still interested in joining my Pathfinder PBP with your Xorn PC, I would love to have you. I had a drop and you are my first alternate. Stop by the IC thread if you've any interest, please. Thanks!
In an Ars Magica campaign I managed to get the group to spend an entire session arguing whether or not they would help some npcs kill the local dragon.
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I once played in an Eberron game where the DM had agreed to take on far too many players and then peppered the campaign with combats against large numbers of enemies. At one point, I think we had twelve people playing with one DM. At least one of the players clearly had no idea what he was doing and constantly needed to be counseled through his decisions or outright told what to do, three of the players (including the DM's girlfriend) were the focus characters who made the world go round, four more were mathtastic optimizers, power gamers or munchkins who devoured time like langoliers and I'm not entirely sure what the rest of us did because we rarely got to do anything.
If I figured in the amount of time it took for me to drive to the game, I'd guess I spent 5 hours, 45 minutes real time, per session, to pass 10 seconds to two minutes in game. The focus characters seemed to have a feat or class feature that allowed them to forward the plot and advance time when we weren't in combat, but I could never find it in any of my splat books so I couldn't take advantage of it.
Think I've recounted this tale once before - albeit more briefly... so apologies if you've heard it before:
About 3 years ago was part of a 3.5 campaign that was a mash up of Keep on the Borderlands and Nights Dark Terror. Effectively a halcyon days throwback that promised loads of fun... We didn't get a chance to play that often, so a day of gaming was truly golden:
The party came across 2 goblin wolfrider scouts in a forested valley. My half orc barbarian and my wife's human monk immediately gave chase using their increased movement to keep it honest. The difficult terrain, judicious feat choices and the burning of action points kept the chase interestly close for the 15 odd rounds it lasted... unlike the 4 hours of game time it actually took [our DM loves maps and scematics, so we every gradient, root and fauna played its part :(]. For 4 hours we chased those little feckers up, down, and through this valley... only to have the now wolfless [they been unseated in falls] scouts walk straight into a double killshot from our DMPC Specialist goblinkiller Ranger as our exausted characters look on...
That final act was the kicker and straw that broke the back of that campaign and almost lost my wife as a fellow roleplayer [she still has a look of searing contempt of those lost 3 hours]
Next time we'll stick with the Ranger... ;)
BD
In a recent game our group spent nearly the entire session buying and selling mundane items in town. Then dividing up some money.
90% was disscusion between party treasurer and DM. The rest of us sat there and ate snacks and talked about movies and video games.
I could have stayed at home and phoned it in.
Think I've recounted this tale once before - albeit more briefly... so apologies if you've heard it before:
About 3 years ago was part of a 3.5 campaign that was a mash up of Keep on the Borderlands and Nights Dark Terror. Effectively a halcyon days throwback that promised loads of fun... We didn't get a chance to play that often, so a day of gaming was truly golden:
The party came across 2 goblin wolfrider scouts in a forested valley. My half orc barbarian and my wife's human monk immediately gave chase using their increased movement to keep it honest. The difficult terrain, judicious feat choices and the burning of action points kept the chase interestly close for the 15 odd rounds it lasted... unlike the 4 hours of game time it actually took [our DM loves maps and scematics, so we every gradient, root and fauna played its part :(]. For 4 hours we chased those little feckers up, down, and through this valley... only to have the now wolfless [they been unseated in falls] scouts walk straight into a double killshot from our DMPC Specialist goblinkiller Ranger as our exausted characters look on...
That final act was the kicker and straw that broke the back of that campaign and almost lost my wife as a fellow roleplayer [she still has a look of searing contempt of those lost 3 hours]
Next time we'll stick with the Ranger... ;)
BD
Seriously? Why didn't some one just shoot them with a bow in the first place? Or do it as soon as it was obvious the DM was going to be a dick about the whole thing? Never mind that it shouldn't have taken you that long to catch them anyway.
And things that always take forever: Trying to find stuff to buy and sell. I think I am going to preface all future efforts to buy and sell with calculating the costs, getting some one to roll an appraise, and if its too low, just telling the DM I sell everything for 50%.
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It's been a few years, so the specifics are getting hazy, but in a war story ascension campaign when we were around 9-11 range (specifically, I was 9 most every one else 10-11)
We gamed on Saturdays from 2pm until.. usually midnight or so. Some of the sessions involving this situation went to 4am. Over the course of 2 1/2 - 3 months, we fought ONE combat. I don't remember the count of rounds, but it was several minutes of gametime. Most of the fight was getting through waves of ogres, not really a challenge for our level, but for sheer volume. Eventually we fought through the cliffside fortress, into and out of an arena with several monsters in it, up to the balcony and into General Laprov's sanctum.
The best part, I was only a few hundred xp from leveling when we rolled init, and at lvl 9 I was the only one to actually get xp for the dozens of ogres we slaughtered. When xp was finally calculated, I not only got to 10, I capped out and leveled to 11 after the next encounter. Over the course of one long battle I went form the lowest level new party member to the 2nd or 3rd highest member. (We had a big group, 8PCs)
So yeah, months (days of actual played hours) to cover maybe 10 - 15 minutes of game time.
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One of the biggest offenders for grinding combat to a the Attack of Opportunity. Every time someone does something, you have to check to see if it draws an AoO, you have to resolve the AoO, then you move to the next character in the initiate order and it starts again. AoO is a good idea, but I just don't if it's good enough to be worth the extra time it adds onto combats.
I rarely have issue with AoO. In my experience it's spellcasters that drag things out. Specifically, players of spellcasters not knowing which spell to cast.
Seriously? Why didn't some one just shoot them with a bow in the first place? Or do it as soon as it was obvious the DM was going to be a dick about the whole thing? Never mind that it shouldn't have taken you that long to catch them anyway.Think I've recounted this tale once before - albeit more briefly... so apologies if you've heard it before:
About 3 years ago was part of a 3.5 campaign that was a mash up of Keep on the Borderlands and Nights Dark Terror. Effectively a halcyon days throwback that promised loads of fun... We didn't get a chance to play that often, so a day of gaming was truly golden:
The party came across 2 goblin wolfrider scouts in a forested valley. My half orc barbarian and my wife's human monk immediately gave chase using their increased movement to keep it honest. The difficult terrain, judicious feat choices and the burning of action points kept the chase interestly close for the 15 odd rounds it lasted... unlike the 4 hours of game time it actually took [our DM loves maps and scematics, so we every gradient, root and fauna played its part :(]. For 4 hours we chased those little feckers up, down, and through this valley... only to have the now wolfless [they been unseated in falls] scouts walk straight into a double killshot from our DMPC Specialist goblinkiller Ranger as our exausted characters look on...
That final act was the kicker and straw that broke the back of that campaign and almost lost my wife as a fellow roleplayer [she still has a look of searing contempt of those lost 3 hours]
Next time we'll stick with the Ranger... ;)
BD
Neither the monk nor my barbarian were packing bows of any kind, I'd tried to nail one with a throwing axe but missed :( Yeah we had various "house rules" regarding the undulating terrain thrown at us, and as my wife's will to live just ebbed, I just more and more bloody minded that I was going to catch up with these feckers and utterly destroy them... Lesson learned - have never played with him again...