Comment on “3: Cognitive Load & Information Filtering”

THANK YOU for putting words to precisely what I had trouble with at my running last weekend. The players scouted out a goblin hamlet, made a plan to assault it and we played out 2/3 of the combat. I was proud of my players for being so clever with their tactics (I won't get into it.)

But I although think I did well overall, I was unable to keep that "CPU queue" going for anything beyond the ordinary demands of combat and player management. I'd planned out some tactics for the goblins, including a crucial one where they made good use of a HP-draining/bestowing plant, making the fight harder while also revealing information to the players that they might themselves exploit -- and damn if it didn't just completely slip my mind to have them act that way, until near the end of the session. I'd written it down on a worksheet, to use your term. I had everything ready to go. But in the bustle, I just didn't consult it sufficiently nor keep the information in my head.

I'm not kicking myself too hard over it by now, but it has me wondering how to enlarge my working memory. I expect I will find myself trying hard to think of myself as the computer visiting the queue on each combat turn. Maybe that will at least help me organize my information better on paper, and then if I just try to instill a practice of returning to it at the top of each combat round...