Something that Needs More Consideration - Pacing

[pemerton]

As ExploderWizard mentioned up-thread, just because you - the GM - know there won't be encounters at night, does not mean the players know that.

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How is this a "needless" waste of time?

Part of the advantage of the table over MMOs and such is the ability, as a player, to do whatever, to investigate whatever. If the GM is trying to constrain that by putting limits on how much time s/he is willing to spend on certain actions, that is effectively putting the game closer to MMOs and such. Not a good thing.

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If it takes five minutes or five hours, so long as most of the table is engaged, it's all good.

I still don't agree. For example, it is possible for most of the table to be engaged in something that is not worth playing out. One example that I'm not myself familiar with, but that others have apparently experienced, is grind in 4e combat. One example that I am familiar with is dungeon-crawl style searching, marching orders, door opening procedures etc.

You are assuming that the reason that the players spend time on things like this is because they enjoy it. My own experience is that they spend time on it because they learned to play from the Moldvay Basic Set or 1st ed AD&D rulebooks, or among players who were familiar with those rulebooks, and that certain ways of playing the game are conventional or received wisdom. I've never finished a session and heard the players talking about the session higlight being the twenty minutes it took to resolve the looting of the bodies and searching of the room after the combat finished. Nevertheless they get sucked into playing out this stuff because they just see it as expected.

Like I said in my first post, I'm working on ways to just eliminate this stuff from my game (eg by having a lot of items and money be upgrades, or rewards from allies, rather than loot in the traditional sense, and also by following the 4e convention of allowing anyone to identify an item's properties out of combat). It's gradually working - and every half-hour saved in a 4-to-5 hour session is a reall payoff.

As for the wandering monster point, I'd rather do the watch order something like this: if an encounter is a result of a skill challenge, then the PC on watch is determined at part of the logic of resolving the skill check that led to the encounter; otherwise, just roll a die to see which PC is on watch, and perhaps allow one player to spend an action point, or a relevant utility power, to have their PC be the one who is on watch.

 

[Hussar]

I usually aim for about 2 to 3 scenes per hour. The slower pace can probably be somewhat explained by my preference for things to unfold naturally, and perhaps because of a tendency to spend a few minutes on dialog now and then.

Slower pace? This is actually faster than what I'm advocating. OTOH, I think I would love your game.

KM - yeah, ginormous combats are slow. Not quite sure how to resolve that one.

Gnomestew - You asked, "move on to what?" Well, the simplest answer would be, something that isn't this. Something different. I've been in groups where a shopping trip to get supplies for a journey could take over an hour of session time because the players were so paranoid that they felt they had to account for every single piton in the list.

Now, when I GM, when the shopping trip comes up, I say, ok, you guys spend x gold. Anything within reason under that X limit? You have it. It weighs 100 pounds. Move on.

Shopping goes from sixty minutes to sixty seconds. Any time a player says, "Hey, do we have ...?" I interrupt him with a "Yes" before he even finishes."

Shopping is not important. Whether you have fifteen or sixteen pitons is not important is a total waste of time. I simply do not care any more. I've played those games before and I no longer care for them.

So, the "shopping scene" where the party gears up A-Team style with theme music playing in the background is now a thirty second burp every six sessions.

Now, I would point out, that this is 100% MY STYLE. If you want a slower game, that's GROOVY. I'm not saying you're doing it wrong. IMO, I think your game would be better if you cut out what I consider to be trivia, but, that's only my opinion. If it works for your group, then fine. It no longer works for me.

And, of course, this is not a set in stone rule. There are going to be times when stuff takes longer. That happens. But, there's lots of things DM's can to do to make sure that it happens when it should happen, not when it shouldn't.

For example, prep beforehand. Even way back in the day, when I had large set piece battles, I would have a rough script of the actions of the bad guys over the first six or so rounds. I would have a round track pre-written when buffs would end. The scene in Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits, when the party enters a chamber with a mess of zombies and six drow - three wizards and three clerics, has a perfect example of this. The bad guys will almost certainly know the party is coming and have prepared for them.

In EX2 Beyond the Magic Mirror, in the final battle, there are dozens of different bad guys, all with different capabilities. The module details out in rough what the bad guys do round by round.

