Controlling Pacing - How do you?

[steenan]

The first thing to consider is what genre you want to model. What kind of fiction you want your game to look like.

Then choose the game system and the adventures you use with it to fit the desired style.

If you create a situation where there are important things to be done, don't expect the characters to take downtime until they complete them. Divide the story into arcs with fast action, separated by long intervals with no tension and no big goals to pursue. The arcs may be as short as a single game session, or as long as several levels.
This won't work with most published adventure paths. You need to prepare your own adventures, or modify the modules in such a way that they fit the arc-downtime-arc structure.

If you don't want to insert downtime this way, I don't think there is any good solution. You either need to accept D&D fast advancement, of switch to a game that has much slower one.

 

[Hand of Evil]

don't sweat EXP -

I think of leveling up as a timeline, spead out your levels over a period of time, each increase is set by you as the DM, like cat years or bell curve. You pick the levels that are most import to you for your players to be; for me it is 6 to 12 range. So, I get them there fast, then hold them there. The trick is stop rewarding the players points, move to treasure and hold the leveling up for WHEN YOU think they need it.

also let the players know your rules.

 

[Abraxas]

Thanks for the posts so far - I've been away and haven't been able to respond till today - more later.

A published AP may not be the way to go. Which isn't so bad, I wanted to use a converted Gates of Firestorm Peak anyways, I can build a campaign around that.

Thinking about this does make me curious if the people designing the games and writing the APs don't think it odd that you have people going from peasant to beings of phenomenal cosmic power in a few months to a couple years - or do they do something different in their own games.

 

[Talysian]

Well you have to look at it (especially in 4th) that really the players are something more then just peasants stating out anyhow... I look at it as each PC is touched by destiny they arn't the average salt of the earth, they are the currents of fate moving through the world.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I keep track of events in the campaign world on a somewhat realistic timeline but don't worry so much about PC levels as they relate to the passage of time. My campaign has run about 17 sessions over the past 9 months of real time. Time that has elapsed in the game world: about 1 month and the PC's are around 5th level. Events keep moving forward no matter what level the PC's are. At any given time there will be challenges that are easy for them, ones that are just tough enough to test them, and others that might easily doom them.

Even back in 1E the DMG mentions that as far as adventurers are concerned the PC's will most likely be "the most agressive types in the area" meaning that the bulk of their time will be spent adventuring/ earning xp. NPC adventuring types by comparison are standing still on the proactivity scale so progression is much slower for them.

Sure there was more downtime due to lengthly healing requirements, spell study and research, training, and so forth which slowed down leveling in game time somewhat.

There is always the old "time passes" exposition. Be sure to give players an option to do something useful during this time such as researching important information related to upcoming adventures, magic item creation, tending to possible business investments, etc.

 

[RatPunk]

don't sweat EXP -

I think of leveling up as a timeline, spead out your levels over a period of time, each increase is set by you as the DM, like cat years or bell curve. You pick the levels that are most import to you for your players to be; for me it is 6 to 12 range. So, I get them there fast, then hold them there. The trick is stop rewarding the players points, move to treasure and hold the leveling up for WHEN YOU think they need it.

also let the players know your rules.

This is what I'm planning on doing for my next campaign. The PCs will level up when I say they do. It might be after one adventure, it might be after three. It just depends on how I feel the story should progress.

 

[Coldwyn]

If I remember Savage Tide correctly, it´s a bit of a race against time. Who knows when the next Pearl will enter the world and activate?
So how do you intend to slow down the pacing when it´s actually a frantic race?

 

[Talysian]

That and it's pretty much once you get to far shore and stuff happens it's a constant gotta do this before the world dies do this before x dies do this before blah blah blah you get the idea.... Having played all of savage tides and ran over half of it... unless you change the story drastically create an alternate timed dimension to age your characters or do time travel..... well

 

[Abraxas]

The new campaign won't be Savage Tide - that's what I'm running now.

It is also what got me thinking about pacing. Previously. I had run the Age of Worms, and while difficult to do, it was nowhere as difficult as the Savage Tide AP to increase the time that it played out over.

The problem I am having is making the passage of time believable given the events unfolding during the AP.

 

[Hussar]

Well, specific to the Savage Tide - the first three adventures could easily span a couple of years. You enter Lavinia's service and nothing happens when she gets things sorted out for a while. Then, you have to trip to the Island, and that's six months, easily. Defense of Farshore could span another few months.

If you don't mind putting your break in there, you could add in a couple of years time at the end of the defense of Farshore pretty easily. Go more into the trade building and whatnot aspects of the campaign - particularly if you use the Organizations rules from PHB 2.

But, that aside, I don't think D&D, at least 3e or 4e are very well geared for this sort of thing. Leveling is not that difficult and, once you get teleport, travel time ceases to be an issue.

My advice would be to simply not sweat it and go with the flow.