A great rule of thumb to keep encounters in any game interesting is that the encounter needs a timer. That's some objective that can be lost or bad thing that can go off.
some examples:
get away before reinforcements come
leave compound before artillery strike
board a ship that needs to take off
complete task before security comes back online/power is cut
Anyone have any anecdotes about how the players responded to having a timer? Anything interesting in their behavior once a timer was introduced?
6 hours ago, Archlyte said:Anyone have any anecdotes about how the players responded to having a timer? Anything interesting in their behavior once a timer was introduced?
This seems like an odd question to me. If the timer is organic, part of the natural result of the "story so far", then the players aren't going to think about it, they're simply going to respond.
Counter question: how does anybody run a game without them? Maybe you've already used them in the past and didn't think about it. It doesn't have to be formalized, if you do that then it means sometimes the players know there isn't a timer, and IMHO the only time there shouldn't be one is at the end of a session when everything is resolved.
Counter question 2: should the players know there is a timer? Not necessarily. They need to know that "the bomb will go off in 5 minutes", but they don't need to know that Hutt Lord Beluga just hired some bounty hunters to track the PCs...reveal of the latter could come in bits and pieces.
Edit: as for anecdotes, I will say I tried running sandboxes in the past, almost always to a boring result. Some players want a story, some want loot and XP, some want to run a portion of your world...all of which meant little cohesion and way too much time discussing what to do next. If you had a group that all want loot and XP, then it probably doesn't matter as much, but my group is kind of varied that way. So a story and some sense of urgency has been key to getting buy-in. Plus, it feels more like Star Wars to me.
Edited by whafrog
5 minutes ago, whafrog said:This seems like an odd question to me. If the timer is organic, part of the natural result of the "story so far", then the players aren't going to think about it, they're simply going to respond.
Counter question: how does anybody run a game without them? Maybe you've already used them in the past and didn't think about it. It doesn't have to be formalized, if you do that then it means sometimes the players know there isn't a timer, and IMHO the only time there shouldn't be one is at the end of a session when everything is resolved.
Counter question 2: should the players know there is a timer? Not necessarily. They need to know that "the bomb will go off in 5 minutes", but they don't need to know that Hutt Lord Beluga just hired some bounty hunters to track the PCs...reveal of the latter could come in bits and pieces.
Edit: as for anecdotes, I will say I tried running sandboxes in the past, almost always to a boring result. Some players want a story, some want loot and XP, some want to run a portion of your world...all of which meant little cohesion and way too much time discussing what to do next. If you had a group that all want loot and XP, then it probably doesn't matter as much, but my group is kind of varied that way. So a story and some sense of urgency has been key to getting buy-in. Plus, it feels more like Star Wars to me.
I'm sorry man, I wasn't clear in that question. I meant an actual timer that the players can see or know is ticking. Some people had said that they use actual real OOC timers. I was curious how the players reacted to such a prop. What good? What Bad? etc.
21 hours ago, Archlyte said:Anyone have any anecdotes about how the players responded to having a timer? Anything interesting in their behavior once a timer was introduced?
As you'd expect, things began to move at a more frenetic pace. Folks didn't tend to be unprepared when it came to their turn, and there were fewer interruptions over the whole course of the scene - so we remained very focused.
The boons were enough that I might implement an OOC timer more frequently if I feel we get mired in option paralysis or anecdotes.
3 minutes ago, themensch said:As you'd expect, things began to move at a more frenetic pace. Folks didn't tend to be unprepared when it came to their turn, and there were fewer interruptions over the whole course of the scene - so we remained very focused.
The boons were enough that I might implement an OOC timer more frequently if I feel we get mired in option paralysis or anecdotes.
Yeah that's really great. One of the difficulties that TTRPGs have is the tendency to bog and drag. In contrast, the quick pace and sensory loading that video games have on their side is something I have seen younger players prefer. I think that adding a sense of actual urgency may be the way to go in helping the game to have a better rhythm of beats and scene transitions. I'm going to play around with this Mensch, thank you for the input.
I've been reading Blades in the Dark to prep myself for the upcoming Scum & Villainy hack and I like their way of handling in-play clocks; it's very much like PbtA games, maybe identical (I haven't researched) but I find this a very succinct way to explain it and they offer a lot of use cases I am definitely going to lift and reuse wherever I GM going forward.
3 hours ago, themensch said:I've been reading Blades in the Dark to prep myself for the upcoming Scum & Villainy hack and I like their way of handling in-play clocks; it's very much like PbtA games, maybe identical (I haven't researched) but I find this a very succinct way to explain it and they offer a lot of use cases I am definitely going to lift and reuse wherever I GM going forward.
Yeah that is really great and it fits so well with the dice in this game.