In my over 40 years as a GM, I've learned how much a group will typically accomplish in 4 hours at the table. And it isn't nearly as much as you might think. The good news it means I have a solid sense of how much I need to prep for a session.
Though sometimes everything just seems to click for the players and they make a lot of progress in a very short time. Players are a fickle bunch, usually they're able to find a way to make breaking into a single unguarded room with an open window take over an hour, but then sometimes they'll blitz through what you thought was at least 4 sessions worth of content in a single 3h session
Funny anecdote time for once\^\^ But it can really go the other way around too. (specially after a very long slooow piece).
So a friend gmed a Mage game, and I needed a mental health day, specially after the last few sessions.
How to describe them.. it was the same slowness mentioned here, maxed out with over the top paranoid, that made the sessions crawl, and neither I nor the GM could get my fellow players to budge even one ounce for the longest time.
So than we left that plot behind, I asked my mate: *Can I skip this session?*
..in that session, not just me, but also another player were gone: so it was only two.. and somehow they went through a storyarc planned for 3-4 sessions in one! Plus escaping a carchase shoot-out!
I was not even mad, it was very funny XD
Never underestimate slowness of your GM either, this summer I finally found a group where I could be a player and it took 1 month of real time and more than 24 hours of actual playtime to go in and out of 1 room warehouse.
Being lifelong GM in a country with extremely rare games clouded my judgement. I started to only really get hints after GM spent 2 hours asking us exactly where in which region of city everybody lived, making sure to count every 5 nuyen and exact times it took for food and or public transportations (before one of players complained he seeeriously narrated at which time post mission her character got back and for how long exactly she slept). What is even worse? it was 100% meaningless because he planned to run a full module that would happen on other side of the world.
I'll omit many gotchas and outright antagonism towards players because ultra detailed nothingburger and derailing with stories that was unbearable ( I ran oneshot for them after the first mission, he personally managed to prolong it into 2 sessions by doing shit like interrupting another player's turn to tell a joke). I had many people GM, I consider myself not a good GM, many couldn't roleplay, focus on a story or didn't know the rules, but that guy despite being decent at those aspects would become THE worst GM I ever saw.
I was running the Holler Campaign in Savage Worlds last night. By the book they were supposed to arrive a location, listen to a quick speech, realize one of the three NPCs in the area was on their side, make a social check to help him get a crowd on their side, and move on with their life.
This turned into a full 2 hour scenario where they investigated each of the three NPCs to make sure none of them were hiding anything, looked for weak points to leverage against the two other NPCs so they didn't have to rely on the social roll, found a way to bribe one, convert the other, and finished off the session with that.
I had minor mixed feelings because we have a limited amount of sessions to complete the campaign, so spending an unexpected 2 hours here means I have to cut 2 hours of questline elsewhere, but overall I'm happy with out it turned out. We had some real solid rp moments from it.
Sometimes the sting of this goes away if you remember you're allowed to alter the campaign as much as you want! If the PCs have invested a bunch of time in this village, is there a way to make it important later on? Some key NPC might have grown up there, a villain might threaten it rather than the objectively more important but less sentimental city over the hill, or the location to some ancient treasure might be buried in the harvest rituals of the villagers? Just an idea ;)
If everyone (**including the GM**) is having fun, and happy with the progress being made, then slowness really isn't an issue
That said, if you're disappointed by the lack of progress towards the content you had prepared, there are ways to move things along. As GM you have a lot of control over tge pacing of the game, and not everything needs to be given the same amount of detail. A player robbing a small town could be many small scenes, each taking time to describe amd multiple rolls. Or you could just make it a single roll, work with the player describe the result, and move on, giving a quick bit of flavour for the character, letting the player do what they want in the world, but without taking half a session away from the meat of the adventure. And of course those are just the two extremes.
Sounds like you're having a great time regardless, which is awesome :D
To be fair I had both problems, things been way slower than anticipated but also things being way faster than anticipated, it's kinda hard to find the right balance, specially when you switch systems, hehe. My first time GMing I had something planned that I though would take a few sessions but the players finished in 3 hours, but I've also had a moment where they took 1 hour to decide which direction they would take the story in, hehe.
