I have been noticing that in a few of the games I have played in as a player the pacing of the game really sticks out to me as something that some GM's handle well, and others seem to struggle with or have a style which maybe isn't congruent with the players' attention. For me I think of pacing as being in one of four modes (that happen at different times in a session. not just one for whole game):

• Time Compression: Skipping ahead/back in time to get to a point in the narrative that is more important or relevant to the action/story. Used to skip tedious or uninteresting sections of the narrative.
• Fast: This is a sparse narrative description style used when the characters are moving through a scene as a transition to another scene or a more important part of that same scene. An example would be describing characters coming into a town and giving a few details of what they see but not giving details of possible interactions so that PCs will move to the point in the scene where something significant can happen. Sometimes players will switch Fast to the next mode (Slow) in order to gain information or to explore some point of description.
• Slow (Normal): This is the pace at which narration hits a balance between description and movement through the scene. The GM is usually giving details which are meant to be explored by the characters. A sudden combat usually occurs from Slow and thus jars the group into Crawl mode. Dialogue normally occurs at Slow.
• Crawl (Combat): This is the slowest mode of pacing and it involves great detail and ability to explore detail. Because Combat generally occurs at this pace, it is the pace that most players associate with action in the game space, and see it as the sign that something significant is happening. Some GMs make the mistake of using this pace too much and begin to trigger sensory adaptation in the players, or in other words the players begin to tune out as the GM indulges in describing the environment too much, or tries to portray the game in a minute-to-minute style.

Do you purposely use these modes or others in your game? How do you keep the time moving in your game so that you best keep the player's attention without going too fast or too slow?

Flexible is my mode)) whatever fits the story/players in each particular moment is the best.

If I feel that the players are tired/disengaged/bored I change pace to speed things up and, vice versa, if things get tense and interesting I slow down to let everyone enjoy the moment.

Some of our sessions (2-3 hours in average) can cover days or even weeks of in-game time; others - just an hour or so.

I think this system works perfectly in this sense - less mechanics, more story.

I definitely use them all.

I'll artificially accelerate the pace when the PCs are getting bogged down with unnecessary minutia (i.e. "What should we use to jam this door open? A rock? A piece of rebar?"). I'll slow it down to escalate dramatic tension (i.e. The PCs are chasing a target through a crowded ecumenopolis and, thus, roll dice to overcome obstacles like cars, pedestrians, a runaway hot dog cart, etc.).

The trick is to pay attention to your players' reactions. If they seem bored, pick up the pace so they get called on more. If they're really into a scene, let them go with it for as long as they want. Some of the best gaming moments I've had have come from off-the-cuff interactions with NPCs.

I think that the pay attention to the players rule I a good one. You can tell what level of engagement you are getting if you but pay attention. I have been a player in many games (and GM too if I'm honest) where this reaction from the player is ignored because the GM is really excited to detail the whole place soup to nuts and maybe even wrote the description up ahead of time. I'm not saying it can't work, just saying that I think it's a good idea to avoid being self-indulgent where pacing is concerned.

Maybe I can ask you guys what you think it is that identifies that good moment of incidental interaction from time wasted while PCs stall the scene by talking to NPCs of no consequence or look for details that aren't there?

18 hours ago, Archlyte said:

I think that the pay attention to the players rule I a good one.

Is this really a "rule", or just what's expected of being a GM? And do you really need this taxonomy? Isn't pacing and flow an organic process adjusted as necessary?

43 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Is this really a "rule", or just what's expected of being a GM? And do you really need this taxonomy? Isn't pacing and flow an organic process adjusted as necessary?

It seems to fit into the idea of a "formula for EotE" games, that's for sure. That should be a table rule, though, along with "don't be a jerk" and "show up clean" and whatnot, but I can see why some folks would want to codify that. I agree with you that pacing is organic and fluid depending on many circumstances, but I also agree that this is one of the most challenging skills for GMs to master.

53 minutes ago, themensch said:

I agree with you that pacing is organic and fluid depending on many circumstances, but I also agree that this is one of the most challenging skills for GMs to master.

Agree that it's challenging, but I'm not sure over-defining helps. I tend to run "running combats", which presumably slots in somewhere between "Crawl" and "Slow", so the taxonomy doesn't help me. And on that note...

I also don't like the descriptive terms. If combats are "Crawls", or dialogues are "Slow", who would want to engage in them? Those should be the most exciting parts of the session, the parts where information is gathered and revealed, tables turned, fates written, and foreshadowing becomes tangible. Time Compression is when things are wrapped up, wounds are licked, finances arranged, beer is cracked and pizza ordered, and, in my world at least, the shopping is done.

1 hour ago, whafrog said:

Agree that it's challenging, but I'm not sure over-defining helps.

I agree with all your points, but this is the key thing I wanted to elevate. I figure everyone's going to find their own way in life, but I am hard-pressed to find a gaming situation where this level of granularity is useful. To each their own!

On ‎11‎/‎9‎/‎2017 at 8:26 AM, whafrog said:

Agree that it's challenging, but I'm not sure over-defining helps. I tend to run "running combats", which presumably slots in somewhere between "Crawl" and "Slow", so the taxonomy doesn't help me. And on that note...

I also don't like the descriptive terms. If combats are "Crawls", or dialogues are "Slow", who would want to engage in them? Those should be the most exciting parts of the session, the parts where information is gathered and revealed, tables turned, fates written, and foreshadowing becomes tangible. Time Compression is when things are wrapped up, wounds are licked, finances arranged, beer is cracked and pizza ordered, and, in my world at least, the shopping is done.

