Why is a Ticking Clock controversial?

[ad_hoc]

Just about every adventure I run has some form of ticking clock.

I can't remember watching an action movie that doesn't have a ticking clock. Common pacing is an opening action scene to set the tone of the movie. Then 1 or more 'adventure' sequences with ticking clocks to keep the tension going. The climax of the movie is always a ticking clock of some form once the action starts. The Terminator is a good example of this. There are 2 main adventure sequences with a stay at a motel to rest and gather supplies in between. Mad Max 2049 is another clear example where there are 2 main driving sequences with ramping tension and a break of safety in between.

The 1st party 5e campaigns all have ticking clocks in their various adventures often with advice at the beginning of the chapter about what happens when the PCs rest. The exception to this is overland travel which is handled poorly by the default rules and the adventures.

So why do I hear on message boards that it is difficult to have them? Or even to go so far as to say that it is railroading/bad form to include them?

I've never played that way so I just don't get it.

[Frogreaver]

Just about every adventure I run has some form of ticking clock.

I can't remember watching an action movie that doesn't have a ticking clock. Common pacing is an opening action scene to set the tone of the movie. Then 1 or more 'adventure' sequences with ticking clocks to keep the tension going. The climax of the movie is always a ticking clock of some form once the action starts. The Terminator is a good example of this. There are 2 main adventure sequences with a stay at a motel to rest and gather supplies in between. Mad Max 2049 is another clear example where there are 2 main driving sequences with ramping tension and a break of safety in between.

The 1st party 5e campaigns all have ticking clocks in their various adventures often with advice at the beginning of the chapter about what happens when the PCs rest. The exception to this is overland travel which is handled poorly by the default rules and the adventures.

So why do I hear on message boards that it is difficult to have them? Or even to go so far as to say that it is railroading/bad form to include them?

I've never played that way so I just don't get it.

Actual Ticking clocks are pretty difficult to setup and can easily result in the players not having an adventure to go on.

They are also an example of a GM exerting force on the players.

It might help if you described a particular ticking clock to get opinions about whether that’s okay or not.

[Contrast]

I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with ticking clocks.

But they can get to be pretty tedious when there's always a pressing time constraint. Much like real life, constant deadlines wear you down.

[ad_hoc]

Actual Ticking clocks are pretty difficult to setup and can easily result in the players not having an adventure to go on.

They are also an example of a GM exerting force on the players.

It might help if you described a particular ticking clock to get opinions about whether that’s okay or not.

Time pressure.

When the PCs long rest they fail the adventure for one reason or another (or have a significant set back).


I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with ticking clocks.

But they can get to be pretty tedious when there's always a pressing time constraint. Much like real life, constant deadlines wear you down.

I see you saying this but I don't understand why.

The question is why? I don't get why you think it's tedious. This is just every adventure for me. It's the game.

My real life is not an action movie and no one wants to watch it.

[Frogreaver]

Time pressure.

When the PCs long rest they fail the adventure for one reason or another (or have a significant set back).

Thanks for not providing an example. I’ll check myself out now.

[Master O'Laughs]

I remember a West Marches campaign on youtube where the DM had ticking clocks in the forms of the different rumors the party that week would hear.

If they chose to pursue "Rumor A" then "Rumor B & C" progressed and their situation slowly became more dire. I think at most there were 6 phases a rumor to hit and one of them hit the 6th phase, ultimately making it a more difficult quest to complete or needing higher level party to complete.

I thought it was handled very well, but with the same party every week it could easily make them feel overwhelmed.

[Abracadangit]

This is one of those things where it's all about the kind of game that the DM wants to run, and what the players want to play.

There isn't intrinsically anything wrong with playing D&D as a kind of sleepy, low-key fantasy adventure where all the monsters disappear in puffs of magical smoke when they're vanquished, and if the party TPKs, they can try the encounter over again a la quicksaving. Some people play D&D to have fun with the story, and they don't want to be bothered by looming threats that put pressure on them if they long rest X times within a certain campaign arc, etc.

Conversely, there's also nothing wrong with playing D&D as a dark, grisly slog where NPCs can't be trusted, monsters are always snapping at your heels, permadeath is always a couple of unlucky rolls away, and dungeons are harsh, unforgiving gauntlets that push your characters' resources to their limits. And on top of everything else, there's a mechanic in place where you need to finish this quest within so many long rests, or else the archdemon catches up to you and you can technically escape, but it'll cost you.

See -- BOTH of those campaigns sound like something I'd like to try at least once. Granted, I think most people play the game somewhere in between one of those two poles, but nobody's wrong. They're just playing their version of the game.

So I think when you hear people say "Ugh, no ticking clock for me, thanks," they're effectively saying that their enjoyment of the game is wedded to the ability to chill, take a while to come up with solutions to problems, and rest if they want spell slots back, or whatever. And the people who are like "Sign me up for that" see the LACK of a clock as almost silly -- like, what's the point of the game if rests are whenever and we can recharge whenever we want.

It's the magic of D&D! Nobody's wrong, they just want to enjoy the game in the way they want to play it.

[ad_hoc]

Thanks for not providing an example. I’ll check myself out now.

There are literally examples in the OP.

It's every 5e adventure and every action movie.

If the PCs rest too long something happens. The person they want to rescue dies. Their rivals beat them to the thing. More monsters come. The enemy escapes. The cave fills with water/poisonous gas/lava. Etc.


Conversely, there's also nothing wrong with playing D&D as a dark, grisly slog where NPCs can't be trusted, monsters are always snapping at your heels, permadeath is always a couple of unlucky rolls away, and dungeons are harsh, unforgiving gauntlets that push your characters' resources to their limits. And on top of everything else, there's a mechanic in place where you need to finish this quest within so many long rests, or else the archdemon catches up to you and you can technically escape, but it'll cost you.

Why are you characterizing things happening in the world over time as a 'dark and grisly slog'?

The Princess Bride has a ticking clock.

They all do.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with ticking clocks.

But they can get to be pretty tedious when there's always a pressing time constraint. Much like real life, constant deadlines wear you down.

In my experience, there are three basic "activity levels" in a campaign:

Downtime: this doesn't have ticking clocks, but it has an alarm clock (ie it will end after X period of time or when something happens, whichever comes first). Here there are no challenges at all--you do what you do effectively off-camera, in accelerated montage time. Here, nothing under a week really matters, and months may pass in the blink of an eye.

