They are approaching the adventure and plot so sloooooowly

[SweeneyTodd]

I don't think anybody's saying you're a bad DM. I was wondering why have so much overland travel, when you're really jazzed to get to something and had to wait two and a half months for it. You answered -- you really like the feel of lengthy overland exploration and travel. Makes sense to me. Players were fine with it. It's all good.

It's just an interesting situation to discuss, no judgement on your group. A character quirk about not liking ships and a DM preference for playing out overland travel sets up the next five sessions. That's like thirty hours of play. It's just interesting to wonder, if the cards had been on the table, whether the group would have chosen the same action.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Hey, I certainly didn't mean to impy that! It's just when anyone presents a scenario, we're likely to try and solve it, and of course its never an easy thing to do.

And when it comes to them not wanting to take the ship - that's a very valid reason.

Myself, I tend to go between two paths on this kind of thing. Which path I choose depends on what I'm trying to convey. If I want to convey the challenge of the journey, I'll go ahead and do the overland journey, played out relatively in full. If the journey is not so important, I'll hand-wave it in order to get on to the main thing.

As I get older and have more time between sessions, I find that I want the PC's to get to the key areas faster in order to keep things moving. If I were 20, and playing my campaign every week like I did then, I'd play it out longer.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I also think its a truism that when estimating how long it will take your players to do something, figure out the longest possible amount of time, and then multiply it by two.

 

[Psion]

It took me a while to adjust to my current group. I figured that where before I might have had 12 steps in a quest, now I have to cut it down to about 6 -- either offloading the extra plot points on NPCs (Great, now that I have the dingus, I can consult the sage of floorwacks, which leads us to the next point on the quest...)

And you know: the difference is primarily around a single player that left.

 

[Dagger75]

I expected the PCs

Theres the problem right there. Never expect.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

It's kind of weird how any thread I start about my game gets into a discussion of how I'm probably a bad DM.

Well, ya know, if you weren't such a bad DM in the first place, you wouldn't have these problems ...

 

[haakon1]

If you want them to go ahead and get there, why not just do it? Seriously. Did they tell you they wanted to play out the whole overland journey?

Nod. Fast-forward (minus x-money for their travels), mostly fast-forward with a few key encounters, or change the adventure on them, with something on the way.

Also, if the dungeon is not a totally static thing, have it metastize (sp?). As in, if the orcs were going to overrun the village, oh it is so overrun by now. They might meet some of the survivors on like day 40, who have come 20 days the other way.

 

[haakon1]

My plan is to pre-script the travel and run a highlight reel, possibly with a 'random' encounter midway to clarify the hazards of walking about the country. However, I want to be able to finish off the module in one session.. and it has 5 combat encounters. Thats a hell of alot of combat for a 6 hour game. At most split into 2 sessions, as there are two distinct parts to the module.

I often pre-roll the random encounters, and the weather . . . makes for a better game if you go a long time between sessions and get rusty at winging 3e.

 

[MacMathan]

As long as you all enjoyed the travel sessions then all is well.

As far as waiting on the plot, I have been there as a DM and it is hard to keep the secrets bottled up

As far as players remembering plot points I usually will provide them with a summary sheet of things they have learned, some of which may or may not be true, to help refresh their memories once they reach the right area. I find it cuts down on frustartion for everyone.

 

[Soel]

I can empathize, Quasqueton!

One of my problems is, if I let certain plot elements stay unrevealed for too long, I actually start to re-think them, and sometimes completely change them, thinking the original just wasn't so hot...