DMs: Have you ever done this?

[Tamlyn]

What about rivals? Are there other groups in the world after the same thing as the PCs? Maybe they have a run-in with a strange adventuring group and instead of another +1 sword, they get a stack of journals with relevant information for loot.

 

[Gort]

One of my favourite DM tricks to save everybody time during investigation-type scenes is to say things like, "Okay, you think you've found pretty much everything there is to find in this place" or "You get the feeling that you're going down a dead end with this lead".

A little rail-roady, but I've seen far more D&D games suck because of a lack of direction than because of tyrannical DMs.