Anyone who has DMed for any length of time has seen it many times. Combat in 4th Edition D&D takes some time and during this time, the attention of our players will wander. They go read their other D&D books, they start playing Peggle on their iPhone, or, worst of all, they actually wander away from the table.
First of all, we must remember that the short attention span isn’t just their problem, it’s your problem too. You’re game simply isn’t stimulating enough to keep their attention from wandering. Sometimes this is ok and sometimes it can’t be helped. Fighting it directly isn’t the answer, however.
Today we’ll look at some tips for keeping the attention of your players on the game in front of them without direct confrontation.
Stress Immediate reactions
One of the ways 4th Edition D&D keeps people paying attention is through immediate actions. Whether it’s as simple as an opportunity attack or a more complicated effect of an item or power, immediate actions can happen at any time. Remind your players regularly to pay attention to immediate actions. If you see someone’s attention beginning to stray, take advantage by moving around them and provoking an opportunity attack. Remind them that if they aren’t paying attention, they miss the chance.
Build an On-Deck System
There’s two other great ways to keep your game speedy and keep your players’ attention. Set up an “on deck” system. On initiative, call out who is up and call out who is up next. Tell the guy or gal coming up next to plan their move, roll their dice, and tally the numbers. On their turn, they simply state the actions, attack score, and damage. This can move things along at a much faster pace.
Show Initiative Orders to Everyone
Always keep your initiative order visible to everyone at all times, including yourself. I do this by draping initiative cards over the top of my DM screen. I have the character names on both sides so I and the players can all see them. Sometimes I too can become distracted and the players can help out by ensuring things are moving along. Keeping the initiative always visible to all means the players can police each other.
Implement a Buddy system
One way to keep the attention of your players on the game is to establish a buddy system. Pair up your players and have them discuss their strategies or plan their actions together. Make sure they’re sitting together so they don’t disrupt the rest of the game with their conversation. A buddy system will help one player keep another player’s attention at the game. If you have multiple iPhoners at your game, make sure not to pair them up. Pair each mind-wanderer with someone you know regularly pays attention.
Switch regularly to roleplaying
In the mechanics-heavy D&D 4th Edition that we’re playing, it’s easy for DMs to get caught up in the math and the rules and forget about the story. During combat, regularly switch to in-character monster voices. Make them interesting or fun. Give out tips of things to come or little background quirks. When you feel the attention of your players slipping, switch into some in-character banter to bring them back to the story. Don’t turn it into a long monologue, but have some fun with it too.
The Three Ring Circus
Modern circus acts have learned that to keep the attention of your audience, you have to give them more than they can process. This isn’t an easy thing to do as a DM but, from time to time, you may find ways to engage all of your players simultaneously. You can do this by delegating the jobs of a DM out to players or adding mind-bending puzzles in the middle of combat.
The key is to look for the times when you can accomplish such things and put them into play to draw the full attention of your players back to the table.
All of it starts with a simple question, however. If you see the attention of your players wandering, what can you do to bring them back?
The tricky thing here is that there are now so many tools for the D&D player that utilize laptops, iPhones, etc. And they’re great tools! iPlay4E, the Compendium, dice roller apps, etc. I use several of them myself. So with my party, just seeing somebody with their iPhone out doesn’t mean they’re not paying attention. The problem is, it’s now even easier for them to surreptitiously goof around during the game without looking like it. My players are really good about this, but I can see how it could be hard. All of these rules help quite a bit, I think. I’ve seen some suggest banning all electronic devices from the table, but as we move into the future I don’t see that being an option.
Mostly good advice, I like the idea of keeping the initiative order in view… I might have to try the cards on the top of the screen. (I normally use a Paizo Combat Pad or a spreadsheet on my laptop.)
But I don’t care for players pre-rolling before their turn comes up. On one level, I have a player that I know will re-roll or declare that he used an at-will and not his daily if he thinks I wasn’t looking… he’s not my typical player, but he’s a friend and generally fun to play with, despite his competitive view of the game.
But on a more important level, a lot of the fun of such a tactical game is watching it unfold as it happens… the dice are what create the tension of combat, and pre-rolling the dice removes the tension out of the moment. It’s the difference between the whole group looking on, waiting to see if you’re going to hit the big bad at that critical moment (“A 20… 18 points of damage, eat cold steel, dragon!”) and phoning in your results… (“Yeah, wait until his turn’s over. I’m about to crit the dragon for 18 points of damage… it’ll be cool.”)
It’s almost like knowing if the batter is going to hit the ball before he steps up to the plate… if you already know the result, there’s no anticipation, no elation or let-down when he hits or misses.
What little roleplaying that happens during a combat comes from everyone paying attention and being in the moment… having players pre-roll is asking them to stop paying attention to what’s happening right now and think about what’s coming up.
My thoughts are, if you’re having this much trouble with players’ attention wandering, you probably have too many players at the table, or the DM is running with too many monsters (or, if you’re me, you’re taking too long to make up your mind about what to do).
My solution is to ban the iPhones and Blackberries if they’re causing trouble (if they can’t distract themselves, they might actually get interested in what other people are doing), cut down to a manageable number of players, cut all monster hit-points by 1/3rd so that the “it’s all over, but the fat lady still has 23 hit points” tail end of combat is minimized. Keep things moving fast and keep them interesting, so that the players find what’s going on at the table more interesting than texting their girlfriends or checking the latest sports scores.
The player’s side of the game is not so complex that he needs a computer to keep track of his character. I’d rather players use pencil and paper, and avoid the distraction of a computer interface just to keep track of hit points and the minimal resources of 4E. As a DM, I’m reluctant to use a computer on my end… the interface itself can become distracting, when it takes longer to find the right tab/window to make a note than it does to scribble something down on my notepad. I’ve experimented a bit, but I haven’t found/developed the solution that doesn’t “take me away from the table” when I interact with it.
Something that was missed in the article is for the DM to examine how they build combats.
Some people are still stuck in 3e thinking and build typical encounters at an average level of 2 or 3 above the party’s average level. The DMG recommends -1 to +1 level, with +2 to +3 as a climax fight.
When people complain about encounters taking an hour and a half to resolve, I often find that the problem isn’t necessarily the players, but how the encounter itself was laid out.
Things like insubstantial monsters and terrain can seriously lengthen the duration of combat.
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every month. October is RPG shows like “The Guild.”
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Thanx-a-lot,
~ Justin
God ideas, thanks!
We used to play 2nd ed. AD&D and combats that took longer than 40min were extremely rare. If don’t know if this is due to the nature of the editions or to my DM-ing or to our general game-handling, but honestly, do you really want to spend over an hour for one single battle? Of course the PCs will get bored!
We’re going to start playing again in about two weeks and I’m really going to make sure we won’t have any battles that’ll last longer than 45min, 60min max. If they last longer, there’s either something wrong with the idea of the battle or with the gaming system. Come on, a hollywood flick lasts 90min.
Streamlining is important, don’t overdo it and keep the game fun and fast paced. These are core elements.