How do you Control/Set the Pace of a Game?

[LostSoul]

howandwhy99, let me try to put what you are saying in my own words:

A DM isn't in control of the pacing of the game, because it's the players who initiate action.

When NPCs act in the world (and the DM is the one controlling them), he runs them according to their nature. He doesn't make judgements based on pacing - "There's been too much action, we need a break from the constant orc attacks, so let me come up with a reason why they won't attack", "There hasn't been any action, I'll come up with a reason why the orcs attack."

When the DM designs a dungeon he isn't acting as a DM but as a game designer.

When the DM rolls for wandering monsters, for example, he's merely following the rules of the game. If he doesn't follow the rules in the moment of play he is acting as a game designer and imposing his own will on the outcome of the game, changing the nature of the activity.

Some questions for you:

How does the DM know what information to relay to the players? "Nothing happens" is never true. "Nothing interesting happens" is the DM playing the PCs. Does the DM have to describe each bird flying by, each gust of wind? How does he know?

What happens if the game system or the module is lacking some information? What criteria does the DM use to come to a decision?

 

[jdrakeh]

Well, I've improvised more gaming sessions than I care to count - run without any preparation whatsoever. Since I was continuously changing the adventure contents during the session, I take it that I was continually cheating, then?

Not only that — you weren't really playing a game!

 

[kitsune9]

Quick gaming story.

Some time ago, I was playing in a homebrew setting 3.5 D&D game. It was a really fun game, high rp, not a lot of action. The plot was fun, we moved along decently, stuff happened. I had a good time. Then, the campaign ended and we moved on to a Shackled City campaign.

Now, I lurve me the Adventure Paths. I do. But, suddenly, the pace of the first campaign seemed glacially slow. The other players were talking to every barkeep/storekeep/random orphan and doing this and that about the town of Cauldron. I chafed. We knew where we had to go, we had a pretty good idea of what we had to do, but the other players wanted to spend far more time on, in my mind, extraneous details. Several frustrating weeks later, I bowed out of the campaign. I just wasn't fitting in.

This got me to thinking. How do you control or affect the pace of a game? What can you do as a DM or as a player to speed things up or put on the brakes? Should you do it entirely in character? Should you step out and meta-game? What things can we do to keep things going at a pace that the table likes?

I would totally metagame that we should be moving on if we blow a lot of game time spinning our wheels. If we know as a group that our next objective is to go explore a set of caves outside the city, it's time to go. We can chat it up with the locals later. I wouldn't quit a campaign unless it came down to different play styles that weren't working out such as players who want to do nothing but rp and me who tends to like quite a bit of combat in between rp scenes.

I too played some of Shackled City and it slowed to a glacier's pace too for us. All of the players and DM decided to abandon the campaign as we just didn't like the storyline and we made it to 5th or 6th level before getting tired of it. Usually Paizo puts out awesome stuff, but we felt that they blew it on their first AP. Age of Worms was awesome though

 

[howandwhy99]

snip

This is definite thread drift, but I agree with your summation of my points above.

Just to restate my position for this thread: DMs do not control the pace of the game when they are not playing the NPCs.

My answers to LostSoul are spoilered below:
[sblock]

How does the DM know what information to relay to the players? "Nothing happens" is never true. ... Does the DM have to describe each bird flying by, each gust of wind? How does he know?

The DM answers about the location, item, person, whatever based upon referencing the game module or ruleset and details the consequences of the player's action from the perspective of the PC. Nothing does happen, if no event is scheduled to occur or was not caused by the players/PCs. Of course timekeeping is measured, but nothing else. The DM needs only to describe what is in the game module or ruleset. Everything else is not applicable.

"Nothing interesting happens" is the DM playing the PCs.

I'm not following you here. How does a DM play a PC? Don't they just become NPCs at that point?

What happens if the game system or the module is lacking some information?

What is lacking in the game module is not applicable to the game. It has no relevance to roleplaying, so it doesn't matter.

What criteria does the DM use to come to a decision?

Most games I've seen use the real world as the default for answering questions not related to fantasy and I agree that can work quite well. Roleplaying games are guessing games after all and responding to questions in a guessing game about reality isn't exactly up to "DM fiat". Or whatever one wishes to call improvisational behavior by the DM.

IMO, if you change the rules in the middle of a game, then what you are playing isn't a game. If others disagree, that's fine with me. It's not a conversation I am looking to get into.[/sblock]

 

[Lanefan]

Keep on the Shadowfell spoiler alert!

What is lacking in the game module is not applicable to the game. It has no relevance to roleplaying, so it doesn't matter.

Er...have you *ever* run a canned module that had exactly all the information you needed? All too often, what is lacking in the game module is highly applicable to the game.

Example: at the end of Keep on the Shadowfell there's a half-open portal with a Thing in it. The module says nothing about a) how to close the portal, or b) how to handle it if the party decide to charge through the portal and attack the Thing (which BTW isn't statted out at all), or c) what exactly Kalarel is doing to open the portal (in case the party for whatever reason want to finish what he started), or a bunch of other stuff. Of course, when I ran the module the players brought up every one of these things - and I had to improvise.

