Beware The Silent Roleplaying Game Killer! - GM Tips

that game went so quickly i can't believe it's it's been four hours of gameplay i mean all that all of that happened in just two hours how how i mean my my how really how because my players would have taken a week to get just there and we're talking about i don't know how what are we doing so we're talking about pace in your games it's the silent game killer how are you handling it and if your game is dying this might be why [Music] greetings and welcome to this week's video my name is guy and we're talking about something that no one really thinks much about but we've all experienced it game pace this is a throwback by the way to one of the very first videos that we've released on this channel but i took that and i mulled over it and updated it and said this is what you're getting so sessions that don't seem to go anywhere that drag out or sessions that flash past so quickly we barely notice the time how do we control this experience how do we how do we capture that immersion and not the drudgery this week's sponsor is dungeon fog if you don't know who they are check out the full details at the end of the video if you do know who they are then you know that they are awesome we love you dungeon fog when we think of pace i'm not talking how fast the characters can run around in a single round i'm talking about physical time ticking over and whether or not we as players of the game that's including the gm experience that time if we don't notice it then the pace is fast if we notice it then the pace is slow so this video is broken into two parts the first one is quick and easy solutions stuff that you can apply to your game tonight for example the second part is a little bit more complex but you can master it and if you do i think you'll be a really really great gm so part one we're all in the same burning boat we really are pace hits us from two vectors as far as i can tell it hits us from the gm side and it hits us from the player's side i had a gm a few months ago who was adamant who is adamant it was totally up to the players to set the pace of the game i believe in my opinion that this is complete rubbish and here is why the players can slow the pace of the game down in three ways so trying to talk to uh one another and just going around in circles and they just talk to death they never actually come up with a plan not knowing their character's abilities and skills and having to pause to look them up all the time i think i got plus five i don't remember not reading the intention of the group and instead of acting doing nothing i i don't do nothing oh wait i just wait who is responsible for fixing this the gm or the players both are responsible and here is how example number one when the group has discussed a plan disagreed discussed disagreed gone around and around and around as the player as a player the character should take a stand your character should just say right enough i will follow your plan or i will follow your plan but we need to follow the plan as a gm once the argument has done a circle once or maybe twice you interrupt them with an npc who burst in my lord something has happened an incident the wall collapses because there's an ogre on the other side of it something that forces them to either adopt their idea or to ignore everything they were ranting and raving about and just to act alternatively both player or gm could say guys stop i'm stopping this game we're going in circles we must make a decision and we need to move on it now please this is not role playing this is now just arguing and i think that's a very important thing to bear in mind is that both sides the gm and the players can do that when it comes to characters not knowing their character abilities and skills this is incredibly frustrating for everybody involved again though as a player what do you do to fix it well just know your freaking abilities and your skills and stuff read the bloody book if you have a bad memory or that sort of thing make notes for yourself don't slow everybody else down because you're too lazy to invest in actually trying to move the game forward okay there are online options that you can use that there's there are zero excuses these days right really there are no excuses as a gm you're most powerful tool is to it's not knowing the rules or to making up a solution on the fly because what that does is that enables the player to remain ignorant all you do is if a player is delaying as you say you find out i'll come back to you then you move on to the other player characters and you engage with them you get them to do their thing once you've cycled through all of the other pcs and then you get back to that player who's still going if they're still looking up something you say your character doesn't act this round because they're confused they're lost in their own thoughts you can act next round so start looking up what you want to do next round now yeah i have done that a few times i have done that too many times as a matter of fact players want to do something different and then they they just don't do players who fail to see the bigger picture or who want to act alone that kind of splits the party up there's nothing wrong with that a split party is a fun party to play with i really enjoyed because you can then bounce between each group leaving the last group on a moment or cliffhanger and that sort of thing it really really really works the rogue is trying to break into a building you have to make some stealth checks and just before the outcome a god comes to stand right next to them they freak out and you go and the god we'll come back to next next next next next next okay so that could be really fun that keeps the pace moving along very rapidly if you jump out just at the critical moment in the event of a player declaring their character will do nothing or just wait well you nod and then you ignore them until you have dealt with everybody else and then you come back to them and say is your character doing anything really characters still not doing anything okay and then off you go just ignore them for the rest of the round don't spend time trying to drag something out of them they obviously don't want to do anything as a player you might want to engage or help your fellow player characters if they're gonna go if they seem frustrated or if they seem disinterested here is a chance for you to jump in as a great player and interact with them and say hey i want you to come with me i need your expertise that sort of thing i mean that's that's what you can do part two welcome to part two this is where you need to step up your game if you want to step up the