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Message: <blockquote data-quote="maddman75" data-source="post: 4842372" data-attributes="member: 2673">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.</blockquote>

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