Quest to Excess
You’ve prepped the adventure, and your GM game face is on. Your quest hooks are laid like bait in a bear trap. You’ve got bandits waiting in the woods. Deadly peril is prepared to spring from the darkness in A3 (the Old Mill) and B1 (Collapsed Passage). Excitement and danger are hovering just around the bend, and all the players have to do is walk out that door. But then, to quote the alt text from “Walk Away”:
“Come on, ladies. Let’s faff about in town all session.”
“I’m going to talk to an inn keeper for several hours!”
In today’s comic, it looks like the heroines of Team Bounty Hunter have made good on their plans. And if I’m running for a group like that, you’d better believe that I’m pulling my hair out in frustration. I know where the adventure lies. It’s right freakin’ there! Why can’t we just get on with it? If only everyone could quit dicking around for five minutes and actually play the damn game! But you know what? That “dicking around” is the game.
Sure there are limits. If folks come over and drink all my beer and bullshit for three hours without rolling any dice, Ima be irate. But if there’s RP afoot, and if the PCs are pursuing their personal lives, and if everyone is having fun interacting rather than following “the main quest,” it’s on me as a GM to let it happen. In those moments when I find myself frustrated by the seemingly glacial pace of a campaign, I have to remind myself that the “main quest” isn’t the point. Sure it can be fun to cue the goblin raid or the drive-by dragoning or Cthulhu rising from a nearby pond, but there’s no need to force it. If everyone is enjoying themselves, and if you’re the only one champing at the bit, you can afford to let the group entertain themselves for a while. Those adventure hooks will still be there in another ten or fifteen minutes. You’ve just got to be patient enough to let your players bite ’em at their own pace.
Question of the day then! Have you ever seen a GM trying to move the plot along a little too hard? I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill railroading, but more of a need to get-on-to-the-next-thing-immediately rather than letting the game develop naturally. Conversely, have you ever been that GM? Did your overactive quest giving help or hinder the pacing of the game? Tell us all about your heavy-handed hooks and obnoxiously urgent quests down in the comments!
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Usually, when I run a one-shot, I don’t need to prepare a huge amount, as the moment the PCs pop into existence in the tavern, they’re going to spend an hour and half walking around, talking to people. In a recent one-shot I ran, the hook was the players hearing whispers in their head, telling them to go to Quest Givers house. Additionally, they were in a desert town, so there wasn’t much tavern to hang about in, anyway. This lead to the players having no choice but to go and adventure, having little else to do.
More stuff to do = more faffing about? Can’t argue with that.
I’m just finishing up a Waterdeep campaign, which went through both Dragon Heist and Undermountain; it was interesting to see the difference in pace.
Dragon Heist, being in a city, is naturally the most likely candidate for people hanging about in the tavern; however, it is jam-packed full of things to do. I really love the various faction quests, but that only made me run them for the PCs more; however, with my PCs looking at 3 different factions, that meant after they finish each chapter (and thus, each quest), they’d be getting 3 more quests to do. Add in four villains, plus emphasising one villain as the main one, plus the various other Waterdhavian inspiration, plus my own home-brew… suddenly, five levels is packed full of adventure. Thus, getting a breather in Waterdeep required an extensive cutting down of what occurred. Fortunately, the second chapter is nothing but fluffing around and setting up a tavern, plus dealing with a criminal rival, and thus gave the players a nice, non-combative breather.
Undermountain, on the other hand, is a location-based adventure; therefore, the players could choose their own pace, and take the plot as leisurely or as quickly as they liked. Of course, since they were in a dungeon, there wasn’t much tavern to stop and rest at; they could chat with their devious drow “allies” or their goblin slaves. The only real time the party was able to chill was whenever plot or fleeing took them back up to the City of Taverns.
The quest-based vs. location-based paradigm is interesting. One is so full of THE PLOT that you have to do it. The other in only full of exploration, which is the plot, which forces you to do it.
