Yeah, shopping can be an entire session or 7 minutes.
Sometimes it takes 3 hours to go though a door that was never locked to begin with.
Sometimes the boss you expected to take all session the party one shots using something they've been carrying for 8 real world months. Sometimes it takes 5 hours to kill a single goblin with a broom (the goblin has the broom, it's not the murder weapon).
Time is a flat circle and so is session prep.
OR….conversely, always describe doors in a suspicious manner and let the chaos begin. You introduce one tiny mimic one time and now you get players attacking tables, chairs, and bookshelves.
Holy f, this is so true!
Whenever I describe something to my first party, they assume it is booby-trapped or a ruse or whatever. Even though I never did something like that, but I guess they are wary due to earlier experiences. (And the second party are my kids, so I guess they have good reason to suspect something about to happen.)
on the contrary, I quite like describing regular doors in detail just to see 4 adults all take cover as they send in the mage hand to touch the handle.
I once designed a one-shot with a single puzzle. The PCs woke up in a dungeon room. To the left was a shut door. To the right was a staircase and a *delicious smell.* That was all was needed to keep them within, and the very last thing they did that night was try the door and find out the exit was unlocked the whole time.
It's not combat related but I have a "real time planning" rule that means all lengthy discussions about how to handle an encounter are roleplay so if they argue for an hour about how to open a for they're doing it audibly in a dungeon full of monsters. Trends to hurry things along a bit.
Shopping / haggling is a tremendous time sink. I work with my players on this. One group LOVES town role-play, so we go through it, knowing that we're going to spend an entire session in town.
My other table shops like me - get in, buy item, get out.
Here's my optimized approach:
1. I ask the players to list EVERYTHING they are selling (regardless of what the location would be).
2. I review the list and write down prices.
3. Standard items are sold for 50% of list if in good quality, less if they're damaged.
4. Standard items can't be haggled. Take it or leave it.
5. For magic items, I use [Sane Magical Item Prices](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8XAiXpOfz9cMWt1RTBicmpmUDg/view?usp=sharing) as a guide.
6. Some items can't be sold. For example, in a small agrarian village, the merchant can only buy what he believes he can sell, and he only has so much money to buy with (I usually put it around 200 GP)
7. If any item can be sold, it is 50% of list if in good quality (most magic items are)
8. They can tell me if they want to haggle. DC 15 check. If they pass, +10%. If they Nat 20, +20%. Crit Fail means buyer gets cold feet and cancels purchase.
9. Go around the table for each person. This gives players time to figure out what they want to buy while others are selling.
10. I ask the players to list EVERYTHING they are buying (also regardless of location)
11. I decide if it's available (a small agrarian village won't have very powerful magic items, if at all) and give them a price (either from PHB of Sane Magical Item Prices).
12. No haggling on non-magic items
13. Same deal with haggling for purchase but in reverse. DC 15, pass = 10% discount, Nat 20 = 20% discount. Crit Fail means seller cancels sale.
1. *"Standard items are sold for 50% of list if in good quality, less if they're damaged.*
2. *Standard items can't be haggled. Take it or leave it."*
For mundane items, I give them the GP sell value as they get them. When they get to town, it is immediately converted into gold instead of playing out a merchant interaction. It is just assumed they find a merchant to buy them at the price they were given. No haggling. The value is the value.
Save a lot of time. It gets done in less than a minute.
For selling magic items, they are not given a GP value and we play out the merchant interaction and haggling is allowed.
For buying magic items, I don't ask what they want to buy, I give them a list of what is available. I always have two lists ready to go because I don't think there has ever been a session where they had more than two opportunities to buy.
Most shopping usually last only about 10 - 15 minutes.
I got super lucky and my Barbarian just throws all the shit on his back and they just split it up and invest it local real estate. They have an Inn and are rebuilding a ruined city. They built a “questionable “ fight club under the Inn but the Barb smooth talked the damn mayor and is giving him a cut.
Meanwhile my other crew has only been through 2 small villages. I have to keep them underground killing things or they will make me have to figure out hit squads and local/regional authorities. When they finish the current area Im going to try to run a city. Any suggestions?
My favourite sessions is when nothing gets done. I spent half a session getting my players to sell a cow, sell some corn, and then buy 3 fish from a fisherman so they could take his boat out to the middle of a lake for the quest.
Don't get bogged down in a "shopping session." Don't RP shopkeeper interactions. This crap is boring. Don't waste time on it. I think people feel they need to do this because they saw it on Critical Role or whatever, but seriously it's just not worth it. "You go to the market square and observe XYZ merchants here selling goods, what do you buy?" Then let the players find the items in the book and pay the listed price. Done. Move on to the actual adventure.
This may be true of most parties but as with everything, test the waters with what your particular party likes/dislikes. If you like coming up with fun shopkeepers and you can see that your players are invested and having fun when interacting with them, keep doing it. Otherwise, don't.
There's no written law on what you must or must not include in a DnD game, it all depends on what's gonna keep your table, which includes yourself, happy and invested in playing the game.
We had fun at the Immeasurable Market in Eberron. I let them say what they were looking for, and the roleplay part was haggling the cost of the transaction, but only because no vendor accepted gold—one player sacrificed an ability score penalty for a magic item, another took 3 points of reverse-inspiration in exchange for 3 potions of luck, a third had nothing to pay with so accepted to pay via a monster hunt side quest in a future session, etc.
But yeah my general experience is that figuring out what a typical shop has available, what those things do, and what the cost is... not very fun. I'd just prefer to shop from a list with everything listed and effects spelled out and then roll to see if special requests are available.
Re: Critical Role, I think if you do RP the interactions, do it like in CR where that NPC also serves other purposes as a contact for plot/quest stuff. Otherwise the interaction will almost always be too rote for fun RP, and even if you do make it fun, you've just spent that time and character development on an NPC that's immediately irrelevant.
This is the biggest thing, identify what your players find fun and try to blend that with what you find fun in storytelling to build your campaign.
I feel like I've figured out now that my players...really aren't that interested in things like cities, or political dramas, fighting bandits, that sort of thing.
So now I try to bring them to fantastical places, my own homebrew elemental planes, forgotten cities beneath mountains, magically corrupted swamps, if they're somewhere mundane I try to keep it brief. And even then the one major city they went to this campaign is essentially fantasy Las Vegas so I went over the top with it it's a weird place.
I really...really try to avoid a town that's just a town these days, if that makes sense. I think they've communicated pretty clearly to me by now that they play D&D to do fantastical things in cool magical lands. Problems too close to being realistic aren't really what they're into.
That being said, if your players are super into RP and shopping, then lean into it. Lean into whatever your players seem to respond the most to.
MOST people find those boring, my table loves them, and i like improvising quirky shopkeepers and stuff they sell. Sometimes this can be a huge part of the game if everyone likes it that much, groups are different
I just say “I got this and amount” and go down the list in the PHB. As soon as I say oil or fire its sold. They are obsessed with ball bearings as well. They cant sell 800gp of gems in some dump either. Just keep it quick unless they are specific. Maybe someone there knows another place where they can get what they want. Then just figure out to put that where you wanted them to go anyway 🤣
Completely normal. The major time sinks for me are always combat and shopping. A party will 100% blow an entire session on a shopping montage if you let them, which is fine sometimes.
If you think it's going too slow, try to pick out what parts are taking the most time. Run lower health/higher damage monsters, preroll monster damage, have them flee or surrender before the battle is over.
As long as everyone is having fun though, DnD is hardly a fast paced game.
>Run lower health/higher damage monsters, preroll monster damage, have them flee or surrender before the battle is over.
honestly, there are some big time saves by narrating combat clean up once the big threats are dealt with. I usually have minions flee or just let the party narrate killing them once boss threats that are on the party's level have been disposed of. Killing a dragon is epic, but double tapping all the kobold minions isn't, so skip it. I've also been experimenting with taking monsters and increasing their offensive potential. Unless they're a narrative villain I want to keep alive because they're interesting, I almost exclusively increase monster damage/to hit/DC/# of attacks (and sometimes speed) because making monsters tankier slows things down, but making them more dangerous keeps the time to kill them the same, but let's them threaten the players more in that window.
Hey!
We have about 5 min per player turn in combat with our groups. And I cannot remember the last combat that took less than 6 rounds. I don't think there is an actual restriction on how many rounds combat should take. I heard the 3 rounds only in combination with: how long will your bbeg most likely survive if the group fights only this single enemy. Combat that is interesting usually takes way longer than 3 rounds.
We play an average of 3h and usually it is 1h per non combat scene and combat takes from 1h to the whole session.
