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Saturday, August 27, 2016

Excellent post on game pacing

I'm a big fan of keeping the pace up in my RPGs. I don't always do it, but I prefer it when I can make it happen. I've done everything from 3-2-1-action counts in combat to real-time decision making to forbidding rules lookups and using stripped-down rules and resolution to keep things going.

Sean over at Power Score has a nice post on pacing games:

Dungeons & Dragons - Pacing Your Game

His games seem more scripted and plot-arced than mine, yet the advice is the same. It's a good bit on how not to get bogged down or let the game get bogged down.

And yes, he's spot on - you have to do a lot of prep work to be able to improvise.

3 comments:

  1. Nothing takes more work than spontaneity.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, exactly. If you don't lay the groundwork, you can't really be spontaneous.

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    2. Just make sure you structure it right; much of my old Hyborian Age stuff had a "plan for spontaneity", but the hand-written notes got cumbersome and ended up slowing things down.

      Organize, internalize, streamline...

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