D&D 5E 5e Pacing Guide

[Remathilis]

We might be arguing semantics a little. When I see or hear the word I go to the literary definition. "The plot of a story consists of the events that occur during the course of that story and the way in which they are presented to the reader." (Literary Devices) So It implies in my mind a lot of pre-planned structure. The vampire example (one from actual play, mind you) is just a situation with enough details so that I can respond on the fly to the players choices, from ignoring it to razing his crypt to the ground. So, yes, there is a plot, but it is in the hands of the players.

I'm arguing that when most DMs design a scenario, they usually plan out the most common course of action based on their players and their characters which usually constitute a "plot". In that regard, its a bit like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure than a Novel; there isn't one set of linear A to B to C, but A, B, C, D, and E all exist and are pre-planned for, it is up the to PCs to decide which ones (and in what order) they will undertaken. All the elements are there, its up the PCs to provide the order and outcome of the events. They are the "reader" of the CYOA book; determining which routes the book will take to get to the ultimate goal (resolution of the hook/plot). Now of course, a CYOA is still more limited than a typical D&D game (since most CYOA writers don't have to account for, say, the reader tossing the book in the corner halfway through or the reader writing his own epilogue) but I think the analogy is close enough to work.

Rare to me would be the DM who designs plot points for all possible options (A, B1, B2, B3, etc) or only the hook (A) and makes up everything else on the fly. I'm sure both exist; I'm sure both are far more work than most people want.

 

[devincutler]

That's super-interesting. I can and do enjoy both styles of play, but I would say just the opposite. A well-run sandbox feels like a living, breathing world that exists independently of the PCs. The world in a well-run story game feels like the setting of a story.

In playing D&D for over 40 years, I have yet to find a DM who can run extemporaneously and make it feel completely natural. Too many things go too well. Fights are all precisely the right toughness and the PCs always just pull it off in the end. Help always comes when you need it. Things never really threaten to spiral out of control because the guiding hand of the DM is always ready, at a whim, to cater to the players playing in the sandbox. I prefer playing and running in a game where there is a set world and I and the other players can react to it and try to make our way through it or change it to suit us.

The sandbox approach ends up having the feel of:

PLAYER: "Man if we just had some owlbear feathers, we could do X"

DM: "Over the hill lopes an owlbear!"

The above is obviously extraordinarily simplified, and even a half-assed DM wouldn't be that blatant, but it illustrates the general feel I get when playing with a full-on sandbox DM.

That is also why I despise die fudging. I am never comfortable with a DM until we get a PC death. I am so tired of DMs asking players how many hp their PC has left and then miraculously the hit does just enough not to kill them (this is obviously more applicable to 3.5 than to 5e). As a DM, all of my combat die rolls and saves are out in the open.

I prefer to present my players with a fully fleshed out situation (I tend to ask them the session before what they want to do next, so that it is still the players deciding their course) and then let them do with it what they will and the dice fall where it may.

The key to a story-lead campaign is that you need to design your scenarios to account for most player curveballs, and you need to very carefully listen to and question what your players want to do next. Even if the players go off the rails, a good DM who has made a compelling storyline should be able to subtly guide their players back on line (if not, then you didn't choose a story that would interest your players).

 

[abirdcall]

Some players want an RPG experience in which the DM's (or referee's, or judge's) job is to create an environment, describe it to the players, and adjudicate the outcomes of their interaction with it. Full stop. These players want "what happens" to be up to them. They don't want it to be managed, handled, processed or structured by the DM for the purpose of creating a "better narrative." These are distinct styles of play. Both can be awesome. But they are different.

Sounds like they are playing Magical Tea Party, rather than D&D. Nothing wrong with that, but that is not what we are talking about here. All of the D&D players I know want the world to have some effect on them such that they can't always decide 'what happens'.

I disagree with the premise that rests do the same thing in D&D as character exposition or comic relief scenes in movies. I think dramatic pacing has more to do with the balance between the "three pillars" (combat, exploration, social) in the campaign. Rests are just a strategic decision, they're like "let's check our resources...should we rest here? OK we rest." then back to the action. They typically don't involve any roleplaying and they're over very quickly. To "reset the tension" a better choice would be a light social encounter or short adventure.

Yeah, they go by quickly. A long rest can and usually does take about 5 seconds of real game time. That is not what we are talking about here.

You really don't think that restoring all character's power resets the tension in the game? If that is your position then I don't have anything more I can say.

And while sometimes there is exposition or comic relief in those scenes, they are much more about pacing than anything else. They are carefully managed in the editing room.

 

[Greg Benage]

Sounds like they are playing Magical Tea Party, rather than D&D. Nothing wrong with that, but that is not what we are talking about here. All of the D&D players I know want the world to have some effect on them such that they can't always decide 'what happens'.