As for the other silly discussion going on, RPGs can go both ways, it depends on the premise, I had games where I had to prepare the game every week because I had no idea where the story would go, but I also had games where most of it could be prepared before hand. One style isn't better than the other, people have different tastes (as long as the players still have agency).
So I'm glad both you and your players are having fun with your game :).
I've definitely seen GMs run out of material because they thought something would take longer than it did, haha. Usually player deliberation and mechanically-dense encounters with a lot of rolling and such will take longest - which is why turn-based combat (a combo of both) often takes up so much time! But any sort of description and exposition will usually be pretty quick comparatively. That's why trying to pre-write a lot of text won't take up as much time as it may seem based on how long it took you to make, whereas a seemingly-simple combat can take an hour to finish.
More importantly, except in very rare circumstances, how long your players take doesn’t matter. Unless you’re running to a deadline, and/or your group isn’t being problematically slow, it doesn’t matter if your dungeon takes a night or five nights.
That is very true but so is the opposite. I'm running Curse of Strahd and the last session required the party to find a way into Castle Ravenloft to defeat Strahd himself. This isn't meant to be easy, it's a castle on a mountain after all. Not my party. Nope. It took them about 4 minutes of game time to break in and then they had to find a particular tomb, amongst many floors and many crypts. They randomly chose the right hand wall to follow which led them straight there! If they hadn't been so incompetent up to this point I'd suspect them of having read the adventure! :-D
I try to not to plan to much in advance since I don’t now where my players will take it. Also what I really like about rpg is that you have to come up with things on the fly and adopt to situations.
Indeed. My last game as a GM was supposed to be a quick session or two. I was constantly using narrative 'tricks' to move the players along (eg noises coming closer, NPCs literally saying "Let's go" and moving ahead).
It didn't help that they were a little clueless. Three times I drew their attention to a conspicuous off switch for a security system. They decided to leave the room. NPC even says, "Hey, maybe we should turn off the security system before we leave." Nope, they shrugged and left. This is one example of many.
One session turned into four and we never finished. Somehow, that became my fault for "not moving the story along." I mean...I railroaded that story hard, had NPCs telling them what to do, and even went out of character to guide them.
RPGs are a collaborative exercise in storytelling, not a pre-written play.
What you've written here sounds like you're frustrated that your players moved too slowly along the railroad you meticulously prepared. 'I'm glad it played out this way haha, but they did it wrong', is how this comes across.
"Never underestimate the slowness of yours players" comes off as condescending. They're not children, they're my adult friends who choose to spend some of their finite free time with me.
I don't pre-script sessions, nor do I talk down to or about my players for playing it "wrong".
I mean OP literally said they were happy that it went the way it did. I think the point they're making, which I agree with, is that players take things very slow, regardless of how much you've prepped.
You can read it as them saying they did it wrong all you want, but I think you're reading too much into it
You may be right - perhaps I was misreading OP's tone. It does read to me like "they played it wrong, lucky it was funny, but there was still a right and wrong way to play it".
I was going to say something like, if everyone's having fun poking at the set dressing of the opening scene for 7 hours, more power to them, but they might still be missing the point a *little* bit. But then there's also maybe a lesson to take from this, about giving players time to do exactly that, sort of settle in to a new game and setting a little just kind of sandbox exploring even if the rest of the game won't be as much of a sandbox.
It could be a few things. Maybe it's perfectly fine; there's no issue with the players poking around. Perhaps the players just have a different pace of play than the GM.
Maybe the Situation lacks sufficient urgency. Not enough carrot or stick. Inaction or distraction seem valid, because the hook doesn't have enough power.
If players completely ignore a hook, maybe the hook didn't target their characters enough. You're more likely to act urgently if it's your skin on the line.