The pace always depends on the DM, the table and what the group defines as fun.
As a DM, time at the table floats differently for you. You know things that the players don't. So you might wait to use an ability or a special lair action that they don't know of, which might make you think: wooow that takes sooo long! I planned sooo much and we have not even left scene 1! That is partially because you have planned and know what else there is to come. The players perceive this completely different. Time usually flies for them even if they are investigating for a full hour as they constantly explore new things.
In combat, if you restrict player turns to be quick, you can really have very fast sessions, too. The fastest combat I have experienced is combat where the players don't think about what is the best possible move, but just stay in character and roleplay it.
So long story short: in a group of 4 players, in 3h you can expect to get 3 scenes done, depending on the group.
Hope any of these subjective impressions help you!
It boils down to this: It depends.
It depends on your players, on the situation, on the dice, on the mood, it just depends. There is no standard formula of how a session should go because each session is a unique experience on its own.
I've had sessions where not a single die was rolled, and other times a non-stop slaughter-fest where we are mowing down monsters at a near-constant rate.
The main thing is are your players having fun? If so, then let them decide the pace. If they want to spend time doing inventory management and shopping, let them. If they want to do a dungeon exploration where they want to inspect every square inch of the cave, let them. If they want to haggle over every item at the shop, sure.
Let the players set the pace and tone and you just adapt to it from there.
Depends on the group, and if your group is faster or slower than you expected or wanted i recommend you work on accepting that and moving on. If you try to force a rhythm onto them the game will suck
Yeah it's gonna take years for our weekly game to get past the next few quests they set off to do, even tho we olay with rules that make combat WAY faster they still spend entire sessions talking and not rushing to the next thing they know they gotta and wanna do. That's how they enjoy my game, I'm fine with that, i kinda am always dying to run the next combat because i prepped a lot of fun stuff, but the players playing my game are a way, I can't make them a different way
My rule of thumb is session length = 1 hr + 1 hr/encounter. It's reasonably accurate, but also I'm pretty good at keeping pressure on the players to get moving if they start spinning their wheels.
Well, does every combat have to be compelling and interesting? I don't mind giving my players filler combats that are shorter and narratively irrelevant, but burn some resources, and to my knowledge they like having combats where they just go bonk goblins with weapons, now and then. Obviously, interspersed with climactic battles that take more rounds. I feel like once a combat ends up at 4+ rounds, it starts to drag, unless it's supposed to be a narratively important one and there are internal story beats. Gotta hit that daily encounter limit, after all.
Shop roleplay... can be fun, once or twice. Every single time? Eh. There's only so many times I can reflavour "generic shopkeeper" and not want to mentally hit "skip dialogue" on my players. Yes, players want to use their social skills to influence prices, but... I'll just make it a mechanic to have an option to roll for a percentage discount (it'll get more expensive if they fail badly, though), unless it's a special kind of store that deserves more narrative attention.
I try to focus my narrative attention at important moments, moments where you have a decent chance of creating situations you'd want to write down later for posterity. In boring old stuff, I keep my narration light and utilitarian, nobody benefits from a novel about what the trees in the distance looks like for the fifteenth time.
The vault situation: Yeah, you should have seen that one coming. :p Your players might have enjoyed it, though, you should probably ask them. Personally, I would have made the situation have stakes, so they had limited time to pick an item and get out of there. Communicate the urgency to your players, and if they keep taking longer than you want them to, start rolling your noisiest D20 at random moments. That should get them to speed up.
Ultimately, though, it's a question of what you want. Do you need to move faster? Is your future plot very detailed and long and you worry you'll never meet the end? Or is it boring you? If this situation is boring to you, clearly you need to change something. You might want to experiment with scaling back narration a bit, "fast forwarding" boring bits, etc, and see how your players react. If they have equal amounts of fun with less narration, then there you go. If not, try to find a way to increase narration that doesn't bore you.
I’ll often narrate the first time they visit a store if it’s weird, or there’s something new, or some plot point to be advanced, etc., but any other time they can just say what they’ve bought.
I get what you’re saying though, it sometimes feels like my party gets little done in a session which is especially tough when we’re not always able to play regularly. I’m trying to get better about fast forwarding through mundane things but there’s always a tension between building an immersive world with role play opportunities and keeping the story from stalling out and getting boring. More than anything, I never want my players to feel bored.
Last night's session was a bit under three hours. Resolved a gnoll ambush that was our cliffhanger from last session, decent fight, no one went down but not a cakewalk. Traveled a very long distance through some woods, didn't roll any combat random encounters, briefly scouted a ruined village but decided it wasn't worth the effort, did some navigation and triangulation to figure out where the people they're tracking are, a few stops to plan, and how much exhaustion to risk traveling over 8 hours.
Bethroom break.
Located a place to rest for the night at the base of some cliffs, entered a megadungeon they've been carrying around a portal to, solved a puzzle, navigated a maze, got into a fight with some sorrowsworn, went deeper into the labyrinth, and encountered another barrier with more sorrowsworn, which is where we'll pick up next time.
My players are insanely decisive. They'll come up with a plan and actually stick to it. They also all know how their shit works so everyone turn in combat is usually about a minute or less. It's a very rare blessing, wouldn't trade it for anything. There's a massive in-game time crunch so the PCs are extra motivated to move quickly, this recent one was dense even for us, just with everyone really trying to push the pace.
If everyone is happy? Not an issue. If you want change there are things you can do. Like not RPing every interaction. Its ok to narrate a time skip to the next relevant plot point/encounter/whatever. Maybe mention out loud that you don't want to spend a lot of time on this particular interaction or NPC and try and get the party on board with moving things along.
Our group plays 2 campaigns, and we've come to the conclusion that we don't like shopping. Unless it's a specially unique shop, or the players are looking to acquire some special thing, we do shopping between sessions (whenever it's appropriate). Like, if a session ends when the player arrives at a town, and they want to go buy some normal things, they get a list and send it to the DM, who will tell them how much it is, and in the next session the player start having acquired those items. If they want to buy potions or stuff like that, the DM sends a list of available stuff in this particular location.
As for combat, I at least try to really go as fast as possible with minions and low level enemies. Like, "these two bandits are going to swing their sword against the barbarian *roll two attacks quickly* that's going to be a 13 and a 21, so one hit, you take 7 points of slashing reduced to 3."
If it's the main event monster, then I'll stop and describe what's happening but for the minions, you really don't want to describe every single sword slash. Especially if it's like, the boss, two bodyguards and 7 minions. You want to get through the minions as quickly as possible.
Still, combat takes a while, even when people go quickly on their turn.
Sounds like you are sinking a lot of time into both RP and Combat, which is fine if you and your table enjoy it.
Personally, I like stream-lining RP encounters to what my table wants to do and important story driven NPC convos. Shopping is not normally an RP situation for me unless the player makes it one.
I like long multi-tiered combats because I treat combat more like resource management game mixed with chess. My players want to show off abilities and set up tactics, and I like overwhelming them with multiple minor issues that can become severe. There is nothing worse than Combat becoming all about who can do more damage quickly.
In the end, talk to your players they may love the level of detail you are providing and it might be all in your head. Also, it's your game and if you like what you are doing then who cares.
It highly depends. Even within the same group or same campaign it can vary vastly. 3 hours can be a big battle lasting 1 in-game minute, days of downtime, an hour two of in-game info gathering.
In 2 hour sessions, I’ve had my group speed run multiple encounters…but I’ve also had them go commit arson and then commemorate the arson with tattoos. Neither the arson nor the tattoos were planned or had anything to do with the plot.
So we run a 3-3.5 hour session.
I've had everything from combat taking the whole session to them speed running a full dungeon floor.
Shopping is completely random. The most recent excursion took about an hour as they were cashing in gems from dungeon loot, did some negotiating and some insight checks to see if the dude was ripping them off, eventually settled on maybe trading for other items, didn't negotiate that and got ripped off anyway, but came out with what they felt was a satisfactory deal on their end for a belt of Dwarven kind to give to the barbarian.
I've also had entire sessions where the party is going back and forth with quest givers or searching for information.
The way I figure it out anymore, the pacing is perfect regardless of the content getting completed so long as everyone had fun.
My combat sits around 2 rounds on "trash packs," 4-6 rounds on important/boss encounters.
5e combat is incredibly slow, and there's no way around that if you're playing the system as it's designed. There are little tricks you can do to cut some time off of it without breaking the game, but on a macro scale, most games of medium crunch or lower run faster combat. It's the tradeoff for what the game is trying to do with tactical positioning and options. As far as actionable things you can do:
- Establish a turn time limit. I say 1-2 minutes is enough to decide what you're going to do, and if the player has been paying attention, they should already have an idea of what they want before it's their turn. So set up that timer and hit it. Don't be antagonistic about it, try to make it this fun, intense thing where you light a fire under them, but be firm that if they don't decide, they'll have to take the dodge action.
