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

[maddman75]

Agreed. I'm dropping out of howandwhy's derail, as its going nowhere. You don't get to redefine the terms as everyone on earth uses them.

I do consider pacing very important in a game, and one of the biggest determinants to how much fun the players have. I really don't care for simulationist style, where the PCs enter a dungeon, explore around in the time allotted, and then stop to pick up wherever they were at. If they'd just finished room 14, next week they'd enter room 15.

What's wrong with this? It pays no attention to the pace of the story. All game sessions have a beginning, middle, and end. Events happen within that time frame. You don't have to pay attention to them, you can just have things happen flatly as howandwhy seems to suggest. But then your enjoyment of the evening's adventure is up to chance. It might turn out a cool story everyone enjoys, or it might be uninteresting. In my misspent youth I didn't might wading through subpar games, but as I get older and my time for gaming lessens, I need to get the fun going.

So pay attention to that structure. At the beginning of the night, you need to introduce, review, or emphasize the main conflict. As the game progresses, they get more information and learn more about the conflict. Finally it is brought to an emotionally satisfying conclusion. That doesn't mean victory of course, but it feels like something was completed, one way or the other.

So how can you do this? Well, the two basic approaches are to speed things up or slow things down. To speed up, you bring conflict a head. Have the villain reveal himself. Or cut out some window dressing. Sure, you might have planned for the PCs to battle the Duke's guards on the balcony before they caught up with him, but if things are dragging you can just cut that scene. Or have them surrender or flee. Or handwave the fight.

To slow things down can be trickier IME. The best way is to throw in subplots or distrations. Extra villains that try to stand in the PCs' way. Requiring more in the way of checks and such to find clues or traverse an area.

In either case, the goal is to have the game not be too short and not be too long, but rather be just right.

If things go wrong, you can always fix them. If a game goes short, you can always explore more subplots or just sandbox it for awhile. If it goes long, you can get to an exciting part and exclaim "To Be Continued! Next Week" (and possibly duck thrown dice if your players are hot to get it resolved).

Another tool in my workshop is scene framing. I tend to use strong scene framing, especially in games that are more about investigation or story development than exploration. The best analogy IMO is Law and Order. The cops find a body and do some research - they have a business card of a laundry mat in their pocket.

DOINK DOINK!

The detectives are already at the laundrymat the next day, showing the clerk a picture of the deceased. He says he knows her, her and her boyfriend got in a fight yesterday. He looks up his customer list and gives them a name and address. They thank the clerk and call it in.

DOINK DOINK!

THey're knocking on his door but he's not answering...

In no case does the show worry about what route the detectives take from one scene to another, or how long it takes, or if there's enough gas in the car. They simply go.

This can work the same way in an RPG. Just DOINK DOINK your players right to wherever they are going. Make sure they know you're going to do this, and if anyone wants to do something else, be sure to go along with it.

 

[ST]

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?

I finally found your reply. Sorry about ignoring it earlier!

EDIT: I rambled so much but missed some key points, so here's some links for definitions and more discussion of scene framing.

An excellent discussion - Scene Framing Ron Edwards takes a lot of flack from people, but I'm telling you, here? His explanation is solid.

Wiki links with some definitions and examples - RandomWiki | TheoryTopics / Scene Framing browse

A blog discussing aggressive scene framing - http://rpg.brouhaha.us/?p=851

This gets debated a lot in what some people might call "story games" circles. Not in terms of "how much power should I allow the players to have, because too much might wreck the game", but "how much power should (players and GM) have over the game, in what areas, because deciding this ahead of time helps accomplish the game's design goals".

So how you apportion scene framing power can often depend on what exactly you're trying to accomplish. Sometimes you might go mostly GM-framed, with player suggestions being considered. (One argument I like is that even when the rules say "GM decides", that doesn't mean "GM decides based solely on their own thoughts" -- you can always ask for player input and decide if it's 'doable' at the moment.

Some systems go with GM framing the scenes, and players spending a Hero Point or Fate Point or somesuch resource to introduce an additional element into the scene. (e.g., "I use Streetwise, I remember something about my mentor's old fence living in these slums", which might be entirely new content suggested at that moment.)

Sometimes it's as simple as alternating GM framing and player framing depending on the constraints of the situation. In town? Feel free to head wherever you want, to explore. Chased by a lynch mob? GM is gonna frame each scene with those guys on your heels until you deal with the problem.

