7 Tips To Speed Up Your Gameplay

0:20 Hello Adventures, the podcast for role players and game masters to help them welcome up your game. We're dungeon masters Jason Portiso, Joe McCall, and Jim Crocker, and today we're gonna I'm gonna set a time limit for this episode. We see if we can get our episodes to be faster. Because if we get episodes be faster and you can listen to them faster, maybe your games will get faster. We need to listen to a podcast about getting your podcast episodes faster. That'll be next episode. Okay, I'll work on that one, but how to well, no, because then we don't have I don't we don't have more time for ads And then like why Okay, so we we need to watch a YouTube video about making your podcast faster so that we can make our podcast faster. Here gameplay, But that's gonna take too long, So I need a TikTok to teach faster YouTube videos. Anyway, this this whole, this whole based down off the rails, So certainly these tangents make our episodes faster. Listen, Jim, listen, we just spent twenty minutes talking about Detroit Party. I will also add off off mic.

1:19 So, Jim, you've got you get a list for us, Tell me about tell me about how to make things faster. Yeah. So, as a person who ran D and D in the game store that I owned for many, many years, one of the things that was important was to try and get in as much play as we could. And so there's a whole bunch of tips that I picked up from other players and just through experimentally running stuff at the store that I found really sped up gameplay and not in a you know, kind of bum rush everybody kind of way, but just in a way that made stuff more efficient. And for the most part, they're all pretty easy to adopt. I mean, there's one of them that might be a little controversial. I saved that one at the end, you know, as we're a loving good controversy like we do, like we do.

2:00 But but I think these are all things that if you decide you to adopt them, you know, you can do one, you can do all of them. They should make things go a little quicker so that you're doing less you know, kind of handling and bookkeeping and stuff like that, and you have more time to you know, to role play, or you can just make the sessions a little shorter so that you know, people aren't getting burned out stuff like that. So shall I begin, Yes, I think getting right to it is this step number one. Yes, Yeah, there we go. That's a good tip, you know, kind of a good meta tip. So the first thing that I have on my list here is and this is interesting because when fourth edition D and D first came out, this was actually the official way that the book suggested that you do this, which is to roll damage along with your hit dice. So when you pick up your D twenty for your fighter, you grab your ten siders, you know, for for whatever your sword damage does. You throw it all at once.

2:58 Then you can just check and see did I hit Yes, then you read the damaged dice off, did I miss No? Damaged dice don't matter, but you've got it all at once there, Oh okay. So yeah, and you would be surprised, genuinely surprised at the number of times, and certainly as a DM, especially if you're rolling for multiple monsters, the amount of time that that's going to save, you know, in fifteen twenty second increments, but if you add it up over dozens and dozens of times, over the course of a game. I found, you know, like that shaves like ten minutes off of time you'd otherwise just spend throwing dice and looking at them to read them. Some people get some people are I get it. Some people are very very attached to like, roll this die and I read it. Then I roll these dice and I read it. But if you could overcome that, if you're not particularly sentimental or superstitious about that part of it, just grabbing that handful of dice throwing them all at once boom will actually save a significant amount of time if you have everybody at the table doing that over the course of your game. So that's my first tip.

3:57 So outside is less total actual die rolls. And we all know how fun die rolls are. It's not less total die rolls. I mean, it's like you're still rolling the same number of directions of throwing the die. And here's the it's actually and this is the thing though, Jason, is it's actually more dice rolls. Well, I was getting to my that was the downside. I was going to say, upside, there's nothing more satisfying than rolling a handful of dice exactly. Yes, Yeah, And also when your player as a GM or a DM, when your players here you rolling multiple dice, they immediately perk up, get scared. They're immediately always fun a feared, So nothing wrong with that. The other thing I found is that it is slightly harder for players to fudge anything if they're throwing a handful of dice all at once, right then that single die that they then cut their hand over and look at and go oh to nineteen like that kind of thing. So so if they're all out there on the table, then that makes that a little tougher. But but the whole point there is to speed things up a little because you're not doing you know, like like grabbing the separate dice you know, as as its own action, and and and and then rolling and reading them. So that's tip number one. What's apps I'm starting? I like that a lot of them. I'm starting. I'm starting that tonight. Yep, yep, yep. That's that's great, And it's like it's something I've done for years. I just do it out of habit now. And and that's the other thing is that once you like, it'll feel weird at first, but once you've done it for half a dozen sessions,

