Dynamic Worlds

Ok so my main goal with the blog is to get the ideas i've been building up and putting it out there for other dm's to use in their campaign.

Tonight I want to talk about the Dynamic World.

One of my favourite things about the D&D Challenges they have released is that they keep changing things up and the environment from one round to another is in a state of constant change

Dynamic Terrain

So when you build your encounter, you can create some options on how the terrain will change and when will it change. Will it change on a certain round or if players step over the area.

-_-

Flooding Room

In this encounter you have a 'trapped' room that does not seem to have an exit. The room is full of columns and pillars of different sizes. Players cannot see the top of the room. When the trap is trigger the room begins flooding and fast. Water rushes from above coating the walls making climbing them almost impossible.

Roll initiative for the water, each round on its turn flood the room 1 square high for each tier the players are.

Some characters can fly, some can swim, other characters can try and jump from pillar to pillar until they get to the top.

On round 2 add some slimes or other swimming creatures that enter battle and cause havoc with the swimming players.

On round 3 add some tiny/small flying based creatures that have been startled by the noise and are attacking the party. This causes problems with the flying members of the party and those trying to jump around

In general the encounter should be free form a bit, it should take the characters 4+t rounds to reach the end. (t being their tier)

If you want to add some extra damage add falling rocks on round 4, burst 1 in random x/y locations

-_-

The flooding room is just one example of dynammic terrain, the idea that the world the players live and breath in changes every moment

Another classic example of this is a collapsing floor.  Perhaps the characters need to cross a damaged section of the keep and if they stay too close parts of the floor collapse. Maybe some collapse anyway

The idea is thinking about how your encounter can change. In the epic levels you can realy experiment. Imagine the party fighting a demon where you have 4 maps set out. Each round on a initiative order everyone plane shifts. they still are in their x/y position but now they are some where different.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water. Works great. 1 encounter 4 maps.

-_-

It takes some work to set this up and change things every round, but the players will remember it for some time

Anyway, that's the start. Until next time keep your dice on the table.

Non Player Characters, The Barkeep

Non player character, to often do we focus on the two first words in that statement. non player. Our NPC's start to lack character.

Who can blame any DM, how many things do we need to keep track of, why add something else who may not be important to the story.

The idea i want to get across here is a para-dime shift of thinking about NPC's. Not just for DM's but for players.

The Barkeep is probably the most powerful NPC i can think of, they are not helpless lawful good individuals.

"I was sitting in my favorite pub down by the docs, a nice quiet place where the fire is always warm and the ale is always cold. I was minding my own business enjoying a smoke and a drink. A group of adventures entered the pub and started flashing some money around and demanded things of old Tuck, the Barkeep. They stayed the hole night and drank and broke the place apart after getting into a fight with a local group of thugs. "

If a barkeep had a class, it would be a bard. Their drinking providing benefits instead of singing or playing music. Barkeeps also know when to shut up, which is why they are protected by most gangs and thugs who know any better.

The pub is where all shady characters go, adventures know this because they go there to find information. it would be safe to assume that the barkeep knows a lot about whats going on and has may favors with people.

"I was walking down the docs to prepare for a boat to baldurs gate, i know i could teleport but something about the sea air i enjoy. Anyway there were those adventures again, piled up dead with the local watch investigating. Well they did not know who was responsible but i sure did"

Barkeeps don't have to be evil, but they are not dumb simple or scare easy. I think its important for Players to be aware of how a Barkeep can be a good friend. They should also not be pestered with, and DM's should not allow players to push the barkeep around.

For DM's barkeeps are great for taking a break from the story, or advancing it along to the next level.

So re think those NPC's and add character to them.

Until next time, keep your dice on the table.

DMs Top 5 things to get at the dollar store

Without mentioning classic, paper, pencils, erasers and sticky notes, there are a few items you as a DM should pickup from the local dollar store every once and a while that can help you with your game.

What i mean by helping you with your game, is that each of these items alone cost little (around a dollar!) and help overall by speeding up your game.

#5 - Poker Chips

If you use the +1 or +2 token rule this is a great way to keep track of them, usually you can get some white, red and blue tokens for a dollar. Use the white for +1, the red for +2 and the blue for action points.

It may not be the best idea in town, but it is something I'm almost sure people do.

#4 - Color Foam Sheets

These colored sheets of foam about the size of a piece of paper can be cut up to make your own burst & blast templates. You can use left over pieces to make bloodied/status tokens.