"Exploration": (air quotes intentional because exploration is much more than this): this has clocks on the multiple-day/multiple-week scale, but they're less about success or failure than about changing what you see. In this mode you are on camera, but there still aren't attrition-based challenges. Every scene can assume that the party starts at full resources and will succeed, but instead of success/failure being the interesting thing, the challenges are more about which path you chose and which sights you see/what you seek out. This could be an arena fight, this could be travel to find new places, etc. Do you befriend the ogres or the pixies? Do you hunt the rumors about the hidden temple or the ones about the dragon's lair? Etc. Passing time changes the landscape, which alters the challenges (if you take too long, the passes will be closed and you'll have to detour around the mountains through the swamp) but doesn't put a hard stop on anything. Here nothing under the scale of a day or week really matters.

Time-crunch: This is the traditional adventuring day. Attrition is in full swing, and you have to get in there and do thing or you'll fail. The princess WILL be eaten at noon in two days. The ritual WILL happen and butterfinger bars will become the dominant life form at the dark of the new moon. Unless you stop it. Here hours and minutes matter, as do days.

In that way, you don't have ticking clocks for everything, but you have a variety of things and the time-scale that matters varies. Variety is the spice of life.

[Mellack]

It's every 5e adventure and every action movie.

If the PCs rest too long something happens. The person they want to rescue dies. Their rivals beat them to the thing. More monsters come. The enemy escapes. The cave fills with water/poisonous gas/lava. Etc.



Tomb of horrors. There is nothing in that adventure that says you have to start the adventure today or next month.

[Psyren]

I am very pro-ticking clock. As I've said in multiple other threads, the three pillars of an effective plot are Goal, Stakes, and Urgency - the latter of which requires a clock of some kind.

Goal: Why does the party want/need to do this?

Stakes: What does the party gain if they do this? What do they lose if they don't?

Urgency: When is the "point of no return" that the goal must be achieved by?

The key to avoiding undue stress however is that the clock doesn't have to be set in stone, and can in fact be "fuzzy." Say we have to beat the Big Bad before the Celestial Alignment happens - you can make it so that every attempt by the heroes to pinpoint that occurrence only gives them a window, and the big climactic fight can be right in the nick of time. Or maybe they're even a little bit late, enough that the ritual is underway and much harder to stop, but not impossible. The key is not letting them realize that you're fudging the timeline to keep things dramatic instead of making their failure (or success) a foregone conclusion.

But having no urgency at all, in my view, makes the game much worse( - particularly as it trains your players to be comfortable with a 15-minute adventuring day or lengthy digressions. \

*Unless a more freeform sandbox is the feel you're going for anyway

[Unoriginal]

It's every 5e adventure and every action movie.

If the PCs rest too long something happens. The person they want to rescue dies. Their rivals beat them to the thing. More monsters come. The enemy escapes. The cave fills with water/poisonous gas/lava. Etc.




The Princess Bride has a ticking clock.

Maybe you're just defining "ticking clock" in a different manner than other people?

[Frozenstep]

I can kind of see the railroading argument. To make a ticking clock work, you kind of need to let the players know they're on the clock. That usually ends up being something that happens to the players (they hear about some ritual that'll be done at midnight, etc), not something they directly choose to do.

[Composer99]

It depends on what you're using the ticking clock for, how prevalent ticking clocks are in the game, and indeed what kind of game you're playing.

For instance, if you're running a hexcrawl/dungeoncrawl sandbox-y style game, there might not be a "big picture" ticking clock, the way that, say, Tomb of Annihilation does, but there is often still a clock. If the PCs are exploring a dungeon with intelligence inhabitants who possess both the means and will to change their arrangements in response to the PCs' actions, if the PCs give them time and space to do so, they should do so. That is a kind of ticking clock - "explore as much of the dungeon as you can before its denizens can get their act together and either reinforce their defences against you or run away with the loot you wanted". Not every dungeon will have this clock - if the PCs are tomb raiding, the defences probably aren't dynamic, for instance.

In a sandbox game, you the DM might still have factions or entities in the setting with their own agendas, which if enacted can result in changes to the game world that might not be to the PCs' advantage. There's nothing wrong with this (it does make the setting feel like a living world that has its own existence independent of the PCs), but in a sandbox game the players should never feel forced at the metagame level to deal with those factions or entities. The ticking clock becomes conditional: if you want to stop the Cult of the Old God from summoning the demon Shrula-Gor'eth into the world, you have 60 days to do so, but it won't end the campaign if you don't.

Similarly, a mission might have a ticking clock - if the players agree to hunt down the fabled assassin Yoranth the Steelsworn before he escapes the Kingdom of Yorr, they might have 30 days to do so. If they fail, they might miss out on rewards. (But in any longer game in a persistent world, if they possess the resources nothing is stopping them from tracking down Yoranth later, possibly getting something for their troubles anyway.) Or if they agree to help save a village's folk taken captive by yuan-ti, they might have only a few days to do so before the captives are sacrificed in gruesome rituals or fed to the yuan-ti young. But again, the clocks here are conditional - if you accept this task, you have so much time to accomplish it.

Other things the PCs might want to do don't need a ticking clock. If the point of tonight's session is how the party figures out how to craft the Legendary Sword of Swordiness, there might not be a ticking clock - no time limit they are working against.

And of course, it's probably worth noting that an RPG is not an action movie, and way the game flows does not need to precisely emulate the story beats of film.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I can kind of see the railroading argument. To make a ticking clock work, you kind of need to let the players know they're on the clock. That usually ends up being something that happens to the players (they hear about some ritual that'll be done at midnight, etc), not something they directly choose to do.

Not necessarily. My current players are about to dive at a major fortress and do a smash-and-grab for an artifact they believe is stored there. That will have a very strong ticking clock, because the fortress, although not all that well defended itself, can obviously and evidently call in reinforcements from the surrounding areas. They could have approached this in many ways, some of which would have had very different clocks. And there really isn't a global-level clock here at all--the whole search for the artifact could happen really any time (the big constraint is "sometime in this generation or so, before things get too bad to recover from").

[Christew]

There are literally examples in the OP.

It's every 5e adventure and every action movie.

If the PCs rest too long something happens. The person they want to rescue dies. Their rivals beat them to the thing. More monsters come. The enemy escapes. The cave fills with water/poisonous gas/lava. Etc.
I believe he was looking for an example from 5e as opposed to a movie.

Movies, tv, books, etc are all constructed narratives -- the author has full control over all characters, what is revealed when, and the overarching timeline. This makes it very easy to adjust tension like a dial. 5e is not that because the players have autonomy within the narrative. Doesn't mean you can't manufacture tension, but the player/character dichotomy must be accounted for.


