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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6699473" data-attributes="member: 6787650">It just occurred to me that you can do the "director's cut" thing without any technology at all. Here's how:As the players are sitting there after the combat, talking about what they're going to do next, roll a d6. If the d6 comes up a six, toss down an index card face-down which says ("3 Mind flayers arrive and stage outside"). The players know something is going on but don't know what. If they move out then, they'll discover that there are three mind flayers outside and they can fight them--but if the players keep arguing with each other, as players are wont to do, once per real-time minute or so roll a d6 again, and each time it comes up 6 toss down another index card ("Wizard arrives, casts Invisibility IV on the three Mind Flayers"; "4 Wights arrive"; "A dozen hobgoblins arrive"; "Offensive begins").I've used at least the roll-a-die part of this before to put pressure on players in time-sensitive situations without completely requiring a table time = game time equivalence, and it seemed to work well, in that when they ran out of time (I rolled a 20 on the d20) the players were really bummed about being too late, but in a way that didn't make me feel like I'd just arbitrarily killed the PC and without any wheedling by the players for extra time. One player kind of blamed another for taking too long to decide on a course of action, which is pretty much the reaction you'd hope for in that situation--the world progresses even while you're standing there thinking, it's not just DM fiat. (He got over the blame thing though, don't worry.) Maybe the die roll wasn't necessary, maybe they would have felt the same kind of tension if I'd just been like, "Hurry up guys... okay, time's up, he's dead now" but it felt like leaving it partly up to chance helped the players feel like the outcome was fair.Anyway, I think having four index cards on the table that the players can turn over, detailing what has been happening for the past ten minutes, would probably feel more fair than me just narrating it. The index cards are a physical artifact in the real world, and they've been accumulating there on the table for ten minutes... totally not arbitrary.I'm going to try to find a way to work this technique into my next session that features some kind of dungeon or other time-sensitive environment.</blockquote>

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