entire game how do you do it how do you manipulate time and plot to keep the pacing going well it's easy in theory and tricky in practice and that is what you have to do you have to practice i had to do it and it takes a long time so maybe i'm a little bit slow but it does take long time so the party is doing something let's say they're trying to cross a raging river um the river is swollen with rain there we go you've done your job you've described the river the broken trees the remains of a bridge that hang like a skeleton over the cold frosted waters all that wonderful stuff okay but the party has reached a stalemate they don't know how to proceed one member has gone looking for another crossing lower down two members are setting up camp because they want a long rest and a fourth member is just waiting the game has stalled the one going alone declares uh once i'm out of earshot i'm going back to town i i need to do some shopping what do you do i mean your game your game has grounds to a halt to camp set up nothing shopping okay now you hadn't planned anything because you intended them to build a bridge using the old trees on the side of the river and then to cross it or you know there was there was something but you didn't didn't realize that they were just going to stop because they've either got disinterested or they tired of this this thing so anyway because of the actions of the pc the decisions that you have made you have been now now you find yourself been in the situation of not having anything to do now you could throw in a random encounter but that doesn't get them across the river they're just going to fight that and then they're going to probably take a long rest after the encounter because they they did a fight right um or they're going to fight it and go oh it's too dang no we're getting someone else all right so so that's not going to work so an encounter won't work the river is suddenly drying up well that's weird why would that happen your solution lies in understanding your plot structure your plot structure so we talk about on this channel we talk about the three-act structure a beginning a middle and an end and we also talk about the five-step process uh which has a similar kind of of structure and each of those steps is broken down into its own little micro steps a beginning a middle and an end so that means that on average you have nine periods during your game let's call them markers you have nine markers to every one adventure um on the five step approach which i've spoken about as well each of those steps would have a beginning a middle and an end and so that would give you 15 markers whichever one resonates with you more either one of them you've got 9 markers or 15 markers so you should be able to keep track of where you are what marker you are at fairly easily and pacing is about how often those markers trigger the bridge event that you've landed in which one of the markers is it where is it meant to be is it is it part of the middle marker of a journey in other words this is the the middle section and they still have yet to get to the conclusion is it meant to be the introduction to a journey by looking at the marker that you're on and which marker is coming next you can begin to find a solution so let us say that the let's say uh a bigger part let's say that the bridge scene occurs in the second act of your adventure or on the five step that's roughly where discover plot is not plot so let's let's somewhere around there marker number five somewhere somewhere somewhere there but it was meant to be an introduction for that particular act it was meant to introduce the characters to the the point the next marker let's say that is that is that is coming up okay so we go all right all right all right so if this was meant to be uh well hang on what was the middle marker meant to be the discover a tomb of a long dead king and must journey through it okay so they were supposed to go they find the bridge and then they get from the bridge to this tomb this thing that we're supposed to be finding now your original plan was that once the pieces had crossed the river they find a landslide because of all those storms that you set up and an entrance to a lost tomb quickly you realize if the landslide happens on this side of the river it gets the pieces across the river in a hurry and into the tomb it solves two problems so by looking at the next marker you can pull from it and just move it a little bit earlier however the one pc has drifted away and wouldn't see the landslide and also the landslide couldn't happen because you described this area as flat and only on the other side are the hills because you knew you needed a landslide later on so you could throw in some earth elementals maybe they've been disturbed by the campfire that the two pcs are building or the landslide that happens later on they've been disturbed by that they could attack briefly but the moment one of them takes damage um let's say something along those lines it then dives into the river itself and causes a slight a slight landslide or a disruption in the water flow and the pcs can get across the bridge it's not a bad idea you're linking from the next marker backwards both of these have they're both pretty straightforward and they're pretty obvious so what if the river suddenly explodes because two massive water beasts are engaged in fighting their bellows are so loud that all pcs hear it even the one gone shopping the two monsters fight breathing massive amounts of frozen water at each other and in their battle they change the flow of the river or they reduce it or they freeze it the pcs can now sneak across those are basic solutions okay so look at the marker that's coming up drag some inspiration from that into what is currently happening now the more advanced solutions that you can do is to take a step beyond the next marker what is the next act what's the next major step what happens after they get to the temple so according to your plan the pcs would find an amulet of extreme power and that later on a cult would try to steal it from them so act three is the cult stealing from them if your pcs are unsure of what to do as in this example it means that they're not really getting your adventure or they have no idea how to get your adventure you've been too secretive about the tomb they don't really know where they're going so they have no drive this saps your pacing considerably if your pcs are lost if they don't know what to do they're not going to be doing anything so all that you need to do is try and pull your your acts closer together shuffle things around so have a look at this um in our example of the cultists in