Reducing the paperwork and process time.

[John Stark]

Maybe this thread would be better suited for general, but since I prefer AD&D to any of the other editions and am asking this in regards to campaigning with that edition, I'm going to post this here.

We've been playing a semi-regular campaign with my wife as DM for the past few months. Its been a lot of fun, and she's doing great given that its her first time as DM. One thing that keeps cropping up though is the amount of paper work and math that we need to do constantly to maintain the campaign. This seems to take up as much time as actually playing the game, and its getting frustrating. Its a lot less noticeable when playing one-offs as we were the past few years, wherein we'd simply make some characters and run through a few modules. We had some out of town company a few weeks ago and did some one-off play in the G series, and it really emphasized the difference in terms of paper work and record keeping between that style of play and long term campaign play.

Thus, I was wondering what ideas others have come up with to reduce the paper work needed to keep track of and run an ongoing AD&D campaign.

For starters, I'd like to stream line character creation a bit. I've been tinkering with coming up with some adventure packs that can be bought for X amount of gold, so that all of the math and selection time needed to buy equipment can be reduced or even eliminated. I can roll up a character in a few minutes, but buying equipment seems to take forever, and its compounded when starting up a game for several players and the character(s)/hirelings/henchmen, etc.

Also, I'm seriously considering dropping copper and electrum coins altogether, or even going with a monetary system that uses gold coins only (plus maybe platinum). Fiddling around with copper coins to buy torches, exchanging electrum for gold after each adventure, and so on, gets tedious.

One of the things that takes quite a bit of time IMO is figuring up xp for monsters. Treasure XP is easy, as its usually just a matter of adding up the gold or the XP value of magic items, but with monsters not only do the base XP values have to be added up, but XP for all of the monster hit points as well (which also means constantly needing to reference one book or another to determine the XP per hit point).

Another thing I've noticed is that, try as we might, we often forget to keep track of arrows, rations, water, iron spikes, torches, etc, during the heat of the game session. While this hasn't mattered a lot in our campaign so far, since our play sessions usually revolve around a delve into a dungeon with a return trip back to town at the end, for long term adventuring in the wilderness or underworld knowing how much stuff we are carrying and using could really matter.

Encumbrance is something else that seems to fall by the way side a lot. In theory, encumbrance makes a lot of sense, but in practice it seems to slow down the game a ton, especially in a game that depends on the players taking stuff to earn XP (i.e., treasure). The problem is that I like the idea of "kill the monsters and take their stuff" for XP, and really don't like other methods of XP rewards that I've seen (particularly "role playing XP" or "story XP rewards,"). The problem of course is that without encumbrance rules, the players are going to have their characters haul everything out of the dungeon, including the kitchen sink if they think there might be a gem down the drain! Thus, its a quandry trying to balance the need for the mechanic versus the book keeping that goes along with it.

Then there is the month to month or year to year campaign stuff to track as a DM, such the effects of aging, the chance of contracting disease, lycanthrope and other curses/blessing, time in the campaign, character expenses, henchmen/hireling expenses & pay, and so on. Not to mention things like tax rates, tolls, duties, fees, and so on, all of which are useful in keeping the purses of the characters lean to the point that they want/need to adventure some more.

And none of this includes keeping track of alignment violations, keeping a minimal account of the happenings in the adventures the characters participate in, and so on!

During actual game sessions, I've made the decision to not bother with the weapon vs. AC chart. While I like the concept, and believe it adds a lot to the fighter classes with their greater range of weapon selection, its simply another thing to look up while playing.

The unarmed combat system from the DMG is useless in terms of stream lining the game, and the UA system IMO isn't any better, but the need for a stream lined system to deal with unarmed combat is needed IMO. Psionics is another system that seems too complicated for the stream-lined play I want, but eliminating it weakens a ton of very tough monsters, and I want a psionics system in our games.

For a time I considered simply playing one of the Basic versions of the game, but have decided that overall, AD&D is what I want to stick with. Its the version of the game that has the most flavor and most consistent rules IMO, and what I want to use.

So, what ideas have others come up with to stream line play, and yet keep the game close to AD&D in terms of the rules & flavor that system promotes?

[greygriffin20]

while im realitively new to 1st ed. (haveing only played it for a little over a year some things to think of when trying to streamline
one if your characters are above like 4th level they have more money than they need...have them round up the price of good to the gold value (ei everything you need to reup in your adventureing gear costs you 5 or ten gold with the exception of weapons)
2 have them pay hirelings in advance (or at least subtract cost in advance)
3 when awarding bonus ex. do it on the spot so you dont have to remember it (if they go up a level tell them it doesnt apply till the group gains all expereince)
4 make a character sheet that includes the waepon vs ac so the players can handle that mess
5 and this really makes all the difference in the world...in your free non gameing time do the work in advance...with my game i have a list of all the monsters and there expereince value and what they have on them ...on top of this i normally have a list of the players ac and what stuff they have on them
i follow the old guidle that for every 3 hours of game time there is one hour of set for the dm....and that provided that its a module if yours is your own campaign world the figure in normally 1 hour of dm work per 2 hours of game time

[Rikitiki]

(apologies if this ends up in the wrong place -- been awhile since I've done bulletin board postings, etc. Feel free to thwap me with a 'do it THIS way' instruction as needed)

FWIW - I print my character sheets with 10-in-a-row upright symbols (usually upper-case '1' or upper-case backslash on a keyboard) and the notation to the left of these is: 'Torches =' or 'Spikes =' and so on. Then, a simple pencil line can be drawn out to the right like an audio-meter-level on a tape deck (or such) so it indicates how many of the item the character has. As they utilize one (or more), they simply erase back the line -- or extend it if they find/buy more.