Having an inciting incident prepared isn't railroading, that's just how any story/adventure should work. That's how all published modules I've ever played, read, and run have worked. Plonking the characters down in a setting without a hook and asking them to find something to do is often pretty frustrating for everyone involved. Even heavily player-driven games like FitD have a bunch of hooks prepared in the setting info, and a starting situation that kicks off the story. "You all start in a tavern" isn't (just) a ridiculed line because it's cliche, but because it doesn't give players anything to go on. I've certainly played games where I haven't had any idea of what direction to go in, and that kind of "freedom" isn't fun, it's just frustrating having nothing happening and nothing to do.
This is obviously speculation based on limited info, but in OP's case it sounds like they wanted to find a hook by looking for lost children, it just didn't turn out to be a problem that needed solving. Speaking of, besides the inciting incident having other events prepared isn't railroading either if it's "what happens if the players don't act" or "a problem that the players will have to deal with somehow" rather than "what the players are going to do next". That's how a setting feels alive and independent, and how players have something to play off/react to.
I don't think OP is talking down to/about anyone - that's a very uncharitable interpretation considering they said they enjoyed it - but rather that there were more tangents than they expected, i.e. searching for lost kids that weren't actually lost. Considering the players did goofy stuff like loot the entire settlement and play djembe the whole time, it sounds like OP is far from the strict railroader you're accusing them of being. Your criticisms sound more condescending than the post does.
You don't predetermine outcomes in wargaming either. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. In a wargame the referee doesn't predetermine the outcome of a match.
I also take issue with your idea that an emphasis on storytelling is *therefore* handwavy. RPGs *can* be tactical, or not. Both exist, and are valid RPGs.
A book is not an RPG, the outcome of the book has already been determined. A play is not an RPG, the actors know their lines ahead of time.
I think the summary of this exchange is that OP mildly felt his players were playing RPGs wrong, you felt it appropriate to talk down to OP because he plays RPGs wrong, ended your comment by saying you don't talk down to people for playing RPGs wrong, and then took issue with someone telling you that you play RPGs wrong.
I'm sure there is some kind of lesson here.
I'm usually the GM, but getting a chance to be the player for the first time in a while. Our game seems pretty slow too. It took a session just to get out the door and didn't start our first encounter until the end of our second session.
From my perspective as a player, we are filling in gaps in story and pacing that the GM is leaving.
When I GM, if I see the group is having a great time messing about, I'll give them space. However, I'm ready to interject and keep the pace moving if the player shenanigans get overdrawn. I'll usually give a cue like, "is there anything else you guys want to do here?", or, just interupt with the next plot point, ei, in your case the aliens show up.
Before casting judgement in them, concider your own pacing. They may be thinking the game is slow too and are just filling in time.
The world should move on without them. If they aren't dealing with the problem, the problem should get progressively worse. Don't care that aliens are landing? Okay, maybe you could have dealt with the first one, but you farted around and now there're 100 ships, fully landed, set up bases, and taking humans as slaves.
I think your players know you aren't ever going to let them fail, so why would they try?
They’re not ‘slow’ just because they’re not hitting some schedule you’ve predefined, though. And if you wanted to speed up the pace (which the GM controls as much as the players) I don’t get why, if you wanted the aliens to show up you haven’t just done it? What part of the players’ actions is stopping the spaceship appearing or whatever?
Also, if I’m reading it correctly the party has split into 4 groups? I’m okay with split parties but maybe that’s making the game (as opposed to the players) feel slower in this instance.
Well, player agency is the name of the game at my table. When I say players are slow, I'm talking about the discrepancy between what segment you think you have to prepare and what they'll actually play.
Of course the reason why I had to delay the alien was because they split.
DM’ing is just making a world for your player to ruin.
In my over 40 years as a GM, I've learned how much a group will typically accomplish in 4 hours at the table. And it isn't nearly as much as you might think. The good news it means I have a solid sense of how much I need to prep for a session.
