We've started playing DnD as a way to spend more quality time together as a family (2 adults 35-45y, 2 kids 10-13y).
We have recently begun the Dragons of Stormwreck Isle campaign with my oldest as DM to learn how to play (we're all n00bs, lol).
We played for 3 hours yesterday and only managed to fight off 5 zombies and eat dinner at the dining hall before bedding down at the Temple of Bahamut (sp?) for the night.
I'm worried that this slow rate of play is going to make my ADHD kids (and husband) loose interest in the whole thing, which would really suck because I think this will be very good for my oldest and his current mental health and behavioral struggles.
Does anyone have any tips or tricks for playing with kids to keep the pace/excitement levels up as we navigate and learn together?
Welcome to the world of D&D :) I hope you are all excited and ready for fun and crazy adventures!
There are several factors that will slow down a session, but let's go over some of the simple things that you can do to help move things along and keep everyone's interest. By no means is there a simple fix, and I'm sure others will have great advice for you, but here goes...
Number one, there is a lot to learn in regards to playing D&D and especially being the DM. The more you play, the faster things will flow as you will get more of a grasp on what is happening every time you play. So, simply playing the game will help later sessions flow better.
Number two, and you will find that this is something ingrained in D&D, Combat can take a long time. When you are out of combat, you can accomplish a lot in a short amount of time, but as soon as you are in initiative, things really slow down, and that is by design. Turn-based combat is great in the fact that it gives everyone a chance to try and accomplish what they want to do that turn, but if you are not sure what to do, what you can do, or prepared, it can go very slow. The first part is knowing your character, and their abilities, so you know what you CAN try to accomplish, next is to make a plan about one to two turns before you go, so when it is your turn, you can quickly describe what your character is doing, make the needed rolls, or ask for saving throws from monsters, and boom off to the next person.
If your DM is okay with it, you can also pre-roll any attacks and damage ahead of time so on your turn you can let the DM know what you rolled to find out if you hit, and then if you are successful, you already have the damage rolled and know the value.
Those are the simple first two things that you can do, and I know 'understanding the game better' and 'speeding up combat' seem very obvious, they can make a HUGE difference in the flow of your sessions.
As an example, our group played on Saturday and we started the session rolling for initiative for a Huge Monster that had erupted out of the ground at the end of our last session. That fight took us an hour and a half, but was great fun, so no one really minded that it took a while as it was a big fight.
Remember that the point is to have fun! If the sessions are not progressing at a fast rate, but everyone is enjoying themselves, then you should be fine.
As I said, these are just some simple suggestions, but if you have specific questions, people here are very helpful :)
Cheers!
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Breathe, dragons; sing of the First World, forged out of chaos and painted with beauty. Sing of Bahamut, the Platinum, molding the shape of the mountains and rivers; Sing too of Chromatic Tiamat, painting all over the infinite canvas. Partnered, they woke in the darkness; partnered, they labored in acts of creation.
I just looked it up and Dragons of Stormwreck Isle doesn't come with a DM Screen, so your oldest might be delayed looking things up in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
Something like this D&D Wilderness DM Screen with Accessories might be very helpful for everyone. The DM Screen has great refence material for your eldest to quickly look up info, and the Cards are a great tool for new players to learn what can be done with an action, definitions of conditions, etc.
Just a suggestion :)
Cheers!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Breathe, dragons; sing of the First World, forged out of chaos and painted with beauty. Sing of Bahamut, the Platinum, molding the shape of the mountains and rivers; Sing too of Chromatic Tiamat, painting all over the infinite canvas. Partnered, they woke in the darkness; partnered, they labored in acts of creation.
There is delayed progress and there is dead "air".
Ignore the delayed progress portion. What will create the boredom that will make people want to leave/stay.
All need to be consistently involved/interested. That can be planning their next action and following the others verbal directions of actions.
For those that are higher risk of boredom aka leaving, ensure they are both planning for their turn/move/action, adjusting it as they listen to others and then adjust accordingly.
Once every individual is consistently involved, then you can work on increasing the pace. A new DM will always be slower until they get in to a routine/habit of less look up of X and feel more confident of their actions/authority.
Early levels are also really bad in lot of cases due to lack of options to think about. That's why its pretty common to start at 3rd level if the adventure can accommodate, since thats where all the interesting abilities come online.
But the big struggle is players drifting off between turns, and having to restart thinking on their own turn. This rapidly snow balls, as it slows everything down for everyone else, which in turn makes them drift off as someone else spends a minute figuring out what to do. If the problem is choice paralysis, then changing to a different style turn order might work better.