Why are you characterizing things happening in the world over time as a 'dark and grisly slog'?

The Princess Bride has a ticking clock.

They all do.
Pretty clear use of hyperbole to identify the two extremes of a spectrum here.

[ad_hoc]

I can kind of see the railroading argument. To make a ticking clock work, you kind of need to let the players know they're on the clock. That usually ends up being something that happens to the players (they hear about some ritual that'll be done at midnight, etc), not something they directly choose to do.

But they can set off the clock once they decide to do something too.

I'm still not hearing or understanding why people here think the ticking clock/time pressure is not the default.

What would The Princess Bride be without its ticking clocks?

1. Humperdinck is on the hunt.
2. Humperdinck will marry Buttercup.

Those are the 2 things which drive the action. There is no movie/story without them.

How do people play without time pressure (for the adventuring parts)?

[Frozenstep]

Not necessarily. My current players are about to dive at a major fortress and do a smash-and-grab for an artifact they believe is stored there. That will have a very strong ticking clock, because the fortress, although not all that well defended itself, can obviously and evidently call in reinforcements from the surrounding areas. They could have approached this in many ways, some of which would have had very different clocks. And there really isn't a global-level clock here at all--the whole search for the artifact could happen really any time (the big constraint is "sometime in this generation or so, before things get too bad to recover from").

Ah, I think I looked at ticking clock and thought it was basically "doomclock". Like "stop this ritual happening in 6 days or the world ends" kind of deal. Slightly different from "actions have consequences, especially given time"

[ad_hoc]

Ah, I think I looked at ticking clock and thought it was basically "doomclock". Like "stop this ritual happening in 6 days or the world ends" kind of deal.

Not every story is Escape From New York. :p

That had a literal ticking clock but the idea is that something bad will happen at some point in the future and this drives the characters to act.

[Atranen]

Movies, tv, books, etc are all constructed narratives -- the author has full control over all characters, what is revealed when, and the overarching timeline. This makes it very easy to adjust tension like a dial. 5e is not that because the players have autonomy within the narrative. Doesn't mean you can't manufacture tension, but the player/character dichotomy must be accounted for.


I think this sums it up. If the clocks are reasonably "long-term", say a villain will reach a goal in 8 sessions, then the players may either 1) foil the villain far too quickly, meaning there is no real tension, or 2) fall behind, so it becomes apparent they will not succeed far before the event happens. These sorts of clocks require too fine narrative control to work well in a free-flowing game.

Short term clocks with lower stakes (e.g. something has to happen *this session*) work better. Longer term clocks work better if they are more abstract, conveying general feeling.

There's also the fact that in action movies, a scene can show the villain discussing their nefarious plans etc. In games that doesn't happen. This makes it harder to set up stakes in the same way.

[ad_hoc]

I think this sums it up. If the clocks are reasonably "long-term", say a villain will reach a goal in 8 sessions, then the players may either 1) foil the villain far too quickly, meaning there is no real tension, or 2) fall behind, so it becomes apparent they will not succeed far before the event happens. These sorts of clocks require too fine narrative control to work well in a free-flowing game.

Short term clocks with lower stakes (e.g. something has to happen *this session*) work better. Longer term clocks work better if they are more abstract, conveying general feeling.

There's also the fact that in action movies, a scene can show the villain discussing their nefarious plans etc. In games that doesn't happen. This makes it harder to set up stakes in the same way.

Characters in movies still need motivations.

If Sarah Conner didn't need to run from The Terminator she wouldn't.

If Humperdinck wasn't after Buttercup they would just live happily ever after. If he wasn't going to marry her soon Westley would have time to recover and they would have time to come up with a better plan to rescue her.

Without the time pressure the audience wouldn't engage with it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Ah, I think I looked at ticking clock and thought it was basically "doomclock". Like "stop this ritual happening in 6 days or the world ends" kind of deal. Slightly different from "actions have consequences, especially given time"

In this case, they're shifting out of Exploration mode (figuring out the lay of the land, deciding where to go, commandeering a ship to take them there) into Adventure mode (get the artifact before the defenses can make that impractical). There are always clocks going, but very few of them are doom clocks.

However, their previous adventure had a mix--they had a hard deadline of noon on 1 Winter Dawning (roughly December 1, four days from start), when Gozh the ancient dragon was speaking to the Congress of Dragons. If they didn't figure out what was planned by Xel'na the creepy stalker ithillich for that time and stop it, bad things would happen (ie every ancient and most of the adult dragons getting infected with a demon virus, driving them insane, along with a volcanic eruption killing most of a city of several hundred thousand and stealing their souls, turning Xel'na into a Demon Prince). But they also had other interfering things, some of them of their choice and some not.

1. The bard had scheduled a performance for the 29th of Autumn Dying (tomorrow) in the evening. This was entirely her choice.
2. They had a rumor that there might be another way into the volcanic core, but that was half-way across the city. There were also (deluded) zealots in those tunnels who'd brought a purple worm for backup. Adventure
3. Since it's a big city, transport is slow.
4. After the performance, the dragons commanded a private performance/interview. That was for the 32nd[1] of Autumn Dying, in the evening. So roughly 18 hours from D-Hour.
5. The walls that separated the volcanic core from the ritual tunnels (long story) would only drop at 8:00 AM, 4 hours before the time.
6. Stopping Xel'na wasn't enough--they also had to get someone to cover the ritual that was supposed to be going on to harmlessly vent the volcanic energies. Xel'na had infiltrated and distorted this ritual.

So there are always multiple clocks, all ticking. Most of which are not doom clocks by themselves, but they do constrain and inform actions and prevent the 5-minute working day from becoming a habit.

[Frozenstep]

But they can set off the clock once they decide to do something too.

I'm still not hearing or understanding why people here think the ticking clock/time pressure is not the default.

I'm not arguing against doomclocks, I used them myself. I just can see how if the DM suddenly drops on the party "hey, you've got 8 days to do this thing or else the world ends" feels like railroading, because now the party has to focus on doing the thing. It also doesn't have to be a world-ender to still feel too important to turn your back on.

I've had campaigns like that, where the opening session is some big dramatic incident, and then we learn it's caused by X and if we don't stop X within Y time then bad things will happen. I enjoy it, I like having time tension and feeling like every long rest is costly, but I can also see why some would think it's a little railroady, when they would prefer to explore and discover what they want to explore and discover. I don't prefer that myself, but I know plenty do. You can still have ticking clocks show up in those campaigns as well.

