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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbhorrentLesson" data-source="post: 6788173" data-attributes="member: 6808177">So recently I picked up Out of the Abyss, and have a few questions on DMing when it comes to travel rate and time management. I am someone who prefers a more narrative game with less focus on mechanical aspects. That being said, would the adventure be drastically affected if the travel pace mechanic was taken out completely, and all travel save important points be instead summed up? I'd prefer to instead use theater of the mind rather than game pieces, albeit with the occasional rough drawing of a dungeon or place being shown, and feel that this rule is more designed for use with pieces and graph paper. This does not mean I would avoid random encounters by any means either, but instead of anyone having to actively calculating the exact distance of a place in comparison to there rate of travel, I'd reduce it down to short sentences such as "You've been traveling several hours, after traversing various caverns, you see a peculiar opening in the distance and can hear bellows of anguish coming from it." I know there is actually a short entry about this on page 30 entitled "Summarizing Travel" but I would like to know how this goes when put into practice.The other topic that confuses me is time management, and is more about 5th edition overall. I quite understand how tracking the passage of time can be important for obvious reasons, but I am a little confused as to why they tried to include it into combat. Is this merely meant to provide players who would like more realism? On one hand, I guess I can see the point of at-least making it known to players how long a round is in in-game time. However, there are certain spells, traits, and other game effects that last time periods such as minutes, hours, days, etc. which make things confusing for me. When used out of combat, these things are easier to handle as you can be rather loose with it as a DM and just decide when in-time passes to fit around whats going on at the time, and what you feel is appropriate. It gets rather tricky to me when it comes to in-combat phases where time is used as a duration of a game effect. How do you manage this? I really don't want to have to time my players with something like a stop watch when they fight. Is there a conversion table anyone knows of with time to turns or rounds? This is another game element I'd really like to eliminate if I could, or at-least find a less tedious alternative. I really appreciate the help everyone!</blockquote>

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