Do you feel like you would have liked to fit more downtime into those first 5 levels?
I was able to give the players quite a bit of downtime, those first five levels; but only by cutting adventure out; I do regret the players missing out on quite a bit of content. I have been telling some of the players that Dragon Heist is a modular adventure, and thus can be played again with little spoilers, in order to subtly nudge them towards having another run, to experience those extra quests.
I’m seven years into my own megadungeon, so I don’t think I’ll be picking up Undermountain anytime soon. Wouldn’t mind Dragon Heist though. Everything I’ve heard makes it sound like a blast.
Ooh, which megadungeon? A homebrew creation of your own design/DMd by you/ played by you, or…?
On a side note, are there any Pathfinder modules or books that play out with the scale or freedom of a megadungeon, but not actually forcing the party to only dungeon crawl for most of the game (Shattered Star for example is 90% dungeon crawls)? My party likes big games and official or prewritten stuff, but dungeons in excess.
It’s Monty Cook’s Dragon’s Delve. It was conceived as a web-based megadungeon, where the maps allowed you to click around to different room information. It was crazy convenient until it was sold to a third party, Kickstarted, and abandoned. I’ve been running off of PDFs for the better part of three years, and you can’t find the original anymore.
I’ve heard good things about Emerald Spire though. The Glass Cannon Podcast guys are running through it, but I believe it’s behind their Patreon wall.
Yeah, my group is doing Dragon Heist now… and yes, while there’s a lot happening, there’s not a lot of time pressure so far, so there’s been a fair bit of RPing downtime.
Enjoying a quiet night at a tavern has been an element of that… because everyone knows that such nights always involve a good brawl. Nevermind the quests and how the fate of the world at stake, sometimes you just want to unwind with some gratuitous property damage.
The deck of many things can be an issue, with this; how am I supposed to run two angry fiends, a betraying NPC, four monster-infested castles, a quest to retrieve a PC’s soul, and my own campaign notes, while also giving my party (and players) the ability to take long rests?
You’re supposed to not use the deck of many things. I explained this: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/deck-of-too-many-things
“We checked, like, yesterday. Lord Cragchin is still ‘into it’. Now pipe down, you’re hurting Magus’ ears!”
Best not to dwell on that dude’s fate. At least not this side of the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy.
I am more than happy to let a party faff about, pass on quests, and give as little care about the events around them.
But like anything, that brings consequences.
Its for these moments I keep the anti-party in reserve. If the party decide that a quest can wait (or they are not just interested), well, there are other adventurers out there in the world that can come to the quest givers aid. And they are going to get the job done, and they are going to do it with style and panache to the adoring praise of all the local NPC’s. And look, the anti-Fighter found a sweet magical sword while he was out there, and wow, the pretty barmaid who has been resisting the Bards attentions for weeks has just fallen into the anti-Bards arms following his take of the daring victory the anti-party won.
Oddly, my players tend to be much more attentive to the next couple of hooks that come along 😉
Huzzah for the Anti-Party!
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/anti-party
Those guys are always great at providing keeping-up-with-the-Joneses motivation. I will say that deploying them too often can be detrimental though. On occasion, getting in a little down time should be actually relaxing. That way the sudden dragon attack is much more effective.
I’ve been a DM trying to move the plot along too hard.
Nothing particular entertaining about it. I’d just sorta constantly be going “Okay, so are you gonna go follow that poor hook now?”
…And when they’re legitimately faffing about it’s okay to give a little push like that on occasion, I think, but I was doing it constantly. I was doing it to players who basically were following my plot, but wanted to roleplay in their character’s reaction to the latest turn of events first, and I was basically going “Yeah yeah, enough about your character. Do my plot thing already!” That wasn’t cool of me. I like to think I’m better now, though.
#empathy
I’ve been that guy too. Not the best habit to pick up.
I’m surprised you didn’t drop a Valentines themed comic on this particular day!