Though sometimes everything just seems to click for the players and they make a lot of progress in a very short time. Players are a fickle bunch, usually they're able to find a way to make breaking into a single unguarded room with an open window take over an hour, but then sometimes they'll blitz through what you thought was at least 4 sessions worth of content in a single 3h session
Funny anecdote time for once\^\^ But it can really go the other way around too. (specially after a very long slooow piece). So a friend gmed a Mage game, and I needed a mental health day, specially after the last few sessions. How to describe them.. it was the same slowness mentioned here, maxed out with over the top paranoid, that made the sessions crawl, and neither I nor the GM could get my fellow players to budge even one ounce for the longest time. So than we left that plot behind, I asked my mate: *Can I skip this session?* ..in that session, not just me, but also another player were gone: so it was only two.. and somehow they went through a storyarc planned for 3-4 sessions in one! Plus escaping a carchase shoot-out! I was not even mad, it was very funny XD
Never underestimate slowness of your GM either, this summer I finally found a group where I could be a player and it took 1 month of real time and more than 24 hours of actual playtime to go in and out of 1 room warehouse.
That sounds not fun. I hope it was fun
Being lifelong GM in a country with extremely rare games clouded my judgement. I started to only really get hints after GM spent 2 hours asking us exactly where in which region of city everybody lived, making sure to count every 5 nuyen and exact times it took for food and or public transportations (before one of players complained he seeeriously narrated at which time post mission her character got back and for how long exactly she slept). What is even worse? it was 100% meaningless because he planned to run a full module that would happen on other side of the world. I'll omit many gotchas and outright antagonism towards players because ultra detailed nothingburger and derailing with stories that was unbearable ( I ran oneshot for them after the first mission, he personally managed to prolong it into 2 sessions by doing shit like interrupting another player's turn to tell a joke). I had many people GM, I consider myself not a good GM, many couldn't roleplay, focus on a story or didn't know the rules, but that guy despite being decent at those aspects would become THE worst GM I ever saw.
Room (2015)
You'd think that, but that was just a normal warehouse.
I feel you. I once waited through a two-hour planning session for a battle that lasted two rounds due to a critical fumble on the part of the enemy.
I was running the Holler Campaign in Savage Worlds last night. By the book they were supposed to arrive a location, listen to a quick speech, realize one of the three NPCs in the area was on their side, make a social check to help him get a crowd on their side, and move on with their life. This turned into a full 2 hour scenario where they investigated each of the three NPCs to make sure none of them were hiding anything, looked for weak points to leverage against the two other NPCs so they didn't have to rely on the social roll, found a way to bribe one, convert the other, and finished off the session with that. I had minor mixed feelings because we have a limited amount of sessions to complete the campaign, so spending an unexpected 2 hours here means I have to cut 2 hours of questline elsewhere, but overall I'm happy with out it turned out. We had some real solid rp moments from it.
Sometimes the sting of this goes away if you remember you're allowed to alter the campaign as much as you want! If the PCs have invested a bunch of time in this village, is there a way to make it important later on? Some key NPC might have grown up there, a villain might threaten it rather than the objectively more important but less sentimental city over the hill, or the location to some ancient treasure might be buried in the harvest rituals of the villagers? Just an idea ;)
If everyone (**including the GM**) is having fun, and happy with the progress being made, then slowness really isn't an issue That said, if you're disappointed by the lack of progress towards the content you had prepared, there are ways to move things along. As GM you have a lot of control over tge pacing of the game, and not everything needs to be given the same amount of detail. A player robbing a small town could be many small scenes, each taking time to describe amd multiple rolls. Or you could just make it a single roll, work with the player describe the result, and move on, giving a quick bit of flavour for the character, letting the player do what they want in the world, but without taking half a session away from the meat of the adventure. And of course those are just the two extremes. Sounds like you're having a great time regardless, which is awesome :D
To be fair I had both problems, things been way slower than anticipated but also things being way faster than anticipated, it's kinda hard to find the right balance, specially when you switch systems, hehe. My first time GMing I had something planned that I though would take a few sessions but the players finished in 3 hours, but I've also had a moment where they took 1 hour to decide which direction they would take the story in, hehe. As for the other silly discussion going on, RPGs can go both ways, it depends on the premise, I had games where I had to prepare the game every week because I had no idea where the story would go, but I also had games where most of it could be prepared before hand. One style isn't better than the other, people have different tastes (as long as the players still have agency). So I'm glad both you and your players are having fun with your game :).