[Sception]

Action movies (& books, plays, etc) cheat their supposed clocks. The timers are set retroactively so that the characters arrive at exactly the right moment for maximum dramatic payoff. Characters never arrive too late unless that is what serves the story. Characters never arrive early except in parodies because if they do then the clock was pointless and would have been cut.

None of this is possible in a dnd campaign, because the story can't be written out in advance the same way. If you set a timer, then either that timer is fake and the heroes will arrive 'just in time' or 'just too late' regardless of what they do, or else you have to write & prepare at least two entirely different outcomes. Which is double the work on the dm's part for no extra payoff that's visible to the players, as they'll only experience one outcome regardless.

Alternatively you could 'wing it', but not a lot of DMs can pull off a solid game by the seat of their pants. I sure can't.

You also have to cut your stakes down so failure to meet that clock isn't campaign ending. The entire campaign ending because an off screen timer is going to run out, and there's nothing the party can do because you hit a patch of bad luck in combat and had to take an extra long rest two sessions ago is pretty anticlimactic.

And the luck thing is a pretty key point. The dice matter in this game, & taking an extra rest isn't always a matter of gaming the system.

If you as the DM want to micromanage what rests the players take, then just set that out as a homerule up front. Heck, as a player I'd welcome this. Nithing is more tedious than a fighter & wizard player arguing accross the table over whether/how long to rest. Declaring rests to be a narrative pacing issue determined by the dm rather than a player action thing would, imo, be an improvement.

[Frozenstep]

-snip-

Yeah, it's definitely possible to use clocks in quite a few many ways. I'm just saying the people complaining are probably the ones who've had doomclocks dropped on them when they wanted to do something else.

[Psyren]

It depends on what you're using the ticking clock for, how prevalent ticking clocks are in the game, and indeed what kind of game you're playing.

For instance, if you're running a hexcrawl/dungeoncrawl sandbox-y style game, there might not be a "big picture" ticking clock, the way that, say, Tomb of Annihilation does, but there is often still a clock. If the PCs are exploring a dungeon with intelligence inhabitants who possess both the means and will to change their arrangements in response to the PCs' actions, if the PCs give them time and space to do so, they should do so. That is a kind of ticking clock - "explore as much of the dungeon as you can before its denizens can get their act together and either reinforce their defences against you or run away with the loot you wanted". Not every dungeon will have this clock - if the PCs are tomb raiding, the defences probably aren't dynamic, for instance.

In a sandbox game, you the DM might still have factions or entities in the setting with their own agendas, which if enacted can result in changes to the game world that might not be to the PCs' advantage. There's nothing wrong with this (it does make the setting feel like a living world that has its own existence independent of the PCs), but in a sandbox game the players should never feel forced at the metagame level to deal with those factions or entities. The ticking clock becomes conditional: if you want to stop the Cult of the Old God from summoning the demon Shrula-Gor'eth into the world, you have 60 days to do so, but it won't end the campaign if you don't.

Similarly, a mission might have a ticking clock - if the players agree to hunt down the fabled assassin Yoranth the Steelsworn before he escapes the Kingdom of Yorr, they might have 30 days to do so. If they fail, they might miss out on rewards. (But in any longer game in a persistent world, if they possess the resources nothing is stopping them from tracking down Yoranth later, possibly getting something for their troubles anyway.) Or if they agree to help save a village's folk taken captive by yuan-ti, they might have only a few days to do so before the captives are sacrificed in gruesome rituals or fed to the yuan-ti young. But again, the clocks here are conditional - if you accept this task, you have so much time to accomplish it.

I think these are good examples. All clocks are not created equal.


Other things the PCs might want to do don't need a ticking clock. If the point of tonight's session is how the party figures out how to craft the Legendary Sword of Swordiness, there might not be a ticking clock - no time limit they are working against.

True - though I would probably want there to be a reason they are crafting the Legendary Sword of Swordiness, stakes if they don't, and those stakes may or may not have a clock associated.


And of course, it's probably worth noting that an RPG is not an action movie, and way the game flows does not need to precisely emulate the story beats of film.

Also true, but there's a lot to be said for action films as a basis of comparison for a swords-and-sorcery style adventure. D&D can emulate a lot of other styles, like a documentary or slice-of-life, but you'll want to be sure your players are down for that too.

[Atranen]

Characters in movies still need motivations.

If Sarah Conner didn't need to run from The Terminator she wouldn't.

If Humperdinck wasn't after Buttercup they would just live happily ever after. If he wasn't going to marry her soon Westley would have time to recover and they would have time to come up with a better plan to rescue her.

Without the time pressure the audience wouldn't engage with it.

I don't think anyone is against character motivations. I don't think most people are against *any* sort of time pressure.

I think the long term, "40 days from now something bad will happen" clocks cause problems because they are difficult to fit narratively into a game with player agency. That's what people (at least me) are against.

[Psyren]

I don't think anyone is against character motivations. I don't think most people are against *any* sort of time pressure.

I think the long term, "40 days from now something bad will happen" clocks cause problems because they are difficult to fit narratively into a game with player agency. That's what people (at least me) are against.

I agree - but I also don't think that degree of specificity is necessary in order for there to be pressure.

[Christew]

Characters in movies still need motivations.

If Sarah Conner didn't need to run from The Terminator she wouldn't.

If Humperdinck wasn't after Buttercup they would just live happily ever after. If he wasn't going to marry her soon Westley would have time to recover and they would have time to come up with a better plan to rescue her.

Without the time pressure the audience wouldn't engage with it.
I don't think anyone is advocating for a campaign with no motivations and no time pressure.

But the point stands that the constructed narratives you keep mentioning are not analogous to a D&D game. Authors cheat. Tension can be at an optimal level and then everyone arrives exactly where they are supposed to in the nick of time. D&D only does that if you railroad extensively. Consequences to delay and time sensitive missions are totally doable, but the players occupy the dual position of audience and actors (with no script) and must be treated accordingly.

[Atranen]

I agree - but I also don't think that degree of specificity is necessary in order for there to be pressure.

Yeah definitely. The problem isn't time pressure but badly done time pressure.

[ad_hoc]

I'm not arguing against doomclocks, I used them myself. I just can see how if the DM suddenly drops on the party "hey, you've got 8 days to do this thing or else the world ends" feels like railroading, because now the party has to focus on doing the thing. It also doesn't have to be a world-ender to still feel too important to turn your back on.