Yeah… Kind of dropped the ball on that one.
Yesterday Laurel was all like, “Did you get my texts?”
And I was like, “What texts?”
And she was like, “Ummm… The ones about doing some valentines sketches?”
And so we wound up knocking out a few “be my valentine” type things last night for the Patreon. We’ll have to do something for the main site next year.
Our Rise of the Runelords GM is really good about allowing space for roleplay. I think there’s something to be said for just saying to your players “you’ve got a couple of days before you leave town, is there anything you’d like to do?”. It feels a bit less organic than spontaneous RP, but I think for new players in particular that permission to take control is really useful.
For veteran players as well. One of Matt Mercer’s go-to phrases is, “Is there anything else anyone would like to do tonight.” That’s not a bad way to make sure everyone feels counted.
I think its worth noting the difference between the PCs wanting to get some air from the main quest, and the PCs legitimately not having a clue of what they want to do next. I know a lot of the time my group will default to downtime activities if there isn’t an immediately visible route to follow up on the main plot, and we just wait for the DM to make the quest fall from the sky. We do occasionally have legitimate quest fatigue, especially of late, since were very close to killing the big bad and starting a new campaign, but mostly we just don’t know where to go next.
Well said. Over the years, I’ve placed less and less emphasis on the “figure it out for yourselves” line of GMing. I’m all about making the next thing obvious.
this is an excellent summary of the Cadaver Crown AP: no time for nuthin, item creation feats basically a waste.
same DM with RotR is like „need next session in town?“
Yeah man. This mess varies heavily by campaign, and you’ve got to cover pacing in Session 0. Like, if we’re refugees on the run from the evil empire, I don’t want to waste my time building arms and armor.
Carrion Crown is the correct title, bit of a lingo mix up there.
Actually the Player Guides to the canned adventures need a section where the pacing and „don’t waste your resources on X“ is spelled out clearly and unsubtly.
That’s fair. They do a good job with “what kinds of ranger terrain and favored enemies you might need,” but something as basic as crafting seems like a step beyond.
That might be because of the “assume you get 2 hours / day of crafting while adventuring” rule, but that’s such a crappy version of crafting that I feel like no one should ever rely on it.
APs are notorious for forcing parties into the next engagement, with room for rest or downtime barely accommodated for. The plots just don’t allow for longer term games of the party say taking a month off to craft, since then the bad guys progress their plots, people die, etc. Nobody is competent on the PCs side to keep things stable, and the bad guys always win in PC absence. As you reach the rocket tag levels a timeless demiplane is practically mandatory, since your BBEGs are becoming wordly threats and thousands will die if the PCs don’t get their shit together, or the usual casual relaxation and rest is replaced by ill vibes and dread. Hard to enjoy yourself when the BBEG darkened the skies.
This makes homebrew games superior, as the DM controls his plot and can easily allow for a break in action – or make the whole game a sandboxy adventure. Think of APs as Fallout 1 or 2, which has a hidden timer for bad events happening, including an early game over. Whilst Homebrews are more Skyrim or Fallout New Vegas.
Solid within-the-rules suggestion for the problem Agi and I are discussing right above. Good show, Z!
Yeah, it’s a bit cheesy and can potentially go awry if not prepared for it (you have to make sure you still eat, drink and breathe, and not stay there for too long, otherwise exiting will kill you as it all catches up simultaneously) or the DM bans it, but otherwise it’s fantastic option. If you’re a lvl20 wizard, you can grab immortality as a discovery (or a mantle of immortality on other classes) and a ring of sustenance to effectively never have to leave your demiplane and be able to (relative to normal time) craft even the most expensive items instantly. Or research any topic. Or read up a manual of stats. Or spend time simply relaxing. Or get an 8 hour rest done during an otherwise time-sensitive mission. Just don’t make Roy Greenhilt’s mistake and lose track of the passage of time, ideally with clocks and day/night/seasonal cycles.