act three who are then going to try to steal the eminent that the pieces found in the tomb in act two if the pcs never cross the damn bridge the whole adventure ends they don't find the emits so so here's what you can do get the cultists to arrive at the same river with the pcs but now instead of the cult of stealing the artifact they try to enslave the pcs or maybe they hire the pcs there is a temple on the other side of the river go into it find an amulet everything is yours except for the amulet which is house or they just attack uh it's ours the temple is ours you'll not get that amulet seeding that there's an amulet there and there's some wonderful combat going on i mean it's it's absolutely brilliant and then we discover that there are cultists that there's an amulet it just makes your story even better what now happens is your third act though is missing something because you've got the cultists right um well no you now just change it instead of it being the cult members who you've now already used you replace it with a dragon or a gnome collector a vampire lord take your pick your plan remains intact your structure remains intact you've just changed around bits and pieces and changed the name of the thing at the end now i know this is it's really easy to come up with when you are just sitting and you are just playing well when you're sitting thinking about it in session however your brain can sometimes fail you and you're like oh yeah what should you take away i mean what can you add what can you do the most important thing is that what is totally sacrificable is your plot structure your structure pull from one to the other and and just swap them around to keep the story going that's absolutely critical another thing that i would suggest you do and this is simply based on driving the timing forward is have a clock that you can look at just off above the heads of the the characters and then you can reference that clock and go okay we've spent an hour we've done an hour an hour of just dialogue i need to kick this game up i need something to happen so you might need to inject something pull from a different marker just add in a random combat i mean that's that's really really how it can work now your group might be different you might have you might have five players and you go okay and every in every hour i want a combat and i want something social okay well after an hour of social you need to have not an hour of combat dear god that's going to slow down but you need to have a combat in there now obviously if your players are having a great time and everyone is engaged screw the clocks but i find that seldom lasts for more than an hour or two your players they wind down so test yourself the next game watch the time and trigger an event every 20 minutes switch it up from social to combat see what it does to your pacing once you get used to that once you kind of get used to that rhythm of going okay i need to add in something i need to do something then then you just just punch it up then you can go okay 40 minutes 40 minutes 40 minutes pretty much it's tough but you have to practice and then your way to practice is to do it anyway i think that that's very very very important now usually i reserve this for the end but it also happens to fit in this week's topic so dungeon fog is the battle map maker that i have used since they launched i really really really enjoy their their map making and they actually help with pacing um well to be fair any map helps with pacing right provided that you can do it quickly and that's one of the things that i like about dungeon fog and that i i mean i i've done this i've done this before a live show and people have watched me doing it it's build a map in 10 minutes before my live game and it actually looked pretty good it didn't look like i'd only done it in in 10 minutes so that's a really really really good indicator in terms of if you don't have any time dungeon fog is really good at saving you time i mean the assets and and miniatures all of those things should never slow down your pacing you should never sit there going i've got the many i've just got to find it in my 10 000 minutes no no don't do that don't don't don't let the players wait send them for a bio break send them for drinks get them going somewhere just don't stop to fix something that that that that slows things down anyway that's it from me for this week what do you do to make your games faster um i hope that you hit the subscribe button to make your games go faster that that might that might work if people are bored if they're searching for things to do or if they're just doing mundane and dull stuff you need to improve your pacing that is the bottom line and that's what you've got to do um so yes um hopefully that will that will help you uh a little word from our sponsors dungeon fog this month has released their new asset pack ancient river sites there's some cool new props in there i'm always blown away by the way with the responsiveness of the dungeon fog team to add in props that the community ask for so the community has this they have a discord and you can go and say i want this prop i want that prop i want that prop and when they release a pack sometimes they've dropped in a few of the packs that the people have asked for which i think is brilliant and they do it almost every every second month i suppose anyway so that's why you would get a subscription as you get all of those things on a very regular basis i truly truly think it's worth it now if you do think it's worth it use the code great gm great gm uh and uh you'll get a discount when you sign up with dungeon fog um give them a week give them a month see what it's like i promise you you won't be disappointed anyway until next time i wish you and yours the very happiest of gaming [Music] i'm going to cry [Music] streaming [Music] this is the moment where he realizes that there's a little bit of panic going on [Music] wow okay hello everybody i'm going to turn the chat on really quickly so that i can see you all laughing at me

Channel: How to be a Great GM

Views: 116,722

Keywords: creating the campaign, campaign creator, how to be a great game master, how to gm, great gm, campaign creation, dnd campaign, dnd campaign design, dnd campaign ideas, rpg campaign ideas, role playing campaign, campaign design, running the game, game master guide, dm tips, pace in a rpg, time in a rpg, fast rpg game, slow rpg game, boring rpg game, tedious rpg game, slow ttrpg game, slow roleplaying games, fun rpg game, fun tabletop games, pace in roleplaying games

Id: IPiL6TIDTKo

Length: 20min 43sec (1243 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020