I've had campaigns like that, where the opening session is some big dramatic incident, and then we learn it's caused by X and if we don't stop X within Y time then bad things will happen. I enjoy it, I like having time tension and feeling like every long rest is costly, but I can also see why some would think it's a little railroady, when they would prefer to explore and discover what they want to explore and discover. I don't prefer that myself, but I know plenty do. You can still have ticking clocks show up in those campaigns as well.

It's not to be taken literally (usually).

In The Princess Bride there is the overarching ticking clock of Buttercup being married but also, once they breach the castle it isn't like they can just have a sleep in the middle of it. The garrison and brute squad will come and find them.

Spoilers for Hoard of the Dragon Queen



There is an overarching clock of the cultists summoning Tiamat. More importantly there are clocks in most chapters.

In the bullywug castle they are outnumbered. If they tarry for too long they will likely be found out. They are also on the trail of the cultists and they don't want to lose them.

In the next chapter if they hang out outside of the mansion for too long they get attacked by monsters.

In the floating castle there are many threats who could find them out including a vampire who is actively on the look out. Also, the castle will eventually reach its destination where there will be even more threats.

There doesn't need to be a grand clock, though it's fine to have one. There should be on individual adventures. If they can take all the time in the world why bother playing it out? How is that exciting? I would nope out of that - game or movie.

[dafrca]

For me, the whole ticking clocks mechanic is fine but like any other strong spice needs to be used with a light hand. I do not want every adventure or session to be on a time clock feel. Some yes, but some I want a little more relaxed explore around feel. When blended together over time then the ticking clock feels more important and less like a fake thing to force my hand and actions as a player. :smallbiggrin:

[ad_hoc]

I don't think anyone is advocating for a campaign with no motivations and no time pressure.

But the point stands that the constructed narratives you keep mentioning are not analogous to a D&D game. Authors cheat. Tension can be at an optimal level and then everyone arrives exactly where they are supposed to in the nick of time. D&D only does that if you railroad extensively. Consequences to delay and time sensitive missions are totally doable, but the players occupy the dual position of audience and actors (with no script) and must be treated accordingly.

I read time and again on this board that the resting mechanics don't work and the game is too easy because the PCs can just rest whenever they want. And then if someone mentions time pressure they say that it is DM railroading, tedious, and unrealistic.

I just don't get it.

[dafrca]

Yeah definitely. The problem isn't time pressure but badly done time pressure.
Yes, badly handled and over used both create issues with games in my opinion. :smallsmile:

[Xetheral]

How do people play without time pressure (for the adventuring parts)?

I don't think the pushback against "ticking clocks" is a pushback against time pressure. I think instead it's an objection to multiple adventures in a row that each have an unrelated doom clock that happens to start when the adventure is accepted. The repeated series of time limits can feel artificial in a way that a single "ticking clock" (or a series of strongly related ticking clocks) in a movie does not.

But there are other forms of time pressure that aren't ticking clocks. For example, if the characters have a very long to-do list with multiple goals, the players often impose their own time pressure to accomplish as many of their goals as possible, even when none of the individual goals have a time limit. Alternatively, a dynamic game world can provide implicit time pressure to take advantage of opportunities that might not last, even without explicit expiration dates.

[ad_hoc]

FOr me, the whole ticking clocks mechanic is fine but like any other strong spice needs to be used with a light hand. I do not want every adventure or session to be on a time clock feel. Some yes, but some I want a little more relaxed explore around feel. When blended together over time then the ticking clock feels more important and less like a fake thing to force my hand and actions as a player. :smallbiggrin:

Could you explain why?

Like I said, I don't get it.

How is it a fake thing?

Taking time to do things between adventures? Absolutely.

But how is it not just the way adventures are structured? I don't get how it can be seen as 'fake'

[Atranen]

There is an overarching clock of the cultists summoning Tiamat. More importantly there are clocks in most chapters.

In the bullywug castle they are outnumbered. If they tarry for too long they will likely be found out. They are also on the trail of the cultists and they don't want to lose them.

In the next chapter if they hang out outside of the mansion for too long they get attacked by monsters.

In the floating castle there are many threats who could find them out including a vampire who is actively on the look out. Also, the castle will eventually reach its destination where there will be even more threats.

There doesn't need to be a grand clock, though it's fine to have one. There should be on individual adventures. If they can take all the time in the world why bother playing it out? How is that exciting? I would nope out of that - game or movie.




HoTDQ is an adventure where time pressure is overused IMO. It works in many of the individual chapters. But as an adventure you're constantly on the move and never settle in anywhere. Characters don't have permanent connections that make the world feel worth saving. I had a similar experience with Out of the Abyss. Both needed to give the characters more of a breather to set stakes.

[Unoriginal]

But they can set off the clock once they decide to do something too.

I'm still not hearing or understanding why people here think the ticking clock/time pressure is not the default.

What would The Princess Bride be without its ticking clocks?

1. Humperdinck is on the hunt.
2. Humperdinck will marry Buttercup.

Those are the 2 things which drive the action. There is no movie/story without them.

Absolutely untrue. What drives the movie at the start is Buttercup's kidnapping, we have no idea Humperdinck is actually after them until... after the duel between the Man in Black and Inigo. You could argue there was a race between the kidnappers and the Man in Black before, but a race isn't the same as a ticking clock. Furthermore, we lose track of Humperdinck for a while until he shows up to prevent Wesley and Buttercup to reach from the ship.

Being on time to prevent the evil prince trying to marry Buttercup didn't matter for Inigo or Fezik, nor did it have any impact on the Count's and Inigo's confrontation. It also ends up being inconsequential as Humperdinck sabotaged it himself.

Time limits is ONE manner to drive tension. Not THE manner to drive tension.

If you want a bunch of 5e adventures with no "ticking clock" factors, you can look at, from the top of my head: Forge of Furry, Dungeon of the Mad Mage and The Wild beyond the Witchlight.

[Elric VIII]

Something missing with the analogy between narratives and D&D games is that a) times when the clock is not ticking are glossed over, and b) D&D is a game where you want to have each encounter be meaningful.

To use the example of the Princess Bride: the shrieking eels were defeated by Fezzik punching one of them and grabbing Buttercup. That happened over the course of a multi-day sea voyag. How do you put a ticking clock on that in D&D terms? Sure, rescuing her fast enough is a small clock, but the fact that the encounter is separated by travel time loading screens means there is just a pass/fail condition on that one encounter. Making an encounter like that is just wasting game time on something that had negligible impact or ends the game.

Otherwise you just have your players grinding low level enemies like it's a MMO until the actual relevant parts of the adventure being.

[Christew]

I read time and again on this board that the resting mechanics don't work and the game is too easy because the PCs can just rest whenever they want. And then if someone mentions time pressure they say that it is DM railroading, tedious, and unrealistic.

