Moving the Story Forward

[Pseudopsyche]

I think my frustration is I have crafted a story, which they all enjoy, but it is just taking a LONG time to tell. The other problem is things just take too long to happen. I have a player with a cursed sword, I know what I am going to do to let him get rid of it, but I know it will take a while till we get there.

One of the most important ways you determine how a game plays out as the DM is by controlling the pacing. You determine what events in the story receive "screen time" and which ones you abstract away. My advice is not to let yourself get bogged down in "playing out" all the events that you imagine happening. You mentioned that you thought of eight things your party needed to do in one game day, to retake a city. Do you really need all eight scenes in your story, or could you just narrate through some of them? Instead of making each one an encounter, could some subset of them be handled with a single skill challenge?

Also, it may help to be flexible with regard to the scenes you already have planned out. If you're impatient to have the player with the cursed sword be rid of it sooner, why not give him or her access to this side quest or whatever sooner rather than later?

In general, you can't afford to be too rigid as a DM. Allow yourself some flexibility both in how the story unfolds and at what pace. Planning ahead is good for giving your campaign direction, but don't let plans become a straightjacket.

 

[Rel]

One of my very favorite epiphanies I've had from using 4e is how the Skill Challenge can be used to gloss over things that need to be glossed over.

In the early going of my current campaign I had the PC's inside these mines that they were trying to find a way out of. Traditionally this would be accomplished by them moving through the place and me describing the layout of the passageways. They'd sort of map the place out, have various encounters along the way and, eventually, they'd find their way out. In my opinion, if your adventure site is big enough, that gets laborious and tedious.

Instead I simply turned the "escape from the mines" into a Skill Challenge. They used various skills to navigate their way out of the place and, with each success or failure, I narrated them past the uninteresting parts and directly to the meaningful places inside the mines. I've used this method several times since for things like overland treks and I think it works great when there is a lot of ground to cover but only so many points of interest along the way.

 

[RavenSinger]

I'm sort of in the same place as jcayer with the pace of my game, so I am really appreciating the idea of using skill challenges as a way to pick it up. In my last session, I also used a skill challenge to simulate getting through some abandoned kobold tunnels. Because I often underestimate how long a full combat can take, skill challenges are a great option.

 

[ryryguy]

Currently, my group is working to help retake a city. I developed a list of things they needed to accomplish in one night. There were 8 things, like take out the watch towers, etc. While they have enjoyed it, and I have enjoyed pushing them beyond their comfort zones, this has turned into the "longest day EVER". It has taken 3 sessions so far and will take at least one more.

Some of the responses to your query have suggested that your problem is that you are straitjacketing your players too much. Essentially implying that you are railroading them (although that term has not been used).

This may or may not be the case; I think it assumes a little too much about your game and how flexible you actually are in responding to player actions at the table. If your players are having fun, if they enjoy having you set the direction and happily grab onto the story hooks you offer, then you're not doing anything wrong.

But on the micro level here, maybe you have gotten yourself a little bit too locked in to the "8 things" needed to retake the city. A better approach might be to come up with the 8 things, but don't require the players to accomplish every last one of them. Let them choose the 3 or 4 that they are most attracted to tackling. Perhaps allies could take care of the rest, or maybe the morale of the defenders will crack after 3 or 4 setbacks.

You could also speed them up with skill challenges as suggested, but it's not even necessary to bring the party into them directly. Just try to keep the party's successes front and center: "Thanks to you taking out the watch towers, the rest of us we able to infiltrate the palace..." Or, "Thanks to your infiltration of the palace, the rest of us were able to take out the watch towers..." Or, "Once you infiltrated the palace, the guards in the watch towers knew the cause was lost, threw down their arms, and fled." The point being, you don't have to plan out one specific "causality" in advance, just make it fit what the players actually do.

A downside of this approach is that if you thoroughly plan out all 8 challenges but only use 3 or 4 of them, some of your planning may have been wasted. But there are countermeasures for that too. Don't plan each one too thoroughly (wing it a little). Try to get the players to pick their targets beforehand so you know what to prepare. Re-use the unused challenges sometime later on.

It may be a little too late to take my advice if you're already in the middle of the "8 things", though you might still be able to fudge it now - "reinforcements arrived much sooner than expected!" Also, if your players are enjoying going through the whole list of 8 things, maybe it's better just to roll with it. wedgeski's advice is good in this regard.

 

[Umbran]

Actually, everyone I've spoken with and tons of anecdotal evidence from ENWorld and WotC suggests that an "average" encounter lasts 45-75 minutes, or on average, an hour. Regardless, something is causing drag for jcayer's encounters any way you slice it.

Not so.

His encounters are taking longer than the EN World average. That's true any way you slice it.

But "drag" is subjective - if the players are engaged and interested and having a good time, there's nothing wrong with only managing one encounter every two hours. If, for example, they are taking a lot of time to plan, and they like planning, then there's no big deal here. That the story doesn't advance means little so long as folks are having a good time.