Time in Preparation versus TIme in Play

I mentioned in my previous post an issue that I had, dragons were one example but it was frequently found with just about any monster that was in mid paragon tier to epic tier. While putting the encounter together was relatively easy, if a bit time consuming if the person running had to copy or type up the monsters stats, the encounters themselves required a hell of a lot more attention and probably more than a few pauses as you tried to figure out what was triggered and anything else that happened. This got progressively worse as you went up in levels, I was actually sorely tempted to shell out an extra 15 bucks a month to Wizards of the Coast for the D&D insider stuff because they had been promising a digital battlemat that a DM could use that would also let me see the ranges for abilities marked on the board as things moved and would actually let me know what went on, even track and calculate damage, ability recharges, and if anything would get triggered. The feature was never implemented for reasons I won't get into her, but had it been done I might have put the money down for it just because I was having so much trouble.

One of the big selling points of fourth edition was supposed to be that it was easier to run and that encounters were quicker to set up and use. This was sort of true but it kind of glossed over a few things. Encounters in heroic tier were in fact fairly quick and easy to run as well as set up, I kind of think heroic tier got the most playtesting and study because of that and it also avoided the HP inflation problems. Encounters above that had problems both in terms of tracking everything and having to stop combats or interrupt turns because they had triggered something, entered an aura, or something similar. The other thing ignored is that unless you typed up the statblocks of the stuff you were using you had to keep hopping around in monster manuals which broke flow and was more likely to make you forget things, and given all the abilities and features there were times where typing up a single regular encounter (where I made NO modification to the monsters) took more time than me building and modifying a 'big' opponent like a dragon or high level spellcaster, and it was also much more tedious since I was just copying things from a book rather than playing with abilities and actually designing something.

A bit older and wiser, a bit more experienced with games and systems and I would have to say that if I have to choose between having to spend more time preparing an encounter or having clunky and issue laden encounters when running I will take having to take more time to prepare almost every time. There are a few reasons for this, the biggest being simply that I have a hell of a lot more time to prepare than I do to play. Unless I am a professional game master (IE I'm being paid to run games and am doing it 5 days a week for 6-8 hours a day) I am probably only running games once a week. Even with a job you can usually take a few minutes each day to mess with a monster or tweak things. Conversely most groups probably only play for about 4 hours, maybe 6 and even then they probably don't game for the full duration of that and if I have to keep halting or dealing with issues during combats it means that the game is bogged down and less progress is made. Part of it is this, I have more time to prep than I do to play and when the game bogs down it's not just my time it's the time of everyone at the table.

The other thing is that prep work gets easier and quicker over time due to familiarity, if you have to choose spells there are probably some you use frequently and can simply put in from memory. The same can be said somewhat of things during encounters but that has more to do with remembering what the triggers and area sizes are constantly, and unless the monsters in question are used a lot it's less likely to be easily memorable. Also a lot of the prep work can help familiarize a game master with the system in question, if only in seeing how things like magic systems, special abilities and things like that work and how they interact with other things.

It can also help keep encounters relatively distinct, so that it doesn't feel like you're doing a retread every time you use a certain monster or classed enemy. You can do more to tweak the monsters, alter spell selections or change powers and generally make the creatures feel more unique. It's good for the players because it means they are less likely to get bored and it means that the encounters you make can be adjusted and reused if you end up a bit short on time without feeling like a rerun.

There's another element in this as well about using multiple monsters, this can almost be its own thing but I'll try to stick to the topic at hand. A lot of encounters will have more than one big honkin monster and as mentioned at mid to high levels there is a lot to keep track of on one monster. For groups of them it can be a nightmare, yes, in theory you can keep it all tracked on notes but a lot of them have auras and other trigger effects or things that happened if they became injured. It almost feels like they felt they could get away with doing this because, hey, you usually didn't have to do any special work before the game putting the encounters together, or not very much so it was fine to overload the monsters with all these features. The thing was that at least with prep work it's more like a learning curve, it is initially difficult but the stuff you're working with is fairly simple and you'll be reusing a lot of it as you go through the game. With the other system it should be better in theory, simple stuff at first with more complexities added, the problem is that you tend to get whole boatloads of effects at once around the same time for many different creatures rather than a nice gradual increase and not much of it is similar so it's hard to generalize stuff you learn from one encounter to the next.

I speak on this as someone who mostly runs games. Though I would like to hear what others out there think..and if I have any readers. Comments on this would be most appreciated, thanks.