Yes, you can make players pre-plan. You nudge them.

No amount of nudging will make some players do anything. Some players are obstinate and frankly not very good, but honestly the solution to “this player won’t stop looking at their phone and their turns take forever” may be to remove them from the group.

Why does it matter how much time everyone takes?

I don’t want to wait 5 minutes for someone to dither and dither and finally decide “I attack”

This was a weirdly aggressive comment.

The solution is the pre-planning, which does not need a timer, nor is it a guaranteed result of a timer.

You cannot make players pre-plan. The timer encourages pre-planning, or at least rapid decision making on the fly. Both have the desired result of the game moving at a quicker pace.

It also has the benefit of creating an impartial tool for measuring, instead of relying on subjective “You’re taking a long time.” It is harder to argue with a clock. This is an advantage.

There was a problem, and in trying to fix it, the DM created a second problem.

What is the second problem?

I don’t always run a timer, but it is a tool in my box.

Mostly it comes out when I feel like the players are spinning their wheels. Like, they know they need to get into the server room on the 10th floor. There’s a front door with security, a back door with an alarm, etc. The players are just going round and round with ideas but not doing anything.

I’ll say “I’m starting a five minute timer. If it hits zero, something interesting will happen”.

If it hits zero and they’re still stuck, then as foretold something interesting happens. A rival group rolls up and firebombs the entrance before heading inside. A security drone spots them and is calling the cops. Whatever. Something that forces them to act.

In combat rounds I sometimes do the same, but only if it feels like they’re not making progress. Maybe it’s a little rude sometimes, but I value keeping the scene moving forward. I don’t want to keep spending three minutes on “should I move? How far can I move again? Is there a range penalty? What if I use a spell first can I still shoot?” stuff. Especially if it’s rules minutia they should already know.

The amount of times I had to remind an old group’s bard that yes, in DND 5e you can move AND take an action was too high.

I think having areas with weaker or stronger enemies is fine. Good, even. So long as you can tell by looking at them what you’re getting into.

Dark Souls generally does this. A rotting skeleton is a low threat. A giant knight in black armor and man sized sword is a bigger threat.

Oblivion will often have dudes that visually and behaviorally are the same, but hit way differently because of the numbers assigned to them. You can’t really look at a scene and understand what you’re getting into.

Other games also do a bad job here. Borderlands for example will have identical looking bandits, but in this area they’re indestructible level 100, and that one they’re push over level 5. The ass-creed Viking one did the same thing. Archers on one side of the river you could ignore, but the far side would one hit you.

I think a lot of studios don’t want to invest in the extra art assets and stuff when it’s cheaper to just use the same monster model and assign it different numbers.

I feel like trying to combine

• high vertical power growth
• non linear “open world”
• power fantasy

all together is just fundamentally at odds with itself.

Personally I’d prefer to see less vertical power growth. I’d rather have the numbers stay somewhat constrained.

Like, let’s say the most damage you can ever do with a lightning spell is 100. Work backwards from that to figure out how much health things should have. We want a master mage to be able to blow mooks up in one zap, mid tier in 3, and big scary shit in 6.

A novice mage zaps for 20. We want mooks to take 3 hits, mid tier stuff maybe 10, and big scary stuff a lot.

Mooks: ~60hp Mid tier: ~210 Bosses: 600

If your gameplay is then deeper than a simple stat check, a novice can persevere and win against a big challenge.

I really super dislike it when you have stuff that looks like a mook or a boss, but is statted otherwise. I remember in Oblivion some witch lady was oddly high level, and she kept fighting despite having like 50 arrows in her face.

Something like that, but with more thought put into it than a Lemmy post from the couch.

Oblivion was kind of really bad though. It had the worst level scaling of the genre.

I think the spell crafting was also toned down and more gated than Morrowind. And the equipment I think was overly simplified.

Nine Sols is squarely in the “good but not fun” category for me. It is well executed but I did not enjoy most of it. Also the story is a bummer.

I reinstalled Sekiro after finishing it to see if my memory was rose tinted. No, sekiro is still like music. Even cleared the “you should lose this fight” tutorial boss.

Path of Exile 2 is pretty good. Wasd movement and a dodge roll are nice. Some parts are still rough, but it’s been out like a month.

I don’t really trust that just anyone will make something new and fun. Something that tries to extract money, sure.

Seems kind of bland, but I guess we’ll see

There’s a couple bands I like that do email for updates and such. I think the one from Worriers uses Ghost, based on the fine print at the bottom of the page ( https://getittogether.laurendenitzio.com/ )

Personally I like it a lot more than social media. I think moving everything to Facebook et al was a mistake

I had an NPC in a RPG that was kind of like this. A werewolf was going berserk in a church. The players were like “Reg! Get out of there!”. Reg sees the werewolf rip a corporate stooge in half and come running at him. He goes, “Bro. Fucking metal.”

Rolls really high on his social check. Werewolf high fives him and just runs by to go murder more corporate leadership.

Satire is dead. Not enough CEOs have followed suit.

There’s a supermarket I walk to most of the time. There’s a food co-op I also go to sometimes, but it’s a little farther and pricier. There’s another grocery store I’d go to sometimes when I was dating someone who lived closer to it. And rarely I’ll get something from some of the other little markets along one of the main streets.

Walkable, healthy, neighborhoods are great. This isn’t even a super expensive area.

I don’t think 5e is an especially coherent game.

I would accept just using standard time.

I think it would be less work to just be like “let’s meet at 15:00” and not have to worry about it on my end. I guess you could just pick a time zone. We do that at work- we just talk about eastern time and make everyone else do the conversion.

This is a good point I hadn’t thought of. There are solutions but no elegant ones immediately come to mind.

I really want them to just pick one and stop changing the clocks twice a year. it’s a huge headache and bad for people’s health.

Also as someone else said, just using UTC and knowing that “here in NY, we typically work from 14:00 to 22:00” would also be fine with me.

As someone else said it really depends on what they’re actually asking for.

If they’re like “how do I make the screen turn off after an hour?” then telling them to switch to Linux is a bad response.

If they were like “I cant upgrade to windows 11, and I don’t even want to, and I don’t want to spend money. I just want a web browser and steam with security updates” then talking about Linux is a viable conversation path.

Everyone I’ve talked to at my job (small software company based in nyc) says he’s a hero, or hasn’t disagreed out loud. My boss was extremely pro violent retribution against people who profit from suffering. The CEO was like “yeah healthcare here sucks that guy had it coming”

There haven’t been any like official announcements or statements. Just conversations.

Most of these ghouls only care about money, so maybe this will help