Running 4e

[bryant]

The thing that really surprised me about running 4e was how amazingly simple it was in practice. Setup is perhaps a different story, which I can’t speak to yet, but assuming you have an adventure in hand and a bunch of players, it’s nearly frictionless to run.

A well-presented adventure, as per WotC’s example, puts stat blocks for each monster with each encounter. These literally have 70% of what you need to run the encounter. You get each attack listed clearly, with the bonus to hit and the damage included, along with any other effects. Everything the monster might do is right there.

Each encounter also has tactics and of course room descriptions, which is another 15% of what you need. Tactics aren’t absolutely necessary but it’s handy to have the script for monster actions available. The room description gives you special features, treasure, and all that. Note that traps and such are statted up as monsters, so you continue to have the stat blocks handy and the mechanics aren’t any different. Skill challenges also fall into this chunk of material.

All in all, an encounter is going to be two or three pages. I haven’t checked but I bet the vast majority of encounters are two pagers.

The other 10% is condition modifiers, attack modifiers such as cover, and so on. I think I’ll have these memorized pretty soon, but in the meantime there’s an excellent Dungeon Master’s Screen which is stable and laid out in landscape format. The latter means you can see players behind it. It has all the charts you want. Literally. It’s impressive.

I added in Paizo’s GameMastery Combat Pad, which is a magnetic whiteboard designed for initiative tracking. I didn’t need it; I could have tracked initiative on the battlemat. But being able to slide counters around when people hold or delay is handy.

So what I discovered was that I could run the whole game standing up, with the combat pad tucked in the adventure booklet, in my left hand. Right hand’s free for dice, moving minis, checking off hit points. This may sound really trivial, but I ran four combats in five hours and I didn’t have to look anything up more than once or twice — OK, having players doing some lookups for me was handy, but even so. 4e is ridiculously easy to run.

I’m thinking about more tweaks. I found some full-sized 1″ maps for the WotC modules that some people did in Dundjinni and Campaign Cartographer (note to players: spoilers, try not to peek too hard), and I think I can use those to good effect to cut down on the time it takes me to draw maps. Also they’re pretty.

I’m definitely gonna use these encounter worksheets next time. It’ll make it easier to track hit points. I’m considering backing one of ‘em with magnetic paper so I could use the initiative magnets on that instead. We’ll see.

But it’s all gilding the lily. The core smoothness lies in the game. Kudos to WotC and the designers.

Originally published at Imaginary Vestibule.

Comments

[crs.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of the stack of index cards for initiative tracking, myself. Delay is a 90deg turn, Ready is 45 degrees... info about the status of each participant in the fight actually written on their card.

The group I usually game with also has been buying up a bunch of the Alea Tools magnetic marker thingies... Not bad, but sometimes more trouble than they're worth.

[bryant]

Hm, might give index cards a try. You could fit monster stats on there easily too, although you'd still need the module for tactics and such...

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

This is good news, thanks.

[head58.livejournal.com]

For the session I ran with the Bandit Ambush, I had copy/pasted the relevant stats into a Word table, printed on cardstock, and cut them up into index cards with one group/type per card. I had room at the bottom of each card for notes on tactics. One of the few things that worked well for me in that game :)

[bruceb.livejournal.com]

I had the same experience as Bryant. 2 full encounter scenes in 3 hours and change, and that our first time together, my first time running 4e, online (text chat, no voice), and all of us new to the software (Gametable). I'm expecting to get in 3 in 3-3.5 hours tonight.

Amazing stuff.

[bryant]

See, for me it's the speed when /not using software/ that startled me. When I'm running something online, I don't mind reference books much -- I'm optimally using searchable PDFs anyhow, and it doesn't kill the mood if I spend a few seconds looking something up. There are always pauses.

Being able to run a complex combat face to face without reference books is, I think, one of the biggest 4e breakthroughs for me.

[bruceb.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure. What I meant to say was just "even with all the various delaying factors, we got a lot done". And yeah, like you, I wasn't doing a lot of lookup, or needing to. (The DM's screen is really nice.)