RPG MUSINGS Play The Game You Want To Play

It’s hard to find a place online which talks about D&D4e that hasn’t, in recent weeks and months, been talking about the pace of 4e combat and ways to make it faster, faster, and faster still. There’s tons of advice that ranges from the practical to the extensive to the radical extreme.

And I’m a bit tired of hearing it.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that these people are wrong. Many of the advocates for speeding up 4e are very smart and savvy people who have a lot of experience with the game. Further, D&D4e can be a game where combat goes slowly and for some people that’s a problem. And there are a lot of ways that you can tinker with the game and speed it up to your liking. My problem is that the discussion seems to me to assume that slow combat is an issue for everybody and that you should definitely be addressing it.

Although it may not be the intentions of the authors and advice givers, I get the enormous sense that the feeling is that you’re not doing it “right” if you’re not taking advantage of the tips, tricks, or overhauls that have been presented. And I think that I need to present the alternate viewpoint, namely that you should play at the pace that you and your group find most enjoyable. Slow combat, or a session largely comprised of combat, does not automatically make for a worse or less interesting experience or session. Nor does fast combat necessarily make for a better or more fun game.

There are a lot of different kinds of people who play D&D4e. Believe it or not, there are people who love having lots of options with their characters, so if you throw everything out for an Essentials game in order to speed things up, you could have quite possibly have hurt someone else’s enjoyment. Some people love the tactical combat aspect of the game and enjoy making the most effective or efficient move they can, so placing things like time limits on players to rush on through could also impact the fun that someone else has at the table. Some people just like rolling dice, so taking away their damage roll might really suck to them. I could go on, but you’re starting to get the point.

People play D&D for a lot of different reasons and it’s important as a DM and a player to address what everybody wants. Sometimes that may mean you ~do~ take some of the things suggested to speed your game up and implement them into a game. Not all of them are weird or extreme like some of the ones I mentioned up above and they can be easy to adapt to. But if your game doesn’t need it, then you should think twice about doing it anyway. It doesn’t matter what bloggers, veterans, or even the developers themselves do. You shouldn’t feel pressured to change how you play your game if it’s already working for you.

So, play at your own pace. Even if it’s “slow”, if you have fun with it, that’s what it’s all about. If you’re enjoying the time you’re spending, you’re not wasting it.