Alternate turn options include:
"all at once": Everyone declares an action, and you resolve it as part of a single turn. Its a bit more work load on the DM to figure out order of operations... BUT..... everyone can plan before committing, which turns it into a collaboration phase. And if something dies mid turn, you can let a player redirect unused attacks to a different enemy.
"Fixing the initiative order": With this the players roll for a turn order, or maybe pick their own order, and then the DM will manually disperse enemies in between each player's turn. The goal is to more evenly space things, so there's fewer instances of gaps in player action.
"Per side turns": Based on Warhammer rules, each SIDE alternates turns, but only one unit can go per turn. So the player party can basically decide who gets to go on their turn, as long as they haven't acted during the round yet. Then the enemy picks a unit to go, then the players, then the enemy, etc. And this keeps going until everyone has a chance to act. This way decisions can be more adaptive, which in turn encourages players to pay attention. So if someone goes down, you're not waiting for the Cleric's turn to do something about it, if they rolled bottom of the initiative.
To help balance out the turns, you wanna use roughly equal number of monsters to players, unless the monster is stronger (letting the players go 4 times to the a Dragon's 1 turn is perfectly reasonable). If you want to use large number of easy to kill monsters (like goblin bandits), grouping the units up so they act as small teams also helps speed things up. 1 one attack roll, and just apply average damage. And if the players attack the team, and does enough damage to kill one enemy, let the left over damage apply to the next one in the team; more quickly whittling them down. ******* The big advantage with this approach is everyone is paying attention, because you can give the turn to whoever has the best opportunity to do something in the moment. Maybe the fighter can go in first to body block. Or the Wizard goes first to set up hazards/soften them up. Rouges generally wanna wait for the enemy to advance, so its easier to get in behind them for a sneak attack. The only big rule here is that everyone gets a chance to act before anyone can get a second turn.
1) Don't use initiative. If one of the players knows what they want to do, they get to take their turn, then one of the enemies acts, then the next player who knows what they want to do. Continue until alternating until everyone has acted. Then start a new round for a player to take their next turn. If there is ever an argument of who gets to go, the character with highest initiative bonus gets to go first.
2) Group up similar enemies and take their turns in a block, rolling all their attacks/damage at once using a digital dice roller.
3) Buy/make dice boxes for all players and allow them to roll their attacks/spells whenever they have decided what to do and then once the dice are rolled they can't touch their dice box again until their turn is over.
Tips to keep the game moving in general:
1) Use non-combat encounters like trap and skill challenges, they tend to be faster.
2) allow non-combat solutions to combat encounter, e.g. negotiating with enemies, sneaking past them, or tricking the baddies.
3) skip any combat that is "trivial" - i.e. super easy because of the planning of the party. E.g. if the players set up a successful ambush and kill half the enemies on the surprise round you can just narrate that the rest run/surrender/are killed easily, rather than running the combat where the party will win very easily. Same if the party kill a boss enemy while a few weak minions are left hanging around, just skip the rest of the combat and have them surrender/flee.
Does anyone have any tips or tricks for playing with kids to keep the pace/excitement levels up as we navigate and learn together?
Give everyone cheat sheets for their characters. When my son was 9 or 10, I wrote each action option his character could take on a sheet of paper with an appropriate icon as well as the basic mechanics for the action.
Try to use every rule required by the adventure and your characters so that you are actually learning D&D and are set up for later adventures.
As your characters advance, stick to single class characters.
If you have questions on how a rule works, make a call for game night and ask in Rules & Game Mechanics.
Hey, Mother_of_Gingers! Everyone plays at a different pace, new players usually take a little longer, cause they have to learn the rules. Even if you were going at a slow pace, that's okay! Dnd is a game meant for anyone who wants to play! You're not an expert, you won't finish it all in one session. The only thing that matters is that you have fun!
I’ve had a similar experience with extended family.
I think that its tough for families to play together sometimes because often times the interest level is different for each member.
I would say, for family campaigns:
1. Don’t be afraid to bend the rules. 2. Modify the DC for younger players (uhhh like, -5 or -10). 3. Let the kids be the heroic damage dealing party members, and the adults the buff/supports. 4. Theater of the mind can be tedious for young players especially with ADHD tendencies. Using visual maps, minis and monsters can really help. 5. Roll out the magic items early.
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Hello friends!
We've started playing DnD as a way to spend more quality time together as a family (2 adults 35-45y, 2 kids 10-13y).