Four sheets for about a dollar, you simply cut a five by five inch section off, then a four by four, then a three by three and use the rest to make multiple one by ones.

#3 - Modeling Clay

Somethings you just don't have anything your need for your game, Modeling clay lets you spend a few minutes to accurately get what you need. Perhaps your building a wall, or simply some boxes. Using this an let the players know that indeed something is on the gird.

The best thing is its all reusable, just roll it back up and throw it in a bag. Just don't let your players make a dr. manhattan slong for your Degenerate Cultist of Orcus, i mean sure hes Degenerate but common.

#2 - Round Labels or Reinforcements

Reinforcements are the little round circles, the donut with the center. Often used to holes in paper that were riped. You can use a pen and write a number in the center circle, then use this circle on the base of miniatures to identify them on your initiative tracking. Sure you have 40 orc's, but now you can have them properly labeled. This works great for the round labels as well

The Outer donut an be colored with a marker and used as a status identification or bloodied mark.

#1 - Star Stickers

Yes, even when i first thought of this, i was like WTF. But then in dawned on me, i can get a pack of 400 star stickers, each sheet has 5 colors, yellow, red, blue, green and silver. Then i realized i can use this to significantly marked tokens, bloodied tokens and other effects.

Its simple and it works, Red of course is bloodied, silver can be a marked effect, yellow, blue and green can be any status effects you find come up a lot in your game. Prone is a big one.

Just peal the sticker off of the sheet, and use one of the star ends to stick it on the top of the miniature. Or but it on the base so it can be seen.

Now that you have some ideas of things you can get to help your game along, here are a few things to stay away from.

Dinosaurs: No they do not make good miniatures

Flutes: No, do not give this to your bard, the party will hurt him. And possibly you.

Fake Swords: This can only end badly.

Honorable Mentions

Small Sticky Notes

Sure i mentioned them at the top, but the smaller ones are great for making areas in books you need later on. Perhaps what page that orc is on, or what page of the players handbook the players treasure is on.

Freezer/Sandwich Bags

Yes, this are great. The freezer bags lets you store dungeon tiles in sets or in groups. If you want you can even pre-build your encounters and store the needed tiles in a large freezer bag, then user makers to write down which encounter it is

With the sandwich bags you can store multiple miniatures again by each encounter or type. Pickup a few blank labels and you've not organized everything in some easy to grab minis-dime bag.

Well there you have it, i hope i brought you some good ideas, or at least some bad ones.

Until next time keep your dice on the table.

Build a better skill challenge with maps (contest)

I recently ran the Living Forgotten Realm adventure BALD1-1 for a group, and I'd have to say from a DM standpoint there is a very detailed skill challenge in there. A lot of the information really isn't need once the rolling begins, but is there to show how free form a skill challenge can be and covers lots of different options for players

The problem i had with it was that i had to read it over two to three times to fully grasp what was going on. The standard paragraph m

ethod of presenting information didn't work that well. It left me confused until i read it several times. It was unclear how one result was connected to another.

This is why flowcharts are the maps for skill challenges. In a situation like this a flowchart can easily show you all the possibilities you open up as you go alone. Perhaps you can only make a check to get a piece of information if you made a success prior to this.

As a 95% DM

I've always tried to use flowcharts to when building my adventure to show possibilities, and were roleplaying takes the party. However after running BALD1-1 I've gotten a whole new appreciation for the skill challenge.

But Flowchart programs are expensive? i can't afford visio.

You don't need this, you don't need anything to play d&d except a few pencils, paper and dice. You can use graph paper to draw out your flowchart, its basically just a bunch of boxes and lines showing where success and failure leads to.

But if you do want to take the software approach, i say check out lovelycharts.com its free and it even lets you share your charts online. This is great if your trying to get feedback from another DM and tweak your skill challenge.

So that being said, i want to offer up a 2 week challenge. submit to me (mike@mikeleger.ca) a flowchart from lovelycharts.com of a skill challenge. Skill challenges will be reviewed and then a winner will be chosen for 1 free year of premium membership to lovelycharts.com

I should be able to offer up a winner by august 16th

Until next time, keep your dice on the table

Who Runs Barter Town

My group has actually requested a skill challenge to be able to get more money out of items, the feel that 20% of an item isn't enough. I personally don't see it being that unbalanced to allow more, considering the party is often using funds to cast rituals and buy non-essential items.

The following skill challenge i present is something that can be requested by the players, it offers no xp, simply the ability to gain a bit more gold from items. The key problem with this kind of skill challenge is that if they fail, the group can just sell the item at 20% or disenchant it to residium.