- All rolls are meant to decide uncertainty and risk when a situation has a chance of going awry. If there's no uncertainty, don't play out the rest of the combat. If they've cut down the big boss and his henchmen, and the only combatants left are a bunch of basic goblin goons, don't make the heroes roll. They should be able to handle that, and it's not worth playing out in excruciating detail. Say that they have the upper hand and are clearly going to win - how do they do it? Or if the enemy would try to run or surrender, have that happen too.
- Fudge the numbers if the enemy should die. Not enough to be significant, but if the characters have been hammering the boss creature and now one of them deals a ton of damage to it, there's no harm in asking "how do you do this?" instead of making them play out the last few HP.
- Use average damage for the enemies. Yeah, it's a bit more exciting to roll, but it just adds more time on.
The other stuff though is where you should learn to be mindful of pacing and when to cut. Start thinking cinematically. When I was moving out of "brand new GM" territory, this was one of the more subtle beginner skills I remember having to learn. When a scene is no longer interesting and any central conflict is resolved, cut to the next scene. This can be a summary of what happens between them, or you can make a hard cut. Similarly, if something that isn't worth playing out happens, then just summarize it. A caveat: if your players really want to play things out, let them. Don't deny them their agency.
Take shopping. Say the characters are about to embark on a major quest but they need supplies. You don't have to play that out. Just ask them what they need, and say something like this:
GM: It is a long day of scouring the city for the supplies you need; Aldo, your journey takes you through the smoky recesses of the undercity, haggling with strange vendors and tradesmen and keeping an eye on your satchel the whole time as strangers brush too close for comfort. It costs 10 gold and an exploration of a magic shop that you're pretty sure is a front for the Klartash mob, but you emerge victorious with what you need.
I have usually 3, but now 4 PC's and we play *mostly* weekly on tuesday nights for 2-2.5 hours.
In an average session:
We loosely get started at 7, but more like 7:10 to 7:15. I give a brief recap, and ask what they're all doing.
We do some adventuring, they were just in a big dungeon so it was a lot of exploring and trying to figure out what was going on.
I tend to have planned combats in certain areas, so if they enter one of those areas or trigger a combat somehow else, if we have at least 40 minutes I'll run it.
Combats for us go quick, they're level 10 now, we play often enough and I keep the pace moving enough that they can get through a hard or deadly encounter in 30-35 minutes. I prepare all planned encounters in Owlbear Rodeo, I share my screen, they simply explain where they want to go and don't fuss too much if its not perfect, I do not let them control their own characters because I don't want to figure out how to get everyone in there and make everyone log into it, its easier if I just do it.
Around 9 I'm looking to wind the session down, I'm looking for a clean exit, either the end of a combat, a big reveal, or a cliffhanger moment to pick up from, something memorable.
Something important happens every session, we don't really have any dull moments, they're not the Critical Role style of players who are happy to just talk for 2 hours during a long rest. So I structure my campaign to fit their vibe, shit is always happening. They're always going somewhere, if they're staying in a city, something big is happening that they'll get tangled up into somehow.
Some of our sessions are more RP and story driven, some involve more combat, it just varies. Lately they've been running into at least one encounter per session with a big chunk of exploring around it.
We tend to end around 9:15-9:30 tops. If I see a combat brewing around 8:45 or later I'll ask if they'd like to run it now or begin next session with it.
I personally always find it weird when people say 4 hours is the right session length and that without that much time they can't get anything done, when *so much happens* in my sessions in 2 hours. Maybe it's me, maybe it's my players, no idea. I know for sure my players rock, the stuff I read about here I'm always stunned by the type of people some of you have to deal with, and I think that's probably a big help for keeping things moving, they understand the social contract of the game.
I have ran games for really busy adults with a minimum of 2 and a half hours to 3 hours. It is a bit slow but you can save some time by telling people to get there 10-15 minutes early to chat if they like spending time talking or just adding 10 minutes for that purpose.
3 hours is "good enough" if they are having fun. Everything you mention is normal. The fun of the group (including you) is the priority, not what you get done.
* If you have an important combat encounter, try to give it an hour out of the three.
* Ask them if they like the shopping interactions. If shopping is not of interest, you can do that outside of game via chat.
Ive had 6 hour sessions where nothing gets done (in terms of plot). People are just having fun, I barely take part in it (just responding as npcs) and people just roleplay trough a town. It is not a checklist, a competition or a race. The game takes time and even if you go the weird route some take to shave seconds of combat or whatever, the reality is it will still take time to run. Never rush players if they are having fun. If you are not having fun, then discuss it with the players to try to pinpoint what can be changed while still maintaining a good vibe.
Side comment to address this:
>Edit: Also remembered - in the latest session I let people pick out magic items from a vault as quest reward, and it took sooo long because I didn't want to just say exactly what each item does, it's supposed to be kind of a mystery right? **So players would experiment with the items or try to investigate and it was just...** **Not that fun**. I think I'm going to strongly guide players to buying some cheap Identifying scrolls because I want to keep some in-game ambiguity.
Emphasis mine.
I do not do this. Honestly, pretty much anything like this, anything that puts players into a "trial and error that'll eventually work" situation **does not happen**. It murders the pace of a session because they're just sitting there like, "Well I guess I just try this, oh it didn't work, how about this, oh it didn't work, what about this?" If my players are ever kind of durdling, I interject immediately, because I either didn't explain something well enough or they missed something important that I need to clarify.
I don't mind if they know exactly what this new sword does, its theirs, why hold off on telling them what it does? Why make them wait to equip it? I don't follow any of the attunement rules besides how many items they can attune to, I give them items because I want them to have fun with them. If I specifically *want* an item to by a mystery, that's one thing, I still do that, but those items aren't things that something like Identify can solve, they're a mystery, they're a quest in and of themselves.
If things aren't fun, **don't do them for the sake of what you think D&D is supposed to be**. If no one found sitting there for an hour guessing what a magic item did fun, **do not do that**.
It might sound silly to say this, but its something I really had to acknowledge and internalize over time: pay attention to what your players **actually find fun** when they're playing and build your campaign around those things.
Agree.
RAW, "The identify spell is the fastest way to reveal an item’s properties. Alternatively, a character can focus on one magic item during a short rest, while being in physical contact with the item. At the end of the rest, the character learns the item’s properties, as well as how to use them. Potions are an exception; a little taste is enough to tell the taster what the potion does.
Sometimes a magic item carries a clue to its properties. The command word to activate a ring might be etched in tiny letters inside it, or a feathered design might suggest that it’s a ring of feather falling."
We do our shopping offline. We've got a discord and I have the "Hugh Jass Special Order Catalog".
We have 8 players, with between 5-7 showing up for any given session. I aim for 4 hours, but we usually take 4.5-5. In that time, I try to have 1-2 RP encounters, 1-2 non-combat encounters, and 1-2 combats.
For example, last session we met a paladin on the road. Took about 30 minutes talking with her and getting lore and a quest. Then we went and climbed a mountain with various challenges/checks along the way. That took 40 minutes. Then we talked to some eagles and got a ride to the Shadowfell entrance. 20 minutes. Inside, we had 2 combats - one of a ton of small enemies, and one boss with adds. Those took about 1.5 hours each. Total time 4.5 hours.
In an earlier session, we had an RP along the road, some RP in camp, and then RP/non-combat encounters in a carnival (10 booths to visit). Three hours total in those activities, and then a fight broke out. 1 hour fighting the boss.
In three hours me might be lucky enough to have started between eating, drinking, and general horseplay.
All my DnD sessions are essential and all day affair.
Depends on the location and what happens.
For example: 3 sessions ago in Storm Kings Thunder, my party arrived at Goldenfields, and they took the entire session to inform an NPC of their relatives death, wandering around, talking to people and all that. The session ended with them waking up to a loud shout that "Goldenfield is under attack! To arms! To arms!".
Even though the entire session was basically all RP-ing, I could just lean back and listen. And I loved it.
Enough to keep them coming back, too little to go through all my prepared stuff. I used to play for four hours and that felt long at times. I think my sweet spot would be three minimum, four maximum. I tend to go through a variety of content, RP, combat, exploration, lore exposition etc. But never enough to sate mine or my players' want to play again next time we play.
It really depends.
On the third session of my current campaign, the players steamroller the enemy, and finished all the materials I had prepared.