My ideal demiplane setup is:
– theme of a tower with appropriate caster accomodations and work areas/labs and areas for party members.
– minor positive affinity for constant healing and making undead impossible to survive for long.
– timeless in regards to time passing outside. food/drink still required, aging still functions, spells last forever.
– bountiful for food/water access.
– low or relative gravity.
– enhanced magics that I often use.
– permanency’d at a size where all of the above fits into it.
– a gate, with plenty of bound outsider or magic traps (symbols, etc) preventing unauthorized entry.
back in 3.5 the rule book spelled out that levelup is something that happens in downtime and even back then canned adventures never gave you that time. at least in PF1 they‘ve done away with that line in the book.
Huh. There might be a comic in that somewhere….
I just handed out a mid-adventuring-day level-up to my Strange Aeons party, and that does bring issues. Like… Do you assume you get the bonus hp you roll? And should prepared casters automatically receive their spells?
A mid-dungeon ‘ding!’ and how those rules are interpreted is pretty much in the field as the ’15 minute adventuring day’. Once you’ve won a fight that left you drained, but got new class features and such, you want to make use of them now rather than later, especially before a boss who is probably balanced around having those ding features.
So if you go with the downtime level option, your adventure grinds to a halt as you arbitrarily rest for 8 hours to get all that stuff, which might be tricky or impossible if you’re on a time sensitive mission. In D&D they mitigate this somewhat with ‘short rest’ rules, aka 1 hour breaks to get your bearing (and spells, for certain classes), which can be done mid dungeon if you’re careful or barricade a room.
On the other hand, mid-dungeon levels without downtime can be a bit RP illogical, as the murder of a monster or acquisiton of exp spontaneously grants the party more durability, resistances, new magic powers or class abilities, and spells options (including writing in spellbooks). This can be waved away with saying the party was already inches from leveling would just need to add a ‘finishing touch’ to their projects or training (e.g. the final eureka moment to finish a spellbook spell), which they do after looting the monster that makes them ding. Divine classes have it easy, at least, with deities deciding to give them new powers or a stronger bond as leveling rewards.
I’m justifying the ding in Strange Aeons as some benevolent force that is trying to resist the incursion of the Dream Lands. I really ought to pay that mess off before the campaign ends though.
As you say about roleplay when its happening, its perhaps why i love the milestone system so much.
No need for fighting to level, no want to. You can enjoy and explore the depths, but its not about clearing it out without a reason. Its the goal of it more so.
And our downtime, well, we do neat things, we have politics and talks about what next. We invest in the world. Find Warlock Patrons, new travel spots, or teleport beacons too. Learn about how someone became a greater demon. Or the darkside of a wizard.
You can very much invest players in the world when they can do fun and relaxing social stuff.
Our fighter picked up barb for the downtime stuff, and the rogue warlock after meeting an angel and asking about a pact. Our barb is looking into druid, or fighter. We’ve all take different looks for how other folks have done things.
This is part of why everyone just comes in early, talks, chats, and just has a great time. We all just have a world we’ve put hours into.
What do barbarian levels offer for downtime?
I’ve been in campaigns that, to my taste, were a little too into speechifying. I think that’s made me more impatient as a GM than I ought to be, which is something I’m trying to change. (Half the time, writing this comic is just therapy.)
The barb, being dragonborn, in moments of downtime, to try and ‘toughen’ up the fighter would spar, and also being a bit devout, read from bahamuts book.
And bleh, meant to say from, not for, blame the hungry brain there. But our barb through the downtime helped the justification for picking up barb for another pc in actions done.
I get the want to do do do at times, but dungeon fatigue seems be much more prevalent in 5th for things.
We as a group are perfectly willing to sneak, clobber, and be clever past problems than simply look to everything as an xp magnet anymore.
Why do you think that is?
