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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 9849825" data-attributes="member: 9053">I think this is a really interesting discussion! I am thinking about just this issue in my own game design at the moment. I describe my game as "play to find out" so I had to think about it a lot.In general, how I run a game depends on what I'm running, in terms of both the system and scenario. I ran Curse of Strahd when it first came out. I introduced the group to Strahd right away. He said "I am having dinner this Saturday at my castle, please be there." And the players asked what day it was: it was Monday. That gave them a definite time before they were going to "my dinner with Strahd." (And then someone pointed out that in the Realms, weeks had 10 days, which allowed me to point out a difference in Barovia that I totally had planned out already <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> )I am currently running Abomination Vaults. At the start of the game, the bad guys turn on their super weapon. The group was able to determine it would take about a month for it to recharge, so they had about 30 days to get to a specific point in the scenario.In both of those cases, there was something happening at that point in the future, but I said "what are you going to do?" in the meantime.For my own game, the players engage with a particular plot, and I put a clock into play for when the bad guys are going to finish what they are doing. There are also clocks for larger issues going on. When they find out about it, I put the clock actively into play where they can see it. It gives them a feeling of "we can do stuff, but time is passing in the world" and I find that generates the pressure I need to make things fun, while still letting them explore things as they will.That's how I do it now, but if I was running a more scripted module (which I don't think is a bad thing) I would get their buy-in before starting play that we were going to have a more constrained time period.</blockquote>

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