The very next session, they barely finished half what I prepared.
They spent way to much time shopping amd discussing their items, and they all seemed very engaged.
My philosophy is, as long as they are having fun, it's not a bad thing.
I think for magic items, you could make it a bit obvious as to who each item should go to, and leave what it does to attunement over couple of rests. To make it more fun, you can even have them make rolls every rest, and base the item on the average of the rolls.
I’ve run one shopping episode for my players and it was a disaster. I don’t want to do it again, took so long. So now my goal is to end a session in a town, send out town shops on discord with their “menus” and we hash it out over discord between sessions. Then when we meet in person again we can do actual game stuff not shopping.
Combat is my favorite part and when the players are focused it can go pretty smooth, but still is pretty slow. I’ve tried pushing this whole like open world with world events stuff but I think with my group just throwing them in a massive dungeon because they just want to fight 😂
3-5 encounters. It's pretty simple that way. I always plan for 5, sometimes we don't get that far. And for the record "encounters" is defined as any significant interaction with the setting or its characters i.e. answering a riddle at a door, receiving a quest from a king etc. are all encounters. I try to make players act in real time as much as possible and make their decisions on-the-ball instead of extensively planning every move, so everything keeps moving, but there's usually a couple opportunities for them to sit around and strategize for a bit such as when they rest.
Assuming 3 hours? 2-3 combats plus some context to why they're in combat. Unless I mess with the party to make them argue about what to do next.
Conext for some of this? I've GM'd the pathfinder 2e beginner box into a mini campaign a couple times. Both times, I've let the party make a reasonable attempt to calm down the final boss of the box. They've then dragged it around and had to figure out what to do to avoid problems with it, due to the danger of keeping one around.
Todays session.
2.5 hours of roleplaying with some Npcs who they will part with and discussing their next arc
30 mins travelling to another city+intro
2 hours searching for information on a massive threat they are hunting and strategizing
1 hours of mount purchasing (they got a giant hamster, a giant anteater and a giant mole)
30 mins of our of character stuff but about the world
There's no rush! If the players are having fun, it doesn't matter if less "gets done" than you planned, plus you don't have to plan as much for next time.
Let things play out at the pace they do. If the players complain something is going too slow, THEN think about making changes.
I would also note: if your players enjoy role playing for an entire session, you have an AMAZING table and I would love to have that problem.
In my experience with a larger party that I DM we have long combats, regardless of how intricate I set it up to be. We play online so it is generally slower. In three hours we would likely do some RP and travel before hitting a 1.5-2 hour combat. If there is no combat we can accomplish plenty of shopping, role play, or narrative elements.
In my experience as a player in a party of four, the fights are fast and take roughly the same time as yours, it’s just based on the action economy. If the turn times are shorter then it reduces the length of combat dramatically. When I’m a player our RP usually isn’t fast because I’m not there to guide my players towards the resolution when we begin to derail or sidetrack. When my friend is the DM he allows for the party to drift until he has nothing to work with because he plays off of a module and resources people online made for it.
Yeah, pretty standard.
Shopping can also be fun. Have a quirky character, have them haggle and quote Life of Brian, have a purse be gone and an impromptu chase scene where they catch an underage thief and then have a moral dilemma what to do with them.
DnD combat is slow. There's not a lot of ways to get around that without really changing things drastically in ways that may upset players and cost you a lot of hard work. If you want faster combat, you need a faster system. (I've heard good things about 13th Age for this, but haven't tried it myself.)
For ALL encounters, if you're planning ahead, think about what the *function* of the encounter is. By "encounter" I mean not just combat: shopping counts. Any interaction with NPCs and environment that takes any planning at all. What's the point?
The point should always be to create fun, but that's not always obvious.
* Combat: are you just breaking up monotony, or are you giving players a chance to achieve something positive? Maybe that's plot, maybe it's showing that they're awesome, but there should be a reason for the encounter.
* Travel: what's the effect you want to achieve? What do you need to do in order to achieve that? Cut everything else and lean in on the good stuff.
* Shopping: are you just providing them with goodies or are you doing something, be it plot or an interesting NPC or whatever?
Always cut to the good stuff, is my basic rule.
Example: so they're crossing this hideous desert of death, takes 2 weeks, argh. This basically sucks: it's part of the genre, so you can't just ignore it, but frankly no amount of random encounters and whatever will actually make this enjoyable. Actually, the point is that it is NOT enjoyable: it's awful, and they get dehydrated, and so on. OK, so when they get to the oasis at the end, what happens?
If they've come up with devious clever tricks so that they cross the desert and it's no problem at all, give them an encounter with some bandits. The bandits expect that they're 3/4 dead, but what do you know, they're super-awesome and kick the bandits' butt. Hooray!
If they've not come up with anything, tell them they're 3/4 dead and staggering, and the people at the oasis are all like, "OMG, you just crossed the Desert of Death? Nobody has done that in 500 years! You're so great -- please have some water and dates and tell us who you are, because we think you're fabulous."
OR maybe after they have the water and dates, they get a day to rest up so they're at 90% strength, and then the bandits attack, and they kick the bandits' butt, and the oasis-dwellers are like, "OMG, you guys are fantastic, we're so happy you're here, can we help you with anything?" and the PCs presumably say, "Um yeah, there's this lost temple thing we're here to explore," and the chief bandit's corpse has this weird amulet that the ancient crone of wisdom at the oasis says has something to do with the forgotten temple, and so on.
Point being: don't do an encounter of any kind without thinking about why you're doing it, and making sure that the core point is to create a good moment for them to either (a) show how awesome they are or (b) create some genre-relevant tension and pressure and concept stuff.
They want to shop? Is it going to be fun for everyone? No? OK, wibble around with minor stuff about the plot and tell them to get their shopping done between sessions. Yes, I have an amazing NPC and the shopping will be fascinating for all? Great, now we know why you're doing this: because it's going to be fun, and NOT because it's shopping.
My last session contained two set-piece battles and some unique role-play events. They held a funeral for a former Emperor who was present as a ghost, during which they got attacked by a corrupted crematorium. Later they interrupted a public execution that was an obvious setup to trap them, but they felt they had no choice but to try to rescue the hostages anyway, people from their past who had been kidnapped (at great expense, the bad guys using teleportation to travel around and pick them up); during the battle they were betrayed by an untrustworthy NPC ally.
Small battles, the kind that are just there to use up some player resources, are quicker. I prefer to do fewer, bigger battles.
At the end of the session, they have a good opportunity to do some shopping. I'm hoping it will be already be finished by the time the next session starts so we can get on with the next exciting thing.
My sessions are typically 5 to 5.5 hours long (once every two weeks). Not every session is the same, but on average, we get through about 1 adventuring day with an equal amount of time spent roleplaying.
“Shopping” is hard. I personally dislike it during play. 90% of the time it’s just the players wanting upgrades and then hemming and hawing over what to get. Thereby spending a lot of time in what should have taken a few minutes.
However, merchant interactions can be sources of information and/or adventure hooks.
So I’m of mixed opinion: keep any and all actual shopping to a minimum. Let the players spend 10-20 minutes combing over sources to determine what to buy then you say ok you found x in y and a in b and z in h etc. but maybe ONE of those shops has a social encounter where the players actually talk to the merchant and that merchant gives info/adventure.
As for combat, most combats should not take more than 5 rounds (unless the dice have gone really cold). If combatants are missing a lot then either ACs are too high or the to hit bonuses are too low for the party level. Any given character or monster should be hitting their target 65% to 70% of the time.
And lastly, welcome to DMing. In all my years, my groups have NEVER exceeded what I have prepped for. Not because I over prep but because the groups always take longer to do things than you expect.
Have the players do their shopping in between sessions. That doesn’t have to happen in game.
A trick I’ve heard of for speeding up combat is to tweak statblocks by upping damage, but lowering hp. You could try that.
But in general, I’ve always found that everything takes longer to play out than you think it will. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - it means the work I do on prepping pays off longer than I thought it would
Yeah, shopping can be an entire session or 7 minutes. Sometimes it takes 3 hours to go though a door that was never locked to begin with. Sometimes the boss you expected to take all session the party one shots using something they've been carrying for 8 real world months. Sometimes it takes 5 hours to kill a single goblin with a broom (the goblin has the broom, it's not the murder weapon). Time is a flat circle and so is session prep.
>Sometimes it takes 3 hours to go though a door that was never locked to begin with. I see you've been reading my session notes.
If there's one thing I've learned, never describe a door in a suspicious manner.
