Pace in your game.

After a player with largely one face to face DM for the last 25 years I realize that I’ve been pretty spoiled. I recently branched out into more online gaming and tried three different groups online as player to broaden my horizons.

I learnt a lot about storytelling and all three games were entertaining. The DMs were very good at creating atmosphere, but my gosh did they have problems with pacing. It felt like sometimes in a 3 hour sessions we would barely achieve anything. Prevarication, spinning out simple tasks, taking ages to reach consensus. Agonizing over trivial details.

What are your games like? Do you sometimes feel like this as players or is it just me. Maybe I have been spoiled with @GuyBoy as a regular DM as we get a lot done but still seem to enjoy good atmosphere and storytelling.

We can spend a whole session planning what to do next. Only to go pursue a totally different thing, sometime on another continent, on whim at the beginning of the next session, under the murderous glare of the GM.

Jfdlsjfd said:

We can spend a whole session planning what to do next. Only to go pursue a totally different thing, sometime on another continent, on whim at the beginning of the next session, under the murderous glare of the GM.

Click to expand...

Since we play only 2.5 hours every two weeks online, we try to be efficient, make decisions quickly and move the story forward. Most of our games are of the investigation or mystery type.

In person, if the players are debating for too long, I prompt them into action with an NPC, an event or a monster. I started doing that during AD&D 2e. The group would stall into endless debates to create a plan. I even used a sand timer to make them see how much time they were taking.

I'm a tyrant DM that plays several groups a week and I force the games to move forward at a blazing fast pace. If you want to play a very fast, focused immersive role play, my game is for you. If you want anything else, find another game.

I'm very harsh....a player even suggests that they might tell a dumb real life story or pull up a You Tube video...and I just kick them out of the game.

I require all players to show up on time for every game. Miss a game for anything short of a real emergency and I kick them out of the game.

I don't allow players to ask (dumb) questions to derail or slow down the game. I force my players to role play: if they want to ask questions: talk to an NPC.

For action or combat, players only have three seconds to state their action. Anything more then that the character stands confused for the round, and often an easy target.

So zoom zoom.

Our games are more about socializing rather worrying about how much we get done. We drink, smoke and the conversations go on a tangent, but we, I as the DM keep things moving within reason to at least get a decent session in. We don't take forever to go buy a sword.

bloodtide said:

I'm a tyrant DM that plays several groups a week and I force the games to move forward at a blazing fast pace. If you want to play a very fast, focused immersive role play, my game is for you. If you want anything else, find another game.

I'm very harsh....a player even suggests that they might tell a dumb real life story or pull up a You Tube video...and I just kick them out of the game.

I require all players to show up on time for every game. Miss a game for anything short of a real emergency and I kick them out of the game.

I don't allow players to ask (dumb) questions to derail or slow down the game. I force my players to role play: if they want to ask questions: talk to an NPC.

For action or combat, players only have three seconds to state their action. Anything more then that the character stands confused for the round, and often an easy target.

So zoom zoom.

Click to expand...

Where do I sign up?

Normally focused and working to move the game forward.....unless i didn't prep, then maybe more tangents and using my DM skills to make player overthink every decisions.

In my main group, some of the players have an acknowledged tendency to go down planning ratholes. They've gotten much better about it over time, but occasionally it still catches them.

In an online group I played with over the pandemic, coming to consensus on basic decisions was a bit onerous. Nobody wanted to boss anyone else around, and nobody wanted to make the wrong decision, and the single-threading of talking on a group call slowed everything down, so we fuddled around a bit.

In the second campaign with that group, I intentionally created a character who was a little bit smarter than everyone else, and a little less patient than everyone else, but who liked driving to consensus - so I'd frame the question for the party, put forth what seemed like a reasonable course of action, and just outright asked everyone if they liked the plan, and played discussion facilitator if they didn't. Got rid of like 75% of our stalls that way.

After some socializing, we're usually moving at a decent pace. Yeah we could move faster, but i'm not really worried about it.
Every once in a while we'll have some low stakes interactions (e.g. visiting the shopkeeper and making small talk). Though that's the exception not the rule.