This is why i designed the failure to be that no one is willing to buy items from the party in town, the players need to be aware of the risk they take when they chose this skill challenge

Also i increased the complexity as the players reach new tiers, the reason for this is because being high level you are known more, merchants would need more convincing to give you more money for items when its wildly known that you have much more gold then they do.

Bartering for a better price

Perception & Insight (Easy DC)
Each skill confers a +2 bonus to the next roll, its used to determin how well the bartering is going. Each time they do this, the DM may tell the player how many success they have, and how many more they need.

Streetwise, Thievery, Arcana (Moderate DC)
Each skill can only be used for one success, they are used to show the value of the item, and to convince the seller that others might be willing to pay more.

Bluff & Intimidate (Hard DC)
Each skill can only be used for two success, if a bluff or intimidate roll is failed, it grants a -2 to all rolls made by the party until the skill challenge is over. Also once failed that skill cannot be used again this challenge

Diplomacy & History (Moderate DC)
The bulk of the skill challenge is used to convince the buyer that the item is worth more, and provide history of the item, and history of the sale. Diplomacy & history can be used for as many success as the group wishes.

Heroic: Complexity 2 (6 success before 3 failures)
Paragon: Complexity 3 (8 success before 4 failures)
Epic: Complexity 4 (10 success before 5 failures)

Success: The party can sell items in this town at 30% - 1% per failed roll. This lasts until the next time the party is in town.
Failure: The party can never again attempt to barter in this town as they have been labeled cheap. No one is willing to buy their items.

See DMG page 42 for Difficulty Class by Level (Remember to increase DCs by 5 for skill checks)


DM Tip o the day
In last nights game i had one party member decided to sleep away from the rest of the party, to spice things up and add some role playing opportunity i had some guards go to where he was sleeping and cause trouble. Instead of role playing he just said "i kill them" instead of me wasting time building an encounter on the spot that i really didn't plan for, i just said, OK -1 healing surge, this place is no longer safe. It allowed me to go back and focus on the game at hand, and no one felt left out. However in this case i did not reward experience points, i am thinking that i should at least offer some sort of reward since he paid a cost. (not that it matter in the long run)

Well that's it for today, until next time keep the dice on the table.

D&D Week End Review - May 15th

Well this week i got to have short breaks and venture into the d&d world for just a bit. During the week i received my world wide d&d game day kit which was pretty exciting. We are going to be playing at alternate icons here in Brantford Ontario next Saturday. If you around the area come on down and join the fun.

I also managed to get some time to build out the next two encounter for my group on Sunday. It should be fun some interesting encounters, one based in a mountainous area, and one in a semi open clearing each with its own tactics. I'll share them for the next few encounters.

My Site
Shadow of Orcus, Chapter 10, session2
ME: This was a fun night, but kind of dragged on, we lost track of time, but everyone had fun.

Encounter, Undead Trolls
ME: This is an encounter i build for my players, they really enjoyed it the map is based off of WotC and all rights are reserved to them.

Unboxing the world wide d&d game day material
ME: crappy pictures and not much text but i do give some idea.

Adventure Ideas

A Debt Which None Dares to Collect | GamesTopica.Net - Topics in Game Creation
ME: GamesTopica has released a wonderful little idea here, i seriously think you can get a 1-2 part adventure off in this, or easily turn it into a dungeon crawl. If your building an adventure off of this, please let me know i would be interested in seeing it. It also gave me the idea for a short campaign that is based on characters needing to take a loan to become adventures in the first place.

Wizards

Most likely one of the biggest thing talked about from wizards this week was the release of the monk play test class. Another item of noteworthiness is the iphone wallpapers. i myself do not own one, i think they are pointless. (that's just the excuse i use because i can't justify the cost here in Canada) However the iphone wallpapers still worked on my nokia 8086 poc.

Next week, i am looking forward to the world wide d&d game day [#dndgd on twitter], and of course the MM2. If you noticed on the 22nd they are releasing a play test of MM3. Is it just me or do you think they should wait a bit.

DM Tips

How to handle airborne minis on the battlemat | Campaign Mastery
ME: must read DM tips on having elevated combat, i myself like using the d6 method to show how many squares up a mini is.

Icosahedrophilia » Laying (terrain) tiles: storage solutions
ME: If your like me and enjoy collecting the WotC tiles, then this is a good read for some storage tip. Next week i hope to offer a hobo solution.