I just don't get it.
It's a bit of a catch 22 of 5e's design. Resting is mechanically very forgiving, but the combat mechanics assume that you will be at/near full health at the start of an encounter, so it sort of has to be so forgiving.

Mechanics and narrative are interwoven but separate strands though. You can use time pressure to drive tension on a narrative, but expecting players to forgo resting if they are severely wounded/out of resources risks creating something that is just not fun. Hence all the posts on using a light hand. We all want to create a compelling narrative, but we also want to preserve actually fun gameplay.


Absolutely untrue. What drives the movie at the start is Buttercup's kidnapping, we have no idea Humperdinck is actually after them until... after the duel between the Man in Black and Inigo.
This. The Princess Bride is a particularly poor example here because it is a send up of the tropes under discussion. It specifically engages in extensive authorial convenience because that is part of the joke. Also the wedding was never even the point -- Humperdinck wanted war with Guilder.

[Kurt Kurageous]

The clue is "A mechanic that makes player's use of time meaningful in a RPG." The response "What is the Angry Tension Pool?"


The OP mentioned pacing. You have more than one clock going, but they start in sequence.

EX:
The heroes save the waon of orphans from going off the cliff, and spend the evening celebrating with the orphanage located with a the cult of doo-goodism. In the morning, a messenger arrives with news of a very dangerous soon-happening plot complication that the heroes could stop if they only could get there on time. They do, and then stop to receive the honors of a grateful city. When suddenly...

You can't got all out all the time. It's exhausting.

[Keravath]

Ticking clocks are a common element in both homebrew and published adventures. Often there is something to motivate the characters to take action in an expeditious fashion and I don't find anything wrong with that perspective.

If you want concrete examples you don't need to look any farther than the Death Curse in Tomb of Annihilation, poison gas in the Hidden Shrine of Tamaochan or chapter 4 of Rime of the Frost Maiden to find published cases of explicit ticking clocks that drive the narrative. These give the players/characters specific types of problems to deal with that require them to take action within specific limited time span.

I don't even consider these railroading in the classic sense. Yes, it may limit the player response to a certain time frame if they want to succeed at the task but they still have the choice to fail if they prefer (depending on the consequences).

[Waterdeep Merch]

It's funny you mention other forms of fiction, because there's actually two different ways most stories come to their conclusion. One of those is the time lock, where the coming of an event(s) forces decisions and actions. This is your traditional 'ticking clock'. I think this is the worst of the two for tabletop roleplaying because of the way time is abstracted. This is linear game design by default because it has to be. Too hard juggling multiple potential timelines, easier to just have 'pass' and 'fail' based on whether you accomplish your goal before time's up. And if you make it too tight, this can mean walking corpses with little chance of victory are forced to fight losing battles else evil triumphs. Sounds great for a book or movie but it's frustrating in actual play. If this isn't true, then the only thing your ticking clock accomplished was stopping the players from doing anything but pursuing the main story. That's best-case.

The other is the option lock, where fewer and fewer options become viable until the last ones standing are the ones the characters must choose from in the climax. I believe this is superior in tabletop roleplaying for a few reasons. It naturally ferrets out possible angles for the game according to the actions and intentions of the players, it can respond to (and indeed inspires) unusual or creative interactivity, and the fail state is most typically doing things the hard way.

You know there's an evil that must be stopped. Once you've made that decision, how do you do it? Do some digging around for information, attack their outlying forces and allies, gather artifacts of power, hone your abilities, sue for diplomacy? The last resort, obvious from the beginning, is marching right up and fighting. Could work, but you're compelled to try these other avenues first. You make connections, prove yourselves worthy, gather the macguffins, become great heroes, find out there's a secret entrance to the throne room. And then based on what all options you've gathered, you make your final play.

The only problem option locks have with 5e is the rest system. It clearly favors the time lock scenario. But I much favor option locks for making a compelling game.

[P. G. Macer]

In addition to the fist-party 5e adventures already mentioned, Storm King’s Thunder explicitly does not have a ticking clock, saying on page 16 of the book in the second full paragraph of the second column of text, “Storm King’s Thunder is not a “ticking clock” adventure, meaning that the characters are under no pressure to end the giant threat quickly.”

[Composer99]

Granting that I have already suggested the analogy between films and RPGs with respect to ticking clocks is inapt, if you want a good film example of how ticking clocks might work well in an adventure, I would propose Avengers: Endgame.

In that film, the ticking clocks apply to several, but not all, of the situations the heroes find themselves in the middle part of the film. But these clocks are volitional and conditional - the heroes accept the ticking clocks as a consequence of other resource limits, and the clocks are a result of the situations themselves in the fiction into which the heroes deliberately engage in order to achieve their objective.


It's worth noting that with some research the "PCs" might have come up with a way to give themselves more time and/or get rid of some of the limits:
- Had they hit upon the idea of traveling to 1970 to get more Pym particles during the planning phase, instead of as a reaction to a setback, they would have had more flexibility in planning the out the mission.
- All the Stones, save one (The Mind Stone), had long stretches of time where they were just sitting around, and in which there would be no time pressure involved in an attempt to retrieve them. It's possible that with more time spent on research, some or all of these situations might have been uncovered. (I am sure the Mind Stone did as well, but it's the only one where such stretches are never shown on screen and can't be inferred from what the audience sees on screen. I also suppose the heroes could have tried to talk Vision into going to Wakanda to have it safely removed during any given interval between Age of Ultron and Infinity War, but I could see that having too great a risk of backfiring badly.)

[Dr.Samurai]

Just about every adventure I run has some form of ticking clock.

I can't remember watching an action movie that doesn't have a ticking clock. Common pacing is an opening action scene to set the tone of the movie. Then 1 or more 'adventure' sequences with ticking clocks to keep the tension going. The climax of the movie is always a ticking clock of some form once the action starts. The Terminator is a good example of this. There are 2 main adventure sequences with a stay at a motel to rest and gather supplies in between. Mad Max 2049 is another clear example where there are 2 main driving sequences with ramping tension and a break of safety in between.

The 1st party 5e campaigns all have ticking clocks in their various adventures often with advice at the beginning of the chapter about what happens when the PCs rest. The exception to this is overland travel which is handled poorly by the default rules and the adventures.

So why do I hear on message boards that it is difficult to have them? Or even to go so far as to say that it is railroading/bad form to include them?