This is all hopelessly vague, I know. It fits into some bigger topics in terms of player agency, and stuff like "What's real in the game world", which is I think the tangent howandwhy is interested in talking about. It also depends on how the group is structured -- do you run with a single party, or having PCs off doing their own thing? Does the table prefer people to not hear OOC info, or are they fine with the players being involved in scenes their characters aren't in?

If you're running with a traditional party, and particularly if the current issue is slow pacing, it may make the most sense for the GM to aggressively frame forward to new events when that's what's going on, and for them to more relaxedly frame, with lots of player input as to the where and when, during downtime or investigation periods.

It may also work out well to tie players getting to frame scenes in with their resources, either metagame resources (Fate points, hero points) or in-character resources (skills, contacts). Again, if pacing is an issue, it may work best for the GM to offer some suggestions or sort of treat these resources as a reward that lets the player 'cut to the chase'. I've done things like "Okay, with your contacts and Streetwise skill, you find the guy you're looking for in an hour or two. Where do you approach him?" so that we're kind of in a negotiating position in terms of deciding how the scene's set up. You want to approach the guy in a bar and schmooze him, catch him in a back alley and threaten him Batman-style from the roof above? This can be a way for players to express their character while quickly moving forward.

Again, I know this is scattershot kind of stuff, sorry about that. I find it a fascinating topic, though.

One last thing I'll say: I've not found that I needed to do much at all to rein in things like "Dude, don't frame ahead to you already having beat the villain", or players wanting to frame to scenes that can't happen, or stuff like that. Everyone at the table has a vested interest in keeping up suspension of disbelief and making the game interesting. I go with full metagame knowledge to players, including stuff like "Oh, if you want to spend a Fate point to show up during this scene, feel free", and letting players decide for themselves if it's plausible and how.

You'd think it'd be a big angle for the players to break the game, but it's really not -- it's largely self-correcting. For instance, I played in a freeform-ish game once where one of the players was your traditional stereotypical badass rogue sneak, a hot elven PC played by a dude, the whole nine yards. Said PC set things up such that they achieved their personal goal, a mission from their thief's guild, so sneakily that the other PCs didn't even know about it. Victory! Well, I guess. He played it so safe and sneaky that essentially he was barely involved in the game, as far as the rest of the players were concerned. He got what he wanted out of the experience, I guess, but it didn't affect or take away from the rest of the group's satisfaction at acheiving their own goals at all. It's like, if you give players some of the Power of Plot, and they "abuse" it, setting up easy obstacles they can overcome with little effort -- they've only really cheated themselves.

 

[The Ghost]

I'm reminded of a quote from Almost Famous where one band member says "just make us look cool, man". That may be what many people want, but I prefer games were the challenges are real.

I am still unsure as to how DM improvising does not create challenges that are real. In my experience RPGs have always been about improvisation.

 

[SteveC]

Here's a question that the first part of this thread made me think of: how much time is too much? I must admit that as I've gotten older, I enjoy the interplay between characters, even minor ones, a lot more. As a result, when some of my players get into it, I can tend to dally with minor events and NPCs longer than I should. My question to the floor is: how long is too long? How much time should you spend roleplaying just for the fun of the interaction before it becomes boring?

I doubt there's one answer to this...how long would you feel comfortable in a pure interactive roleplay situation with no plot advancement?

--Steve

 

[jensun]

Here's a question that the first part of this thread made me think of: how much time is too much? I must admit that as I've gotten older, I enjoy the interplay between characters, even minor ones, a lot more. As a result, when some of my players get into it, I can tend to dally with minor events and NPCs longer than I should. My question to the floor is: how long is too long? How much time should you spend roleplaying just for the fun of the interaction before it becomes boring?

I doubt there's one answer to this...how long would you feel comfortable in a pure interactive roleplay situation with no plot advancement?

--Steve

If your players are engaged and interested and the game isn't flagging then I probably would just leave it to run its course. If you as GM find what is going on dull and tedious then I may be tempted to chivvy them along a bit.

I personally have no real interest in playing out my players buying a new wardrobe for an hour of our limited game time.

 

[ST]

I doubt there's one answer to this...how long would you feel comfortable in a pure interactive roleplay situation with no plot advancement?

That's a really good question. I have to unfortunately cop out and say it depends on your group, but that's interesting, because stuff like "How long should a scene go on" isn't something that often gets discussed around the table.

When I'm GMing I push pretty hard to 'get to the point', at most being willing to have one of those scenes per PC per session that's a 'just because/slice of life' type of scene. If there's a supporting character in the scene, or if I'm playing and my PC is there, I'll typically angle to get a conflict or decision point to come up, one that's relevant to whatever the theme was of that pure dialogue scene.

