Tips for speeding up d20 play in FG2?

[Dachannien]

Don't forget, there was a script posted recently that automatically rolls initiative for monsters and NPCs when you add them to the combat tracker. If you know a combat is coming up during the next game session, you can also set up the combat tracker and tokens before the session.

[Tropico]

Yeap Callum, in recent games I've been a player in I've slammed against two extremely important 'speedup/bogdown' factors in the game.

First, learning to use the hotkeys properly and to their fullest potential is critical. In Griogre's game last Saturday he was good enough to point out to me that hotkeys are not only important for speeding up your rolls, but also are key to letting the GM know always exactly what bonuses it is you're rolling (or forgetting to roll). The (label) part in the "+x (label)" format of building the hotkey is critical to keeping the GM updated on just what's going on so he can in turn keep the game flowing correctly.

Second, simply being clear and concrete on the rules you choose to use in your game makes a big difference. I was running a level 8 Rogue with 'Rapid Shot' and 'Many Shot' and I think it rapidly became clear that I have -very little- experience running such a character, to the extent I bogged down the combats during my turn because I didn't have the multiple-shot rules for different situations down and needed them explained to me. To everyone else's credit, they were very patient and helpful with me, yet I was naturally still aware of what I was doing to slow everything down.

Of course, those two things are really up to each player as a person and individually, and you can't really control those factors at all as a GM, you just have to roll with it. So I can't really say how useful it is to be aware of them (but it's gotta be better than being UNaware of them!).

The other thing that pops into my mind is simply choosing a ruleset that is naturally faster and more streamlined for quick resolution of combats and good pacing. Hence my current explorations into Savage Worlds, which shows a lot of promise in that area. Of course the question with such a system is, being the non-popular choice, will I ever get enough players for it? But it's worth a shot at least.

Oh and also, voice DOES speed up everything drastically. It makes me really have a tough choice between the deep immersion offered by 'all-text' (and being used to it from MUDs) and the speed and easy-flow of voice. Tough choices all around

[NymTevlyn]

No matter how much people say voice is faster, I won't use it. It's distracting and immersion breaking. I hate talking on the phone too though.

[Kalan]

No matter how much people say voice is faster, I won't use it. It's distracting and immersion breaking. I hate talking on the phone too though.

Ditto here...

[Dachannien]

I guess my feeling on it is that if we weren't using FG, we'd be playing face-to-face (minus some folks who live in other cities/time zones), and we sure wouldn't be typing then

[Griogre]

All I know is that I can probably double the combat encounters per session that is longer than a couple of hours with voice, YMMV. Remember you don't have to let your players use voice.

[NymTevlyn]

Face to face, I can see the person who is talking. Even knowing someone's voice over vent or something isn't enough for me. I also don't want to inflict suffering on my players with my awful voice.

I think the biggest problem with combat bogging down in FG is players alt-tabbing out when it's not their turn or not knowing the rules or planning what they're going to do on their next action.

[John_Geeshu]

I agree that if voice speeds up your combats you must know something about using it that the rest of us don't. I honestly can't see an advantage in combat unless you are playing with newcomers who are unsure of the combat rules, or you are having to correct a lot of mistakes. In that case, yes, voice speeds things up immensely because it's superior to even the fastest typist's skill. Personally, I now favor FGII without voice over traditional F2F table top, so I may be a black sheep on this issue.

[joshuha]

I like voice for combat and for just general banter to keep my logs pretty clean.

We tend to use it to ask all the metagame questions and we have a few players new to 3.5 rules. So our first underwater fight the other day went a bit smoother with voice then it would have if everyone was typing out all the questions.

Even with standard fights, just being able to ask for clarification for certain things like descriptions, obstacles, etc. still speeds it up rather than just typing.

However, we tend to RP pretty heavily so we have had whole sessions where the Ventrilo server is rarely used but its nice to have it there. There's been a few times with even RP that there has been some confusion on who said what or agreed to the plan or what the plan was that voice clears up a bit faster than waiting for everyone to respond in text.

However, I wouldn't probably ever switch to voice for the RP part because I do find that the text combined with moods and emotes leads to a much more immersive RP experience.

[NymTevlyn]

I'd like to have a separate chat log/window that /ooc is sent to.