By your logic I'm just supposed to tell them something like "That's irrelevant, move on."??? Please tell me you're not serious...

Lanefan

 

[howandwhy99]

a) how to close the portal, or
b) how to handle it if the party decide to charge through the portal and attack the Thing (which BTW isn't statted out at all), or
c) what exactly Kalarel is doing to open the portal (in case the party for whatever reason want to finish what he started), or
a bunch of other stuff.

Of course, when I ran the module the players brought up every one of these things - and I had to improvise.

By your logic I'm just supposed to tell them something like "That's irrelevant, move on."??? Please tell me you're not serious...

I won't defend bad game module design, but yes by the designers own creation these must have been considered irrelevant. The module is essentially saying, in a one-shot there is a) no way to close the portals like the one presented, b) no continuation of the game after one goes through the portal, and c) no means by which any PC can finish (by magic I presume?) whatever Kalarel started.

I agree, these are some pretty glaringly big errors. But I didn't write the module. I can only assume the designers didn't believe those elements were relevant to anyone roleplaying in that situation.

I do agree that openly responding that those are all irrelevant to gameplay is far too big a clue to give the players - as DMs we're not really supposed to give away the answers after all. But given the scope of play the module provides it is hard to provide such answers when the players follow those avenues of guessing. They seem like pretty obvious ones to me too.

 

[Hussar]

It's not cheating, but it is certainly taking part in the game design. EDIT: a.k.a., being a game designer. When this is done during a game session it is absolutely cheating.

I'm curious, why the distinction? One of the stated roles of the DM in any edition of the game, is part game designer. This is emphatically stated in the Moldvay Basic book:

While the material in this boklet is referred to as rules, that is not really correct. Anything in this booklet (and other D&D booklets) should be thought of as changeable - anything, that is, that the Dungeon Master or referee thinks should be changed.

I'm pretty sure that this sort of paragraph appears in pretty much every D&D book ever published that includes DM's guidelines.

So, why would you distinguish between these roles when the rules don't?

 

[ST]

I've had good results from using aggressive scene framing as a GM. Sprung on a group unawares it can feel like railroading, but I make a point of discussing how I'll do scene framing beforehand. I usually cut past any 'slice of life' scenes entirely or handwave them past, if there's really not much potential for something out of the ordinary to occur.

Now if a player wants a scene at a tavern or haggling over gear or something like that, go for it. But we usually only do that if there's a "point" to it (be it character development or whatever).

Typically I like to start people with a Bang, some situation that forces them to make a decision (what they decide doesn't matter, just that they do *something* in response), and then give them some freedom in framing to the next scenes as they roar off dealing with problems.

From my experience playing with groups that want to 'act everything out', basically frame linearly unless they explicitly skip ahead, I feel like it's an issue of group communication. Some people may be there to soak up the flavor of the setting, or interact in-character, but rather than have those scenes be separate slice-of-life stuff, I prefer to have them within scenes that have decision points, to integrate them with whatever plot the players are creating.

Usually I'll mix GM doing scene framing and having the players do it. That can itself be a pretty useful pacing mechanism. I don't really at any point worry about losing immersion or flow by framing ahead to a future scene, since it hasn't been an issue with my group. But it's something to talk about with them, since pacing is going to be a factor of the group's preference (whether consciously or unconsciously).

 

[Hussar]

ST - a question.

How do you do players framing the scene? How much control do you give the player (or players I assume) over the game?

 

[howandwhy99]

I'm curious, why the distinction? One of the stated roles of the DM in any edition of the game, is part game designer. This is emphatically stated in the Moldvay Basic book:

I don't think the quote is very clear and I'll try and explain why. As RPGs are guessing games they operate like other guessing games, 20 questions, riddles, and even trivia. Before a game can begin the answers to be guessed must be predetermined. Otherwise it's just Alex Trebek saying "you're right" whenever he feels like it.

For example, think of roleplaying a horse jockey. It doesn't matter if the race is on a track or began impromptu across a field. The playing field must be predetermined ahead of time. If the referee simply chooses what comes next during play then there is no game, the winner is and will always be whomever the referee wants to have win.

By preparing the field beforehand, whether it be live action or simply narrated across a tabletop, the racers still face an objective challenge rather than the will of a person putting on a show. Whether there is an obscurity over the field, doesn't matter. It could be fog of war, limited line of sight, unseen answers to be guessed at, in RPGs I'd say the basic limited knowledge of the human condition, Does that obscurity make it easier for a DM to cheat by making up the answers as they go along? Sure, but that obscurity and trust in the riddle teller is a requirement of any guessing game.

I could easily play 20 questions by lying throughout with my answers. Effectively saying "yes" to every answer, or only to those from the people I liked. But I would be both lying and cheating. In RPGs this is the DM breaking the rules. Can he change the design of the game before it begins like someone changing the lines of a riddle? Or the object to be guessed at in 20 questions? Sure, but not once the game has begun.

So while there may be game text quotes assuming DMs will not only be relating the roleplaying game, but also designing parts of the game, the creation of those modules is no less the actual performance of game design requiring of good design skills than those fans creating levels for a computer game.