Time is running out!

The drama of a race against time is a staple of the movies, how do you replicate it at the RPG gaming table? The GROGPOD discord scenario workshop worked its magic.

Most GM’s have an RPG conundrum that they want to resolve. For some, it’s the thrill of the chase, how do you emulate high-speed pursuits effectively in a game, to create excitement and jeopardy?

For others it’s the ability to invoke the grapple rules without everyone around the table groaning.

For me, it’s the dramatic pressure imposed by time.

How do you set the clock ticking to make a breathless, race against time that feels as exciting as it does in heist movies, or spy thrillers? How do you compel the characters towards their goals, so they can snatch victory with seconds to spare?

I posed the question to the #scenarioworkshop channel in the GROGPOD discord* and there were some great contributions that I will summarise here.

LEVERS AND PULLEYS

Behind the GM screen it is possible to use a host of tricks to create the illusion of impending action and setting the pace. The GM can generate the tempo by performance techniques, changing the speed and tone of how they speak, “I like to rattle the dice,” speaking a little quicker can create urgency. Dave Paterson, from Frankenstein’s RPG podcast suggested having a studded mallet to hand.

Some have suggested using cinematic devices such as music and sound-effects to add a layer of intensity. It’s a challenge to coordinate the action at the table with a recorded soundtrack. I recall the inappropriate moments when ‘Battles’ track cropped up on Clannad’s Robin of Sherwood soundtrack. Perhaps a live orchestra is the solution?

Gaz from the Smart Party always says that no game suffers from too much pace, but as a GM I can rush things a bit. In my desire to create impending tension I can create a whirlwind that can leave some players exhausted. The players are taken for a ride, but they need to have a sense that they are in the driving seat rather than on a rollercoaster.

That’s why mechanical factors are more effective in driving the action rather than depending on GM, stylistic levers and pulleys to drive the action.

So what are the mechanical elements available?

TIMELINE

The backbone to a countdown scenario is the timeline. In other words, a sequence of events that will happen if the Players intervene or not. The evil schemes of the NPCs will proceed along a trajectory will only be diverted by the actions of the the players. This is more about giving the impression of movement towards a conclusion rather than dialling up the intensity of individual incidents.

It’s important to frame of the scenario, the scene and the current status of the players, for them to get the impression that the world is having a momentum around them. The cogs are moving, even if they aren’t.

The Conspyramid in Nights Black Agents is a good mechanism for representing the nodes of the macro-organisation behind the scenes; as more elements are discovered, or enemies eliminated, it brings the action closer and closer to its conclusion: the head honchos, the Boss Fight.

CLOCKS

There’s no time like the real-time. Oven-timers, egg-timers, phone-timers are a visual props that can show time in the session evaporating. These are effective at creating a sense of forward momentum, but there’s something unsatisfactory about it as a technique. Real time is never ‘real’ time in the game time.

Using it in small scenes can work, but having time set for an entire session can be distracting and counter productive. It can allow players to encourage others in the group to hurry and make decisions, but its more likely to frustrate them when things don’t progress.

TURNING TOKENS

A more gamified version of the levers and pulleys is the use of a visual prop to represent the passage of time. The use of tokens, or a big ‘countdown’ dice, can show points when plot points have been hit and progress towards the conclusion are being made. Events in the timeline can trigger the turning of tokens, but often it can be as arbitrary as the GM generated effects described above.

Various Powered by the Apocalypse games use clocks to indicate the passage of time. These are conceptual clocks that are more like Trivial Pursuit pies. As the game progresses failures and successes as you move through the game can fill segments in the clock. The number of segments is agreed as it is created, and once completed it will trigger an event: a new piece of knowledge, a new enemy alerted, or some other encounter to crank up the tension.

The Index Card RPG encourages GMs to fix the number of rounds of combat in advance, “the floor collapses after five rounds!”, for example.

More dramatically, Ten Candles creates horror by the light of candles being extinguished, and Dread uses a Jenga tower to represent the dwindling time-resource and the increase of suspense. The Jenga tower also adds real shock reactions as everything collapses.

ROLL WITH IT

The best way of creating tension and unpredictability into gaming sessions is to turn to the dice.

In my experience, rolling the dice brings a collective sense of participation, as everyone leans in to see the result. Blades in the Dark asks the players to roll ahead of a heist to determine the stress level of the mission. Is it going to be a cool walk-through the motions or a stressful scramble?

‘Usage dice,” which appear in Black Hack, Cthulhu Hack and the Savage Worlds Adventurer’s Edition (and others) are a really effective way of abstractly representing depleting resources, including time. The resource starts at a dice level, d10 for example, on a roll of 1 or 2, the dice level reduces to the next level (so d8) and continues until d4 and there’s a 50:50 chance of the resource coming to an end.

This is a great way of representing time running out. If the usage dice is rolled at key moments such as the end of a scene, or attempts to pick a lock, diffuse a bomb, the excitement mounts as the players are dreading the one or two pips appearing.

COUNTDOWN … 3, 2, 1

But, stop the clocks, I have found a solution that I have tried and tested and works. Thanks to Daily Dwarf for pointing to WOIN (What’s Old is New) which has a mechanic used in its now out of print Judge Dredd game.

Countdowns is a core mechanic of the game, where a dice pool of (usually) d6s is created and the size (number of dice) adjusted by the situation. A slow countdown could be 6 d6, and it’s rolled at key moments. Every time a 6 appears, the dice is removed from the pool, until they’re gone. The pool can be stabilised by player character actions and additional dice added: a critical lock pick roll? Nice, add another d6 into the pool.

I’ve used a riff on this method in two convention games. For each player I added 2d6 into the pool and gave them a shake at the end of a scene or crucial points of threat. The first was a Twilight 2000 extraction mission. The bunker containing their target hostages is running out of oxygen, can they get to them on time? The second was for Stormbringer in the world of Corum, could the players enlist the help of a volatile demon before the Mabden armada invaded?

Each time, the dice pool depleted to the wire, and success hinged on a final dice roll. It’s magic when that happens.

Now, I’ve rolled a 6 on my final dice, it’s over.

Is it? are there other mechanics that the scenario workshop missed? Let me know.

*if you’d like to join the GROGPOD discord and join in with the conversation, then please get in touch and I’ll send an invite.