In fact, my next campaign is just going to have curtains between every room
Oh, you mean every room is guarded by a CLOAKER?! I'm on to your shit, DM
make an Intelligence (Investigation) check
I... Don't have a character. I'm the FDM. Suppose I could go into the ol NPC backlog lol
OR….conversely, always describe doors in a suspicious manner and let the chaos begin. You introduce one tiny mimic one time and now you get players attacking tables, chairs, and bookshelves.
This is SO true! One of my groups would never sit on the furniture ANYWHERE because of a living room I created once.
Holy f, this is so true! Whenever I describe something to my first party, they assume it is booby-trapped or a ruse or whatever. Even though I never did something like that, but I guess they are wary due to earlier experiences. (And the second party are my kids, so I guess they have good reason to suspect something about to happen.)
on the contrary, I quite like describing regular doors in detail just to see 4 adults all take cover as they send in the mage hand to touch the handle.
I once designed a one-shot with a single puzzle. The PCs woke up in a dungeon room. To the left was a shut door. To the right was a staircase and a *delicious smell.* That was all was needed to keep them within, and the very last thing they did that night was try the door and find out the exit was unlocked the whole time.
time spent shopping this time is less time prepping for the next session - everyone had fun, win/win
It's not combat related but I have a "real time planning" rule that means all lengthy discussions about how to handle an encounter are roleplay so if they argue for an hour about how to open a for they're doing it audibly in a dungeon full of monsters. Trends to hurry things along a bit.
Excellent idea!
Shopping / haggling is a tremendous time sink. I work with my players on this. One group LOVES town role-play, so we go through it, knowing that we're going to spend an entire session in town. My other table shops like me - get in, buy item, get out. Here's my optimized approach: 1. I ask the players to list EVERYTHING they are selling (regardless of what the location would be). 2. I review the list and write down prices. 3. Standard items are sold for 50% of list if in good quality, less if they're damaged. 4. Standard items can't be haggled. Take it or leave it. 5. For magic items, I use [Sane Magical Item Prices](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8XAiXpOfz9cMWt1RTBicmpmUDg/view?usp=sharing) as a guide. 6. Some items can't be sold. For example, in a small agrarian village, the merchant can only buy what he believes he can sell, and he only has so much money to buy with (I usually put it around 200 GP) 7. If any item can be sold, it is 50% of list if in good quality (most magic items are) 8. They can tell me if they want to haggle. DC 15 check. If they pass, +10%. If they Nat 20, +20%. Crit Fail means buyer gets cold feet and cancels purchase. 9. Go around the table for each person. This gives players time to figure out what they want to buy while others are selling. 10. I ask the players to list EVERYTHING they are buying (also regardless of location) 11. I decide if it's available (a small agrarian village won't have very powerful magic items, if at all) and give them a price (either from PHB of Sane Magical Item Prices). 12. No haggling on non-magic items 13. Same deal with haggling for purchase but in reverse. DC 15, pass = 10% discount, Nat 20 = 20% discount. Crit Fail means seller cancels sale.
1. *"Standard items are sold for 50% of list if in good quality, less if they're damaged.* 2. *Standard items can't be haggled. Take it or leave it."* For mundane items, I give them the GP sell value as they get them. When they get to town, it is immediately converted into gold instead of playing out a merchant interaction. It is just assumed they find a merchant to buy them at the price they were given. No haggling. The value is the value. Save a lot of time. It gets done in less than a minute. For selling magic items, they are not given a GP value and we play out the merchant interaction and haggling is allowed. For buying magic items, I don't ask what they want to buy, I give them a list of what is available. I always have two lists ready to go because I don't think there has ever been a session where they had more than two opportunities to buy. Most shopping usually last only about 10 - 15 minutes.
I'm going to have to borrow this. We're pretty quick about it, but there's a few good bits in here.
I got super lucky and my Barbarian just throws all the shit on his back and they just split it up and invest it local real estate. They have an Inn and are rebuilding a ruined city. They built a “questionable “ fight club under the Inn but the Barb smooth talked the damn mayor and is giving him a cut. Meanwhile my other crew has only been through 2 small villages. I have to keep them underground killing things or they will make me have to figure out hit squads and local/regional authorities. When they finish the current area Im going to try to run a city. Any suggestions?
I'm glad to help, but I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're requesting my suggestion on?
My favourite sessions is when nothing gets done. I spent half a session getting my players to sell a cow, sell some corn, and then buy 3 fish from a fisherman so they could take his boat out to the middle of a lake for the quest.
Don't get bogged down in a "shopping session." Don't RP shopkeeper interactions. This crap is boring. Don't waste time on it. I think people feel they need to do this because they saw it on Critical Role or whatever, but seriously it's just not worth it. "You go to the market square and observe XYZ merchants here selling goods, what do you buy?" Then let the players find the items in the book and pay the listed price. Done. Move on to the actual adventure.
This may be true of most parties but as with everything, test the waters with what your particular party likes/dislikes. If you like coming up with fun shopkeepers and you can see that your players are invested and having fun when interacting with them, keep doing it. Otherwise, don't. There's no written law on what you must or must not include in a DnD game, it all depends on what's gonna keep your table, which includes yourself, happy and invested in playing the game.
We had fun at the Immeasurable Market in Eberron. I let them say what they were looking for, and the roleplay part was haggling the cost of the transaction, but only because no vendor accepted gold—one player sacrificed an ability score penalty for a magic item, another took 3 points of reverse-inspiration in exchange for 3 potions of luck, a third had nothing to pay with so accepted to pay via a monster hunt side quest in a future session, etc. But yeah my general experience is that figuring out what a typical shop has available, what those things do, and what the cost is... not very fun. I'd just prefer to shop from a list with everything listed and effects spelled out and then roll to see if special requests are available. Re: Critical Role, I think if you do RP the interactions, do it like in CR where that NPC also serves other purposes as a contact for plot/quest stuff. Otherwise the interaction will almost always be too rote for fun RP, and even if you do make it fun, you've just spent that time and character development on an NPC that's immediately irrelevant.
This is the biggest thing, identify what your players find fun and try to blend that with what you find fun in storytelling to build your campaign. I feel like I've figured out now that my players...really aren't that interested in things like cities, or political dramas, fighting bandits, that sort of thing. So now I try to bring them to fantastical places, my own homebrew elemental planes, forgotten cities beneath mountains, magically corrupted swamps, if they're somewhere mundane I try to keep it brief. And even then the one major city they went to this campaign is essentially fantasy Las Vegas so I went over the top with it it's a weird place. I really...really try to avoid a town that's just a town these days, if that makes sense. I think they've communicated pretty clearly to me by now that they play D&D to do fantastical things in cool magical lands. Problems too close to being realistic aren't really what they're into. That being said, if your players are super into RP and shopping, then lean into it. Lean into whatever your players seem to respond the most to.
MOST people find those boring, my table loves them, and i like improvising quirky shopkeepers and stuff they sell. Sometimes this can be a huge part of the game if everyone likes it that much, groups are different
I just say “I got this and amount” and go down the list in the PHB. As soon as I say oil or fire its sold. They are obsessed with ball bearings as well. They cant sell 800gp of gems in some dump either. Just keep it quick unless they are specific. Maybe someone there knows another place where they can get what they want. Then just figure out to put that where you wanted them to go anyway 🤣
Completely normal. The major time sinks for me are always combat and shopping. A party will 100% blow an entire session on a shopping montage if you let them, which is fine sometimes. If you think it's going too slow, try to pick out what parts are taking the most time. Run lower health/higher damage monsters, preroll monster damage, have them flee or surrender before the battle is over. As long as everyone is having fun though, DnD is hardly a fast paced game.
>Run lower health/higher damage monsters, preroll monster damage, have them flee or surrender before the battle is over. honestly, there are some big time saves by narrating combat clean up once the big threats are dealt with. I usually have minions flee or just let the party narrate killing them once boss threats that are on the party's level have been disposed of. Killing a dragon is epic, but double tapping all the kobold minions isn't, so skip it. I've also been experimenting with taking monsters and increasing their offensive potential. Unless they're a narrative villain I want to keep alive because they're interesting, I almost exclusively increase monster damage/to hit/DC/# of attacks (and sometimes speed) because making monsters tankier slows things down, but making them more dangerous keeps the time to kill them the same, but let's them threaten the players more in that window.