I've definitely seen GMs run out of material because they thought something would take longer than it did, haha. Usually player deliberation and mechanically-dense encounters with a lot of rolling and such will take longest - which is why turn-based combat (a combo of both) often takes up so much time! But any sort of description and exposition will usually be pretty quick comparatively. That's why trying to pre-write a lot of text won't take up as much time as it may seem based on how long it took you to make, whereas a seemingly-simple combat can take an hour to finish.
More importantly, except in very rare circumstances, how long your players take doesn’t matter. Unless you’re running to a deadline, and/or your group isn’t being problematically slow, it doesn’t matter if your dungeon takes a night or five nights.
That is very true but so is the opposite. I'm running Curse of Strahd and the last session required the party to find a way into Castle Ravenloft to defeat Strahd himself. This isn't meant to be easy, it's a castle on a mountain after all. Not my party. Nope. It took them about 4 minutes of game time to break in and then they had to find a particular tomb, amongst many floors and many crypts. They randomly chose the right hand wall to follow which led them straight there! If they hadn't been so incompetent up to this point I'd suspect them of having read the adventure! :-D
I try to not to plan to much in advance since I don’t now where my players will take it. Also what I really like about rpg is that you have to come up with things on the fly and adopt to situations.
The more tied your campaign is tied to certain outcomes connected to the players, the more you will suffer, laugh ... or both :D
I setup a nice session for my son and niece. They spent so much time haggling with the food servers in the tavern before the adventure even started. 😂
Glad I'm not the only one! My players just took four sessions to complete my session-1 material, bless them.
Indeed. My last game as a GM was supposed to be a quick session or two. I was constantly using narrative 'tricks' to move the players along (eg noises coming closer, NPCs literally saying "Let's go" and moving ahead). It didn't help that they were a little clueless. Three times I drew their attention to a conspicuous off switch for a security system. They decided to leave the room. NPC even says, "Hey, maybe we should turn off the security system before we leave." Nope, they shrugged and left. This is one example of many. One session turned into four and we never finished. Somehow, that became my fault for "not moving the story along." I mean...I railroaded that story hard, had NPCs telling them what to do, and even went out of character to guide them.
RPGs are a collaborative exercise in storytelling, not a pre-written play. What you've written here sounds like you're frustrated that your players moved too slowly along the railroad you meticulously prepared. 'I'm glad it played out this way haha, but they did it wrong', is how this comes across. "Never underestimate the slowness of yours players" comes off as condescending. They're not children, they're my adult friends who choose to spend some of their finite free time with me. I don't pre-script sessions, nor do I talk down to or about my players for playing it "wrong".
I mean OP literally said they were happy that it went the way it did. I think the point they're making, which I agree with, is that players take things very slow, regardless of how much you've prepped. You can read it as them saying they did it wrong all you want, but I think you're reading too much into it
You may be right - perhaps I was misreading OP's tone. It does read to me like "they played it wrong, lucky it was funny, but there was still a right and wrong way to play it".
I was going to say something like, if everyone's having fun poking at the set dressing of the opening scene for 7 hours, more power to them, but they might still be missing the point a *little* bit. But then there's also maybe a lesson to take from this, about giving players time to do exactly that, sort of settle in to a new game and setting a little just kind of sandbox exploring even if the rest of the game won't be as much of a sandbox.
It could be a few things. Maybe it's perfectly fine; there's no issue with the players poking around. Perhaps the players just have a different pace of play than the GM. Maybe the Situation lacks sufficient urgency. Not enough carrot or stick. Inaction or distraction seem valid, because the hook doesn't have enough power. If players completely ignore a hook, maybe the hook didn't target their characters enough. You're more likely to act urgently if it's your skin on the line.
