Do you use deadlines in your campaign?

[Mesh Hong]

as for "dramatic deadlines", I use them as little as possible. I know i hate them as a player because they feel cheap and artificial, like things will turn out a certain way regardless of the adventurers' actions.

I understand what you are saying and see your point but Dramatic Deadlines (i.e. turning up at the most dramatic moment) can be important from a story point of view.

It is just more exciting if the group arrives at a scene just in time to have a chance to stop the evil maniacs dastardly plan, rather than they arrive in plenty of time and put a circle of protection on a key location rendering his plans mute.

I agree that this sort of thing is artificial, but it isn't necessarily cheap. It does require a certain level of the suspension of disbelief however which will vary from group to group. Of course the suspension of disbelief can only go so far, if the group has a rough deadline (accurate to within a day or so) and miss it then I agree that the opportunity is wasted and the plot changes accordingly.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Sometimes or at least let my players "think it". Example is catching a ship, that will sail with the tide or that they have only minutes before the burning roof falls on them or the lava pours through the tunnel. Mostly these are planned events that I have generated results for.

 

[Desdichado]

I rarely use deadlines, mostly because that would require that we pay attention to how long things are taking in game. Since that doesn't really interest us much... well, y'know. No deadlines.

 

[firesnakearies]

it's not so much that the players fail the quest if they rest, it's that when they step into a dungeon or start investigating, they set things in motion.
I'm not anal about the time they take to disarm a trap or end a fight but resting almost always has consequences. it generally means that when the PCs get back to the action, the bad guys will be prepared for them or will have left town.

This is the kind of time crunch I like and would use most often. Essentially, once you break in the front door to the evil lair and kill a few things, you've stirred up the hornets' nest. If you think you're just going to go camp out for a day and have all the rest of the bad guys standing around statically in their same rooms waiting for you to come kill them, you're mistaken.

 

[Dausuul]

I try to avoid contrived coincidences. If the players arrive in the nick of time, I want there to be a good reason why they should arrive in the nick of time, and I'll put in some work to come up with one. I won't say I never use dramatic deadlines, but it's very rare.

On the other hand, I seldom have explicit, timed deadlines. That's more bookkeeping than I like to bother with. It's more, "Bad stuff is happening. As long as you make a good-faith effort to keep things moving, you'll show up in time to stop it. If you start dawdling about and camping after every encounter and acting like this is a computer game where the quest-giver will just stand there waiting for you to get around to her... well, your new story hook is 'The BBEG opened a portal to Hell and nobody stopped him. Archdevils now rule the world. Their minions are hunting you down. Can you survive?'"

I only use a timed deadline as such when I want time management to be part of the challenge.

 

[Piratecat]

I use both. Many things happen when dramatically appropriate (or, more appropriately, when the precarious tower of plot is nudged by the PCs and everything is set into motion by their actions.) As a result, I try to be explicit when there is a hard deadline.

In my Grey Guard campaign, the PCs were in a city that had rebelled against its empire. They'd been expecting imperial troops; they hadn't been expecting a 250' tall colossus to rise from the harbor and destroy the navy. The colossus then announced that the rebel leaders had until nightfall to present themselves, or it would flatten the entire city.

That gave the PCs 12 hours to act. What they did in that time was up to them. I knew what would happen and how many people would die if they didn't try to improve matters, and I gave them a countdown of how many hours remained after each scene.

 

[TheYeti1775]

I picked Often to Sometimes in it's use.

Unless there is a hard set one in a module I'm running, for the campaign world I create a general timeline for the world.

I.E.
In one week the new king comes to power, followed by a build of of the armies.
The Thieves Guild plans a jewelry heist next month of a rumored shipment.

Having general things out there like that provides future hooks on top of what the PC's create for themselves. Such as if the PC's knock off one of the key planners for the Guild, the heist might be averted.

 

[pemerton]

One fairly straightforward way to use tactical deadlines in a combat (as per FireLance's post upthread) is to let the players know that reinforcements are coming. This gives them an incentive to deal with the current opposition and/or improve their defensive position before the number of foes, and hence the risk of being overwhelmed, goes up significantly.

 

[howandwhy99]

I marked "Always" use time-related deadlines for my campaigns.

They are not timelines for the players' actions, but rather the actions of the entire rest of the multiverse (within the PC's' reach). Nor does any gameworld event end the game, but good time management by the players always matters.

 

[Wolf1066]

The plots and plans of the NPCs in my world often have timeframes - "they will take X days/weeks/months to achieve this unless there is intervention", one of the serial killers is killing about once every two weeks now and slowly escalating his activities... there are just some things you need to keep track of.

They become deadlines and spawn lots of lesser deadlines if the PCs elect to oppose or aid the plot. Or the time frame may be royally screwed up by the players' actions. e.g. if the plot requires something to be achieved or obtained first and the players somehow thwart (wittingly or unwittingly) that part, it could set back the plot for ages depending on what contingencies are in place.

I have a calendar for the year 2070 - it has moon cycles, local tides and sunrise/sunset times (its amazing the sort of stuff you can find on the internet) and getting a calendar for the year 2071 would be as simple as opening up the appropriate programs again - I use it a lot and I keep track of the date and rough hour of the day. Excel's ideal for generating dates for repeating events then I can mark them on the calendar or in my notes.

If nothing else, I get an idea of what the news should be...