Icosahedrophilia » Nanotechnology: storing D&D Miniatures
ME: Also from icoahedrophilia, its a post on storage D&D miniatures. He offers a good solution for medium or smaller creatures beacuse you can just get those containers at the dollar store, but larger miniatures are a bit more tricky to store.

Skill Challenges

Skill Challenge: Playing With Fire — Dungeon's Master
ME: DungeonsMaster has done it again, he continues to release excellent skill challenges that every DM should read. The more skill challenges you do the better you get at them.

Other

Monster Manual 2 - In Depth #1 | Critical Hits
ME: Critical Hits offers a review of some of the critters from MM2, i think these are the ones that just was all over the internet the last two weeks.

Points of Light: Monk Playtest
ME: Points of Light has a review on the monk class already, talk about getting some game time in.

RPG dumping ground: The Lucky Penny

ME: what a great idea for a magic item, i think i will use something like this. maybe a encounter power of flip the coin, heads nothing, tails you get a +2 bonus to your next skill challenge

Hello, My Name is Barbie: Girls are the Natural-Born Gamers « Dice Monkey
ME: Being a father of a two and a half year old daughter, i really enjoyed reading this post. I want my kid to enjoy the same kind of fun i had in d&d, but i can't be upset if she chose not to, its her choice. That being said i think we won't refer to Sunday night's as guys nights anymore, instead game night works better.

D&D Week End Review - May 8th

Well another week of D&D has gone buy and I realized that most people still do not know what kind of player i am.

I am a player who plays once a week, and once a month. I don't dump lots of money into the books because I'm 29 and a father of a two year old. In a few months, there will be a second kid.

I work from home as a IT outsourcing consultant in Brantford Ontario Canada. I have played with the same group of people once week for the last 10 years and is no way that sad. For some of us we are so busy with our lives that this is the only time we can really hang out. We are friends before we are d&d players.

Anyway thats enough about that, here is what was worth reading this week.

My Site
TMNT & Comic Book Day
Game Day Announcement
Star Trek Preview

Adventure Idea

Random plot hook of the day: An abandoned tower a day’s journey from town has started emmiting some arcane lights in the middle of the night. These lights can be seen for miles around, and since last week people have been mysteriously waking up in the middle of the night and walking toward the tower. The tower had an arcane lock protecting it when the town guards went to investigate, and they were too scared to break in. Adventurers are needed… help!

Me: I love it, i think its a great idea

Wizards
Wants people to fill out a survey

DM Tips
Slyflourish

Download glyphs and runes and sigils from the net as signatures for evil-doer letters and journals

ME: a better idea would be to use the symbols to create your own tiles.

Use large 1″ graph paper sheets to pre-draw your battle maps. Great for transportation and quick play on detailed maps.

ME: not exactly enviromentaly friendly, besides where do you get 1" graph paper big enough, it would waste too much time to tape a bunch together to get the size you need. I would rather spend that time on tiles.

Don’t have all your players? Run a one-shot adventure that shows some history or lore or off-screen action. D&D;’s show, don’t tell.

Me: In my experience making new characters takes forever. What i do recomend is just ignoring the fact that someone is missing.

Did a player’s character die or become incapacitated? Let the player play one of the monsters and take out their anger on the party.

Me: This is a bad idea, beacuse its obviously a bad idea. the player can cheat and let his team win, or his team can hold it against him.

Store Dungeon Tiles by set in 1 gallon zip-lock bags with the little plastic zippers in a cardboard “bankers” box from Staples.

Me: Well this sounds familar, oh yeah thats beacuse i did it before. Bankers boxes are a great idea if not expensive.

Build a castle based off of a real castle map
ME: i think its a solid idea, but find castles are to 'boring' for fantasy rpg

Adventure Prep: The City Adventure
ME: great tips for running an adventure in a city

5 Tips for Managing DM Prep Time | DnD Corner
ME: pretty solid, only thing i would add is make al istof names, and put a * next to them as you use em.

Skill Challenges
Questing GM; A Borneon Gamer: {Quest Log} Rewarding Success and Failures in Skill Challenges
ME: another great skill challenge blog

Running Memorable Skill Challenges (Part 2) — Dungeon's Master
ME: tips on skill challenges are always great

Other
RetroRoleplaying: The Blog: "Alignment Map" of Gaming Style
ME: Old school aligment map converted to game play types, funny but true

Creating character portraits with “Hero Machine” « www. Newbie DM .com
ME: Make your character portraitswith the new hero machine, apparently it has changed in the last 10 years

4E Dungeons and Dragons “Mark” Solution – Magnetic Markers from Alea Tools
ME: good review, makes me want to try these

Chicago Dungeons & Dragons Examiner: The horror and paranormal in D&D and RPGs
ME: worth a read, very good article

Losing My 4ginity | UncleBear
ME: decent review on a DM starting 4th edition, i can understand where he comes from

Until next time, keep your dice on the table.