We have recently begun the Dragons of Stormwreck Isle campaign with my oldest as DM to learn how to play (we're all n00bs, lol).
We played for 3 hours yesterday and only managed to fight off 5 zombies and eat dinner at the dining hall before bedding down at the Temple of Bahamut (sp?) for the night.
I'm worried that this slow rate of play is going to make my ADHD kids (and husband) loose interest in the whole thing, which would really suck because I think this will be very good for my oldest and his current mental health and behavioral struggles.
Does anyone have any tips or tricks for playing with kids to keep the pace/excitement levels up as we navigate and learn together?
TIA!
Rest well, and dream of large women.
-MoG
Greetings Mother_of_Gingers,
Welcome to the world of D&D :)
I hope you are all excited and ready for fun and crazy adventures!
There are several factors that will slow down a session, but let's go over some of the simple things that you can do to help move things along and keep everyone's interest.
By no means is there a simple fix, and I'm sure others will have great advice for you, but here goes...
Number one, there is a lot to learn in regards to playing D&D and especially being the DM. The more you play, the faster things will flow as you will get more of a grasp on what is happening every time you play. So, simply playing the game will help later sessions flow better.
Number two, and you will find that this is something ingrained in D&D, Combat can take a long time. When you are out of combat, you can accomplish a lot in a short amount of time, but as soon as you are in initiative, things really slow down, and that is by design. Turn-based combat is great in the fact that it gives everyone a chance to try and accomplish what they want to do that turn, but if you are not sure what to do, what you can do, or prepared, it can go very slow. The first part is knowing your character, and their abilities, so you know what you CAN try to accomplish, next is to make a plan about one to two turns before you go, so when it is your turn, you can quickly describe what your character is doing, make the needed rolls, or ask for saving throws from monsters, and boom off to the next person.
If your DM is okay with it, you can also pre-roll any attacks and damage ahead of time so on your turn you can let the DM know what you rolled to find out if you hit, and then if you are successful, you already have the damage rolled and know the value.
Those are the simple first two things that you can do, and I know 'understanding the game better' and 'speeding up combat' seem very obvious, they can make a HUGE difference in the flow of your sessions.
As an example, our group played on Saturday and we started the session rolling for initiative for a Huge Monster that had erupted out of the ground at the end of our last session. That fight took us an hour and a half, but was great fun, so no one really minded that it took a while as it was a big fight.
Remember that the point is to have fun!
If the sessions are not progressing at a fast rate, but everyone is enjoying themselves, then you should be fine.
As I said, these are just some simple suggestions, but if you have specific questions, people here are very helpful :)
Cheers!
Breathe, dragons; sing of the First World, forged out of chaos and painted with beauty.
Sing of Bahamut, the Platinum, molding the shape of the mountains and rivers;
Sing too of Chromatic Tiamat, painting all over the infinite canvas.
Partnered, they woke in the darkness; partnered, they labored in acts of creation.
Greetings again,
I just looked it up and Dragons of Stormwreck Isle doesn't come with a DM Screen, so your oldest might be delayed looking things up in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
Something like this D&D Wilderness DM Screen with Accessories might be very helpful for everyone.
The DM Screen has great refence material for your eldest to quickly look up info, and the Cards are a great tool for new players to learn what can be done with an action, definitions of conditions, etc.
Just a suggestion :)
Cheers!
Breathe, dragons; sing of the First World, forged out of chaos and painted with beauty.
Sing of Bahamut, the Platinum, molding the shape of the mountains and rivers;
Sing too of Chromatic Tiamat, painting all over the infinite canvas.
Partnered, they woke in the darkness; partnered, they labored in acts of creation.
There is delayed progress and there is dead "air".
Ignore the delayed progress portion. What will create the boredom that will make people want to leave/stay.
All need to be consistently involved/interested. That can be planning their next action and following the others verbal directions of actions.
For those that are higher risk of boredom aka leaving, ensure they are both planning for their turn/move/action, adjusting it as they listen to others and then adjust accordingly.
Once every individual is consistently involved, then you can work on increasing the pace. A new DM will always be slower until they get in to a routine/habit of less look up of X and feel more confident of their actions/authority.
Early levels are also really bad in lot of cases due to lack of options to think about. That's why its pretty common to start at 3rd level if the adventure can accommodate, since thats where all the interesting abilities come online.
But the big struggle is players drifting off between turns, and having to restart thinking on their own turn. This rapidly snow balls, as it slows everything down for everyone else, which in turn makes them drift off as someone else spends a minute figuring out what to do. If the problem is choice paralysis, then changing to a different style turn order might work better.