Well for me I like to know what a throwout bearing is if I'm going to change a clutch. I think that for many people analysis is annoying, but for me it is energizing. TTRPGs have that unavoidable truth that combat (especially when you use rolled Initiative) slows down play for most groups. That is unless the GM is always at a slow pace. Dice have to be rolled, books consulted, etc. If you have streamlined that to the point where it runs super fast then that's just awesome in my book.

On ‎11‎/‎9‎/‎2017 at 9:36 AM, themensch said:

I agree with all your points, but this is the key thing I wanted to elevate. I figure everyone's going to find their own way in life, but I am hard-pressed to find a gaming situation where this level of granularity is useful. To each their own!

Yeah time is fleeting and I have to maximize it. I wish that weren't the case but it is.

On 11/9/2017 at 11:26 AM, whafrog said:

I also don't like the descriptive terms. If combats are "Crawls", or dialogues are "Slow", who would want to engage in them? Those should be the most exciting parts of the session, the parts where information is gathered and revealed, tables turned, fates written, and foreshadowing becomes tangible. Time Compression is when things are wrapped up, wounds are licked, finances arranged, beer is cracked and pizza ordered, and, in my world at least, the shopping is done.

I don't find them inappropriate descriptors when talking about pacing. Even the dumbest sugar-and-caffeine-fueled summer action movies take breaks from the action by slowing the pace of the story. I've found that when my games are high-tension, all the time, my players begin to shut down. The people at my table are fine with parts of the game moving at more of a crawl if the crawl is interesting to them and it seems that the game is still moving in forward direction.

Yeah I was able to use this language in talking to the GMs of a few games (of varying genres and systems) so that I could give them feedback on times when I felt the game was dragging and not because it needed to at that time. It's all dynamic of course, and everyone has their preferences, but for me as a player I need some reason to be stuck in the doldrums of a long travelling scene or I start to feel like disengaging.

In a game I played in recently the GM had our reactor malfunctioning and so we had to shut down the hyperdrive and use the back up in order to get to our destination. There were three PCs on the ship and an NPC. I think he wanted to role-play 11 days of us sitting on the ship being cold and hungry and with nothing else to do really. Ok so the next day it's still cold in the ship and you're hungry. Oh make a Resilience check and if you fail you take strain. Ok what do you do now? Ok next day you are even colder and more hungry. I was praying for a screen wipe.

On 11/16/2017 at 6:48 PM, Archlyte said:

Yeah I was able to use this language in talking to the GMs of a few games (of varying genres and systems) so that I could give them feedback on times when I felt the game was dragging and not because it needed to at that time. It's all dynamic of course, and everyone has their preferences, but for me as a player I need some reason to be stuck in the doldrums of a long travelling scene or I start to feel like disengaging.

In a game I played in recently the GM had our reactor malfunctioning and so we had to shut down the hyperdrive and use the back up in order to get to our destination. There were three PCs on the ship and an NPC. I think he wanted to role-play 11 days of us sitting on the ship being cold and hungry and with nothing else to do really. Ok so the next day it's still cold in the ship and you're hungry. Oh make a Resilience check and if you fail you take strain. Ok what do you do now? Ok next day you are even colder and more hungry. I was praying for a screen wipe.

I definitely understand this view point. I was also in a recent game where our GM had us roll every single minor event or task. All of them. This wasn't in SWRPG but i understand the point all of same. Our group was traveling across a desert/savannah for 10+ days. Our GM had us roll our survival checks every few hours, and we had to try and search for water in between as well. It was 3 sessions about 3-4 hours long of just boring slow dice rolls.

This same GM also had us do a single random (not major story or boss, stumbled into this while traveling) combat encounter that lasted 3 sessions. This actually caused all of us players to leave the game because of how awful it was up to that point. So pacing can potentiality cause a GM to lose players if not handled well.

3 hours ago, Noahjam325 said:

I definitely understand this view point. I was also in a recent game where our GM had us roll every single minor event or task. All of them. This wasn't in SWRPG but i understand the point all of same. Our group was traveling across a desert/savannah for 10+ days. Our GM had us roll our survival checks every few hours, and we had to try and search for water in between as well. It was 3 sessions about 3-4 hours long of just boring slow dice rolls.

This same GM also had us do a single random (not major story or boss, stumbled into this while traveling) combat encounter that lasted 3 sessions. This actually caused all of us players to leave the game because of how awful it was up to that point. So pacing can potentiality cause a GM to lose players if not handled well.

Thank you for sharing this, I think it's good for people to be aware of how their game may be perceived by others within this particular parameter. Your experience helped me to crystallize a few thoughts on the subject:

It feels like you are more likely to get the Too Slow GM than the Too Fast GM, but I have seen both. The Too Fast GM is often easy to deal with though because you can usually ask to stop the transition (or ask to go back to scene) and examine something, or talk to someone, to slow the scene back down and do some little bit of action that you want.

The Too Slow GM seems to me to be more difficult because as a player you don't really know what is going to happen next, so hope keeps you listening and waiting for some bit of action or interest. Too often though the GM has entered a trance of self-indulgent description and narration where an unnecessarily slow pace is adopted. This is also a sign that the GM isn't really paying attention to the players, and is doing his/her own thing. Railroad GMs do this a lot in my experience because they have a detailed blueprint of where they are going, and want to manage the time while also having little curiosity as to what the players will do, as they know the players will be funneled into a path.

I feel like your pace should have a purpose, but you should also listen to the body language and the behavior of the players to see if they are getting restless or are disengaging.