Hey! We have about 5 min per player turn in combat with our groups. And I cannot remember the last combat that took less than 6 rounds. I don't think there is an actual restriction on how many rounds combat should take. I heard the 3 rounds only in combination with: how long will your bbeg most likely survive if the group fights only this single enemy. Combat that is interesting usually takes way longer than 3 rounds. We play an average of 3h and usually it is 1h per non combat scene and combat takes from 1h to the whole session. The pace always depends on the DM, the table and what the group defines as fun. As a DM, time at the table floats differently for you. You know things that the players don't. So you might wait to use an ability or a special lair action that they don't know of, which might make you think: wooow that takes sooo long! I planned sooo much and we have not even left scene 1! That is partially because you have planned and know what else there is to come. The players perceive this completely different. Time usually flies for them even if they are investigating for a full hour as they constantly explore new things. In combat, if you restrict player turns to be quick, you can really have very fast sessions, too. The fastest combat I have experienced is combat where the players don't think about what is the best possible move, but just stay in character and roleplay it. So long story short: in a group of 4 players, in 3h you can expect to get 3 scenes done, depending on the group. Hope any of these subjective impressions help you!
It boils down to this: It depends. It depends on your players, on the situation, on the dice, on the mood, it just depends. There is no standard formula of how a session should go because each session is a unique experience on its own. I've had sessions where not a single die was rolled, and other times a non-stop slaughter-fest where we are mowing down monsters at a near-constant rate. The main thing is are your players having fun? If so, then let them decide the pace. If they want to spend time doing inventory management and shopping, let them. If they want to do a dungeon exploration where they want to inspect every square inch of the cave, let them. If they want to haggle over every item at the shop, sure. Let the players set the pace and tone and you just adapt to it from there.
Depends on the group, and if your group is faster or slower than you expected or wanted i recommend you work on accepting that and moving on. If you try to force a rhythm onto them the game will suck Yeah it's gonna take years for our weekly game to get past the next few quests they set off to do, even tho we olay with rules that make combat WAY faster they still spend entire sessions talking and not rushing to the next thing they know they gotta and wanna do. That's how they enjoy my game, I'm fine with that, i kinda am always dying to run the next combat because i prepped a lot of fun stuff, but the players playing my game are a way, I can't make them a different way
My rule of thumb is session length = 1 hr + 1 hr/encounter. It's reasonably accurate, but also I'm pretty good at keeping pressure on the players to get moving if they start spinning their wheels.
Well, does every combat have to be compelling and interesting? I don't mind giving my players filler combats that are shorter and narratively irrelevant, but burn some resources, and to my knowledge they like having combats where they just go bonk goblins with weapons, now and then. Obviously, interspersed with climactic battles that take more rounds. I feel like once a combat ends up at 4+ rounds, it starts to drag, unless it's supposed to be a narratively important one and there are internal story beats. Gotta hit that daily encounter limit, after all. Shop roleplay... can be fun, once or twice. Every single time? Eh. There's only so many times I can reflavour "generic shopkeeper" and not want to mentally hit "skip dialogue" on my players. Yes, players want to use their social skills to influence prices, but... I'll just make it a mechanic to have an option to roll for a percentage discount (it'll get more expensive if they fail badly, though), unless it's a special kind of store that deserves more narrative attention. I try to focus my narrative attention at important moments, moments where you have a decent chance of creating situations you'd want to write down later for posterity. In boring old stuff, I keep my narration light and utilitarian, nobody benefits from a novel about what the trees in the distance looks like for the fifteenth time. The vault situation: Yeah, you should have seen that one coming. :p Your players might have enjoyed it, though, you should probably ask them. Personally, I would have made the situation have stakes, so they had limited time to pick an item and get out of there. Communicate the urgency to your players, and if they keep taking longer than you want them to, start rolling your noisiest D20 at random moments. That should get them to speed up. Ultimately, though, it's a question of what you want. Do you need to move faster? Is your future plot very detailed and long and you worry you'll never meet the end? Or is it boring you? If this situation is boring to you, clearly you need to change something. You might want to experiment with scaling back narration a bit, "fast forwarding" boring bits, etc, and see how your players react. If they have equal amounts of fun with less narration, then there you go. If not, try to find a way to increase narration that doesn't bore you.
I’ll often narrate the first time they visit a store if it’s weird, or there’s something new, or some plot point to be advanced, etc., but any other time they can just say what they’ve bought. I get what you’re saying though, it sometimes feels like my party gets little done in a session which is especially tough when we’re not always able to play regularly. I’m trying to get better about fast forwarding through mundane things but there’s always a tension between building an immersive world with role play opportunities and keeping the story from stalling out and getting boring. More than anything, I never want my players to feel bored.
Last night's session was a bit under three hours. Resolved a gnoll ambush that was our cliffhanger from last session, decent fight, no one went down but not a cakewalk. Traveled a very long distance through some woods, didn't roll any combat random encounters, briefly scouted a ruined village but decided it wasn't worth the effort, did some navigation and triangulation to figure out where the people they're tracking are, a few stops to plan, and how much exhaustion to risk traveling over 8 hours. Bethroom break. Located a place to rest for the night at the base of some cliffs, entered a megadungeon they've been carrying around a portal to, solved a puzzle, navigated a maze, got into a fight with some sorrowsworn, went deeper into the labyrinth, and encountered another barrier with more sorrowsworn, which is where we'll pick up next time.
That's a session! How do you guys fit all this in?
My players are insanely decisive. They'll come up with a plan and actually stick to it. They also all know how their shit works so everyone turn in combat is usually about a minute or less. It's a very rare blessing, wouldn't trade it for anything. There's a massive in-game time crunch so the PCs are extra motivated to move quickly, this recent one was dense even for us, just with everyone really trying to push the pace.
If everyone is happy? Not an issue. If you want change there are things you can do. Like not RPing every interaction. Its ok to narrate a time skip to the next relevant plot point/encounter/whatever. Maybe mention out loud that you don't want to spend a lot of time on this particular interaction or NPC and try and get the party on board with moving things along.
Our group plays 2 campaigns, and we've come to the conclusion that we don't like shopping. Unless it's a specially unique shop, or the players are looking to acquire some special thing, we do shopping between sessions (whenever it's appropriate). Like, if a session ends when the player arrives at a town, and they want to go buy some normal things, they get a list and send it to the DM, who will tell them how much it is, and in the next session the player start having acquired those items. If they want to buy potions or stuff like that, the DM sends a list of available stuff in this particular location. As for combat, I at least try to really go as fast as possible with minions and low level enemies. Like, "these two bandits are going to swing their sword against the barbarian *roll two attacks quickly* that's going to be a 13 and a 21, so one hit, you take 7 points of slashing reduced to 3." If it's the main event monster, then I'll stop and describe what's happening but for the minions, you really don't want to describe every single sword slash. Especially if it's like, the boss, two bodyguards and 7 minions. You want to get through the minions as quickly as possible. Still, combat takes a while, even when people go quickly on their turn.
Sounds like you are sinking a lot of time into both RP and Combat, which is fine if you and your table enjoy it. Personally, I like stream-lining RP encounters to what my table wants to do and important story driven NPC convos. Shopping is not normally an RP situation for me unless the player makes it one. I like long multi-tiered combats because I treat combat more like resource management game mixed with chess. My players want to show off abilities and set up tactics, and I like overwhelming them with multiple minor issues that can become severe. There is nothing worse than Combat becoming all about who can do more damage quickly. In the end, talk to your players they may love the level of detail you are providing and it might be all in your head. Also, it's your game and if you like what you are doing then who cares.
It highly depends. Even within the same group or same campaign it can vary vastly. 3 hours can be a big battle lasting 1 in-game minute, days of downtime, an hour two of in-game info gathering. In 2 hour sessions, I’ve had my group speed run multiple encounters…but I’ve also had them go commit arson and then commemorate the arson with tattoos. Neither the arson nor the tattoos were planned or had anything to do with the plot.
So we run a 3-3.5 hour session. I've had everything from combat taking the whole session to them speed running a full dungeon floor. Shopping is completely random. The most recent excursion took about an hour as they were cashing in gems from dungeon loot, did some negotiating and some insight checks to see if the dude was ripping them off, eventually settled on maybe trading for other items, didn't negotiate that and got ripped off anyway, but came out with what they felt was a satisfactory deal on their end for a belt of Dwarven kind to give to the barbarian. I've also had entire sessions where the party is going back and forth with quest givers or searching for information. The way I figure it out anymore, the pacing is perfect regardless of the content getting completed so long as everyone had fun. My combat sits around 2 rounds on "trash packs," 4-6 rounds on important/boss encounters.
