Taking 10
Jeremy the Dragon has come a long way since his murder and subsequent rise to lichdom. He’s got his own party now, a proper knightly nemesis in the person of Cavalier, and even seems to be enjoying a leadership role (if “enjoying” is the right word). I hope he’s got his phylactery in order.
Any dang way, despite the title of today’s comic, this one is not about the 3.X concept of Taking 10. Instead we’re talking about the more prosaic version of the phrase. In other words, we’re talking about instituting a formal mid-session break.
It’s not something my group has always done. Sure we would press pause for pizza or GM bathroom breaks, but those were obligatory interruptions. As the resident forever GM I’d scarf my slice, exit the john in record time, and get back behind the screen as fast as humanly possible. I always had vague notions in the back of my mind about keeping the momentum going. We’re just about to get to the good part! They’ll lose focus if I let them! We must maintain immersion at all times! My players meanwhile would excuse themselves to take a call or grab a fresh beer, but those were always catch-as-catch-can moments. We never put much thought into it, and in retrospect that might have been a mistake.
Like so many GMs out there, I think this is one of those times where it’s important to pause, reflect, and give a heartfelt thanks to Matt Mercer. It honestly didn’t occur to me to institute a formal mid-session break until I noticed the cool kids on Critical Role doing it. And while I’m all aboard the you don’t have to emulate CR train, this is one instance where I’m glad I did. At the bare minimum, taking ten offers all players a chance to grab a snack and take a bio break without rolling to save vs. FOMO. It’s also an opportunity to refocus, letting everyone pause and absorb the session-so-far. But speaking as a GM, the chance to check my notes and plan my next move has proved invaluable. Freed temporarily from the pressure of hustling the story along, a few minutes worth of intermission is all it takes to double check important plot points, incorporate the consequences of player shenanigans, and set up for the next scene.
My own sessions tend to last about four hours. If your group goes longer than that, you might institute more than one break. But if you’re at all worried about letting players slip outside the magic circle, rest assured: no one has complained about it yet.
So how about it, guys? Does your group take formal breaks, or do you try to soldier through from start to finish? Other UX design questions apply: How frequent are these breaks? Who gets to call ’em? And if you’re the GM, how do you spend those precious moments of intermission? Tell us all about your desperate rewrites and mid-session adjustments down in the comments!
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Yes and no. We tend to have short sessions — two, maybe three hours — so breaks aren’t usually necessary. But those players with children usually get some distractions… phoning home to say goodnight if we’re playing face to face, or putting the kids to bed if playing online. So depending on what’s going on when that happens, we might take a short break, the rest of us talking game or non-game stuff.
I guess that’s a point in favor of short sessions. How often do you have ’em though? I’d think that two hours every other week would leave me itching for more game time.
We do weekly sessions, so while a bit short, they’re enough to get stuff done. And while one session a week is enough for me, some of the others play with other groups on different nights…
I’m running 1/wk at this point, but it rotates between three different campaigns. I do miss a consistent storyline on a weekly basis, but the tradeoff is playing with more of my friends.
We don’t really have formal breaks in my group, but we have a tendency to order pizza or the equivalent at game start and then an informal break when it arrives where we eat and just kind of talk a bit instead of continuing to game, with more focused gaming resuming afterwards (through thinking about it often partway through the food rather than allowing time for completely finishing eating.)
There’s always that weird moment of frame switching where somebody asks you an in-game question. Suddenly you’re scarfing the last few bites of pepperoni and onion while trying to remember if you have any healing potions left.
Are Jeremy and his crew playing the villain role these days, or does Cavalier just dislike dracoliches that much?
Cavalier might be stuck in the ‘chivalrous stupid’ mindset due to knightly expectations. Or they might have an outright code/oath that says ‘go kill dragons, a lot’.
And Dragon Party likely doesn’t mind or see anything wrong with the obvious cliche.
Heh. It’s possible that her order has a similar rule. Or maybe someone cough FIGHTER! cough put up a quest bulletin that said the dragon party was doing bad stuff, and Cavalier rode off to do the hero thing.
The dragon party might indeed be into clichés… but then again, they were clever enough to spot the loophole in the quest to bring them in, allowing them to squeeze reward money out of the Quest Giver.
“It says dead or alive, so pay up.”
The Dragon Party is The Dragon Party. The Villains are The Villains. I did a chart and everything!
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/role-call
As for Cavalier, I don’t think she’s got anything against dracoliches in specific. But if you’re wearing plate armor and riding a noble steed and carrying a polearm, you’re sort of obligated to go wyrm stabbin’ from time to time.
Provided your noble steed doesn’t fall asleep before the charge. 😉
I love Brick, but he does have some uh… acceleration issues.
Mind you, I can’t think of a finer steed in the water.
You can’t fall asleep when you might drown! That’s just science.
…does that imply that The Evil Party aren’t villains?
The Evil Party are adventurers. The Villains are not.
Thinks of it this way: The Villains might hire The Evil Party to do nefarious deeds.