5:30 it'll just be second nature. You just do it automatically. Second one new players uh specifically assign them a veteran player buddy. If this is a thing that you can do a lot of times. One of the things that really can slow the game down is the processing time that new players need to understand everything that's happening, to find stuff in the book and things like that. And even if all that buddy is doing is saying to that player, you know, they're you know, flipping through the book fireball, fireball, fireball where and the veteran player can say page two twenty like that, you know, that is saving time. Making sure that players that don't know the game, they're paired with someone whose specific job is to help them bring them along and make sure that, you know, when time matters, they can, you know, maybe nudge them a little, maybe encourage them, help them understand what their options are so that that is not falling on the DM who is also managing all the monsters and all that kind of stuff. So give any new players a buddy who knows the rules, sit them next to that person so they can help them move them along. That will definitely speed your gameplay as you go. So that was tip number two. Tip number three the single greatest D and D accessory that you can have, the one thing that if you're going to spend extra money on something that is not just the books, you should spell cards. Oh that's a better answer. Spell

7:01 cards. Nothing slows play like a player, especially a new player, who you want to love the game, who you want to be enthusiastic, who you want to you know, be a cool magic user or you know, warlock or sorcerer or whatever, even just a bard with all those cool spells that they can have. But nothing slows to the game like they're flipping through the book to find that spell to figure it out, even if it's written on their character sheet or whatever. But you have those spell cards right in front of them, lay them right out on the table boom. At the beginning of play. What spells do you have memorized? You've got these five, they're right in front of you. When it comes time to do it, you just pop it, pick it up. You read the description right off of the card. It's got everything you need on there. They're very well designed. They're my favorite D and D accessory. Like I said, that is not you know, you know, books or character sheets or something like that, and absolutely recommend it for a low cost option. For these there are apps of it. The D and D Beyond app has spells available.

8:03 You do have to own the content, I think for some of the at least some of the spells, and then you can just print your own too, like if you can go through the books as a DM or and and and look them up in print, I think, Jason, that's something that you do at some of your public games. Yeah, So for the games, I wanted breweries for the For the store games, a lot of players will bring their own characters, but I have my preaching characters available for them. And for the breweries, we are encouraged to have pregen characters for all players. And I made the character sheets laminated them so that we can dry erase them and also white and also so we can wipe beer off of them. And I did the same for spell cards. I chose spells for all the casters and you. And also this also saves us time and say, hey, I know you're gonna long rest right now, but these are the spells I design this character to have, so we can just skip all that yeah, and great. You know it made it easier as a player because I played one of your games, is it The Wizard? Yeah?

8:54 Yeah, And I played the Wizard and it was like I didn't have to figure any of that out, use my little my little goblin with I love it. I didn't have to figure any of that out. I didn't have to look up spells at all, like it. And I encourage whether they are new or veteran or in between, I encourage them to kind of like hold them in their hand like it like a handful of magic cards or yu gi oh cards or god forget something like poker and like but like you have your spells at your arsenal and like this this is how like this probably have the Wizard's doing it if if you were personifying the Wizard, they're for the pages of their books that you got. You got What's like, okay, what do I have? What gambit does? But even just like you know, having descriptions of everything, it's like, hey, what do we got?

9:37 What do we got? What do we got? And I like, there are you'll see this more like magic and and Pokemon and Yugo and stuff like that where you'll have like the little tiny book with the card sleeves already in them. That might be my next step eventually, when I want to spend even more money on this and giving them an actual spell book and just one extra step of like a little like a little tiny photo album, but like with the spell cards in there. Yeah right, yeah you can. You can get them for fairly cheap ish, but I feel like I want to make these look like as cool as they possibly can. Yeah, And every game store has that kind of stuff as successories, because they sell magic cards and Yu Gio's cards and all that kind of stuff. And you know, if you have your character in a three ring binder, you just buy a couple of card pages so you can slip your spell cards in that they go in there behind the character. And the other thing that I love about it is, like you said, if you've got it kind of as a hand of cards, that encourages those players to glance at them between turns if there's nothing going on, if they've got some downtime, it's like, oh, let me remind myself what blade barrier actually does. And so they're going to be more ready and more familiar when their turn comes around with how those spells work and how to use them then if they have to, you know, flip through the player's handbook to find it when it comes time for them to do their thing. So yeah, and all cards. I'll take this second to shout out hit Point Press, who makes these of these animated spell cards. There's the and I can't think of what that is called. When