I've never played that way so I just don't get it.
Well, I am currently in Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus and the DM eventually complained that we were playing very linear and not really looking into the various side hooks he was sprinkling around and we as the players were all like "well... we figured there wasn't time because a certain bad thing is going to happen to a certain city that we are trying to save" and he was like "oh... well, that will take a little while so... you have time to kind of do other stuff".

There is the issue of 1. is there actual time to do other stuff and 2. would it make sense, given the circumstances of the ticking clock, that the characters would choose to do other stuff?

For some games it works. But it is weird to include it, and then also expect players to explore other leads and branch away from the main plot. Because there is a ticking clock.

[Chronos]

You can't have the players always working against a doomclock. But non-doom-clocks can be as frequent as you'd like, and you can still use doomclocks, too, just only occasionally.

[dafrca]

Could you explain why?

Like I said, I don't get it.

How is it a fake thing?

Taking time to do things between adventures? Absolutely.

But how is it not just the way adventures are structured? I don't get how it can be seen as 'fake'

If every adventure was find and fight the demon how many of those in a row until you feel board and the adventure was just route actions? Well if too many adventures are just watch the time tick down and try to beat the clock, after a while it would become a bore and feel forced or "fake" to me. Use any format at times and it can be fun, use it too much and it ruins them in my opinion. I am unsure what is so hard to understand but at this point I will point out this is my opinion and I am not saying it must apply to you. Maybe you enjoy the predictability of using the same format and thus works for you. It just does not work for me. :smallbiggrin:

[Thunderous Mojo]

Could you explain why?
But how is it not just the way adventures are structured? I don't get how it can be seen as 'fake'

It depends upon the circumstances of how the Player Characters came to be doing what they are doing.

I seriously doubt President Jefferson gave Lewis and Clark a hard deadline to complete the mapping of the Louisiana Purchase.

Likewise, in a setup such as in the Endless Quest book Return to Brookmere, in which the party is going to their newly granted estate, that has, unfortunately, become a ruin and is overrun with interloping creatures....there may be no hard time limitations to mapping, clearing out, and then renovating the estate.

There are also times when a Time Constraint is unneeded.

If the players really, really want to defeat, capture, and or kill their nemesis,(the vampire named Lilith the Wise), a timer might be entirely unnecessary to motivate the players.

I do agree Time Constraints can be useful and fun.
I have a minute sand in glass timer I use for people's turns...(in Zoom games I use a Digital Timer as it is easier to read on camera). I also will set hard time limits: "You have 20 minutes of Real Time to concoct a plan to cross the Fire Swamp".

If everything becomes "Your intrepid band of 5th level Adventurers must Defeat the Lord of Blades in Two Days time"...eventually the Players might say...."yeah...so what...go ahead Blow Up the World....we want to take a Long Rest...if the 💩 is going to hit the fan, we need our resources".

In a Hoard of the Dragon Queen Campaign...I've seen a party, on a timer, but equipped with a Planar Gate...escape to another plane...instead of fighting Tiamat.

Sometimes the tension of "Do X Impossible Act, in a seemingly insufficient amount of time" will lead groups to pull a Brave Sir Robin....though that sometimes takes the narrative to some interesting places...ala the Party that let Eberron be conquered by the Daughter of Kyber.

[GeoffWatson]

For some groups a time limit is needed or they'll long rest after every encounter so they are always at full power.

[Mork]

In my experience, ticking clocks within an adventuring day are fine. Ticking clocks within an adventure are ok.
But ticking clocks within an campaign are the real tricky part. I had an campaign where I just put an illusion of a clock. "there are competing interrest, maybe the world will change" *narrator voice: the world didn't change whatever they did*. However just this illusion already let my players abandon every side quest I put in front of them, just rushing the main story.
I think that for a next situation my clocks have to be.. more binary. You either do this quest, or this quest.
But broad undivined clocks can stress players out.

EDIT: oh and I have to edit, a lot of players have a videogame, completionist attitude towards the game (something I am guilty of myself). I want to DO EVERYTHING, use alle the content that is available. Having to choose is a hardship in itself :P.

[Corvino]

Tension is fine, but you need tension and release for it to be satisfying. Unmitigated tension is stressful and tends to kill the fun.

I had one DM who put every quest on a fairly short timer. If you missed it then the World wouldn't end, but the Party would be actively screwed over - fines, enmity of a powerful group, that sort of thing. There was no time to explore because as soon as you heard a rumour of a quest you needed to jump to attention and start running. Some of it was creative and entertaining but the players got mutinous pretty fast.

[Contrast]

I see you saying this but I don't understand why.

The question is why? I don't get why you think it's tedious. This is just every adventure for me. It's the game.

My real life is not an action movie and no one wants to watch it.

So for clarity when I'm talking about there always being a pressing time constraint I don't mean 'at some nebulous point in the future <thing> will happen' I mean 'we need to go now or <thing> will happen'. If you mean the former, as I said I have no objection to ticking clocks in general. In the that context:


If the dial is always on 100, then you can't crank it up when you want tension. If you try to achieve tension all the time, it'll just result in stress rather than tension.

I don't want my epic adventure to feel like a chore and constantly having deadlines quickly exhausts tension because 'Yay we did the thing! ...now let us immediately do the next thing and the next and the next and...'.


You've mentioned action movies - to me a game with constant pressing time constraints would be like an action movie that is simply one long 2 hour action sequence. Most movies aren't that - they have lulls with peaks and troughs so that when the action kicks in it heightens the tension.

[Xervous]

EDIT: oh and I have to edit, a lot of players have a videogame, completionist attitude towards the game (something I am guilty of myself). I want to DO EVERYTHING, use alle the content that is available. Having to choose is a hardship in itself :P.

I find the completionists are both entertaining and simple to deal with. When I want conflict I just give them more options and state plainly they appear to be exclusive. Either someone comes up with a great idea or we get a harebrained scheme that cruises right on through the ‘are you sure?’ guardrails.

For clocks I’m still having good success with major events the players care about that aren’t campaign ending. It’s not an event the players need to address before day X, it’s something they’d have to be at Y on day X for. This puts a constraint on their meanderings if they want to address X.

[Mastikator]

Well, I am currently in Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus and the DM eventually complained that we were playing very linear and not really looking into the various side hooks he was sprinkling around and we as the players were all like "well... we figured there wasn't time because a certain bad thing is going to happen to a certain city that we are trying to save" and he was like "oh... well, that will take a little while so... you have time to kind of do other stuff".

There is the issue of 1. is there actual time to do other stuff and 2. would it make sense, given the circumstances of the ticking clock, that the characters would choose to do other stuff?