Something like that can make a huge difference in the pacing of combat. Instead of the DM sitting there trying to pick between a bajillion different options, he can take his time beforehand and select stuff that will likely work. May not be 100% the best thing to do, but, it's likely better than what he or she would pick without the time to cogitate.

I'm currently designing an adventure which features some very large combats. Because I'm using Maptools, I've taken a few minutes to make some macros that will do large numbers of die rolls very quickly.

Another thing is to use canned speeches - the infamous boxed text. I can get pretty tongue tied sometimes. While a boxed text might be bad, it's better than listening to me fumble around while I'm trying to say something. And, if you play on a VTT and your DM refuses to use voice chat, it helps him out when his typing skills are not exactly stellar. I had one DM who refused to pre-type anything, but could only type about 20 words per minute. GACK. It was actually one of the biggest reasons I quit the group. Frustration of staring at a blank screen while he typed up stuff one hunting peck at a time.

 

[pemerton]

I've been in groups where a shopping trip to get supplies for a journey could take over an hour of session time because the players were so paranoid that they felt they had to account for every single piton in the list.

This is exactly what I'm talking about! Very few players think this is inherently interesting - they only do it because the early D&D rulebooks told them this is how to play a fantasy RPG, and no one's ever pointed out that there are other ways to do it.

That said, I'm a little more hard-arsed (=traditional) than Hussar - in D&D I still have the players keep track of their cash, their sunrods and their pitons (for us, this much detail is part of playing D&D), but we have a couple of players who are quite happy to be delegated the quartermaster duties, and when the PCs get a chance to go shopping they deduct the coins and change the equipment lists.

That said, I rely on my archer PC to keep track of his arrows, and I have a feeling that his quiver is essentially infinite! Given that he's not one of the players who likes quatermastering, and his PC is completely hosed in combat without arrows, I have zero interest in policing this, let alone having him roleplay through the collection of his spent arrows from the bodies of his fallen foes after each combat!

 

[pemerton]

KM - yeah, ginormous combats are slow. Not quite sure how to resolve that one.

It depends a bit on your definition of "ginormous" - but one way to do it in 4e is to make liberal use of swarms.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Gnomestew

Say what now?

I will have a more cogent reply to your post - and others, since my last post in the thread - later, but I saw this and had to comment on it.

 

[Starfox]

Pacin gis an art. Different rules, gamemasters, and campaigng use different pacing to good effect. Sometimes, a single social scene can be worth spending hours on, sometimes it should be skipped with a few words. Sometimes, a journey can be a campaign, sometimes it is happens in a single sentence. No easy way to tell what is right when. But if in doubt, I try to err on the side of brevity.

What bothers me most is when the game system slows down pacing - action scenes should be short and intense, not whole-evening affairs.

I'm setting a kind of internal clock where any single element should never last more than an hour, and most should be about half that. In a three hour session (which is what I play), I should be able to get through about 5 "encounters" (I put the scare quotes there because encounter does not have to mean combat). Five or so fairly distinct scenes.

"You must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to Hussar again."

Hussar:

For everyone in the thread being AWESOME!

This feels a little cheap tough

 

[ExploderWizard]

I still don't agree. For example, it is possible for most of the table to be engaged in something that is not worth playing out. One example that I'm not myself familiar with, but that others have apparently experienced, is grind in 4e combat. One example that I am familiar with is dungeon-crawl style searching, marching orders, door opening procedures etc.

If something is not worth playing out then the table full of players shouldn't be engaged with it. Who decides what is interesting enough to explore through play if not the people at the table?

You are assuming that the reason that the players spend time on things like this is because they enjoy it. My own experience is that they spend time on it because they learned to play from the Moldvay Basic Set or 1st ed AD&D rulebooks, or among players who were familiar with those rulebooks, and that certain ways of playing the game are conventional or received wisdom. I've never finished a session and heard the players talking about the session higlight being the twenty minutes it took to resolve the looting of the bodies and searching of the room after the combat finished. Nevertheless they get sucked into playing out this stuff because they just see it as expected.

So you are saying that exploration based play isn't really enjoyable and that the only reason someone would bother with it is because they were used to it? I have been enjoying the exploration of the game environment for 30 years just because I don't know any better?