11:07 like you ticular lenticular, that's the lot they call that where you kind of you can kind of like like you know, you change the angle on it and it looks like there's some motion. Yeah, it's like it's like it's like a five it's like a five frame animation. I have the whole set up to ninth. Levels are awesome. They're not They're not cheap, but they are if you only getting couple levels, like you get them as your character levels up. They're not totally expensive. And of course Wizards Prince the official ones and they look to feel great. It's funny, my skin is crawling as you are mentioning lenticular cards because they have that feeling of like frosted glass. Yeah, that that's like, I hate it. Phobias aside, folks, Lenticular cards are super cool. They do come with a with a plastic film on them, so that would mean much, which I peeled off immediately. But that's why you put them in the cards. Sure, yeah, I think they take Terrorit sized cards. Well, I they look so cool. They made me want to play a caster, and of course I immediately played a barbarian. But that's not the point. Yeah, and I mean and frankly, you know, if you are playing the Marshall class that has a lot of stuff going on with it, you can do, you know, kind of a harken back a little bit to the fourth edition days.

12:22 You can put some of those fighter abilities on a card like a spell card, sure, so that when your turn comes around, you know, you know, you know, do your Bardic inspiration on a card so that you know how it works every time it comes around. You don't have to again keep preferring to the book or flipping your character sheet over and stuff. And just a call back to an old episode. Two index cards, which I have one in front of me because Jason left it here. Well, yeah, I'm old enough that what we used to do was write our spells out Longhand on index cards so that we you know the ones we use most frequently magic missile. Yeah, I got it right here. So yeah, got your magic missile right here. Pal, All right, So that's that is tip number three. Spell cards. They're the single best accessory you can have that are not, you know, outside of your dice, in your character sheets and your books. Hello Adventurers, just stepping in here to remind you guys that we're actively looking for submissions for our Hello DMS episode that gets reported every month. Send us your burning D and D questions to Helloadventurers podcast at gmail dot com, or send us a voicemail by visiting Helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Don't forget to begin your message with Hello DMS. You can't wait to get your questions and talk about them on the show. Send us your questions today. That's Helloadventurers Podcast at gmail dot com. Poor you the voice at helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Now let's get back to the show number four. And this is a thing that I used extensively when I was running at the store Average Monster Damage. This is a fifth edition

13:56 thing that they introduced that, as far as i'm con was just a thing that was obvious and there all the time. But that makes total total sense for the number of combats that you're running. And that is any official D and D monster listing will list that monster's damage in terms of dice you know, two D six plus four or just a static number that indicates an average of what that role is going to turn out as. And any time you're running a combat where the stakes aren't super high or you're not super interested in it being super swingy, just use those average damage numbers. The Noel hits you, he's going to do eight points and you can just keep doing that and that's totally fine. Those hit points aren't abstraction anyway, and there's nothing And this is one of the things that when I pitch this to people they kind of get upset about. But you know, like, well, but we like the uncertainty of it. No one's saying that you can't have that.

14:58 That when it when they come up against the big bad like the boss dragon at the end, that yeah, when you roll that that dragon's breath weapon, that's when you bring out the you know, the eight D six and throw them on the table where everyone can see them and everybody can go oh crap, or you know, breathe a sigh of relief. But if you're just you know, if it's the Orcs, if it's the Cobalds, that are you know that you got to fight your way through to get to that dragon. Say if you're if you're fighting ten coalbalds, Yeah, just use average damage and you can even put if you're afraid of it being like, oh, I don't want to like it just seems so like a cookie cutter. So say nine sometimes and say seven another like yeah, it's not that exactly. You make up the rules a little bit as a as a DM guys, you can do that or you know, and and the other way you keep it from being cookie cutter is how you describe how the damage is delivered. This one's a bite, this one's a slash, this one's they you know, they shove you back into it, into one of their traps or something like that, and it's all you know. Each time it's four points of damage, but it's a different four points of damage each time.

