Inspiring and Pacing Combat

As a storyteller, over the years, I developed a keen eye that picked up on when a party has seen enough combat, and wanted it to end, or when the party wanted it to start. It is like a third eye or something, I just know when it is time to switch gears. This weekend I ran the same game twice for two totally different groups of players at Winter War.

The first of the two groups, the power gamers, ripped through the module like a well-oiled machine; they were unstoppable on their quest to beat the module. They had the right PC classes with all the right feats and powers, and they were armed to the teeth with “rewards cards”, the RPGA players ultimate cheese weapon to overcome the inequities of MMRPG game play. Half the party had already played the module once before; these guys were serious meta-gamers to the max; some role-play banter did drift around the table, but they were there for the glory of battle and destroyed everything that dared to stand defiantly before them.

The second group, I’ll call the role-players, was comprised of what I would consider idealists who had chosen PC classes that sounded cool, whose feats may have made sense for a home game, but were essentially useless, at least in the game I ran before them. This group had no “rewards cards”, and this was their first time through the module.

The power gamers cleared the dungeon in 3hours, the role-players went 5 minutes over on a 4 hour slot. Both groups said they had a blast, and felt challenged, and at some moments they were even scared. I did not pull punches on either party, I always roll dice in front of players, but I did make adjustments to inspire and keep pace. With the power gamers, I had a white D20 that was hot, and I kept rolling one natural 20 after another, so I held up the die, and announced to the table it was retired for the game. The table cheered. I really did not do much else, outside of drawing them into the story and deliver them to the end.

The role-players were lucky, I kept checking my D20 to make sure it was not a D10, because it was rolling so low. With these guys, the problem was they were not together as a group, they were light on the cheese, and because of this the combats dragged on. The solution, I carefully placed hit point smudges. I basically paced the combats, after scanning the table and seeing every PC bloodied and worried; some monsters would get bloodied a couple hit points earlier than normal, or drop dead a couple hit points short of where they were stat’d too. It is amazing to see how just one monster getting bloodied, maybe a smidge earlier than normal will change the mood of the table. I don’t think the players noticed, and I ended up doing it twice at key points in the encounters during play to help move the story forward. I think my slight HP adjustment made the game a success for the role-players without making it into a cake walk.

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