On the other far end of the scale, one time one of my players' PC owned a coffee bar. It was a really nice one, his home base and set up to be a center of social interaction in the town for the PCs and NPCs. He gave us a five-minute walkthrough of the place, and I'm all "Okay, that could lead to..." and he's all "Oh wait, I haven't described the upper floors yet" and then I bite my lip and then later its "Oh, I need to tell you guys about my personal office with the naval-themed decor" and mercifully he eventually got the hint that we wanted to continue playing. It was like forty-five minutes or more, and it was one of the most excruciating things I've ever sat through.

As far as face-to-face in character dialog, I'm totally biased. I don't really like it, seriously. (Maybe one of the reasons I set things up in game to have most of the conflicts -- and arguments -- between PCs). The last time I *enjoyed* a pure RP dialog session for it's own sake, I was like fourteen. Now, that doesn't mean I can't do dialog scenes if it's something that matters either to me or my character -- those I can get inspired in, and that includes playing a NPC as a foil to a particularly wound-up PC -- but for their own sake, just sort of sitting around the campfire talking about stuff, I take those as a player-initiated request to slow the pace for a bit, and then let them do their thing until they are ready to move on.

I should also bring up that my baseline pacing is way faster than it used to be. Whether we're talking about heavy dialog scenes or more third-person narration/discussion of actions, I'm usually looking at 2 1/2 - 3 hour sessions, so we move quick. Maybe fifteen minutes in an opening scene where player(s) are pushing forward their own goals and generally setting the stage for the night's activities, five-ten minutes on a number of scenes as we build action, maybe another 10-15 minute one as a breather (that's where a 'slice of life' scene often comes up), then some more fast ones, and inevitably the last bit's going to be a scene that takes 20-30 minutes to play out either because there's some heavier than usual resolution mechanics being used, or to have time to wind down and wrap up the situation.

In contrast, the last PNP D&D 3.x game I was in would routinely have fifteen minutes just talking to the bartender (with the GM doing his dialect and acting, and the rest of us awkardly trying to go with his flow), intermediate scenes where little but travel or simple obstacles were overcome that took 10-15 minutes, and big battles that took 1-2 hours. (Interestingly enough, I was in a totally freeform game a while back that had almost exactly the same pacing as that D&D game did, with system handling time replaced with more dialog.)

 

[Doug McCrae]

I agree with previous posters who say that howandwhy99's definition of roleplaying game is actually a lot closer to more conventional games such as boardgames or videogames. In particular it closely resembles crpgs such as World of Warcraft.

1) Impartial referee. The only truly impartial referee is a computer.
2) Runs a set module without deviation from what has been laid down. The referee is governed by strict rules, like a computer program.
3) Purely gamist, all about challenging the player. No roleplaying in the sense of acting in character.
4) Attaining levels is a marker of genuine achievement. This is far more true of WoW where one knows that, with a level 80 toon, at least someone put in the hours (though maybe not the current owner). One has no such certainty in a ttrpg though, a character might have levelled up under a Monty Haul DM.

It's like howandwhy99 has taken Gygaxian D&D, which is already strongly gamist, and distilled it, purified it until every last shred of non-gamism is removed. I'm not sure what he's ended up with is actually a roleplaying game any more.

 

[Woas]

The flow of information from GM to Player and thus the brevity of action is what, IMO controls the pacing.

 

[ST]

The flow of information from GM to Player and thus the brevity of action is what, IMO controls the pacing.

That's a pretty solid definition of the GM's primary agency. I agree with that, with the caveat that it mostly applies to games in which the GM is presenting situations and the players are responding to them. Not all games get run like that, it's sort of a continuum between "next room in the dungeon" and "you can do anything, what now?" and often individual campaigns will see the breadth of possible action on the part of the players narrowing and widening as play goes on.

"brevity of action" is a great shorthand, I think I have to steal that phrase. I usually think of it in terms of scene length, but it suggests the ability to change pace during a scene, go from full first-person dialog to quick descriptions of actions, etc.

 

[Obryn]

It's like howandwhy99 has taken Gygaxian D&D, which is already strongly gamist, and distilled it, purified it until every last shred of non-gamism is removed. I'm not sure what he's ended up with is actually a roleplaying game any more.

Yep. If you are no longer playing an RPG by following the advice in the 1e DMG, I think your definitions are off. (See page 110 regarding Dice and Control of the Game, wherein it's suggested to fudge the dice once in a while to make things go as you planned, and so players don't get unnecessarily screwed over.)

-O