Hey all,

I have been dreaming up a bit of a scenario to run for my group but I wanted to add a time mechanic to the game. Something to pressure the players and instill that sense that we need to do this and we need to do this now. I know I could simply do this by having increasingly harder checks as time moves in the game, and maybe that is the best way to do it. I have been looking at other systems that do it well like dread, for example. If you have never played dread its done with a jenga tower. Rather than rolling dice you remove a block for every risky action you take and if the tower falls you die. It is primarily a horror based system but can be used for other things. If you were try and mesh these systems together how would you do it? I love the visual sense of urgency the tower offers. Maybe during the scenario rolled threat or failure could be a mandatory or optional pull. Despair could be 2 or three pulls. If the tower falls maybe the target escapes or the PCs get some lasting critical injury. (killing a PC in this systems seems far to harsh for this)

Ideas?

Add Setbacks for every round/check etc.

I forget which published adventure it is, but there is one that has a countdown timer. Each "tick" can cover multiple rounds, but is effectively an encounter area. When you move around the ship, progress by 1 tick. If they take too long (as determined by you) progress 1 tick. As each tick progresses, the ship is slowly breaking apart, and you describe the various problems. On tick 1, the ship shakes and shudders. On tick 2, The bridge announces abandon ship. On tick 3, main power goes out, and you fight by auxilary lighting. On tick 4 an adjacent section explosively decompresses. On tick 5, you hear the engines shut down completely. On tick 6, you hear emergency calls from sickbay that a plasma fire has trapped 20 crew...etc.

Just keep a big die visible to the players, advance to keep track of the ticks. Its up to you whether to tell them in advance how long they have. (i.e. on Tick 2, loudspeaker announces "Lord Vader will land in 3 ticks. Report to your posts.")

Have you considered adding the timing urgency in a meta-way? Perhaps you could use an egg timer (I have a set of cheap hourglasses) that I can set on the table to provide a visual representation; when one of those expires, I could flip it, add another difficulty die, and keep going.

I like your Dread idea, too, it definitely adds to the anxiety!

I forget which published adventure it is, but there is one that has a countdown timer. Each "tick" can cover multiple rounds, but is effectively an encounter area. When you move around the ship, progress by 1 tick. If they take too long (as determined by you) progress 1 tick. As each tick progresses, the ship is slowly breaking apart, and you describe the various problems. On tick 1, the ship shakes and shudders. On tick 2, The bridge announces abandon ship. On tick 3, main power goes out, and you fight by auxilary lighting. On tick 4 an adjacent section explosively decompresses. On tick 5, you hear the engines shut down completely. On tick 6, you hear emergency calls from sickbay that a plasma fire has trapped 20 crew...etc.

Just keep a big die visible to the players, advance to keep track of the ticks. Its up to you whether to tell them in advance how long they have. (i.e. on Tick 2, loudspeaker announces "Lord Vader will land in 3 ticks. Report to your posts.")

It's from the Age of Rebellion adventure that comes with the game master's screen and it comes off very effective. I used a big white board labeled 1-10 and as they moved around the ship I progressed a marker over the numbers. The player's imagination will add a level of urgency.

I once ran a bomb disposal game. players had 120mins before the bombs went off. so I brought a cheap countdown clock and left it running where everybody could see.

OK playing an action takes more time than RL but you hand wave traveling so it kind of evens out.

in true movie style they succeeded with only a few seconds left (although I did stretch the last bit out a little )

Depends how big your scenario is - is it a full session? A single encounter?

If it's smaller than a full session, use the rules that already exist for structured gameplay, with a certain number of rounds before X happens. Perhaps some successful actions can extend that limit, but some actions might decrease it.

I once ran a bomb disposal game. players had 120mins before the bombs went off. so I brought a cheap countdown clock and left it running where everybody could see.

OK playing an action takes more time than RL but you hand wave traveling so it kind of evens out.

in true movie style they succeeded with only a few seconds left (although I did stretch the last bit out a little )

I ran Starfall as a New Year's Eve party game, and joked with the players that they had until midnight to escape the ship.

They made it to their shuttle a minute or two before the New Year, so I used that time for them to describe firing up their shuttle. As the clock rolled over I interrupted them with the ship blooming in a fiery explosion in space, using violent gestures and vocalizing sound effects, after a moment of silence I describe their shuttle emerging from the blast.

I could not have hoped for the timing being any better; I had not expected it to work out so well.

Put the players in a room fulling with hydrogen sulfide and tell them to hurry it up.

Not that I did not say player characters .

A technique I learned from the new Conan RPG is when players are hesitating or procrastinating flip or threaten to flip a Destiny Point over to the Dark Side. It really galvanises them. ​

I randomly flip Dark Side points quite often! Often times it's because of something going on in the background (a cutaway scene that happens in the "movie" of our game but which the players don't see), but sometimes it's just for giggles to make them worried and to get them moving.

It's great, you should try it!

It's a technique I'm fond of too. In the first session we ran (Basic Escape from Mos Shuuta since I was working with newbies, and I'm a newbie GM too) one of the PCs put his foot in it with the spaceport administrator so I quietly flipped a destiny point and when they asked responded with a smile of "you'll see..." then when the mad rush from storm troopers was there another group turned up blocking off part of their escape. As they were told it was the consequence of the destiny point they've been very cautious about it and I can use it to build up a bit of tension. I just repeat a smile and "you'll see" and they're putty in my hands.

That said there was an interesting 4th, 5th and 6th wall breaker when the Mirialan thief decided she'd flip it back and try to "charm" the GM. It was such good out of the box thinking I let them off for a little bit and gave them a bit of a discount at the next merchant encounter!

I like the Dread Jenga-tower interactive aspect in theory but as someone who is tasked, in real life, with creating products that can be accessed by the disabled, I find it problematic. Or to put it another way, if I was having a klutzy kind of day, I wouldn't want to be playing Jenga.

Several of the options listed by previous posters are great options. I typically use some combination of:

• tasks get harder each round
• complications are introduced on failures that make it harder to complete the next task
• the PCs only have so many rounds to complete a task

Not to be too reductionist but FFG SW is pretty much built for what you want to do without the hassle of introducing a Jenga tower.