Of course the world can have some effect on them. As I stated explicitly in the section you quoted, part of the DM's job is to adjudicate the outcomes of their interactions with the world. But how, when, where and why the players interact with it is all them, and therefore, ultimately, so is "what happens."

I mean, even if you don't prefer this style of play, it shouldn't be this incomprehensible. DM: You're in the Keep. The Caves of Chaos are rumored to be up the road to the northeast. There's a swamp over thataway rumored to be the domain of degenerate lizardmen. There's forested mountains to the north; they're teeming with brigands, so the locals say, and the bandits often raid along the road. What do you do?

And then you play freakin' D&D! The players decide where they go and what they do and at what pace. There's no predetermined or even pre-seeded "story" in the narrative sense, and certainly no narrative structure, pacing, or other techniques to manage how the PCs do their thing. The DM has created the environment (or in this case, purchased a module) and the players go explore, interact with and plunder it. The players decide how many encounters they want to face, whether to try to camp in the dungeon or head back to the keep, whether the "tension" is too high or too low or just right. If they want more "tension," they go looking for trouble -- maybe try those stairs leading down. If they want less, they pull back. They're in control. None of it is managed by the DM.

Some players like this style of play. So when you offer guidelines on how the DM can manage pacing, or structure the narrative, you shouldn't be surprised when someone pipes up with, "This is cool, but it doesn't fit my style of play." That's because it doesn't, and pretending there's really no difference in the styles of play isn't going to be very convincing or helpful.

I say this as someone who is prepping a Primeval Thule campaign that is going to be heavily narrative to better emulate the sword-and-sorcery genre. Your ideas have been helpful to me. I'm going to flat-out tell the players we're emulating genre and each adventure (story/episode) is typically going to have three acts. You get a short rest in the interlude following Act One, another in the interlude after Act Two, and a long rest recharge when the story is resolved. That "story" might be one hour, one day, or one week. You've given me some helpful ideas to think about.

But it's going to be radically different from my B/X Stonehell game; approaches that work for one style of play would be disastrous for the other.

 

[Skyscraper]

This is a great thread discussing advanced notions of RPG. Good stuff all around.

Kudos to all for the very non-confrontational tone, too. Makes reading interesting, and the very nuanced opinions come out as very thoughtful, to me; as opposed to the very stubborn, I'm right-and-you're-wrong opinions that simply emanate an ego challenge (not discussing waffles here...) and where the actual opinions of the posters are all but lost.

 

[abirdcall]

And then you play freakin' D&D! The players decide where they go and what they do and at what pace. There's no predetermined or even pre-seeded "story" in the narrative sense, and certainly no narrative structure, pacing, or other techniques to manage how the PCs do their thing. The DM has created the environment (or in this case, purchased a module) and the players go explore, interact with and plunder it. The players decide how many encounters they want to face, whether to try to camp in the dungeon or head back to the keep, whether the "tension" is too high or too low or just right. If they want more "tension," they go looking for trouble -- maybe try those stairs leading down. If they want less, they pull back. They're in control. None of it is managed by the DM.

I'm sorry that you don't see how the rules of the game and the environment affects pacing and how everyone at the table, including the DM, takes part in that.

This is not a matter of what style is preferred. It's a matter of what is actually happening. This has nothing to do with a predetermined story.

At any rate, I wrote this to benefit people who are having issues with pacing in their campaigns and the way that rules affect it.

I'm sorry that you don't understand the OP, it is likely a measure of my ability to communicate, but it is what it is. I lack the ability to properly explain this it seems.

Maybe someone else can try.

 

[Greg Benage]

Well, I'm also sorry I don't understand it, since I thought I was learning something from it. But I'm not going to give up that easily. Let's focus in very narrowly on this bit. You say above that it's not about what style is preferred. In the OP, you say this:

Pacing Models:

One of the best pieces of DM advice I have read was in the Ravenloft 3e DMG about pacing techniques. The most important thing not to mess up in a horror game is keeping the tension rising throughout the session.

Why is this so important in a horror game? Is the implication that it's more important in a horror game than some other kind of game? If so, is it really so difficult to understand that it might not be important (to manage) at all in a location-based, exploration-focused game?

I did my best to time rests to happen at the end of each session, so the next one could have continually rising tension. It is still important in action/adventure stories and can be accomplished a number of ways.

Okay, so it's also important in "action-adventure stories." What about games in which "rising tension" is not a priority, or more specifically, what about games in which the players, rather than the DM, are expected to manage tension through their own decisions about how to explore and interact with the environment the DM has created?

Here are some examples of pacing models:

"The Pendulum" - Encounter difficulty ramps up slowly and then down again.

Says who? The DM? What if the DM just creates the location and populates it, and lets the players decide what they do? What if they decide to go right to level 2, get their butts kicked, and retreat to the easier stuff on level 1? Now encounter difficulty has started high and then subsided because the players chose an easier path. The DM can't manage encounter difficulty -- that's the players' job in this style of game.

