Fast-Paced Game: Talking at the Table

[Maginomicon]

Foreword

I want to run a fast-paced game.

By "fast-paced" I mean that the clock matters and it matters a lot. Entire scenarios require completion in a matter of in-game days or in some cases less than an in-game day. The time of day in-game matters for the purposes of determining environmental concealment, and the clock ticks by round-by-round with a consistent 6-second-increment 24-hour timer that's visible to all players during play. Out of combat we use real time taken with a stopwatch instead of a round-by-round timer.

Talking at the Table

I prefer to not tolerate issues arising from unproductive talking at the table, so I want to know what people here think about implementing the following house ruleset for fast-paced games in particular.

Stopping the Clock

A player can choose to ask that I "stop the clock" (pause the stopwatch) so that purely out-of-character topics can be addressed (such as asking what they see in-character, asking about game rulings, asking for information about another PC's abilities, etc.). They can also "stop the clock" to deal with out-of-game issues (such as going to the bathroom, making a food run, etc.). In short, when the clock is "stopped", only out-of-character information requests and out-of-game issues are allowed.

Stopping the clock partially exists to help eliminate the fact that people at the table often don't know what people on their team are capable of and often get the impression that everyone's trying to do their own thing instead of acting as a team. It also partially exists so that the group must politely pause the game whenever people have to temporarily leave the room.

Of course, I as GM stop the clock whenever I call for something out-of-character (like asking for a spot check), or describe something that would normally be instantaneous in-game (such as describing the results of a spot check).

"Flexible" Initiative

A player can ask that we roll for "flexible" initiative to slow in-game time down to a crawl. "Flexible" initiative means there's no initiative roll; everyone gets to have "a turn" speaking in-character but no one's allowed to take another turn speaking in-character without advancing the timer 1 round. (that is, after everyone's had a chance to speak in-character, the timer advances six seconds).

As suggested in the Rules Compendium, talking in-character for anything longer than roughly a sentence or so (~25 words, as the sending spell) is longer than a free action. You can say one sentence out-loud per initiative count as a free action, double as much as a standard action, or triple as much as a full-round action (this applies in combat as well, not just during flexible initiative). Thus, during flexible initiative, anyone can spend their entire turn saying roughly a paragraph in-character. Any communication that would happen in-game (such as tactical suggestions) must happen in-character (although not necessarily with funny character voices).

Of course, anyone can always "stop the clock" as mentioned above while flexible initiative is in use.

[Fouredged Sword]

I would get a clicker to count off rounds. Just a push button counter to keep track of how many turns the party has burned in that discussion.

Unless your party has tons of optimization, generally time in rounds isn't the issue in the long run. Stuff (mostly spells) per day generally is what slows groups down and drags the adventure to a halt until they can recover. Keeping them on a clock will keep them frugal and mindful of their usage of abilities, but most of the day should probably be simply broken into 15min increments.

[gondrizzle]

This is pretty similar to how I run my games, but I don't use a clock or explicitly talk about "stopping and starting" game time. My players understand that talking about what kind of pizza to order, and most description, happens outside of game time, but nearly everything else, time is moving.

If they spend too much time standing around talking while exploring a dungeon, I start rolling dice for wandering monsters behind the screen. Or I just have the one in the next room hear them and kick the door down to come get them. When we first started playing together (like our second session), they stood in front of a cave that "reeked of troll" and had some gnawed bones around the entrance and talked about whether to go in for a few minutes. They were 2nd level. I had 3 trolls come out to meet them, instead. They had to run. I want a dungeon exploration to be a tense adventure, or at least as tense as I can get it in D&D. I don't allow long planning conversations to take place during combat. We run in initiative order and you can say something short while your character does their round, but that's it. My players use ready actions more than most 3.5 players, I think.

I also make them map.

I don't really enforce this "real time" thing when we're messing around in town, or travelling, though. That time is largely abstracted.

[buttcyst]

I do my best to keep track of days for the purposes of thing happening outside of the immediate area of my PCs. As for hours and minutes, that usually gets dumped on the party druid because of all the spell durations. Being former military, it helps make it easy to judge how much time is "actually" spent in regards to combat communication as well as how long it takes to talk to someone in general, in combat, anything more than a "GO NOW" is a standard action, I make exceptions for things like a ready action or combined initiative, but not more than a quick "you go this way, I go that way- GO". out of combat I usually give 20-30 minutes off the top immediately following anything initiative based depending on how much "recovery/damage control/looting needs to be done, after that, time is usually done in 5/15/30 minutes increments depending on distance moved and time spent talking, 4 hour blocks for most other purposes such as travel, in town, over night, item creation, and other things like that, and for general down time if extended, equal intervals, usually 3 or 4, just to check in.

[Flickerdart]

In the game, the characters are experienced adventurers who spend days and weeks together, fighting side by side. They will think like a unit, and often not need to give each other orders to act in tandem.

Out of game, the players are a bunch of guys who meet once a week to pretend they're the characters. There is no possible way that they can operate as efficiently as their characters would. Unless you game with a Navy SEAL team, I would not recommend attempting to do this.