Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="redrick" data-source="post: 7315088" data-attributes="member: 6777696">The point is not to put an arbitrary sand-timer on every interaction scene. I see it more as just a helpful reminder not to get into an interaction scene without an exit strategy. In the case of a "get things done" business meeting, that exit strategy might look very different from information gathering. (This is what PCs are usually talking to strangers for — trying to gather information.)Maybe this is just my table, but we have both players and DMs (we rotate) who can sometimes get a little carried away bantering with NPCs. The way these scenes usually get resolved is either the DM decides, "ok, they've learned/done everything they need to do in this scene, so I'm going to end it," or the players decide, "ok, whatever, this is boring, the plot lies thataway, so let's get out of here." Which is to say, the dialog is always allowed to overstay its welcome and the ending feels a little forced and plot-driven. So the thought is, instead of entering every dialog like a video game dialog, where the NPC will stand around dutifully answering PC questions until they exhaust the available information or the player finally gives up and gets bored, enter every dialog with a low-grade time pressure where it is understood that the NPC does not have all day and if the PCs spend all of their time trying to get a few extra GP for their quest, they won't have time to ask the NPC some of the other questions they wanted to ask. This allows the final, "Ok, conversation is over," to feel more organic than DM fiat.Of course, if NPC/PC interactions are running smoothly, ending when they feel like they should end, and not hogging an inordinate amount of table time, there's no problem and no need for a corrective.In my own day-to-day professional interactions, while conversations last longer than my conversations with strangers, we are still all trying to communicate whatever needs to be communicated and then get off the phone or out of the room and back to whatever we need to be doing.</blockquote>

Verification