Our group takes 10 min break sporadically. Though I feel like session breaks are a thing too, where either due to obligations or DM fatigue it’s good to skip a session a week. Helps that we have multiple sessions/DMs on different days so it’s not a total loss of entertainment for the week.
That’s another topic worth looking at. Of course, I’ve heard it said that once you cancel three sessions in a row, it’s time to pack up the game and come back with something folks are excited to play.
I feel less like Dracolich is slowly gripping the reins of tabletop RPGs and achieving Grognard Growth (GG).
Won’t be too long before he either bites the bullet to start DMing, or looks back in his early adventuring years and realizes just how snowflake-immature their first sessions were. And that his bro is only mostly a jerk!
I’ve yet to figure out how Fighter and Jeremy are related. Perhaps some dragons adopted Fighter after he tragically “lost” his birth parents?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-13
This makes me imagine that whenever someone takes the ‘rich parents’ trait, those parents are dragons.
lol
I honestly think I’m going to let the Jeremy / Fighter relationship quietly move offscreen. It’s just too weird trying to justify how they’re brothers outside the context of the meta gag.
waves hand Fighter must have been trained in swordplay somewhere. Maybe whatever organisation it is emulates families, and isn’t picky as to which races are welcome?
But Jeremy doesn’t even use a sword!
So? Blaze does. And Fighter also punches people. ^_^
It could be a regular school of hard knocks, regardless the means with which they’re dished out.
I wonder if they were in the same sports leagues as Miss Spine Eater’s?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/origin-stories-team-bounty-hunter
I won’t lie, I’d get a kick out of seeing the teenaged bounty-hunters trample over teenaged Fighter on the sports field. With cleats on. ^_^
Not a mid-session break or a group I played in, but a DM I spectate the party of, took a long, several months hiatus as their campaign was slowly approaching a conclusion, citing a lot of stress piling up, both in DMing (skipping some plot lines, ‘rushing’ things towards a conclusion, the stress/fear of a game going on too long/forever vs finishing the story decisevely) and real life (2020 problems, stress-health and so on)…
They recently returned to say that the stress has cooled down and that they want to continue the game, with a cooler mindset and a successful sabbatical for everyone involved agreeing it was a good plan and all other sorts of wholesome player/DM reactions.
So don’t underestimate session breaks as well! Especially if they’re for a between campaigns period, or near any climax/high stress period in real life (usually exam periods).
For me it’s a seasonal issue. Holiday breaks are always tough since half the group has a load of let’s-game-every-day free time and the other half has family obligations.
Typically i call them whenever the PCs are about to do something bold and foolish with a high chance of casualties so that they actually have a plan going in and dont just faff around until one of them dies. Typically they use this as intended, and it doubles as an opportunity for me to make sure i dont have to use the bathroom in the middle of a climactic fight.
At this point the PCs are powerful enough that they dont need them often, but since DMs will never not have to pee in the middle of the game, they get them anyway.
*Rubs temples*
Alright guys. Give me a few minutes while I get this shit sorted.
*Players giggle and high five*
*GM migraine intensifies*
I think breaks as “mandatory” are mostly up to each group, but any games I have played where they are longer than a couple hours have always included a break and I think it is a good idea. Can be a nice way to “refresh” and ironically, go for an even longer than intended session! (which I like)
Laurel always talks about her epic college gaming marathons where the group would pass out, wake up, and game some more. My middle-aged ass can’t conceive of that mess anymore, lol.
the longest I ever went in my stupid youth was about 12-16 hours. We actually “accomplished” about 2 hours of any “real gaming” tho. the rest was messing about, joking around, and generally not getting anything done. It was a blast!
we‘ve done away with the lunch break at the Asian restaurant across the street when the quality went south, the hour break in the middle of the session somewhat badly broke the flow of play.
It got replaced with a breakfast at the beginning of the session. That helped a great deal to get the non-gaming related small talk over with.
With the virus around we are back each to his own junk food.
Hey now, there’s a reason its “take ten,” not “take sixty.” I think a meal break works if you order out, but you’re right: leaving the gaming location strikes me as an invitation to cat herding.
Playing in our local gamestore took exactly 3h, from 17 to 20, when the store closed for the day. So no breaks there.
During the early forays into role-playing the two older guys that introduced us to The Dark Eye took about 2-5 smoke breaks during 4-5h of adventuring.
As a DM or player outside of those scenarios I’ve never had an “official” break. Save for when the pizza arrived I guess. But I do see the enormous use of it now, while playing via Discord or Skype. The Shadowrun session yesterday went on for 6h non-stop.
Oof. You know how some Hollywood blockbusters go, like, three hours of runtime? And people are like, “There should be an intermission?” GMs have that power! They can make it happen!
My IRL group (6-8 people, including the GM) generally has 5-7 hour-long sessions once a week; though we are currently on hiatus due to COVID. We generally try to soldier through, unfortunately, one person in particular has a severe nicotine addiction and often leaves the table for smoke breaks. Three others at the table are smokers, but dont have such a severe addiction, these three smoke from the hookah at the table. Atleast twice during each session, there comes a time when both the hookah coals need to be relit, AND the nicotine addict takes their smoke break. It is during this time that everyone takes a short break, to either grab another drink, take a piss, etc.
