Alex Schroeder's BlogMar 8
I am using a Pathfinder dungeon for my AD&D game and the introduction of story elements like kidnapped children about to get sacrificed is at odds with old school dungeon exploration. The party travelled through the forest and suffered a random encounter with a harpy. They beat the monster but had to retreat back to town. A plot cleric showed up – that’s me judging that every small village probably has a village cleric that knows how to cast cure light wounds. It’s…
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https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2026-03-08-time
Show threadSandraMar 9

@blog

I’ve learned that having too strong time pressure and too weak time pressure are both bad. Tomb of Annihilation had too strong of a macguffin both temporally and value-wise. A completely zero’d out time pressure wrecks challenge.

My new campaign started a week ago. We’re doing D&D 5.1 with tons and tons and tons of house rules and all non-humans reskinned.

Show threadAlex SchroederMar 9
@Sandra Yeah, completely zero time pressure as in “endless 10min adventure day” is also bad. But what works well is spatial pressure because for a while, distance is time, too. So it takes hours to get there and hours to get back in-game is a problem if things can happen on the way, and there is an out-of-game component as well where you can always pick safe and easy until I ask my players whether they want to play Agricola or an adventure game, so to say. I like it when all sides agree with the setup and then it’s somewhat self-imposed. Like level limits, in a way.
Show threadmhdMar 9
@kensanata @Sandra Even if you're not using adventures with story lines like Pathfinder (or e.g. the more OSR-ish Willow), are you removing the possibility of something like this happening from the "faction game"?
Show threadAlex SchroederMar 10
@mhd I’m not sure in what sense you are using “faction game”, here. In my games, the players enter a system with potential energy but almost no kinetic energy. Prep places opposition in space, with goals, but there is no agent for change. When the players aren’t there, nothing changes. When the players leave, I try to change things but even that is rare. The result is that I don’t have to simulate the whole adventure ground but only determine reactions to players. The prep for unexplored areas is prep for future sessions, not an invisible setting that keeps reacting. Therefore there can be no time pressure regarding the unknown. Very rarely, there is time pressure “in the present” – see the kobold running away to warn enemies and a race is on – but is that the same as a timer running? An example might be somebody assembling an army. So yes, I’ll say “you have five weeks to prepare” and then we have a mini-game on how best to react. But that is also not the same as the time pressure scenario, I think.
@Sandra
Show threadmhdMar 10

@kensanata One common scenario seed for me would be a statical situation interrupted by the player's actions. Basically the dungeon equivalent of Red Harvest / Yojimbo / Fistful of Dollars. Two factions, alike in dignity and power, in a kind of stand-off. Then the players happen, and by their "kinetic energy" interrupt.

Maybe some guards are removed by the PCs, and thus an incursion of one faction that wasn't possible now is. They take prisoners. An execution or sacrifice would seem the logical conclusion to this.

That would suggest a timer to me. Otherwise it's the "quantum sacrifice scene" that would seem more in line with the story/encounter-oriented gaming set. That's what I meant with possible faction game scenarios that pose similar pressure situations. Would you avoid this in general?

A kidnapping scenario set in place before the players arrive at the dungeon location isn't that much different technically, although I can see arguments about the "prime mover" status of the players or the primacy of the dungeon.

@Sandra

Show threadAlex Schroeder
@mhd I would not avoid such situations in general, for sure. At the same time, this is extremely rare and I suspect it's because what I keep looking for in the back of my mind are a kind of in-game morality tests: "Are you in fact the good guys?" That is why in the hours between the sessions I suspect I'd favour situations developing where the moral question is not so on-the-nose. Let's assume the players killed some guards, the beast man invaded the druid's level and kidnapped a notorious wizard from his library and threaten to kill him. Where would that even show up? I can place the druid's ally in a beast man prison for them to discover, sure. In an encounter with the druid's guards they might start talking and say that strangers have killed some of their fellow guards and now the wiz kid got kidnapped by the beast men, sure. In other words, there is change. But that is more about establishing consequences instead of setting up time pressure for the players because they don't really care for the wizard. A typical setup in my games, perhaps, would be this: the players want to explore the tomb of Nefret and on the way they hear about the kidnapped wizard and now they must choose: do we rescue the wizard instead of exploring the tomb? But implicitly they know: it would be very unlikely that rescuing the wizard means somebody else loots the tomb. The tomb is just an adventure for some other time. There is no pressure. Players just need to decide whether they care.
@Sandra
Mar 10 at 8:19amWeb
Show threadAlex SchroederMar 10

@mhd The reason I say all that is that I generally dislike scenarios where I think I'm playing in a sandbox and it turns out the referee sets up so many threats and timers that we as the players don't actually have a choice. Today we need to find Baba Garo because otherwise the dragon destroys the guest house. Tomorrow we have to fight the baboons otherwise the druid kills the halfling. Then we need to go and talk to the beast men queen otherwise the Set cultists will smash them. It might feel exhilarating but it also removes agency.

Sure, in theory, we could just drop it and emigrate. At the table, that's not how it works. There's an implicit agreement regarding the current campaign, I'm sure.
@Sandra

Show threadmhdMar 10

@kensanata Sure, too much of anything is a bad thing. Especially if it's a tightly and artificial orchestrated "Rumplestiltskin" setup where you do one thing today, another thing tomorrow, all cleanly possible, but basically another railroading strategem.

In my experience, the time-bound factor often works the opposite way, because you've got concurrent, overlapping triggered events. Big ceremony on the full moon, only time where you can find the monk/druid to beat up to level up. Reinforcements for the bugbears arriving in three days. Big market including the Alchemist's Caravan in town tomorrow. Other party on level four of the dungeon progressing as we speak.

There's no complete freedom for the party (but there never is), but there's certainly agency. I prefer to stretch them out over larger periods of time and make the conclusions clear enough for the players to decide (no "hah, you missing the harvest festivals angers the bishop you never met…"), but that's the same with rooms, traps etc.

(I'm also not going into morals, because I think they're completely orthogonal to timers and I really don't like talking about them in an OSR context because oh boy…)

@Sandra