I really think its the matter of the dungeon being nasty in terms of whats you tend to face on level in repeat encounters.
The exploration of pf and earlier had a way that you fought much more singular style, with 5th, you can often face many fights designed to be burning through your hd and short rest/spells far more often.
I guess fights have a different intensity for 5th.
Like that game of Black Crusade when my group ignored the very black crusade we have manage to pull because they were busy watching the romance between my pc and another? Or like the time that in a Witcher game we ignored the encounters for three sessions our DM has arranged for instead go to the tavern to play Gwent? Or like in a V:TM long ago where my character used several permanent dots of resources to pay for vacations to each and all of the blond women over 40 just to spite and troll a Ventrue, while the rest of the group was too dicking around the city complete ignoring the main plot of the game?
Yes, our DM can say that we have done that many times and cry from despair 😀
Wait… all the blonde women over 40 in a whole city got vacations? Was that your enemy’s favored prey or something?
Yes, all the blonde women over 40 in a whole city got vacations because they were the favored and, being the guy from the Ventrue clan, only prey. They all got a month of vacations, a whole month without prey to feed upon. Not only that, but my pc also got all the blond hair-dye on the city and sent it to the rest of the women over 40 just to give the Ventrue guy false hopes. And that was just me trolling a NPC the rest of the group were doing their own dick-schemes. Meanwhile our DM was mumbling something like “I got a whole campaign prepared and all you want is to make Malkav proud”. Is fun when you crush your DM hopes and burn his plans in front of him 😛
This is beautiful and awesome and I love it. I’m gearing up for my own series of heinous hare-brained petty revenge plots myself.
For the unaware, Ventrue clan weakness in Masquerade was that they chose one “type” of person and they could only get blood from that person. This enemy’s type was apparently blond women over forty, which is…kinda specific.
Glad you like it 🙂
In that game we all got so much fun, except our DM 😛
I don’t know how much specific the whole blond-women-over-forty thing is. It was our DM who choose that. In a game i played a Ventrue that could only drink people who were his vassals, it was a Dark Ages game. His childe, another pc of mine, got something kinda-like, he could only drink from people who were his employees. Once after loosing his mobile bloodbags… er… retinues, he hired a random guy to tell him that his suit was nice and then drank him 😀
Where were you with this story back in “Venial Sins,” lol?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/venial-sins
I have trolled so much NPC for petty reasons at best, so many times, is hard to recall all of them. Like Xykon i need for people to narrow the search parameters. After all, the day i decided to crush the live of an NPC it was their most painful and terrible day but for me, as the meme goes, it was Tuesday 😛
Speaking of off-topic things, I just noticed Colin looks like Fighter. Laurel reminds me of female Wizard.
My mom asked if we were supposed to be Fighter And Thief. We both identify with Wizard due to THE DRAMA, though Laurel says my rules-obsessions make me a good stand-in for Cleric.
And who would Summoner represent? 🙂
Short answer: https://1d4chan.org/wiki/That_guy
Long answer: As much as Fighter is a jerk, and also a prototypical That Guy, there are some personality traits that are truly irredeemable. And if Fighter is a lovable goofball of murderhoboism, Summoner is the sleazy side of the That Guy coin. We wound up putting Summoner into the comic to talk about all those creepy That Guy issues that would have made Fighter truly unlikable.
Unfortunately, it worked a little too well. Laurel dislikes drawing Summoner comics, on account of it makes her (understandably) uncomfortable.
Fighter is That Guy that complains about no having fun and want to murder anything no matter what. Summoner is That Guy that complains about historical accuracy and want to get laid no matter what.
Laurel does well in disliking That Guy 🙂
Funnily enough, the summoner in the comic is as loathsome as the class itself is – on account of taking ages to do turns with their pet(s) and having some of the most broken abilities or archetypes in the game – enough to be banned from official play in their non-unchained form.
I have a solution for your/Laurels summoner dilemma/troubles, though!