Encumbrance I do by feel/intuition and 'common' sense: it's pretty obvious
to everyone if a character is overburdened, lightly or half-burdened with gear, etc. Sure, sometimes there's minor debate 'cause they really want to schlepp something back, but usually a simple: "No, you can't carry that, or you'll have to drop something to do it" suffices. I'm not going to be a mental weigh-station agent with the resultant time-consuming, game-impacting results. If I have to make the point, I usually grab some real-life object from the room, plop it in their hands, and say, "This weighs about what you're trying to carry -- imagine hiking five miles with it...hmm?"

At the beginning of every session (unless it's a very-next-minute-continuation of the previous), I simply state player by player how much money, items, etc, they need to reduce on their sheets due to taxes, levies, cost-of-living. Minor debate sometimes ensues, but usually they see it as fair versus spending valuable playing time doing accounting instead of adventuring. Out-of-the-ordinary leins on their finances can become the spark of an adventure to either pay off the debt (you ate the dinner, you gotta wash dishes to pay for it!) or to righteously thwack the overly-greedy culprit(s) to restore some balance.

Hope this helps...

[Sieg]

HERETIC!!!!!

THAT'S NOT BTB!!!!!!!




Actually, I do most of that myself. Except the torch bar....I've often tought to do something similar; must get around to that.

[Sieg]

Oh, and I do adventuring packs to speed up things...especially for new players. I use all the coin types, but have platinum a Dwarf exclusive coinage and Electrum an Elven one. That way, its hard to get anyone to take them and conversion rates have a 10-20% exchange fee due to the difficulty of their use.

Arrows....rather than rolling to see which one broke and which didn't I use a flat 1/2 rate of recovery. So,, PC X fires 10 arrows in a melee (bad idea but...), they can recover 5. period. Some find this harsh, but if you're firing arrows in a dungeon they'll hit a LOT of stonework. Its probably too generous if anything.

I also do ration and torch fixes at the beginning of each session so its not so much an ongoing accounting chore. As for monster kills, I make one of the players be "Monster Monkey" and they keep track of the critters killed and email me the list afterwards.

HTH,

Mike

[Irda Ranger]

I have some solutions to these problems that have worked regardless of editions. They're not magic bullets, but they are helpful. One of the 'solutions' you'll see often is "Each man a task."

I've been tinkering with coming up with some adventure packs that can be bought for X amount of gold, so that all of the math and selection time needed to buy equipment can be reduced or even eliminated. I can roll up a character in a few minutes, but buying equipment seems to take forever, and its compounded when starting up a game for several players and the character(s)/hirelings/henchmen, etc.

Your solution is a good one here. Most people end up buying the same stuff over and over anyway, varied only by the type of adventure. Spelunking? Better get more torches and chalk. Going to the northlands? Load up on fur cloaks and pemmican. Etc. You can different "packs" to suit each type.

Also, I'm seriously considering dropping copper and electrum coins altogether, or even going with a monetary system that uses gold coins only (plus maybe platinum). Fiddling around with copper coins to buy torches, exchanging electrum for gold after each adventure, and so on, gets tedious.

I hear you, although I haven't found it terribly burdensome. If I know I have more than enough money to pay for expenses I just keep a rolling list of "17 sp, 6 cp, 22 ep, etc. etc." and zero out the balance at the end of the session. I've had DM's just charge a monthly "living expenses" fee though (cost depending on lifestyle) and ignore the fiddly bits of getting meals and stuff. That works too.

One of the things that takes quite a bit of time IMO is figuring up xp for monsters. Treasure XP is easy, as its usually just a matter of adding up the gold or the XP value of magic items, but with monsters not only do the base XP values have to be added up, but XP for all of the monster hit points as well (which also means constantly needing to reference one book or another to determine the XP per hit point).

As my normal part of managing combat I'll have a sheet of paper with the monsters fought and how many HP they started out with. It will probably just say "Orcs: 7, 8, 6, 5." along with my notes tracking HP loss. At the end of the session I have "jobs" for each player, and one of the jobs is to take my combat slips and total up the XP awards. Everyone does their job in parallel and announces the results.

Another thing I've noticed is that, try as we might, we often forget to keep track of arrows, rations, water, iron spikes, torches, etc, during the heat of the game session.

I use a flat percentage of "arrows lost". The other things are tracked by the "quartermaster", another player job, who is expected to track the group's belongings. I'll note things like "X hours pass, so check off your torches" or "climbing down that cliff required three spikes." Etc.

Encumbrance is something else that seems to fall by the way side a lot.

Yeah, this one's a pain. I don't have a specific AD&D rule to offer you, but (regardless of edition) I usually simply Enc. to smaller number of "points" than individual pounds and just keep track of the big items - armor, weapons, backpack, sacks of coins, etc.

For most adventures there is just no way they can carry all the loot out on their backs in one trip anyway, so it's sort of a non-issue. Instead they usually gather the heavy valuables into one safe/hidden location and come back for it later with mules and hirelings.

Then there is the month to month or year to year campaign stuff to track as a DM, such the effects of aging, the chance of contracting disease, lycanthrope and other curses/blessing, time in the campaign, character expenses, henchmen/hireling expenses & pay, and so on. Not to mention things like tax rates, tolls, duties, fees, and so on, all of which are useful in keeping the purses of the characters lean to the point that they want/need to adventure some more.

The DM is responsible for knowing the date and year, but the effects that has on the PC should all be part of the character sheet and handled on a rolling basis by the player.

I think the best thing you can do is have "checklist of procedures" that you want to handle during downtimes. That way you never forget anything and you can quickly and efficiently handle each task and move to the next. It doesn't lessen the amount of work, but it drastically lessens the amount of "brain cycles" you burn doing it. Time is saved too.

I don't have much to say about your other problems at this time, as I'm just getting back into AD&D.