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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bawylie" data-source="post: 6812215" data-attributes="member: 6776133">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.</blockquote>

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