When It's Not Your Turn...

[Goober4473]

I'm looking for a way to keep everyone engaged in a turn-based situation (combat or otherwise), even when it is not their turn. Basically, they need to be able to make meaningful decisions outside of their turn, while primary focus remains on the player or NPC who's turn it is. Does anyone know of any good examples of this, or have any good ideas?

[Sanglorian]

[Goober4473]

[SheikhJahbooty]

Do players have a pool of points that they can spend to modify die rolls? Something like hero points or fate points or je-ne-sais-quoi points?

If you let players modify their own die rolls to be more heroic, you might want to let them modify other rolls as well, as if to say, "Pay attention, your teammate might need your help on his roll."

Or maybe you could lay penalties on the table, like a little note that says "slippery flagstones (-2)" and the players have to wait until after the NPC rolls to use it, and the best use of it is when the NPC only just barely made the roll to hit, so the penalty could change a hit to a miss, if the players are paying attention and if you make such a roll for the NPCs while the penalty is still on the table. FATE has something like this in that new aspects are free to tag until everyone has had a turn. If the penalty would not have made a difference on any of the rolls while everyone gets a turn, the free tag goes away, and you will need to spend a fate point to site that aspect in the future.

[BubbaBrown]

In the system and setting I've been working on, I use Interrupts. If they got the action budget and a valid reason, they can momentary jump in, do something, and then return control back over. It's a nice way to allow people to dodge out of the way of incoming fire when someone misses a shot trained for them or let them lay in wait for the right moment to strike. I've noticed it helps people pay more attention to whats going on, in hope of being able to catch things at the right moment.

[Rob Lang]

They way I get round this is in the heat of the battle, giving each player only about 10 seconds to make their mind up. If they don't make their mind up in that turn then they are left however they are. What you then get is people thinking about their next go while listening to other people as there simply isn't time to ask lots of questions and get the lay of the land. This works especially well when you're not using minis as there is less of a tendancy to count squares and work the best way around the situation. It's more a case of:

'describe what you do'
GM checks to see if its possible and then...
roll dice if you need to. Move on.
Next player.
Ask a quick questions if you need to.
Take too long or want to ask another?
Tough.
Next player.
etc
At the end of the turn, the GM gets to do some describing and the players get a pause. Then next player! GO GO GO!

You will find that your players take a while to adjust but when they do, you can have huge combats in a short evening game. You'll find that people get tired quickly and that they make 'less than optimal' choices but that's less off a problem than being bored.

[Nicephorus]

[Rob Lang]

@Nicepherous - although the system can help speed up combat (having fewer tables like you mentioned), it's actually more down to the GM than anything else.

I ran this way during a game at Gen Con UK 2008 and the players, having never played Icar before, really got into it. Icar does have a medium amount of system crunch to contend with but I'm fairly certain I know the rules inside and out. There was no need to pause, I didn't need to look anything up. Any GM who knows their system well can approach this level of speed. I saw it done in a D&D 4e game I watched. The GM was brilliant and he had minis to contend with. The players were not familiar with 4e and did struggle fighting against their assumed knowledge of older versions of D&D but the GM just ploughed on. I understand (although not in depth) that 4e is streamlined but it seemed that the GM was applying a lot of the rules off the top of his head in a skillful way.

Some nights, if I see I've got a battle ahead and I am too tired to handle it (after a long week at work say) then I will try and shove in a side quest or reduce the size of the battle.

Your players need to be up for it too. If you players like the ponderous tactics of a minis game, then this high speed GM style won't work. Being pushed into action is just not fun for some.

[Nicephorus]

I think the key thing is for the gm to know the game system and the intent of the NPCs well enough to be nigh fearless in rulings and actions -to have the NPCs react naturally without huge pauses. Knowing the system is a big help and lighter systems are easier to learn. I can run D20 pretty quickly though it's not light (unless I haven't run it for a few months). I'm not sure if anyone could run Twilight 2000 or similar games quickly. The players also have to adapt and not retreat to the books.

There's also a personality issue. Some people aren't comfortable with the possible errors that come from moving quickly.

[Thought]

Turns are great for individuals. But who says that you're players have to be individuals? Why not a team? The thing about teams, especially effective ones, is that they work more along the lines of a single organism than a group of individuals.

As such, you can design your rules around a team rather than the individual. D&D uses a series of actions to represent a single turn (Attack, Move, Minor, etc); you could do the same but on a team scale. For example, a team might be comprised of 3 players; total they have 3 actions to use and only have access to "basic" actions like a move, attack, etc. But if they work together, they could gain access to advanced actions and additional actions. two teammates might lay down cover fire while a third moves; that third player moves further than if the other two weren't playing down cover fire and allowing that player to move further and opening up an 4th action. If both sides are treated as a single organism, then the players have only “their turn” and “the enemy’s turn,” reducing the amount of time they aren’t active.