What To Do When Combat Stalls
The Quarry Pit Trap
In a Basilica campaign session, combat in a quarry almost stalled out like an airplane losing speed and starting to drop like dead weight. I could tell the pace was slowing down, but when a player asked after a few moments of table silence, “Whose turn is it?” I knew the encounter was crashing.
I’ve written a lot about designing challenging combats and speeding them up with numerous tricks, but the problem this time wasn’t the CombatScape, foe tactics, or mission design.
It was especially worrisome because we were playing online and it’s even harder to earn and keep player attention. So I needed to act fast.
Scolding Just Makes It Worse
Typically, when a stall happens, we appeal to the group.
“Ok, what are you guys doing?”
But that’s vague and it generates silence like mass appeals tend to do. Everyone’s wondering if they should speak up instead of being focused on the encounter and actions.
Even calling out the next in initiative doesn’t solve the problem, because players are still grappling with lack of clarity and the tyranny of choice.
And getting frustrated and berating the table (“Come on guys, let’s pick up the pace.”) just backfires as it puts players on the defensive, thinking it’s their fault.
The Invisible Killer
What was the root cause here? It wasn’t the design, because all the boxes were checked for my encounter build:
- The battlefield had challenging verticality with four levels to quarry bottom.
- Half a dozen foes occupied different positions on the quarry levels, giving players interesting choices.
- Innocent NPCs were chained and doing hard labour, escalating the stakes and creating additional difficulties.
Instead, gameplay suffered from the invisible killer: bad communication. I say invisible, because when communication’s good, no one notices. But when it’s bad, everyone feels it.
In this case, we had several comms issues:
- Analysis paralysis. Prisoners and multiple foe positions offered too many choices that felt the same.
- Muddled objective. The goal was to find out why stone shipments had stopped. But the encounter itself offered no clear goal. Save the prisoners? Whack the dogmen guards? Investigate the weird frozen pool at the bottom?
- The grey zone. This was the big one and a good example of the invisible killer. I call this the grey zone. Everyone knows somebody’s gotta do something, but who? Despite running in initiative order, players were fuzzy about who should act next.
Three Descriptions Fixed My Fight
The good news is the solution’s 100% in our control.
And this is where my Lore Drop method proved itself. In four quick steps, it gets players re-engaged and driving the action again, even in combats. Especially in combats, or any kind of rotating spotlight situation.
For example, I quickly jumped in with a Lore Drop about the dogman leader and shaman doing something weird with a glowing blue staff at the frozen pool on quarry bottom. Ending with, “Bartram, what are doing?”
After Bartram’s turn, I used another Lore Drop to transition to the next player and I described a guard on level 1 kicking a prisoner hard and yelling, “Work harder or you’re dinner!”
And then, at the end of the round, I did another Lore Drop describing the guards realizing the party’s presence and several running to ladders and climbing up.
Three quick descriptions solved the three problems:
- No more analysis paralysis. Stop the prisoner abuse, intercept the climbing guards, or interrupt the ritual at the pool.
- No more muddled objective. The group quickly agreed that the leader and pool situation were top priority.
- No more grey zone. Every description ended with a name, so no one had to check the Foundry combat tracker to know they were up.
Lore Drops are my go-to for attacking bad pacing, applying first aid to flailing encounters, and getting indecisive players focused and deciding faster.
I teach the whole method in CampaignCraft with GM’s Log #13: Lore Drops.
Reading advice in a newsletter is one thing, however, and executing it on-the-fly at the table is often another. The first time you try a new technique, friction points and questions always come up.
To help you bridge that gap, I’m running a one-hour Lore Drops workshop on Zoom this Tuesday night. You’ll write Lore Drops, I’ll guide you through all four steps, and you can ask me anything about prepping and improvising descriptions.
It’s free for CampaignCrafters. Join by Monday and I’ll send you the Zoom invite.
Hope to see you there.
Cheers,
Johnn
roleplayingtips.com
https://discord.gg/6MxTRAqQ76
Have more fun at every game!
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