Something that Needs More Consideration - Pacing

[Reynard]

It's mostly a way to increase plausibility imo. The classic D&D dungeon is stoopid for a number of reasons but one of the major ones is that too much is packed into too small a space. I mean why does this tribe of hobgoblins live so close to a gray ooze's pond and an owlbear's nest? They'd either kill them or move.

Not doing a room-by-room allows you to have bigger, more plausible underground settings without having to make every room interesting.

Otoh if no one minds lots of monsters close together or the GM is able to make empty rooms interesting and the PCs like to turn the moose-heads therein, then the trad dungeon is fine.

It's not a logical place. They are called the "Cave of Chaos" and such for a reason. These underground realms are where the veil between this world and The Other (call it the Far Realm or the Abyss or the Shadowfell, it's all the same hell) is weak. Creatures from Here are drawn to it and creatures from There slip through the cracks. It's physical form may have begun as dwarven halls or goblin mines or human catacombs, but it has long since been co-opted by forces so dark, so alien that the dungeon can barely be considered to exist
in the real world at all.

And the real secret? The terror that only those who perish within understand, that freezes their dying blood and maddens their fading minds? It lives. It, the dungeon, is a terrible, malevolent being hungry for souls. Like an angler in the dark depths, it dangles shiny things to its prey and then devours them in the pitch.

 

[Hussar]

The the traditional dungeon become traditional for a reason, or because it had to fit on A4 paper?

 

[billd91]

Another way of putting it - if the players decide the watchlist (and I have to say, what more epic decision could there be in a fantasy RPG!?) - and then the encounter timing is determined randomly, there decision-making was of no consequence.

That's not true at all. Player decision-making will come in to play with respect to who's taking watch at all. Who gets to keep watch when the night is darkest and will suffer such related handicaps? How is the camp arranged - is the livestock clustered in an area that a predator could use to approach the camp? Would it go for the horse first as the most attractive meal? Do you have multiple people keeping watch? Is the watcher sitting still or patroling?

It doesn't really matter when the encounter occurs. What matters is that the players have decided to be prepared for one, should it occur. Whether the encounter comes in the first, middle, last watch isn't that important... save for the PCs on watch at that particular time because, thanks to the decisions made earlier, they have first crack at dealing with the problem (or succumbing to it).

 

[Hussar]

The point is Bill91, after the first time this is decided, or perhaps the second, it becomes an SOP and never talked about again. So, while yes, you gain the player decision making element for a very short (hopefully) while, it's not something that's going to come up again and again.

So, why bother in the first place? Why not assume that the PC's, being adventurers, have a reasonable grasp on what needs to be done and let it go from there? The horses are tied in a favourable position, the watch is set and away you go.

Any of your decision points - does the encounter attack the horses first, can it approach from the side the horses are on - can be determined pretty much randomly anyway.

Then again, the whole "who takes watch" thing is not why I play D&D. If its why you play, then great. Go for it. It's like tracking arrows and food. I simply no longer care about that level of detail. I just assume it's a given and move on. As a DM I don't screw the party for not turning into Green Beret's every time it's time to set up camp and as a player, I trust my DM not to screw me.

I no longer prefer antagonistic roles for the DM.

 

[ExploderWizard]

It doesn't really matter when the encounter occurs. What matters is that the players have decided to be prepared for one, should it occur. Whether the encounter comes in the first, middle, last watch isn't that important... save for the PCs on watch at that particular time because, thanks to the decisions made earlier, they have first crack at dealing with the problem (or succumbing to it).

Yup. This came into play in my last session. The PC's were camped in a dangerous area of the mountains and chose a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd watch.
When an ettin showed up early in the night I knew who was on watch and thus which passive perception would be tested against the ettin's clumsy stealth. The party had set a cold camp to draw less attention so listening was the primary means of detecting danger for the human ranger who was on that watch.

That little bit of information permitted the encounter to begin smoothly without having to roll for who was on watch to find out what level of perception was involved. Players may want to plan when the most likely time for an attack might be based on where they are, and what they are dealing with and place sharpest eyes and ears in key places to minimize the suprise factor. Random rolling takes this away from them.

 

[Janx]

As folks are surmising, there are multiple aspects to Pacing.

Pacing in combat can mean making it run faster and smoother (less dithering).

Pacing in dungeon crawling can mean hand-waving the room searches, and empty rooms.

For a low-level party of first time players, making decisions on watch order, making camp, opening doors, searching rooms might be novel and educational. However, it can get tedious. And for experienced players, they already know all this anyway.

Its not fun anymore, except for GMs looking for an edge to introduce a threat that exploits a mistake.

If you were producing the game as you would a film, what scenes would you leave off as boring, and extraneous to the story? There are some folks who can't let go of any of them, but all the good directors know there's a lot of material you can do without.

Its not about giving players a "Win" button, but cutting out the parts that make the game suck. If the players are on the wrong track for a missing boy, either move the boy to where they are, or bring in new information. Not because you want to hand them victory, but for the sake of having a good time and stopping the slow drag.

My overall tips are:
ask the players if they have an standard procedures for making camp, searching rooms and doors. If they don't, they'll lie and make one up. That's fine. Assume the follow this and aren't doing anything blatantly dumb. Now you can skip asking, and them declaring this kind of stuff.

Roll-up secret room checks in the dungeon in advance (use the best stat in the party if need be). Now simply declare when such things are reached and encountered.

Do the same for traps (you may need to devise a fair means of determining who set off the trap when a search is failed). Consider that failure means somebody in the party set it off and is now making a Save to avoid it as part of discovery. This removes tedious hallway and room searching, as it is implied. Special traps (like the one under the idol they are sent to retrieve) would not be handled this way, just the generic room and hallway traps.

In the beginning of the game, except for special items, let players buy items from the PH themselves, and sell items for 50%. Hand-wave this as "you all stop for supplies before heading out"

A realistic dungeon/cavern will be sparsely populated, namely lots of spaces will be unoccupied. hand-wave this exploration as "you explore and pass through many chambers, finding nothing, until..." wherein you introduce the setup for the next encounter. You won't have the false-positive setup of several rooms to lull the players into a trap, but you also won't bore them.

If you auto-assume the players are exploring until they encounter something, make sure you also incorporate decision points that matter in the dungeon. A hallway fork that has clues of danger about it. This changes up the encounter types (effectively, the fork is the encounter).

If the players over-plan in a dangerous area, have a "random" encounter ready to move into their area to sound an alert or trigger a reaction. Always have some kind of deadline threat that implies the players have a limited time to decide. You may not have to bring it in, and it need not be actually based on time. Just make sure at the start of their planning session, they are advised (possibly via NPC) that urgency is required in their planning by virtue of something will happen if they tary.

If the players are actively attempting to solve your game problem, but are going the "wrong" way, don't punish them by making the game drag out in fruitless effort. Either inform them in-game that this way is wrong, bring in a new clue to redirect them, or move the objective to where they players are going.

The game should still have fast paced moments (combat, chases, etc), as well as slower, more thoughtful scenes of discussion, decision making, and problem solving

For the GM who likes to introduce complications based on mistakes the players make (aka screw the players on micro decision making), those methods should probably be abandoned at the micro scale. Let the PCs be heroic, or whatever. Screw them over at the macro scale. Sure, the party always has good tactics for camping and crawling. But do they handle politics well? Do they consider who they ally with carefully? Do they pay attention to the impact of who they kill, and who they turn into the authorities? Do they question who they do business with?

These methods may be a huge shift for some in how the game is played. But they will likely be fun and challenging, and make bettter use of game time.