16:00 It also means that the players, if they know you're doing that, you can kind of have a little agreement. These guys are average damage. Every time they hit you. You're going to take four. The players know, like as soon as they hear it hits you, they can just check it off in their character sheet and it's not a whole thing where they got to try and figure it out. And you can also kind of do a little bit of there's a different sort of strategizing and it can be a little fun sometimes where you say, okay, Magic, you've got five hit points left, but I know they're hitting for four every time I can take one more hit, so I'm going to stay there before I step off, right. Whereas if you're rolling damage and it's uncertain, that's a different sort of strategy, but it can be fun to mix those up as well. Absolutely yeah, And it definitely speeds up the game, boy because as a GM, if you're not having a and it definitely speeds up the game because as a DM, if you're not having to throw all those extra dice read them, and especially if you've got like you know, like I said, two D six plus four where you're doing math every time. I am someone who anytime I can eliminate math from my life, I will happily take that opportunity.

17:07 And this is one of the ways you can see that. So Yeah. Tip number four average monster damage, you know, whenever you can whenever it's not super important and you really want the kind of swinginess of actually rolling damage dice, it'll speed your game up immensely. Tip number five. And this kind of follows up a little bit on what we're talking about, Like, you know, if you've got ten Cobalds, group those monsters together. Grouping monsters together, this is a thing that will make it go a lot faster, and that you can combine with some of those other tips like using average damage and rolling damage along with your hit rolls, depending on how you want to do it. You know, if you've got nine Cobalds, put them into three groups of three, roll three initiatives for them and have all three of them go in that initiative thing and just you know, and you can then grab three D twenties, roll them all at once. Two of them hit you. They're doing four points each. That's eight points of damage to the fighter boom you're moving on, and you've just handled three monsters in the time that it would normally take to do one. I love that, yeah, because if you're you know, and the players can still target them individually, that's totally cool. It's not like they're you know, you're combining their their hit points for how many they get taken down and stuff like this.

18:23 But boy, by having them all act together on a single initiative and kind of just throwing all their dice at once, you can do those big hoard encounters in a way that then doesn't take forever, you know, where where you're going. Okay, so the you know this cobalt attacks roll hit roll damage, the second co bal attacks roll hit roll damage. Okay, then the fighter goes two more cobalts roll hit roll damage. That can take forever. This is skeleton number seven exactly I've actually said, and especially because in a lot of those hoard encounters, what's going to happen is, you know, like like two thirds of those swings are gonna miss, They're gonna bounce off the armor, or they're gonna you know, because what the whole point is is you're throwing so many critters at them that that like, even though they're only gonna hit one out of three times, eventually that damage adds up and they got to you know, they got to take them down before they get overcome. Combining that together is a way to do that without it takes forever. And if you're me, the monsters are only going to hit a third of the time. Yeah yeah, So that's typically roll. Group your monsters together, and then if you want, like I said, you can combine that with average damage you know, and rolling you know, and or rolling damage at the same time as you roll those hits and you can get those big fights. Those big hords really reduced the amount of time that that takes. Tip number six. And this is a thing that some tables like some tables don't, I totally get it, but it definitely speeds the gameplay. And that is what I call TN transparency, which is to say,

19:57 letting everybody know what they're target numbers are all the time. If they're making a skill check, you know, to get up this cliff, you're going to need a fourteen rogue. Go, you know, just right off the bat, telling them what the ac of the monsters are. If the monsters do something that increases it, you say, they take this maneuver, he's sixteen now instead of a fourteen, Go ahead and tell me what you get, you know, roll it and tell me what you get. Especially for new players, It's immensely helpful because the uncertainty that comes from you know, I roll it, I look to you, I roll it, I read the number off, I look to you as the DM. DM you know, you look down at the monster to see what it's ac is, look up, tell me yes or no, and then yes, you hit it. Oh cool. Then I go and pick my damage dice up and everything I mean, and I'm kind of, you know whatever, I'm sort of exaggerating a little bit, but sure, if you can cut that process down to you're gonna need a seventeen to hit it, and the fighter picks up, you know whatever, they're they're two d twenties for their two attack and you know, two different colored damage dice. They throw that all at once and like like that just makes everything go so much faster. Anytime you have skill checks, anytime they're taking them swinging anything, just tell them up front what the target number is there. Make sure there may be instances where you want them to figure it out because the monster has something, you know, particularly weird going on or something like that. But this is one of those things where you can kind of get across the idea that these are trained

