Things You'll Need:
- Dungeons and Dragons rule books
- Dice
- Character sheets
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Step 1
Make tabs for the pages of the Monster Manual or any other supplementary books that you may need. Or create photocopies of any important creature information that you will need to reference during the game. Because combat is the focus of a hack-and-slash game, you will need to be able to quickly look up any statistic or rule information about the enemies the characters will be facing.
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Step 2
Before the game begins, set up any props or mood enhancers you plan to use. Props are not nearly as important in a hack-and-slash game as in a role-play-oriented session, but they can still be useful. You may consider printing off pictures of the monsters or major non-player characters, then pasting them onto a white board as the characters meet them, to give your players a graphical representation of what is happening in the game.
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Step 3
Allow the players a wider range of character-customization options, and make the various combat skills, feats and abilities easier to acquire. When a session will be composed mostly of combat, the players will have more fun if they have additional options.
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Step 4
Rule more leniently when players attempt grandiose combat actions that are not specifically covered in the rule books. Combat can become stale very quickly when every round is run in the exact same manner; so if a player states that her character is attempting to fire arrows while sliding down a rooftop and then draws her sword to attack the enemy on the ground, find a way to turn those ideas into specific game rules and work them out normally.
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Step 5
Throw interesting extra elements into the combat every now and then to keep the players on their toes. Every battle does not have to occur on even terrain with the characters and their enemies taking turns trading blows. Blinding snow, slick rain or burning lava are all environmental elements that can completely change how a battle plays out. Spicing up the locations or throwing in timed problems can also give a battle much more flavor--like fighting across rickety old bridges or escaping a rapidly burning building filled with assassins hired to kill the party.
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Step 6
Take brief interludes between the combat sessions, to allow the players to role-play or interact in nonviolent ways with the various denizens of your campaign world. But always find a way to move quickly back into a battle sequence, to keep the excitement up at all times.
