Gentlemen,

My Campaign had been running smoothly and I've got not only one but two separate groups playing parrallell to one another in the same game. With that said I could use some help.

I'm looking for any tools, publications, tips, tricks, ect ect that any of you widened gentlemen may use to speed along your games. Particularly combat. I tend to have decent sized battles and we use minis. The battles are relatively easy to track but very time intensive when I'm having to account for HP, abilities, statuses, weapons, ect ect ect.

I've looked at the Formation rules and the mass combat rules and to be honest they don't work too well for me. They seemed to be aimed at much larger scale that what I'm doing and also assume that the PCs will be in a position of Authority. The typical scene we fight in has 7-15 friendly troops (about half of which are PCs) and about double that in bad guys (though usually not met all at once) it's just too much to track and keep combat moving fluidly. Any ideas?

any of you widened gentlemen

Aw, c'mon! I haven't been able to do much cardio since I twisted my ankle; you don't need to be so mean about it!

As to your question...

First of all, why are the PC's dragging so many NPC's around with them? If you can drop some or all of the extras and then drop the enemy headcount appropriately, that alone should speed things up considerably.

If it's too much too handle, leave out some npcs (just move them along with the mob) and just give "assistence" bonuses to the "active" npcs? I dunno.

Yeah, I would suggest killing off the NPCs (most of them, at any rate). Let the PCs bring them, just focus fire in the first few fights, get a couple kills, stress the lethality of the system while giving one of two of those NPCs to rise to the occasion and be recurring. It's like this huge fight we had in my game; 5 PCs, 4 NPCs, 10 Mooks vs. 1 Master, 10 NPCs and 79 Mooks. Everyone was on a vehicle of some kind (it was a train fight with a bunch of attack vehicles pulling up to let people jump or shoot). The enemy focused fire on the mooks on our side, killed all but two of them in the first two rounds, and then another died after he kept messing up. We had one miraculously survive 4 mooks piling in on him and get 6 kills over the fight. That guy got a freaking name. The NPCs on their side were given to the PCs to control, so the Master, Elites and Mooks of the bad-guys were easy to handle. That was a brutal fight, too. So much fun.

Ha sorry, that "winded" was supposed to be a "wizened"...... As for why so many NPCs. Well the player group is 7 players, then when you add PCs that they have picked up along the way in any given story it usually ends up around 10-12. To be fair it wold be a bit odd if a bunch of Imperial Guardsmen were running around in an element any smaller than that. Oh and I am running this an an Only War DH mash up

For an Only War based Campaign the DH elements have brought a TON of social dynamic and a reliance on outside parties to help in their efforts. That means heavy NPC involvement. As much as Id love things to be easier for me, I am not willing to sacrifice proper storytelling or that bit of realism for my own sanity (at this point)

Are you controlling all of these NPC's or are the players?

In my previous campaign, the sniper in my group starting keeping a seperate page with any and all potential bonuses and penalties that could affect his attack. This sped his attack calculations up immensely. Before he started this his attacks were around 1-2 minutes long while we tallied bonuses and DoS. After this his turns became closer to 15-30 seconds. Big improvement. Since then Ive suggested that most players with a lot of calculations ie snipers dual wielders and machine gunners, do the same. It really speeds up the combat. I haven't needed it yet, but I intend to build these charts for my mooks if it ever looks like theres going to more than 8 of them in a fight.

A cheat sheet for everyone with brief summaries of combat options was also helpful for my group.

I point out to my players that a round is only about 5-6 seconds. If they cannot declare their actions in that time, they "freeze" (lose their turn.). This drastically improves combat time as players are ready for their action when their turn comes! In fact, I have only ever had to enforce the freeze once in any group!

Buy the official app if you have a capable device (iOS or android). It automates a bunch of stuff and looks really awesome. It's not cheap compared to other apps, but consider that you are playing a pretty niche boutique game. Also, the app gets free updates for each new book rather than making you do microtransactions. Please support the awesome app and encourage FFG to do more like it in the future!

Buy the official app if you have a capable device (iOS or android). It automates a bunch of stuff and looks really awesome. It's not cheap compared to other apps, but consider that you are playing a pretty niche boutique game. Also, the app gets free updates for each new book rather than making you do microtransactions. Please support the awesome app and encourage FFG to do more like it in the future!

Ive owned it since the week it came out. Sadly it doesn't seem to be easily compatible with any line of FF games products aside from DH 2.0 specifically

In my previous campaign, the sniper in my group starting keeping a seperate page with any and all potential bonuses and penalties that could affect his attack. This sped his attack calculations up immensely. Before he started this his attacks were around 1-2 minutes long while we tallied bonuses and DoS. After this his turns became closer to 15-30 seconds. Big improvement.

As the sniper in question thanks! I find making cue cards for my characters to be extremely effective in speeding up turns with a lot of math. Also having enough dice, and if bad at mental math a calculator or scrap of paper near by to be helpful. As for the number of NPCs the players are controlling make them some cue cards as well with 2-4 different actions and limit the players to choosing from those can really speed things up on that end.

Yeah, handing control of NPCs over to PCs to take the burden off of you helps a lot.

Yeah, handing control of NPCs over to PCs to take the burden off of you helps a lot.

Though I generally agree that it makes things easier it also tends toward a power gamer style and definitely breaks the continuity for any player trying to immerse themselves in a role. Since I am all about telling a story in a simulationist a method as is convenient that makes for a pretty large impediment. Though I appreciate the insight.

Power gamer? How is that? And giving your players a sheet to run during the fight (not all the time) shouldn't have an impact on their immersion.

Power gamer? How is that? And giving your players a sheet to run during the fight (not all the time) shouldn't have an impact on their immersion.

Well it takes a very dedicated role player to immerse themselves into the role of not just one persona but two. Which is exactly what needs to happen if said Player is to do anything but treat the now 2 charcacters he/she has control of as anything more than chess pieces in a sounds to me like more of a narrative wargame than an RPG. I don't agree with you and I find your methods to be counter productive to my style of play but that is just my opinion and is only valid to my personal scenario. I have no interest in arguing about subjective tastes in style. Nuff said now if we can move on to productive conversation that would be great.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d-KM-bLzBMPS6lLas1QJcE6prmPcLny6W6ZwVXBiCVY/htmlview?usp=sharing&sle=true#

https://roleplayingtips.com/rpg-articles/