21:30 adventurers that know what they're doing. They're professionals at this gig. So like a guy that's been swinging a sword, you know, for four years, going down into dungeons and stuff like that, you know, to the point where he's managed to survive to be a twelfth level fighter, he's going to have a pretty good idea how tough that thing is and where the chinks in the armor are. And you know, you know, his trusty magic sword he's been carrying around for the last six months. You know, he knows what the capability is that webinar. And the way that you get that across is to just tell the players what they need to hit, you know, what the what they got to do to overcome you know, monsters, resistances and stuff like that. And I think that that really really speeds gameplay, but especially at low level when players are new, just telling them what they need, I think that's the right way to go. So that's tip number six. And here's tip number seven. And this this can be a little controversial, bring it on, but this is my thing. No devices at the table, nothing will speed up your game, will get your players to focus on what's going on. Then just at the beginning of the game, very politely telling everybody, put your phones away, put your tablets away, whatever it is that you're doing now, digital character sheets, blah blah blah, all that kind of stuff. Yes, I understand that. I am a firm believer that the game will go a lot faster if everybody has a paper character sheet and whatever reference tools they need in front of them, you know, in in you know, old fashioned codex format, because the the

23:03 you know, the opportunities for distraction with devices, even though people are like, my character sheet's on my phone, so I need to use my phone to look at my character sheet. Like you know, they're going to be getting text messages, and they're going to be looking at Reddit, and they're going to be you know, like if it's not their turn, they're gonna, you know, flip over to some idle game that they've got on their phone or something like that. I don't count people that need to do stuff like have fidget tools or like I have a friend who knits at the table so that she has something to do with her hands and to kind of you know, like like you know whatever, keep that part of her brain occupied that that needs to be occupied. With something going on. But when she's doing that, she's attentive to what the other players are doing. And that's one of the things that slows the game down, is when players are not paying attention to what's going on on other players. Turns and devices are the single most pernicious thing that you can have at the table to draw people away from giving other players that attention. I mean, not just that means they're going to know what's going on, but that is a courtesy to those other players to be engaged and interested in what they're doing on their turns and all the speeds on each other. Because if you can find ways to speed up what everybody is doing on their individual turns, it makes it easier for the other players to then give them that attention because it's not getting drawn out.

24:32 They're not sitting there watching somebody flipping through a book, you know, or figuring out which dice they have to roll and stuff like that. Because I get it that can get a little tedious, that, you know, especially in our you know, modern fast paced world where all of us are competing for attention and stuff like that. But but man, you just, I mean, you know, you don't have to be a jerk about it, but just having a rule. You know, I had a rule at the store that if you needed to take a call, you needed to look at your phone to get up from the table and step away from the table to do it. People could have their phones, but they had to have them face down on the table and if they picked it up to look at it, then to step away from the table because that was clearly they were not in the game when they were doing that in that moment. And I know that, like I said, that's a controversial thing. Some people feel like they have to have those devices at the table. Call that the Disney rule.

25:25 Yeah, I guarantee you if you get rid of them, it will speed your game up. Everybody will be more attentive, and you will like it better. I guarantee it. Yeah, there's times where like it seems like it's it's like a last resort, but it works. It absolutely works. Yeah, that would only obviously work if you if you're playing physically in the city location. And this is what I'm talking about. All this stuff that I'm talking about is is presumes face to face play, because if you're being mediated by Roll twenty or whatever and stuff, like that. Then there's there's all kinds of different considerations when you're when you're sharing time, you know, over video software or something like that. Yeah, you know, I guess my whatever. My seven A for that one is everybody should have their cameras on. That makes the game go much much faster. If you're doing audio only, that's that's death for gameplay, for speed to play. And I know that the young folks these days, some of them like like don't like to be on camera with each other. But like, whenever I hear that, like if I'm going to play online, never hear game is like Discord voice only, I'm like, nope, I'm out. So yeah, yeah, that that's our that's our kind of online gaming. That's my online gaming tip. If you don't want the games to slow to a deadly crawl, make sure everbody can see each other so they can get those social cues as they need to. One of the things you say that I liked was having everyone play with a paper character sheet. And there's there's a couple of

26:56 reasons why I like this. H A. If we're generating characters by just clicking through prompts, then we don't fully appreciate the choices that go into that character build, especially at higher levels. Like yeah, if you're doing a one shot and you're starting at level seven, like you're just blowing past seven levels of choices. And also like even for for ongoing characters, like I would, I would be curious to have our game, Joe, have everyone switch over to a paper character sheet done, just even just have it done, because no world level seven at this point, and like having us build a character sheet and like doing the math and everything like that, no one makes us appreciate the choices that were made. But like also like makes us write it out. It's like in high school when you like when you just copy your notes from from one paid from one other, it helps you like like really understand all of the class features and the character features. Yeah, and I know I know that, you know I'm rolling my D twenty and adding you know, plus plus my strength modifier front a hit, And I know that the damage of my javelin is doing one D eight plus whatever.