If this really applies equally regardless of style of play, how do you reconcile that? How do you use this specific technique in a location-based, exploration-focused game? Do you use some kind of AngryDM techniques where you create keyed gates, like a video game, and simply don't allow the players to go right to level 2 until you want them to? If so, you're not supporting the location-based, exploration-focused style of play. If you're not using techniques like that and the players can go where they want and do what they want, how do you make sure encounter level difficulty is increasing? How do you use the pacing technique?

Edited for typo.

 

[Uller]

Just a couple quick observations without having yet read through the entire thread or even entire OP (I'm working and checking boards between built/test/fix cycle...)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is, to me, the iconic D&Desque action/adventure movie. Starts in a bar to introduce PCs and establish background along with some action just to get the players interested and working together but not necessarily introducing anything to do with the main plot other than perhaps how the PCs come to be in the location.

A bit of travel and some action along the way along with some RP between the PCs to establish party dynamics.

The premise of the adventure is introduced at the village while the party takes a long rest to recover from the initial adventure and overland journey (and probably level up).

Another overland journey to get to the adventure site, some exploration and RP to introduce villains followed by the discovery of the "dungeon" entrance and from there it becomes pretty much a dungeon crawl complete with battles, traps, exploration, breaks in action for short rests, pursuits and evasions culminating in the climatic battle on the bridge.

The other thing I would say is I agree with those who have said that adventure planning should not involve worrying too much about this stuff, or at least that's the way it works for me. I place a variety of NPC/monster villains, allies and neutrals within the adventure. So are appropriate for the PCs and others are too high or low a level and I let things play out. More often than not, the PCs determine the pacing of the adventure through their actions and the NPCs add or remove tension with theirs. This isn't to say mine is the right or only way...it's just how it has worked out for me. Trying to set up the narrative and pacing ahead of time usually results in a lot of wasted work because the PCs invariably choose to tackle the challenges I present in ways I didn't anticipate (which is what I love most about DMing...the players never fail to surprise and entertain me)

 

[Bawylie]

I think for pacing, you have different levels to be paying attention to.

Round-by-round, session, and adventure/campaign. The 1st two have more to do with time, IMO, while the last one is more about the structure of a story.

When you're pacing the first two, you need to pay attention to the amount of time the group spends talking, deciding courses of action, and restocking. On the individual level, every moment a player uses (beyond what's reasonably necessary) is a moment they're taking from everyone else.

My sessions run 4 hrs. I prefer to have as much of it spent playing as possible. So keeping a strong, quick pace means bringing people from scenario to decision point to consequence to next decision point as economically as I can.

On the adventure level, there is almost always a narrative structure in play. The very instant the PCs have a goal, that structure is employed. The better adventures understand and employ that structure (even in sandbox style games). And human brains seem to like it. We look for patterns and consequentialism as a routine brain activity.

But tension! That's where we all kind of fall down in this thread. Tension can only exist between competing desires. Which means a discussion of rests alone is insufficient.

If rests break tension, it is because the PC's dwindling resources are impeding on their ability to achieve their current goal. A rest alleviates that.

By and large, I don't like to run games so tight that a short rest means a loss. The players should feel free to take an hour here or there without failing the adventure, under most circumstances. But a long rest completely resets their spells and abilities, and I like that to usually accompany a cost. The 8 hrs is usually enough.

But, if resource attrition isn't impacting the PCs' ability to achieve their goal, then rests have no impact on tension.

To short-hand it, I keep this general principle in mind during play: "Find out what they want, put something in the way of it." That's generally a good place to start for tension. After that, see what they do and adjust as needed.

 

[abirdcall]

By and large, I don't like to run games so tight that a short rest means a loss. The players should feel free to take an hour here or there without failing the adventure, under most circumstances. But a long rest completely resets their spells and abilities, and I like that to usually accompany a cost. The 8 hrs is usually enough.

Yeah, I think this is how 5e is set up to be. The thing is, I have seen a ton of posts talking directly or indirectly about the problems their games have that I attribute to not understanding how short and long rests work in 5e. Which is the purpose of the thread.

I do also agree that managing real time spent at the table and spotlight time for each player is important.

For those who don't understand, imagine a 5e game where PCs were able to benefit from a long rest, even in the middle of battle. That would have many effects on the game, not the least of which is a difference in pacing.

Hopefully now you can see how rules have an important impact on how stories are told. Regardless of your style of playing RPGs, the stories will be shaped differently by different rules sets.

Being aware that this happens, why, and how to manage it has value.

If you feel you don't have use for this guide because things are under control, then that is great. If on the other hand you are coming to the board because you feel 5e is broken, one of the most common reasons seems to be do with pacing. So, maybe look into why.