Alternate turn options include:
"all at once": Everyone declares an action, and you resolve it as part of a single turn. Its a bit more work load on the DM to figure out order of operations... BUT..... everyone can plan before committing, which turns it into a collaboration phase. And if something dies mid turn, you can let a player redirect unused attacks to a different enemy.
"Fixing the initiative order": With this the players roll for a turn order, or maybe pick their own order, and then the DM will manually disperse enemies in between each player's turn. The goal is to more evenly space things, so there's fewer instances of gaps in player action.
"Per side turns": Based on Warhammer rules, each SIDE alternates turns, but only one unit can go per turn. So the player party can basically decide who gets to go on their turn, as long as they haven't acted during the round yet. Then the enemy picks a unit to go, then the players, then the enemy, etc. And this keeps going until everyone has a chance to act. This way decisions can be more adaptive, which in turn encourages players to pay attention. So if someone goes down, you're not waiting for the Cleric's turn to do something about it, if they rolled bottom of the initiative.
To help balance out the turns, you wanna use roughly equal number of monsters to players, unless the monster is stronger (letting the players go 4 times to the a Dragon's 1 turn is perfectly reasonable). If you want to use large number of easy to kill monsters (like goblin bandits), grouping the units up so they act as small teams also helps speed things up. 1 one attack roll, and just apply average damage. And if the players attack the team, and does enough damage to kill one enemy, let the left over damage apply to the next one in the team; more quickly whittling them down. ******* The big advantage with this approach is everyone is paying attention, because you can give the turn to whoever has the best opportunity to do something in the moment. Maybe the fighter can go in first to body block. Or the Wizard goes first to set up hazards/soften them up. Rouges generally wanna wait for the enemy to advance, so its easier to get in behind them for a sneak attack. The only big rule here is that everyone gets a chance to act before anyone can get a second turn.
Additional tips to keep combat moving:
1) Don't use initiative. If one of the players knows what they want to do, they get to take their turn, then one of the enemies acts, then the next player who knows what they want to do. Continue until alternating until everyone has acted. Then start a new round for a player to take their next turn. If there is ever an argument of who gets to go, the character with highest initiative bonus gets to go first.
2) Group up similar enemies and take their turns in a block, rolling all their attacks/damage at once using a digital dice roller.
3) Buy/make dice boxes for all players and allow them to roll their attacks/spells whenever they have decided what to do and then once the dice are rolled they can't touch their dice box again until their turn is over.
Tips to keep the game moving in general:
1) Use non-combat encounters like trap and skill challenges, they tend to be faster.
2) allow non-combat solutions to combat encounter, e.g. negotiating with enemies, sneaking past them, or tricking the baddies.
3) skip any combat that is "trivial" - i.e. super easy because of the planning of the party. E.g. if the players set up a successful ambush and kill half the enemies on the surprise round you can just narrate that the rest run/surrender/are killed easily, rather than running the combat where the party will win very easily. Same if the party kill a boss enemy while a few weak minions are left hanging around, just skip the rest of the combat and have them surrender/flee.
Give everyone cheat sheets for their characters. When my son was 9 or 10, I wrote each action option his character could take on a sheet of paper with an appropriate icon as well as the basic mechanics for the action.
Try to use every rule required by the adventure and your characters so that you are actually learning D&D and are set up for later adventures.
As your characters advance, stick to single class characters.
If you have questions on how a rule works, make a call for game night and ask in Rules & Game Mechanics.
Have fun and roll 20s.
How to add Tooltips.
My houserulings.
Hey, Mother_of_Gingers! Everyone plays at a different pace, new players usually take a little longer, cause they have to learn the rules. Even if you were going at a slow pace, that's okay! Dnd is a game meant for anyone who wants to play! You're not an expert, you won't finish it all in one session. The only thing that matters is that you have fun!
Thank you everyone! We're playing again tonight and I will keep all of your advice in mind!!
Rest well, and dream of large women.
-MoG
I’ve had a similar experience with extended family.
I think that its tough for families to play together sometimes because often times the interest level is different for each member.
I would say, for family campaigns:
1. Don’t be afraid to bend the rules.
2. Modify the DC for younger players (uhhh like, -5 or -10).
3. Let the kids be the heroic damage dealing party members, and the adults the buff/supports.
4. Theater of the mind can be tedious for young players especially with ADHD tendencies. Using visual maps, minis and monsters can really help.
5. Roll out the magic items early.