28:02 Yeah, but why but why is it plus six? And I kind of understand, And I'm very much the kind of person that needs to understand. I just wanted to say I'm very much the short private person, I need to understand the why behind it in order to fully understand any concept. So yeah, sorry, And she's where it says where on the cusp of level eight we're going to get asis pretty soon. It's like, you know, maybe that we we can see visually and kind of just force people to go through the math again and again. We have we have a bunch of new newer players at the table and some of them joined us at that level like four and five, So like having them see like how one choice affects other features and things like that, and then they can make decisions based on that. But even just like like I said, the high school, copying your science notes from your scratch pad in class into your nicer notebook later kind of solidifies all that information just a little bit more and you don't have to go flipping through either pages or or tabs. The other The other really nice thing about where my brain went on, like everybody doing a paper character sheet is when they need to look for information like hey, do a stealth chuckle, where's my stealth? And they're looking through like, no, it's right here, you know, go to the left. You'll see a list you know of things here, there's some dots looked down, you know, about three quarters of the way down stealth is there? Oh there it is, Yeah, because that comes up a lot, and I know that at the Brewery game we played. We're like it's I think. I said, like, oh, it should be here. You're like, no, these aren't standard characters. Yeah, these are different ones. But if you use a standard

29:33 character sheet, then you know, or you use all the same one. Yeah. Yeah, But that also kicks off of the buddy thing that we talked about earlier, where if you know, you have one player that knows that character sheet inside it out, and they're sitting next to someone that's not as familiar with it, and that new player goes, where are my skills? And you know, the player that's been there for a while not only can say center of the sheet halfway down, they can literally just reach over and tap on the sheet where it is the they're looking for, in a way that if somebody has their iPad or something like that. It's really hard just because of the way these things work. You can't really reach over and go, well, scroll up here and then tap there and that's where that is. It's just a it's got a different valance to it, and I you know, and it underlines kind of the social nature of it when you've got those sheets and also just you know, like the other thing I said, it makes it a lot easier, Like I was talking about with the spell cards. If you've got that paper sheet in front of you, you can sort of glance down at it and look at it between turns and familiarize yourself with it in a way. That's much tougher if you're looking at a device. When you get into that device, kind of the device occupies your full attention. A sheet of paper on the table is a thing that is part of the whole thing that's going on the take. You know, you can look over that sheet at the DM and pay attention to them and be glancing at it in a way. It's very that that I feel like is much more difficult, you know, if you're trying to do love to have your tention go back and forth between a device and the team. I was going to say, like, have you a device in my hand that that draws my attention, but a piece of paper with with numbers and words on

31:07 it rejects bad. There we go. The other nice thing about what would be nice about no devices? I know, it's not obviously a room or excuse me, it's obviously not a rule that would work at my table or our table, Jason. But the one really nice thing that I thought of is partially challenge that. Yeah, the one really nice thing is all that would require changes to work at your tip. Yeah, it would, it would. It would require a hefty amount of changes. But the one really nice thing is there'd be no meta gaming. There's definitely been times that I'm like talking about a monster and I hear somebody say the name of the monster, and I'm like, how would you know that? Where I hear them clicking, Yeah, because they're looking they're googling the monster that I just described, or if I accidentally like say the name and I don't want to give all that information away, and so oh yeah that that's the other really nice thing is your players can't look at that strong that's strong focus. That's somebody that's not that's not thinking about what's going on at the table, that's not listening to your description, right, you know where you're kind of doing a slow burn to reveal that it's a troll, right as you're describing the weed stripping off of it and stuff, and their head is down in their phone going tippity tappity tippity tappit. The're not looking at you. So yeah, let's recap. Yes, let's recap. So seven ways that you can speed play at the table, assuming that we're sitting down altogether playing a face to face D and D game. Number one, roll damage along with your D twenties. Anytime you can combine dice, throw them in one big fistful that

32:40 is going to speed play. You know, it'll save you ten to fifteen seconds per role, But the number of roles you make over a you know, a full game that'll actually get you, you know, a substantial amount of time back. Number two. Any new players at your table, if you're introducing them to the game, try and give them a buddy next to them that can help them navigate the game. It'll speed things up for everybody and keep everybody more engaged. Number three. Best accessory that you can buy. You know, like I said, aside from dice and your rulebooks, spell cards lists of spell cards. You can buy the official ones that come from Gail Force nine. You can print your own. You can write them longhand on index cards the way we used to back in the days of Basic D and D. But having spell cards instead of having flipped through the book always speed things up. Number four for you as DM average monster damage.

