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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maxperson" data-source="post: 7610896" data-attributes="member: 23751">Whether or not you are specifically thinking in literary terms, you are in fact employing the literary technique of pacing when you do that.  Wandering monsters by the way, are an example of the literary technique of pacing at work.  In books, the protagonists often come across a wandering monster as an encounter.  That the wandering monster was written in, instead of rolled randomly does not change the fact that both the story and the RPG are using the literary technique of pacing.  Both the author and the DM decided that something exciting needed to happen at that spot and engaged the technique to move the pace along.That was a deflection(not saying it was an intentional deflection), though.  It's irrelevant whether it's unique to literature.  All the matters is that it is a literary technique.  To give an analogy, while breathing isn't unique to humans, it is still a human activity.  It doesn't stop being a human activity just because millions of other species also breathe. Not quite.  It doesn't ALSO mean controlling the flow of encounters and the rate that players make it through the adventure. It CAN mean those things.  Keeping the game from grinding to a halt is pacing, but the DM is not required to also control the flow of all of his encounters and the rate of the adventure in order to engage in pacing.  Like many things, there are varying degrees of pacing.</blockquote>

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