I read that as seven 1-hour sessions in a single day. I may be tired.
Ever have any character sheet fatalities from that hookah? Those coals have been known to jump.
My main group – the only one to run for over 3 hours, typical sessions being 6 – takes a 20-minute break at around the 4-hour mark. During this, the players eat pizza and fight over tomatoes whilst I inhale fizzy dandelion and burdock with a side of cheese-filled baguettes and a light salad, make a frantic toilet break and then scribble notes and plans like a maniac whilst they discuss politics, art or 40k tournament results.
In covid-world, this is all instead done as we go along.
Why are they fighting over tomatoes?
Because they’re savory?
Three of them absolutely love them, and the others join in the scramble to grab as many as possible because it amuses them.
In years past, my table-group would take a break to run to the Burger King (or whatever else the host had a sheet of coupons for) and get food. The sessions would be about 6 hours, with the break happening around the 2.5hour mark.
When playing online, it’s also just “short breaks as necessary”, and that’s how I’ve played for years.
Man, I’m beginning to think that the whole digital vs IRL D&D debate is a lot more complex than “I don’t like learning software.” There are a lot of differences that you just wouldn’t think about at the outset.
Intervals. Like the ones that give on the movies? 🙂
There are many things that where a thing before critical role 😛
We take an small interval, 10-15 minutes, to stretch legs, getting blood back circulating, getting food, and turns on the bathroom. Many times i have got no bathroom for discussing plot with the DM. He never breaks to the bathroom until everything ends. In sessions of four-six hours 🙂
On a side note, players wouldn’t need to take a break if they were robots. Time to invest on some robotic players 😀
Nope. I’m pretty sure Matt Mercer invented the concept of breaks. Guy’s a genius.
Yep, sure. He also invented D&D, dices, Warhammer and platypuses 😀
Don’t forget the concept of imagination!
The guy isn’t even worth of my hate, nor my anger, not my disdain. He is unworthy of my wrath. He is just uninteresting to me :/
“On a side note, players wouldn’t need to take a break if they were robots. Time to invest on some robotic players” (No idea how to actually quote, so this will do for now 😛
Maybe not robotic, but same same: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2018/02/16
Shut up and take my money 😛
goddamn i need to catch up on them
Back when I used to play irl games it really varied based on the situation. If my memory serves me (which given how terrible my memory I wouldn’t bet on that), the tendency seemed to be that smaller groups usually didn’t take formal breaks but larger groups did. This makes some sense to me since larger groups means it’s harder to fill people in on what was missed without a lot of repeating and it’s easier for one person to go for a bio break and other people to decide “hey that’s a good idea” which results in everyone taking a couple minutes.
Also there were games where we’d eat actual real meals, sometimes by someone not playing. Which meant whether we wanted to pause or not, it was pausing time since you can’t really bring your character sheets, pencils, and dice to the table of a knife and fork dinner and expect any other ending than tragedy. 😉
“I watched my brothers die all about me. They were stained red with effluence of the fell beast Mar Innara.”
Hehehehe. =D
Relatable. Even when I’m not GM. Which is unfortunate when I’m dehydrated, my water bottle empty, and the closest tap with a sink basin deep enough to fill it* halfway across the house…
*I don’t have a huge water bottle, just a skinny one (and a shallow nearby sink basin). I’m not weird in that way, I’m just weird in other ways.
I think perhaps you can add “New GM Chalice” to your holiday wish list.
My Pathfinder group’s sessions are typically ~3 hours, but can easily get to 4 if we’re really in the groove, my Curse of Strahd group range from 2 hours to up to 4, and my main 5e group (which is on hiatus) is in the 3 hour range.
None of them have a specific “break” time. The main 5e campaign is a massive group (7 players plus the DM) and so long as the person in question isn’t the focus of a scene, they’re able to dip for a couple minutes if they need to with minimal issue. My other groups are small (3 players each and the GM), so if someone needs a break, we just halt and chat amongst ourselves until they get back
It would probably be a good idea to set up an actual break time, but generally I’ve found that it’s hard to get back into the swing of it naturally with an extended break, at least with the larger group. Smaller groups handle the disruption more easily and so I can see implementing a break with a group of 3-5 players, but more than that and I’d be worried about losing the group’s focus.
How long is an extended break? I usually do 5-10 minutes.
Typically 10 minutes, so it’s really not that long, but with the main 5e campaign, it was really difficult to get back on track when we tried it when we still met in person (we’ve got a lot of goof-offs in the group). With the other ones it usually comes down to that most of them don’t have the mental stamina to do a really extended session, even with the break, and one of them tends to get a bit too much into his drink and a break would definitely not help that situation.
Ah. Well I can at least empathize with your situation:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/drinking-problems
In both of her appearances since her introduction Cavalier has engaged in PVP. Is that just her thing?