33:29 If you've just got Quorcs or Cobald's or you know, you're some basic monsters, don't bother you know, rolling that D six damage for them every time. Take a look in the book. It'll tell you how much the average damage is. Just use that instead, just you know, read it off as you hit. Save you a whole bunch of dice rolls. It'll make speed things up for everybody because players will know what they got to mark whenever they get hit in any combat where you're using that number five. Grouping monsters together, when you have large groups of monsters, have them act on the same initiative. Have a big fistful of dice, throw moll at once. Combine that with average damage to have your you know, big fight against a horde of zombies or skeleton. Just go lickety split, just right like that number six. Target number transparency, tell the players what they need to roll.

34:13 Don't be coy about it, don't be you know, there may be times every now and then where it matters that they're not quite sure what's going on, but boy, for the most part, assume that competent adventurers have an idea of what's going on. Just tell them what the armor classes of the monsters they're encountering are, the target numbers of any skill checks they're making. Tell them right up front so they can know immediately whether they immediately whether they hit that target number or not. So target number transparency, that's the thing that will really speed things up. And finally, number seven, I guess somewhat controversial. This may just be because I'm an older you know, an older DM, but if you can set things up so that you have no devices at the table, or at least no devices that are used extraneously. Have people put their phones face down, step away from the table if they need to make a call, and put those character sheets on good old fashioned paper character sheets, so that the people are not you know, flipping through Roll twenty or whatever or dand beyond on their iPads at the table.

35:07 That will speed things up. It may require a little bit of change of how people are used to interacting with the game, but it will increase everybody's attention and it will definitely speed play in the long run if you can keep those distractions off of the table. Those are my seven tips. I'm sure a whole lot of people will have got a whole lot more ideas, and this feels like the perfect opportunity for them to call in or email us, Jason, how would they do that? You can always send an email over to Hello Adventurers Podcast at gmail dot com, or you can send us a voicemail at Helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Yeah, and I would love to hear any tips anybody has that you know are not included as part of that list. There's a few that are a little more esoteric and maybe you know, kind of specific to certain situations. But if you've got some I haven't thought of, you know, I'm all of yours on that. Yeah, let us know if anything's been working for you, and let us know about how hard your players cried when you took their phones away. I will say that like that these are kind of like for in person games, A lot of these really work for online games as well. Like if you have an auto roller, then you're not really saving any time by doing it.

36:14 All at once, so that one doesn't really apply. But even having veteran players pair up with new players even online, they can the DM each other and not that almost works better online. Having spell cards, you can have digital spell cards, you can have like bookmarks to the spell stucher using, and most VTTs and most digital character sheets you can just click on the spell so you're you essentially have your spell cards already. If you're doing it depends on what you're playing with. If you're doing your roll twenty thing, then it's it's going to roll damage for you. But if you're doing it over of just over discord and then it's just a communication thing for you. The average damage still works. Group initiative still works even if you're using an initiative web app, like I use an improved Initiative dot app, which is absolutely staple in my games at this point. That'll take care of an it for you and get DC transparency and keeping extraneous devices away. That even works online.

37:06 So this so this is on for everybody. Jim Jim fantastic job. And that's how you do a podcast, a long form podcast in the time it takes us to do a Hordror story podcast, and that is a commentary on how long it takes us to do a short episode. But Jim, I'm running a game. I'm running a bergame tonight. Actually, if I'm going to make sure that I use at least a couple of these so we can spend less time doing clerical stuff and more time describing how these players are absolutely wamping me. I got womped the other day. But we'll do game stories another time. Fantastic, So thank you so much for listening to Hello Adventurers. We are your hosts, Jason Portiso, Jim Crocker, and Joe McCall producer, editor, engineer Jason Portiso. Music is by Nick Spurrier, artwork by Kristin Roderick. You can reach out to us any feedback or suggestions by emailing Hello Adventurers podcast at gmail dot com. Hello Adventures is a JTP audio production Goodbye Invents