Like I said in my first post, I'm working on ways to just eliminate this stuff from my game (eg by having a lot of items and money be upgrades, or rewards from allies, rather than loot in the traditional sense, and also by following the 4e convention of allowing anyone to identify an item's properties out of combat). It's gradually working - and every half-hour saved in a 4-to-5 hour session is a reall payoff.

Im glad those rules and methods are helping to provide you with the style of game you enjoy. In my opinion these techniques bring to much artificial gamism into the fictional gamespace. The things you seem to enjoy cutting out of your games are the important details that make the the game world feel like another place as opposed to just a stage for particular scenes.

As for the wandering monster point, I'd rather do the watch order something like this: if an encounter is a result of a skill challenge, then the PC on watch is determined at part of the logic of resolving the skill check that led to the encounter; otherwise, just roll a die to see which PC is on watch, and perhaps allow one player to spend an action point, or a relevant utility power, to have their PC be the one who is on watch.

Huh? Who is on watch and when is strictly a player decision. If and when an encounter occurs is largely a DM thing ( which can be impacted by previous player activity).

This also removes an element of PC to PC roleplay. We have fun deciding in character who gets stuck with the middle watch shift.

This is exactly what I'm talking about! Very few players think this is inherently interesting - they only do it because the early D&D rulebooks told them this is how to play a fantasy RPG, and no one's ever pointed out that there are other ways to do it.

Not everyone finds the same play elements to be of equal interest. Much like rules themselves, players will gloss over elements that they don't think will add anything to the game.

That said, I'm a little more hard-arsed (=traditional) than Hussar - in D&D I still have the players keep track of their cash, their sunrods and their pitons (for us, this much detail is part of playing D&D), but we have a couple of players who are quite happy to be delegated the quartermaster duties, and when the PCs get a chance to go shopping they deduct the coins and change the equipment lists.

Nothing wrong with this. Let the people that want to do that go for it. The same goes for mapping or keeping a journal of the group's activities.

That said, I rely on my archer PC to keep track of his arrows, and I have a feeling that his quiver is essentially infinite! Given that he's not one of the players who likes quatermastering, and his PC is completely hosed in combat without arrows, I have zero interest in policing this, let alone having him roleplay through the collection of his spent arrows from the bodies of his fallen foes after each combat!

Why stop there? Who needs to carry weapons? Just have whatever anyone needs to make an attack appear as needed and vanish afterwards.

A lot of basic needs can drive adventure hooks but only if they are important in the campaign. Who needs to follow a clue that may lead to an oasis if the party can wander in the desert forever and never need water?

Running low on ammunition while still being harried by enemies inspires desperate plans to aquire some or find creative ways to deal with foes.

If the PC's are all Rambo with endless M-60 belts the world feels cheap and fake.

 

[Desdichado]

So you are saying that exploration based play isn't really enjoyable and that the only reason someone would bother with it is because they were used to it? I have been enjoying the exploration of the game environment for 30 years just because I don't know any better?

Unless you happen to be one of his players, then I don't know how you could have come to that conclusion.

The other overlooked point in much of this discussion is that the GM is also a player, and it's not his role to just sit there dutifully allowing the players to wander about doing whatever they want to do, regardless of how interesting he thinks it is. A lot of times as GM, I move stuff along because I'm not interested in dealing with it.

Luckily, my group is mostly composed of like-minded players, so I'm not running roughshod over someone else's favorite part of the game or anything.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The other overlooked point in much of this discussion is that the GM is also a player, and it's not his role to just sit there dutifully allowing the players to wander about doing whatever they want to do, regardless of how interesting he thinks it is. A lot of times as GM, I move stuff along because I'm not interested in dealing with it.

This is the top reason that I refuse to deal with magic item shopping during sessions anymore. Left unchecked, players will spend far too much time looking at trinkets and goodies leaving the DM twiddling his thumbs.
If the players want to spend time chatting with NPC's, wandering and exploring odd corners, or just drinking & gambling its all good because they are interacting with the world and the DM has something to do.

 

[S'mon]

I guess I'm pretty much the anti-Hussar on this (yet again). It's true I don't like players to plan endlessly and not do anything. But as long as they're interacting with the environment, I'm happy. I just GM'd a 4 hour text-chat City State of the Invincible Overlord session that basically involved shopping and talking to NPCs, and I had a great time. The CSIO strongly supports this style of heavy-immersion play because everything is detailed, just walking the streets is an adventure.