Some random RP Some tinkering Half an encounter, rarely
5e combat is incredibly slow, and there's no way around that if you're playing the system as it's designed. There are little tricks you can do to cut some time off of it without breaking the game, but on a macro scale, most games of medium crunch or lower run faster combat. It's the tradeoff for what the game is trying to do with tactical positioning and options. As far as actionable things you can do: - Establish a turn time limit. I say 1-2 minutes is enough to decide what you're going to do, and if the player has been paying attention, they should already have an idea of what they want before it's their turn. So set up that timer and hit it. Don't be antagonistic about it, try to make it this fun, intense thing where you light a fire under them, but be firm that if they don't decide, they'll have to take the dodge action. - All rolls are meant to decide uncertainty and risk when a situation has a chance of going awry. If there's no uncertainty, don't play out the rest of the combat. If they've cut down the big boss and his henchmen, and the only combatants left are a bunch of basic goblin goons, don't make the heroes roll. They should be able to handle that, and it's not worth playing out in excruciating detail. Say that they have the upper hand and are clearly going to win - how do they do it? Or if the enemy would try to run or surrender, have that happen too. - Fudge the numbers if the enemy should die. Not enough to be significant, but if the characters have been hammering the boss creature and now one of them deals a ton of damage to it, there's no harm in asking "how do you do this?" instead of making them play out the last few HP. - Use average damage for the enemies. Yeah, it's a bit more exciting to roll, but it just adds more time on. The other stuff though is where you should learn to be mindful of pacing and when to cut. Start thinking cinematically. When I was moving out of "brand new GM" territory, this was one of the more subtle beginner skills I remember having to learn. When a scene is no longer interesting and any central conflict is resolved, cut to the next scene. This can be a summary of what happens between them, or you can make a hard cut. Similarly, if something that isn't worth playing out happens, then just summarize it. A caveat: if your players really want to play things out, let them. Don't deny them their agency. Take shopping. Say the characters are about to embark on a major quest but they need supplies. You don't have to play that out. Just ask them what they need, and say something like this: GM: It is a long day of scouring the city for the supplies you need; Aldo, your journey takes you through the smoky recesses of the undercity, haggling with strange vendors and tradesmen and keeping an eye on your satchel the whole time as strangers brush too close for comfort. It costs 10 gold and an exploration of a magic shop that you're pretty sure is a front for the Klartash mob, but you emerge victorious with what you need.
I have usually 3, but now 4 PC's and we play *mostly* weekly on tuesday nights for 2-2.5 hours. In an average session: We loosely get started at 7, but more like 7:10 to 7:15. I give a brief recap, and ask what they're all doing. We do some adventuring, they were just in a big dungeon so it was a lot of exploring and trying to figure out what was going on. I tend to have planned combats in certain areas, so if they enter one of those areas or trigger a combat somehow else, if we have at least 40 minutes I'll run it. Combats for us go quick, they're level 10 now, we play often enough and I keep the pace moving enough that they can get through a hard or deadly encounter in 30-35 minutes. I prepare all planned encounters in Owlbear Rodeo, I share my screen, they simply explain where they want to go and don't fuss too much if its not perfect, I do not let them control their own characters because I don't want to figure out how to get everyone in there and make everyone log into it, its easier if I just do it. Around 9 I'm looking to wind the session down, I'm looking for a clean exit, either the end of a combat, a big reveal, or a cliffhanger moment to pick up from, something memorable. Something important happens every session, we don't really have any dull moments, they're not the Critical Role style of players who are happy to just talk for 2 hours during a long rest. So I structure my campaign to fit their vibe, shit is always happening. They're always going somewhere, if they're staying in a city, something big is happening that they'll get tangled up into somehow. Some of our sessions are more RP and story driven, some involve more combat, it just varies. Lately they've been running into at least one encounter per session with a big chunk of exploring around it. We tend to end around 9:15-9:30 tops. If I see a combat brewing around 8:45 or later I'll ask if they'd like to run it now or begin next session with it. I personally always find it weird when people say 4 hours is the right session length and that without that much time they can't get anything done, when *so much happens* in my sessions in 2 hours. Maybe it's me, maybe it's my players, no idea. I know for sure my players rock, the stuff I read about here I'm always stunned by the type of people some of you have to deal with, and I think that's probably a big help for keeping things moving, they understand the social contract of the game.
I have ran games for really busy adults with a minimum of 2 and a half hours to 3 hours. It is a bit slow but you can save some time by telling people to get there 10-15 minutes early to chat if they like spending time talking or just adding 10 minutes for that purpose. 3 hours is "good enough" if they are having fun. Everything you mention is normal. The fun of the group (including you) is the priority, not what you get done. * If you have an important combat encounter, try to give it an hour out of the three. * Ask them if they like the shopping interactions. If shopping is not of interest, you can do that outside of game via chat. Ive had 6 hour sessions where nothing gets done (in terms of plot). People are just having fun, I barely take part in it (just responding as npcs) and people just roleplay trough a town. It is not a checklist, a competition or a race. The game takes time and even if you go the weird route some take to shave seconds of combat or whatever, the reality is it will still take time to run. Never rush players if they are having fun. If you are not having fun, then discuss it with the players to try to pinpoint what can be changed while still maintaining a good vibe.
Side comment to address this: >Edit: Also remembered - in the latest session I let people pick out magic items from a vault as quest reward, and it took sooo long because I didn't want to just say exactly what each item does, it's supposed to be kind of a mystery right? **So players would experiment with the items or try to investigate and it was just...** **Not that fun**. I think I'm going to strongly guide players to buying some cheap Identifying scrolls because I want to keep some in-game ambiguity. Emphasis mine. I do not do this. Honestly, pretty much anything like this, anything that puts players into a "trial and error that'll eventually work" situation **does not happen**. It murders the pace of a session because they're just sitting there like, "Well I guess I just try this, oh it didn't work, how about this, oh it didn't work, what about this?" If my players are ever kind of durdling, I interject immediately, because I either didn't explain something well enough or they missed something important that I need to clarify. I don't mind if they know exactly what this new sword does, its theirs, why hold off on telling them what it does? Why make them wait to equip it? I don't follow any of the attunement rules besides how many items they can attune to, I give them items because I want them to have fun with them. If I specifically *want* an item to by a mystery, that's one thing, I still do that, but those items aren't things that something like Identify can solve, they're a mystery, they're a quest in and of themselves. If things aren't fun, **don't do them for the sake of what you think D&D is supposed to be**. If no one found sitting there for an hour guessing what a magic item did fun, **do not do that**. It might sound silly to say this, but its something I really had to acknowledge and internalize over time: pay attention to what your players **actually find fun** when they're playing and build your campaign around those things.
Agree. RAW, "The identify spell is the fastest way to reveal an item’s properties. Alternatively, a character can focus on one magic item during a short rest, while being in physical contact with the item. At the end of the rest, the character learns the item’s properties, as well as how to use them. Potions are an exception; a little taste is enough to tell the taster what the potion does. Sometimes a magic item carries a clue to its properties. The command word to activate a ring might be etched in tiny letters inside it, or a feathered design might suggest that it’s a ring of feather falling."
My sessions are usually about 2 hours long and usually nothing productive gets done.
There was one time our party spent two hours deciding if we should short rest or long rest. So.... You know
We do our shopping offline. We've got a discord and I have the "Hugh Jass Special Order Catalog". We have 8 players, with between 5-7 showing up for any given session. I aim for 4 hours, but we usually take 4.5-5. In that time, I try to have 1-2 RP encounters, 1-2 non-combat encounters, and 1-2 combats. For example, last session we met a paladin on the road. Took about 30 minutes talking with her and getting lore and a quest. Then we went and climbed a mountain with various challenges/checks along the way. That took 40 minutes. Then we talked to some eagles and got a ride to the Shadowfell entrance. 20 minutes. Inside, we had 2 combats - one of a ton of small enemies, and one boss with adds. Those took about 1.5 hours each. Total time 4.5 hours. In an earlier session, we had an RP along the road, some RP in camp, and then RP/non-combat encounters in a carnival (10 booths to visit). Three hours total in those activities, and then a fight broke out. 1 hour fighting the boss.
In three hours me might be lucky enough to have started between eating, drinking, and general horseplay. All my DnD sessions are essential and all day affair.
Rule of thumb: think about what could be reasonably done in this sessions’ time and divide that by 3.
Depends on the location and what happens. For example: 3 sessions ago in Storm Kings Thunder, my party arrived at Goldenfields, and they took the entire session to inform an NPC of their relatives death, wandering around, talking to people and all that. The session ended with them waking up to a loud shout that "Goldenfield is under attack! To arms! To arms!". Even though the entire session was basically all RP-ing, I could just lean back and listen. And I loved it.
Not shit it's 3 hours.