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/cessation-of-hostilities
Hmm, almost coming up to that strip’s anniversary…
I’m not sure that the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy could survive the loss of Rouge the Eidolon.
What about the DruidxArcane-ArcherxKinecist threesome instead? 😀
The gain would surpass the loss 🙂
Oddly enough, the most fun I’ve had recently as a DM (besides utterly foiling my players’ stupid casino heist plan (that I deliberately did not know the details of) with basic security measures) was when the players took 20 real-life minutes to argue about which of their many, many enemies was responsible for ransacking the Alchemist’s apartment (the answer was, surprisingly enough, not “all of them”). It was nice to see the extent that they have engaged with my world and its factions.
Recently, as a player, there was a situation where we had discovered the location of the next part of the dungeon, and one of my partymates said “You know, my character doesn’t really have a lot of motivation to go there.” And so we argued for a few minutes before that PCs’ Barbarian brother picked him up and walked to the new dungeon site, on the grounds that there was stuff to fight that way, and the brother was keeping him from fighting it.
With that said, when I went to check on today’s comic, I accidentally hit “Random”, was taken to the comic about railroading from a few years ago, and had some things to say on that subject. Since today’s question is somewhat related to railroading, I thought I would share those thoughts anyways.
The classic horror story of a railroady GM is the GM who has basically written a novel, and want the PCs to act it out, no ifs, ands or buts. I find this kind of funny, because I have found that my novel-writing background actually improves my GMing a lot. Part of it might be that I write plot-based (not character-based) stories, so creating a bunch of events that happen and leaving the characters and how they solve the problems to the players comes easily enough. The big thing though, I think, is that writing plot-twist-driven and mystery-driven fiction is all about manipulating the audience, their emotions and the information they have access to, and since a GM’s audience is their players, all of those tricks still work. Information control is a GM’s greatest tool, and done right, you can create player interest and investment, build suspense, make players feel smart when they realize what all of the little clues mean, AND manipulate the players into going right to the encounter that you spent all week planning, rather than causing an unrelated fight on the other side of town that you have to hastily improvise. I call this the “curated” GMing model, full of tricks like Schrodinger’s Choice (where players get the GM-desired answer regardless of their choice – the hallway they pick always has the encounter the GM wants them to deal with first in it), the Unfailable Skill Check (where the players roll, but will always pass the check, traditionally finding the plot-relevant clue), the Emergency Retcon (where the boss they crit’d and killed before he could escape magically becomes the pawn of his assistant, who was the true mastermind “all along”), the Unavoidable Accidental Run-In (where they PCs just happen to bump into a plot-continuing NPC no matter where in town they are or what they are doing), the Post-Facto Solution (where a mystery’s solution is changed after the clues are given – sometimes because a player guessed it, but, ideally, in order to make it match a player’s theory you’d never considered, therefore making them feel smart for “figuring it out”), and, most controversially, the d20 Fudge. A lot of players might complain about those tricks if they knew about them, but like actual magic tricks, as much as the audience says they want to know the truth, their enjoyment is actually greater if they do not. I can understand why people would have a problem with this style, but in my experience it can lead to really great campaigns.
I can dig the magic trick metaphor. I used it in one of mine:
https://adventureaweek.com/shop/pathfinder/pathfinder-adventures/b24-young-minds/?doing_wp_cron=1581779632.6471719741821289062500
Spoilers for the module, but there are three suspects in this particular mystery, and the last one the PCs investigate always turns out to be the murderer. I put a great big warning sign on the plot though: “Do not let your players know!” The illusion of unlimited agency is vital for these kinds of strategies. It works beautifully when it works, but it can absolutely destroy an experience when it fails.
Also, more generally: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/2b3qsx/the_quantum_ogre_a_dialogue/
gasp gasp
I JUST emerged from a 4-days-deep rabbit hole of 9-year-old quantum ogre arguments, including but not limited to a guy arguing that if the GM does not exclusively roll their dice before the rest of the table, the players will immediately suspect that the GM is, in fact, trying to (le gasp!) make them do the plot, which will so offend them that they leave the game!