DM Tips: Encounter Information

As you learned from Monday's (actually Tuesday) crafts i use the D&D tiles in every encounter. They are pretty generic and don't provide much information.

So today's tip is about encounter information. When building your encounter its important to list details about the encounter, is it day or is it night, what is the illumination like, is there difficult terrain in the encounter and where is it. Are there areas of concern, that could deal damage.

Every encounter you build should include the following
Illumination: Consider time of day, weather, and put in any negatives you need to apply to perception checks
Traps/Damage: Identify any areas that are traps or create damage. Example what if one square has a campfire.
Treasure: List any treasure that can be found in the encounter

This is where you can make your encounter unique and give your players additional challenges. Its a great way to increase the challenge of an encounter without affecting the monsters or XP. Check out the Dungeon Delve for great ideas on tweaking up your encounter.

So you have your encounter built, and your using tiles, how do you convey this information to the player?

Answer: Overhead projector sheets, cost about $12 for a pack of 20. Seems a bit pricey but when you use whiteboard markers you never realy need more.

Its hard to see in the picture to the left beacuse the material is so clear but thats the beauty of it, it allows you to mix well with your tiles, and still draw directly on the encounter. I highly recomend drawing walls, and if something in the encounter causes something to change, you can show it live, its even great for drawing in the wizards wall of fire.

One of the things i do in my encounters is orange squares, every encounter has 1.5 times the amount of orange squares than players. (5 players 7-8 squares) my players know that when the sceen starts (i will explain the diffrence between a sceen and a encounter next week) that they can chose where they want to be as long as its in a orange square.

It gives them some flexibility in the encounter that makes sence, brings back the old marching order question, and gives you control when setting up your encounter.

Sticky Tack, i used it monday and i am using it again today. This is a amazing tool for any DM. I use it to stick the tiles to the mat, and when creating multiple levels it helps to hold the blocks in place (muilty level encounter is going to be the topic in two weeks time) i've also used it to create a beholder (a zombie behodler).

In this case were going to create small peices of sticky tack and stick the film on the tiles. Five peices should work just fine, one in each corner and one in the middle.

Remember you can draw anything you want on the tiles, in this example here you can see i used it to draw an underground river. Sure its placed on top of a stair set, but it works, the rest of the area is a cave set tile system.

So this DM tip is half crafts and half tip, in either case i hope you enjoy it and find new ways to use the overhead projector sheets. I don't recommend cutting them up because it makes them harder to reuse, but having a bunch that are 8"x 8" will work out in your favor.

Until next time, keep your dice on the table.

Dungeon Master Tips: Organizing your Adventure

This week i am going to discuss how you can organize your adventure. All adventures in my opinion require a bit of planing. For every hour you intend to play an adventure you should spend the same amount of time planing.

I personally break up all of my adventures into 8 encounters, i mix and match the kind of encounters i want to do but for me a single adventure takes players from one level to another in 8 encounters. At our speed that's 4 weeks of game play.

Tools

There are various tools at your disposal but for me my main ones are the Dungeon Master Guide , MS Word, MS Viso, DDI Compendium, and DDI encounter builder.

MS Visio

The key to a good adventure is not wanting to railroad your players. So i create a start of my adventure, and a end, where i want my players to end up. I'll add a few boxes to the Viso showing possible pieces of information they can find. As i figure out the general storyline i then plot everything out into the Viso. the key is to make it fit on one page

Don't have MS Visio? Try LucidChart

Dungeon Master Guide

Great for references, nuff said.

MS Word

I build my encounters in MS, The first page contains the adventure name and details, the second page is blank. The third and fourth page is a the basic story line and my RP notes, while the 5th page contains the Visio drawing from earlier.

Now i break up the encounters so that the basic encounter information is on the left hand side, and the map (which honestly I've taken from dragon and customized for my own needs) on the right hand side. The next few pages contains monsters information taken from the DDI Compendium so i have everything i need in one place.

I repeat the encounters in the exact same method adding blank pages where i need to.