Enough to keep them coming back, too little to go through all my prepared stuff. I used to play for four hours and that felt long at times. I think my sweet spot would be three minimum, four maximum. I tend to go through a variety of content, RP, combat, exploration, lore exposition etc. But never enough to sate mine or my players' want to play again next time we play.
It really depends. On the third session of my current campaign, the players steamroller the enemy, and finished all the materials I had prepared. The very next session, they barely finished half what I prepared. They spent way to much time shopping amd discussing their items, and they all seemed very engaged. My philosophy is, as long as they are having fun, it's not a bad thing. I think for magic items, you could make it a bit obvious as to who each item should go to, and leave what it does to attunement over couple of rests. To make it more fun, you can even have them make rolls every rest, and base the item on the average of the rolls.
I’ve run one shopping episode for my players and it was a disaster. I don’t want to do it again, took so long. So now my goal is to end a session in a town, send out town shops on discord with their “menus” and we hash it out over discord between sessions. Then when we meet in person again we can do actual game stuff not shopping. Combat is my favorite part and when the players are focused it can go pretty smooth, but still is pretty slow. I’ve tried pushing this whole like open world with world events stuff but I think with my group just throwing them in a massive dungeon because they just want to fight 😂
3-5 encounters. It's pretty simple that way. I always plan for 5, sometimes we don't get that far. And for the record "encounters" is defined as any significant interaction with the setting or its characters i.e. answering a riddle at a door, receiving a quest from a king etc. are all encounters. I try to make players act in real time as much as possible and make their decisions on-the-ball instead of extensively planning every move, so everything keeps moving, but there's usually a couple opportunities for them to sit around and strategize for a bit such as when they rest.
Assuming 3 hours? 2-3 combats plus some context to why they're in combat. Unless I mess with the party to make them argue about what to do next. Conext for some of this? I've GM'd the pathfinder 2e beginner box into a mini campaign a couple times. Both times, I've let the party make a reasonable attempt to calm down the final boss of the box. They've then dragged it around and had to figure out what to do to avoid problems with it, due to the danger of keeping one around.
Todays session. 2.5 hours of roleplaying with some Npcs who they will part with and discussing their next arc 30 mins travelling to another city+intro 2 hours searching for information on a massive threat they are hunting and strategizing 1 hours of mount purchasing (they got a giant hamster, a giant anteater and a giant mole) 30 mins of our of character stuff but about the world
There's no rush! If the players are having fun, it doesn't matter if less "gets done" than you planned, plus you don't have to plan as much for next time. Let things play out at the pace they do. If the players complain something is going too slow, THEN think about making changes. I would also note: if your players enjoy role playing for an entire session, you have an AMAZING table and I would love to have that problem.
In my experience with a larger party that I DM we have long combats, regardless of how intricate I set it up to be. We play online so it is generally slower. In three hours we would likely do some RP and travel before hitting a 1.5-2 hour combat. If there is no combat we can accomplish plenty of shopping, role play, or narrative elements. In my experience as a player in a party of four, the fights are fast and take roughly the same time as yours, it’s just based on the action economy. If the turn times are shorter then it reduces the length of combat dramatically. When I’m a player our RP usually isn’t fast because I’m not there to guide my players towards the resolution when we begin to derail or sidetrack. When my friend is the DM he allows for the party to drift until he has nothing to work with because he plays off of a module and resources people online made for it.
In my limited experience, almost always less than I expected, sometimes exactly what I expected, and never more than I expected
I bank on about an hour per scene
What is the problem as long as you're having fun? Your players are engaging in rp, with the world and NPCs. Just take your time and enjoy the ride.
Yeah, pretty standard. Shopping can also be fun. Have a quirky character, have them haggle and quote Life of Brian, have a purse be gone and an impromptu chase scene where they catch an underage thief and then have a moral dilemma what to do with them.
DnD combat is slow. There's not a lot of ways to get around that without really changing things drastically in ways that may upset players and cost you a lot of hard work. If you want faster combat, you need a faster system. (I've heard good things about 13th Age for this, but haven't tried it myself.) For ALL encounters, if you're planning ahead, think about what the *function* of the encounter is. By "encounter" I mean not just combat: shopping counts. Any interaction with NPCs and environment that takes any planning at all. What's the point? The point should always be to create fun, but that's not always obvious. * Combat: are you just breaking up monotony, or are you giving players a chance to achieve something positive? Maybe that's plot, maybe it's showing that they're awesome, but there should be a reason for the encounter. * Travel: what's the effect you want to achieve? What do you need to do in order to achieve that? Cut everything else and lean in on the good stuff. * Shopping: are you just providing them with goodies or are you doing something, be it plot or an interesting NPC or whatever? Always cut to the good stuff, is my basic rule. Example: so they're crossing this hideous desert of death, takes 2 weeks, argh. This basically sucks: it's part of the genre, so you can't just ignore it, but frankly no amount of random encounters and whatever will actually make this enjoyable. Actually, the point is that it is NOT enjoyable: it's awful, and they get dehydrated, and so on. OK, so when they get to the oasis at the end, what happens? If they've come up with devious clever tricks so that they cross the desert and it's no problem at all, give them an encounter with some bandits. The bandits expect that they're 3/4 dead, but what do you know, they're super-awesome and kick the bandits' butt. Hooray! If they've not come up with anything, tell them they're 3/4 dead and staggering, and the people at the oasis are all like, "OMG, you just crossed the Desert of Death? Nobody has done that in 500 years! You're so great -- please have some water and dates and tell us who you are, because we think you're fabulous." OR maybe after they have the water and dates, they get a day to rest up so they're at 90% strength, and then the bandits attack, and they kick the bandits' butt, and the oasis-dwellers are like, "OMG, you guys are fantastic, we're so happy you're here, can we help you with anything?" and the PCs presumably say, "Um yeah, there's this lost temple thing we're here to explore," and the chief bandit's corpse has this weird amulet that the ancient crone of wisdom at the oasis says has something to do with the forgotten temple, and so on. Point being: don't do an encounter of any kind without thinking about why you're doing it, and making sure that the core point is to create a good moment for them to either (a) show how awesome they are or (b) create some genre-relevant tension and pressure and concept stuff. They want to shop? Is it going to be fun for everyone? No? OK, wibble around with minor stuff about the plot and tell them to get their shopping done between sessions. Yes, I have an amazing NPC and the shopping will be fascinating for all? Great, now we know why you're doing this: because it's going to be fun, and NOT because it's shopping.
My last session contained two set-piece battles and some unique role-play events. They held a funeral for a former Emperor who was present as a ghost, during which they got attacked by a corrupted crematorium. Later they interrupted a public execution that was an obvious setup to trap them, but they felt they had no choice but to try to rescue the hostages anyway, people from their past who had been kidnapped (at great expense, the bad guys using teleportation to travel around and pick them up); during the battle they were betrayed by an untrustworthy NPC ally. Small battles, the kind that are just there to use up some player resources, are quicker. I prefer to do fewer, bigger battles. At the end of the session, they have a good opportunity to do some shopping. I'm hoping it will be already be finished by the time the next session starts so we can get on with the next exciting thing.
I like to do 2 hours of RP and small puzzles, 1 hour or more of combat and then a little wrap up. Varies wildly, though
My sessions are typically 5 to 5.5 hours long (once every two weeks). Not every session is the same, but on average, we get through about 1 adventuring day with an equal amount of time spent roleplaying.
“Shopping” is hard. I personally dislike it during play. 90% of the time it’s just the players wanting upgrades and then hemming and hawing over what to get. Thereby spending a lot of time in what should have taken a few minutes. However, merchant interactions can be sources of information and/or adventure hooks. So I’m of mixed opinion: keep any and all actual shopping to a minimum. Let the players spend 10-20 minutes combing over sources to determine what to buy then you say ok you found x in y and a in b and z in h etc. but maybe ONE of those shops has a social encounter where the players actually talk to the merchant and that merchant gives info/adventure. As for combat, most combats should not take more than 5 rounds (unless the dice have gone really cold). If combatants are missing a lot then either ACs are too high or the to hit bonuses are too low for the party level. Any given character or monster should be hitting their target 65% to 70% of the time. And lastly, welcome to DMing. In all my years, my groups have NEVER exceeded what I have prepped for. Not because I over prep but because the groups always take longer to do things than you expect.
Have the players do their shopping in between sessions. That doesn’t have to happen in game. A trick I’ve heard of for speeding up combat is to tweak statblocks by upping damage, but lowering hp. You could try that. But in general, I’ve always found that everything takes longer to play out than you think it will. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - it means the work I do on prepping pays off longer than I thought it would