30 Days of Gamemastering: Part Fourteen

This is part fourteen in the continuing series of posts for the “30 Days of Gamemastering Challenge” from Triple Crit.

How do you facilitate combat? Any tips, tools, or cheats?

Running combat is probably the one GM duty that I am the worst at. I’m much better at running role-play vs. roll-play. And combat is almost always the “cruchiest” part of any game.

One way I’ve found to make smaller combats a little easier is to use multicolored dice behind the screens. My red dice will be “the enemy” (whoever it may be in the encounter), my green dice will be my friendly NPC, etc. Then, when initiative is rolled, I can keep it straight by setting those dice aside and going in the proper order. For larger combats, I use a magnetic board with little slips representing each player and rearrange them on the board.

I still haven’t figured out a way to figure in all the various feats and skills of an NPC very effectively. I inevitably forget something as I trying to keep track of all my player’s actions. I just muddle through the best I can.

I think I’m going to be looking to your comments for tips and suggestions on this one. Combat is my GM’s “Achilles heel”.