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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7123015" data-attributes="member: 7006">[MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] (and Angry DM) are right that one of the hardest things to make players feel (in a potential negative way) is the passage of time.  Letting time get away from you, or using it for things other than what matters most in the task at hand can be very difficult.  As  [MENTION=6792135]Tersival[/MENTION] said above... if the party arrived at the BBEG and it has a bunch of minions in front of it... was that because the BBEG always had those minions, or is it because they dilly-dallied through the dungeon after letting that one enemy escape?  Players can of course guess whether things are happening due to them letting time get away from them... but it's usually just that, a guess.  And even if the DM is quite explicit to them in saying "Nope, these monsters are hear because you did X, Y, and Z" (which we all know is more of a meta-game explanation for the situation than anything else)... the players don't tend to feel the tension in the moment as they see the results of letting time get away from them.Using a dice pool such as this... or heck, even just using the Jenga tower mechanic of Dread itself... it puts the passage of time front and center so everyone can see it.  They see the pool get bigger or the tower begin to wobble, and they KNOW that stuff is happening and is going to hit the fan.  There is a tangibility to the tension.Now the biggest question mark though, is exactly WHEN that tension is released and WHAT happens when it does.   And that (as  [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] points out) is one more place where the DM has to think on their feet and come up with something important enough to hopefully be a deterrent... knowing full well that you might roll that '1' or have the tower fall during a rather undramatic point.  It requires a DM to really be on their game.  Making the release of tension actually something of consequence, and being able to figure out what that is even when it occurs at an inopportune time.Some DMs might be great at it.  But others, when put on the spot like that, might end up coming up with nothing better than indeed your prototypical "random monster encounter".  So this dice pool for time is not a guaranteed mechanic for all tables.  But then again, what mechanic is?  Every rule, mechanic, or variant could be the holy grail for one table, and a total waste of time for another.  And at least to me... the visualization of something ephemeral like the passage of time that the players do not experience while their PCs do can be a huge boon.  And it might be a very effective way to let the players experience something like it.</blockquote>

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