Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
How often are your stories on a clock?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 8622783" data-attributes="member: 19857"><p>The vast majority of the games that I've run over the years either have no clock at all, or a deadline that is so far off into the future that it's there for flavor more than to encourage the players to move faster or not take rests. The players will often come up with their own deadlines - and sometimes short term deadlines come up naturally (like in a recent game the players ended up with an NPC ally who was under a curse that needed to be reverted within 48 hours or they'd permanently come under the control of the big bad guy) but they tend to emerge from the players' actions rather than anything I'm setting up on purpose to hit a daily encounter budget.</p><p></p><p>I think a lot of bad advice about this on the internet comes from the dumb decision that Wizards took to scale the number of combat encounters per day in 5e to 6-8. That's a ridiculous number to try to hit constantly IME, and trying to hit that number of encounters and also have any kind of non-combat encounters and then also come up with reasons why the PCs can't take a break often starts to strain the fiction of the world. And it doesn't flow naturally with the idea of having "days" to mark time and recharging abilities either - even in dungeon crawl games I find it far too much (and it doesn't match how we played back in the day either where we'd get through about half that many in a day and then be looking for a safe place to make camp). 3-4 is a much more natural number of encounters to expect in a "day" IME.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jer, post: 8622783, member: 19857"] The vast majority of the games that I've run over the years either have no clock at all, or a deadline that is so far off into the future that it's there for flavor more than to encourage the players to move faster or not take rests. The players will often come up with their own deadlines - and sometimes short term deadlines come up naturally (like in a recent game the players ended up with an NPC ally who was under a curse that needed to be reverted within 48 hours or they'd permanently come under the control of the big bad guy) but they tend to emerge from the players' actions rather than anything I'm setting up on purpose to hit a daily encounter budget. I think a lot of bad advice about this on the internet comes from the dumb decision that Wizards took to scale the number of combat encounters per day in 5e to 6-8. That's a ridiculous number to try to hit constantly IME, and trying to hit that number of encounters and also have any kind of non-combat encounters and then also come up with reasons why the PCs can't take a break often starts to strain the fiction of the world. And it doesn't flow naturally with the idea of having "days" to mark time and recharging abilities either - even in dungeon crawl games I find it far too much (and it doesn't match how we played back in the day either where we'd get through about half that many in a day and then be looking for a safe place to make camp). 3-4 is a much more natural number of encounters to expect in a "day" IME. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
How often are your stories on a clock?
Top