Thanks, Colin.
You poor, poor gamer. Do you need a hug?
What is Inquisitor doing to Magus under the table? Seriously, that face, where the arms are…
Well how do you spend your downtime? Eldritch Knight doesn’t look like she’s enjoying it though, so I think Vengeance Paladin needs to get a manicure.
You think that’s bad? Riddle me this: Where is Magus’s lower body? 😛
Mind. Blown.
She’s a cat. Cats are liquid. Ergo, in a liquid-bearing container. What is a tavern full of? Exactly.
Adventurers. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that adventurers are liquid. This assertion of liquidity is further supported by the well-documented habit of adventurers to carry many thousands of gold pieces worth of currency on their persons.
I’m pretty sure it’s in Schroedinger’s sealed box – but I could be wrong…I should look in to see.
I’ve seen both sides. I’ve been in an adventure where I was having fun letting glimpses into the reasons why my Varsian Changeling Witch had such an extreme view of revenge and that might be her own self-controlled channel for letting out the spite that is so common to her race and the GM is like “Okay, well…there’s a monster now.” It really kills the rp and makes me want to devolve to “I fireball the thing, we move on.” really quick.
On the other hand, I ran a WoD quest I called “Broken Mirror” which was about a set of sisters, Sophia and Allison, that were taken by the same Gentry. Sophia led a bunch of other changelings out in a daring escape while crying about how sad it was that her sister decided to stay with the thing that had been torturing her. Allison escaped later and was less than happy at being left behind, and she served as a sort of Big Bad in that she was seeking revenge on Sophia who was the Spring Queen when Winter was fast ending. If the PCs let her have her revenge, there would be no one to accept the crown when the seasons changed! The quest was written so that I had certain events taking place on certain days at certain times, so that if the PCs set up an ambush or something I was legit. The number of times I said, “So what do you guys do today?” and received answers of nothing. Then they wondered why it was so hard to convince Allison not to be the violent rage monster at the end…
I advocate for a visible scoreboard in these situations. Spoilers for the Giantslayer AP, but check out this example from Book 1:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Resolve-Point-Table.jpg
The module tells you to “praise the PCs” when they do things to slow the module’s orc invasion, and to let them see the consequences of their screw-ups when they fail at certain check points. It’s a neat idea, but I think it fails because players have no way of distinguishing those comments from normal GMing. It might break immersion, but I think the idea of a visible reminder gives presence to these systems at the table.
In your case, a calendar that you ominously cross off, one day at a time, could do the trick. “You feel something approaching.” Cross-with-red-marker. “A change in the wind.” Cross-cross. “You can’t help but feel like time is slipping away.” Cross-cross-cross. “Would anyone like to do anything while we are… eighteen, nineteen… twenty days from the solstice?” Pointed look.
It’s heavy handed, draws attention away from the fiction towards the mechanics, and risks breaking immersion. It also might be necessary.
Why does Eldritch Knight look like she’s in severe pain?
As a player I have never received downtime beyond a day or two.
As a DM I have taken pains to give the party downtime. It took them a while to un-learn their habit of rushing to the next thing.
As a cat with cat hearing, the Quest Giver is probably yelling loudly enough to make her ears hurt.
Heh. I’m surprised Magus didn’t spazz out and a do a back flip: https://giphy.com/gifs/cat-cucumber-cYmGBt2TBiOCA
Nah, that’s more reserved for goblins, orcs, and other greenskins that manage to sneak up on her. Then again, the same reaction goes for most Adventurers caught in a surprise round by greenskins.
This… is the exact same backdrop as one of the Patreon comics.
Nice.
I see you have discovered our labor-saving practices. Well-spotted!
Also, I wouldn’t want to eat off that table.