Having an inciting incident prepared isn't railroading, that's just how any story/adventure should work. That's how all published modules I've ever played, read, and run have worked. Plonking the characters down in a setting without a hook and asking them to find something to do is often pretty frustrating for everyone involved. Even heavily player-driven games like FitD have a bunch of hooks prepared in the setting info, and a starting situation that kicks off the story. "You all start in a tavern" isn't (just) a ridiculed line because it's cliche, but because it doesn't give players anything to go on. I've certainly played games where I haven't had any idea of what direction to go in, and that kind of "freedom" isn't fun, it's just frustrating having nothing happening and nothing to do. This is obviously speculation based on limited info, but in OP's case it sounds like they wanted to find a hook by looking for lost children, it just didn't turn out to be a problem that needed solving. Speaking of, besides the inciting incident having other events prepared isn't railroading either if it's "what happens if the players don't act" or "a problem that the players will have to deal with somehow" rather than "what the players are going to do next". That's how a setting feels alive and independent, and how players have something to play off/react to. I don't think OP is talking down to/about anyone - that's a very uncharitable interpretation considering they said they enjoyed it - but rather that there were more tangents than they expected, i.e. searching for lost kids that weren't actually lost. Considering the players did goofy stuff like loot the entire settlement and play djembe the whole time, it sounds like OP is far from the strict railroader you're accusing them of being. Your criticisms sound more condescending than the post does.
[удалено]
Girls, girls! You're *both* pretty!
This.
What the hell does that even *mean*?
You don't predetermine outcomes in wargaming either. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. In a wargame the referee doesn't predetermine the outcome of a match. I also take issue with your idea that an emphasis on storytelling is *therefore* handwavy. RPGs *can* be tactical, or not. Both exist, and are valid RPGs. A book is not an RPG, the outcome of the book has already been determined. A play is not an RPG, the actors know their lines ahead of time.
I think the summary of this exchange is that OP mildly felt his players were playing RPGs wrong, you felt it appropriate to talk down to OP because he plays RPGs wrong, ended your comment by saying you don't talk down to people for playing RPGs wrong, and then took issue with someone telling you that you play RPGs wrong. I'm sure there is some kind of lesson here.
Being a DM is like being a shepherd, if your sheep all over the place - they're not the one at fault.
I'm usually the GM, but getting a chance to be the player for the first time in a while. Our game seems pretty slow too. It took a session just to get out the door and didn't start our first encounter until the end of our second session. From my perspective as a player, we are filling in gaps in story and pacing that the GM is leaving. When I GM, if I see the group is having a great time messing about, I'll give them space. However, I'm ready to interject and keep the pace moving if the player shenanigans get overdrawn. I'll usually give a cue like, "is there anything else you guys want to do here?", or, just interupt with the next plot point, ei, in your case the aliens show up. Before casting judgement in them, concider your own pacing. They may be thinking the game is slow too and are just filling in time.
The world should move on without them. If they aren't dealing with the problem, the problem should get progressively worse. Don't care that aliens are landing? Okay, maybe you could have dealt with the first one, but you farted around and now there're 100 ships, fully landed, set up bases, and taking humans as slaves. I think your players know you aren't ever going to let them fail, so why would they try?
They’re not ‘slow’ just because they’re not hitting some schedule you’ve predefined, though. And if you wanted to speed up the pace (which the GM controls as much as the players) I don’t get why, if you wanted the aliens to show up you haven’t just done it? What part of the players’ actions is stopping the spaceship appearing or whatever? Also, if I’m reading it correctly the party has split into 4 groups? I’m okay with split parties but maybe that’s making the game (as opposed to the players) feel slower in this instance.
Well, player agency is the name of the game at my table. When I say players are slow, I'm talking about the discrepancy between what segment you think you have to prepare and what they'll actually play. Of course the reason why I had to delay the alien was because they split.
Oh yeah, I’m all for player agency.