On making your game flow

Inspired by this post on Studded Plate on DM pet peeves I thought about what to do to avoid common pitfalls. As it sat in draft I got nudged further by this post on 'Player Responsibility' which is another blast of 'stop your horsing around'. In particular I would like to share things I have adopted over the years to make the gameplay flow, whatever the game.

The key concept I am drawing on here is the Motivator/Hygiene model:
There are Motivators that you want to boost as much as they can; in the context of a gaming table, these are the things people are here for.
There are Hygiene factors that you want to have to a minimum standard, otherwise no matter how good the motivators are, people will not have fun. Example of this - people who want to play a game about super-heroes are going to be less enthusiastic at a table running a grimdark 0-level dungeon crawl.

Game flow means minimising hygiene factors that slow down your table, while boosting positive things that can speed it up, two subtly different things. To boil this down - keeping things kinetic at the table includes both holding attention and avoiding boredom through friction. These are two sides of the same coin but not quite the same thing. You may have a frictionless game, but if the players are not bought in, it does not matter. No amount of good, smooth process will hook in someone who is not interested in this game in the first place. Conversely you may have players really keen on the game but if turns drag then even the best will drift over time.

With that said commanding attention during the game is either the single hardest issue or not an issue at all. My fairly gnarled and old-school view is that the game gets your full attention by default. If it is not your turn, you should be either paying attention to the turns of others or ready to snap back when it comes to you. There is a point flagged in this lessons learned from online gaming of "Set Reasonable Expectations" that I think is a key point. I think attention drift can be forgiven if the consequences are low - player knows exactly what they will do when it comes to their turn, meanwhile another player is executing something complex - that is fine. The underlying point is 'do not let your inattention hold up the game'.

Note this is not 'all eyes on me at all time'; this is about respecting the time committment everyone at the table has made to be there and making it the best experience it can be for all. Pacing falls apart if one or more folk are not paying attention - bringing them back up to speed is dull for others and you risk a vicious spiral of boring catch up losing other peoples attention, who then need to be caught up and so on.

Make it easy for people to pay attention by doing things at the table you know the players enjoy - puzzles for puzzlers, NPC encounters for role-players, combats, etc. Check that your understanding of the players favourite elements remains correct now and then - I have been surprised how often I have thought 'hmm, that did not go so well' about something that was very well received. Trust your instincts that you may have reason to ask but do ask before making big changes - to reiterate, sometimes I have thought a thing went less well but the table enjoyed it a lot.

Lastly for all this, the main thing for good flow is set out expectations that this is a thing everyone is working towards in session zero. I make it a point to flag that keeping the story moving is a priority and if a rules point cannot be resolved rapidly, I will rule and move on. As ever session zero is your friend.

Then assuming this key factor is resolved and everyone is bought in, what other hygiene factors can you improve to make the game flow?

Avoid re-work - as a player when your turn comes up, be ready to roll. There is a continuum of actions anyone can take to make it easier to do the things you do a lot. The simplest is book-marking the pages of rules you reference all the time (my PHB bristles with different eras of sticky page-marker tabs - yellow paper from an old hunter, orange from my summoner, etc.

As a DM, if the rule is not immediately to hand and it is killing your momentum, make a ruling and move on. Do not mess about with your nose in a rule-book; if someone can tell you the rule great, if not make a call, roll a dice, move on. Better that the party fight a pair of repainted bears with minimum delay then you fish about trying to find in which of your shelf of monster manuals that particular critter they are facing is. If the point comes up off initiative, when you can ask a player to look it up and check while you talk with others, then no problem with checking it but most times it is better to keep things interesting to rule and move on.

I found a handy rule of thumb is to note how many players are affected by a ruling and weigh the time spent hunting an answer against the stakes. It can be quite an interesting and thematic moment to have everyone searching texts to check *can* that spell be cast to do *this* effect, the eureka moment following finding the answer can be great. But where detail on nuts and bolts is going to have little impact and only affect one player, that kind of thing is ripe for ruling in my eyes.

Be clear - document the weird thing your character can do, master that little patch of the rule book - contribute to the table by handling that thing. As a DM I am happy to defer to a 'rules master' when I can trust they are impartial and reliable. If you have a single giant combo, write up the way the bonuses stack or however it works on a post-it and give the DM a copy to stick on the inside of their screen. You are now sure it works, they have it as a reference, job done.

Pick your appropriate format between theater of the mind and tactical maps. Similarly, sometimes it comes time to call a fight when the end result is a foregone conclusion - a few more rounds of hacking but no way are the villains escaping. Once the drama has gone, and the table is not excited, you can draw the curtain and move on. If people are still having a blast destroying the last of the skeletons with ever more elaborate stunt moves, then fun is being had, carry on, carry on.

Take breaks - this was a hard learning for me as an old-school "we play till we fall off our chairs at 4am" DM but it is true. The energy at the table fades down over time but it is remarkable what a quick break can do to recharge it. Be aware of 'scene breaks' or logical down-beats before (or immediately after) high tension moments and call a short break to attend the call of nature, get snacks, etc. Even just getting up, walking to the end of the room and back is good to help re-energise. There is a great discussion about burn-out on Web DMs that makes a good point that lower frequency higher quality gaming is better than vast amounts of grind. From the point of view of making a full session flow, declare a break just before you ramp up into the next intense point, at a good cliff-hanger moment, and when everyone comes back they will be amp-ed up to deal with it.

To bring this to a conclusion - once you have gathered for an agreed type of fun (attention is assumed) then make sure it is easy for people to stay focused on the game. There is a whole lot more to be said about pacing, split parties, maintaining interest for people 'off camera' and so on but in general, make sure that people have skin in the game for the scene at hand and better a squeaky ruling that keeps things moving along then the RAW perfect call that took 12 minutes of dead halt.

Once these friction-factors are reduced to the minimum possible then you can do all the fun bits of making sure the maximum fun is being had at the table.

For another view Questing Beast has some thoughts on 7 Ways To Speed Up D&D.