Don't have MS Word, try OpenOffice

DDI Encounter Builder & DDI Compendium

The DDI Compendium has two tasks for me, one is finding monsters and creatures that fit my story, level, and encounter so nothing seems out of place. The second is to copy & past into word so i have all my information during game play. I recommend for monster pages to be two columns, and formatting the text a bit. i can fit large monsters in 1 full column, and usually two minions per column.

The encounter build i use after i have a list of creatures in mind, and just use it to figure out what creatures are going to be in each encounter.

Don't have a DDI Account, try Monster Lister & Encounter Planner

Binding

Once i have everything checked over and it looks the way i want it to look, i save it off as a PDF (plenty of PDF printers out there) and upload it to staples. I will get it printed on both sides in black & white (so when your doing your map use circles with letters in them to identify monsters (A)). And i pick a cheap binding. the hole process costs me around $4.50 for a 30 page document.

Additions

Another great addition to add after the fact is the 'PrintableDM' sheets i mentioned before hand, I'll send them to staples at the same time for printing and usually get 8 done at a time. if your lucky they will accidentally bend the corners on them and you don't have to pay. good thing i was folding them in half anyway :)

So there you have it, you spent 8 hours designing your adventure, and saving all the information and you have a nice hard copy to show for it. Some of you are thinking, 8 hours that's a full days work for me. Well sometimes being a DM is, but when you have everything organized and know where your game is going, you can spend a hour a night on it after the kids have gone to bed. Before you know it your two adventures ahead of the game

That's all for this week's DM's tips, remember its us vs. them!

Speeding up Combat in 4e, another DMs point of view

There are a plethora of articles on the internet on how to speed up combat in 4th edition, i hope to add my list of suggestions to the pool. Our group uses lots of these and they seem to work for us, however our encounters are still around a hour long, and really that's fine, these tips just seem to make combat go smother and more effectively on all sides.

Planning

The DM needs to spend the same amount of time preparing the encounter as it takes to play the encounter. So if you want to finish an encounter in an hour, the DM should have to spend an hour working on it.

DM's should re-read all of the monsters in any given encounter shortly before game day to refresh themselves with how the encounter is going to operate part of planning is you should know your monsters. I have all my monsters per encounter separated in a plastic bag, each with a sticker on it identifying it by letter.

I'm also a huge fan of the the printableDM encounter manager I have one printed out in advance per encounter, often i use it for my combat notes, with pre-rolled initiative and reminders of ongoing effects. However sometimes i have to squish some monsters together in the same area, but it works for me. I also find it extremely useful to put THP & Bloodied value notes on here.

From Dave [Player] - know your damn powers
the waiting for us to figure out what attack we are doing slows us down a lot.

Splitting up initiative

Initiative should be broken up equally between the monsters and the party, What i mean by this is if you have 5 players you should have 5 monster initiatives. Dosen't mean you need to have 5 monsters, just means that if you have more consider making groups of minions and other similar monsters go on the same round.

Minions

Minions are a great way of speeding up the encounter, they don't use the DM's time because the players usually kill them off pretty quickly, this also gives the party a sense of achievement every time a monster drops on one of their turn.

From Dave [Player]
minions! minions! minions!... sure they are worth jack for EXP. but 1 hit kills mean we get to move on. don't load the encounters with just minions, but if you want to throw a bit more of a challenge our way, make the encounter as you want (for normal difficulty) and then throw a stack of minions at us as well. We might not finish the entire fight faster, but we feel good about whipping their butts. And really, with a min of 4 players we can whip 4 minions in 1 round easy.

Dealing with players

I hate the idea of putting a player on a egg timer, this is probably one of the single most common suggestions out there. It seems to me that DM's blame players for the slowdown of combat, when they don't realize that players are just playing the game. If you see someone getting bored or don't think they will be ready by their turn then have a minion attack them, tell them, "bob your turns coming up" but overall i find it unnecessary.

Rules

Dealing with rule questions are the toughest slowdowns your group can face, and the one you as a DM take the flack the most for. However 4th edition gives you room for forgiveness from players; when a question comes up about possibilities make a call an look it up later. If you find out you were wrong after the game, then give that player a action point they can spend any time during next game night. On the other side of that, if you don't think the rules allow for it, then let the player to spend an action point to cheat the system. After all, they are heroes are they not.

over all have fun with the game as well, spend your prep time properly and the encounter will go smoothly. These simple rules provide encounters that aren't going to be faster all the time, but more enjoyable.

Remember time is how we perceive it to be.