Tuesday, November 25, 2025

Why TTRPG Combat Feels Slow (How to Fix!)

The reason why your TTRPG combat feels slow is because I'm waiting for my curse word turn!

Playing TTRPG combat is like watching a documentary about one action scene from an action movie. It takes one hour or more to show a 1-minute fight scene, and it chops up that action scene and scatters its pieces throughout the documentary. If you are watching the documentary just to see the action scene, it's going to feel like you're doing fifty-nine minutes of waiting.

To solve this, first you need a game system with rules that allow for short turns with faster action resolution. If turns are short, that means less waiting for your turn. Pathfinder 2e for example gives players the option to do up to three things on your turn. Three actions on a turn means longer turns and more waiting. D&D 5e is a game where I hear the Dungeon Master asking the players "is that it for your turn?" a lot because it's not clear in 5e when someone's turn is done (absolutely a flaw, not a feature!). Worse yet, this question often prompts the player stop and think about what else they can do (bonus actions are crap)! Any game rule that lets the GM or the Player spend a reaction or similar action to interrupt (or disrupt) the flow of turn order is a momentum killer and should be purged from the game!

Second, you need to cut down on the "documentary" parts of your game. The documentary parts are the parts of a TTRPG where players count squares, ask for rules clarification, ask what they see, hear, etc., ask about lore, ask "would my character know this?", request do-overs or retcons, suggest or discuss strategy, ask for a recap because they weren't paying attention, aren't ready on their turn because they were on their phone or making side conversation, and so on. All of these things are examples of either breaking character or being a bad player. To solve the second problem, implement a no breaking character rule. Implement other rules and incentives to pay attention and be ready on their turn. Courtesy unfortunately sometimes needs to be enforced by the GM.

Third fix: Everyone (yes, players too!) needs to narrate their movement and actions better. Where are you at the start of your turn, how do you move, where do you end up. What are you doing, how are you doing it, what is your intended outcome or effect? Use natural language instead of game terminology. For example, don't say "I do a sneak attack to monster A", say "I run up to monster A and stab them in the back with my short sword". It's not for the sake of having pretty sounding game descriptions. There's a function to it. Game terminology is abstract, and so it feels abstract. It's vague. It's hard to visualize and remember. Natural language is clear and describes something in a precise, literal way we can visualize and remember. This will save us from asking for clarification about what you're doing in the moment, and it will save us from any discussion after the fact about what you stated and what your left out of your action. You didn't say you jumped over the puddle of acid, and you didn't say you ran around it, so you ran through it. I know your character isn't ordinarily stupid enough to make that mistake, but for some reason he did. No do-overs or retcons because this slows the game down. Next time, pay more attention to the scene and describe your action better.

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