For some games it works. But it is weird to include it, and then also expect players to explore other leads and branch away from the main plot. Because there is a ticking clock.

I think the only way to have side quests in a timed main quest game is if it's clear that completing the side quests will add more time to the timer than it takes away. This works better if the timer is more like a checklist for the BBEG, and the side quests either delay, or unchecks a box.

[Sorinth]

I don't think a ticking clock is controversial, but at the same time I don't think it makes sense all of the time. Many adventurers/quests won't have any sort of clock especially if the players are driving the storyline.

[Burley]

I've found that ticking clocks require the players to be more invested than usual, and that's probably why DMs struggle with them.

Normal D&D is like "Hey, the bard over by the hearth is singing about a gold-filled tomb about two-days south. Yeah, he sang a little riddle about needing a key or something, but we can figure that out when we're there." If a "clock" exists here, that tomb would have been pillaged twenty years ago, by adventurers who didn't faff about in the tavern waiting for quests to drop in there laps.


For a ticking clock to work, the PCs need to have a goal that THEY want accomplished. Not the mayor of the village, not the head of the mage guild. The PCs should know what the clock is ticking toward and then should know that their actions can only speed up the clock. But, they need to have an investment. Maybe it's a race to the gold-filled tomb, because only opens on an equinox, or the mayor wants his daughter rescued before she's eaten by the dragon (who just woke up, so, it's gonna be hungry, y'all).

If at all possible, put the "clock" on an adventure hook that directly relates to one or more PC. A family member, or a mentor, or an arch rival is about to get in over their head. A hometown in peril of a being caught between two large armies. Players will respond to the "clock" if the purpose of the mission is to "avoid failure," rather than "be successful."

[Temperjoke]

I don't think the ticking clock itself is controversial, rather it's how it used versus player/DM expectations. Meaning, like so many things that cause arguments in TTRPGs, it all boils down to proper communication and setting the right expectations.

[Demonslayer666]

My players are against time clocks because they insist on being at full power for the next fight.

They also dislike them because they feel rushed to do the main quest and cannot do side quests.

[Willie the Duck]

Just about every adventure I run has some form of ticking clock.

I can't remember watching an action movie that doesn't have a ticking clock. Common pacing is an opening action scene to set the tone of the movie. Then 1 or more 'adventure' sequences with ticking clocks to keep the tension going. The climax of the movie is always a ticking clock of some form once the action starts. The Terminator is a good example of this. There are 2 main adventure sequences with a stay at a motel to rest and gather supplies in between. Mad Max 2049 is another clear example where there are 2 main driving sequences with ramping tension and a break of safety in between.

The 1st party 5e campaigns all have ticking clocks in their various adventures often with advice at the beginning of the chapter about what happens when the PCs rest. The exception to this is overland travel which is handled poorly by the default rules and the adventures.

So why do I hear on message boards that it is difficult to have them? Or even to go so far as to say that it is railroading/bad form to include them?

I've never played that way so I just don't get it.
I haven’t really had the experience that whenever ticking clocks are brought up, they are widely and wildly panned. What I have seen is a lot of discussion about 5e’s rest/recharge mechanics, the 5/15-minute workday, and how the lack of native restraint from just resting back to full between each encounter disproportionately favors the classes with Long Rest-recharging high-powered abilities (mostly full-casters). In those discussions, someone inevitably brings up the point that you can use a ticking clock to pressure your PCs into not rest-recharging as frequently, allowing the other classes their moments to shine. To that response, I absolutely have heard a chorus effectively saying ‘oh, gawds, not this < canned response /justification/canard/etc.> again!’. Frankly, while the most hyperbolic of such responses can be pretty grating, I tend to agree with the frustration expressed. A ticking clock is, at best, an imperfect solution to the general issue, at worst something that perhaps prop- up or pseudo-justifies the level of inter-class balance as it exists. This is because many gaming groups cannot find it realistic to always include a ticking clock, and when they can’t include a ticking clock they are still playing in the same system that others justify the balance of by invoking the option of a ticking clock.

Throughout the thread you’ve continued to use the example of action movies, and I would agree that they are a good example of narratives (and I think others have done a good job pointing out that what works well for a narrative, particularly a scripted one, does not inherently work well for a game) where ticking clocks are well used for pacing and tension. Thing is, not all games are going to be like action movies. Sometimes your Indiana Jones Expy is going to be going through the dungeon searching for the treasure, and there are no other treasure hunters also chasing after the same ark/grail/stones. Sometimes you are Jason on the quest for the golden fleece and your only time pressure is that you want to succeed and go back and claim your throne to Thessaly from Pelius. Sometimes you are playing an old-school character who just hit name level and just wants to clear an area so you can build a keep. To add a time clock to those can range from unnecessary to artificial-seeming to downright disruptive to the intended challenge.


My real life is not an action movie and no one wants to watch it.
It’s non-obvious that we should want to structure games as things that someone would want to want to watch. Maybe you would want to do that some of the time (say, if you were filming an episode of Critical Role or the like), but not always (or certainly not obviously always, such that someone wanting to do otherwise would seem aberrant).


I'm still not hearing or understanding why people here think the ticking clock/time pressure is not the default.
Why would we assume that it is the default? Is there some written or spoken guideline or unspoken understanding amongst gamers that this is an assumed part of the game? It could be your default, and more power to you for figuring out what you like, but why would you assume it is the general default, such that you think other people should have to justify why they don’t agree?

[Cheesegear]

So why do I hear on message boards that it is difficult to have them?

Easy. Because players are babies. But let's do a few reasons.

Do I a) forgo resting (anywhere between 1-8 hours) for the sake of narrative, or b) ignore narrative so I have all my stuff in combat?

Players don't like not resting a ticking clock because it ultimately means that their character is largely worse in the long run. Players don't want to be bad. Players want to play the class they're playing because they have a certain amount of abilities and spells, and when the DM says that they can't use those spells because of reasons, it basically ends up being 'Why am I playing this class if the DM wont let me use my stuff?'
No resting also leads to exhaustion mechanics. Which means that the characters actually do become worse over time, even if they don't even have any abilities to use.

A ticking clock leads to worse decisions.

For some reason, a lot of players - and yes, I have found this on this very forum - have a weird way of thinking that they simply can't make a decision or choice unless they know the outcomes and consequences of their choices beforehand. Or rather, it's unfair of the DM to force the players to make a choice without giving them some, most or all the information that they need to make an 'informed' choice, rather than simply a choice. A ticking clock might mean that a player can't spend a day talking to the locals, a ticking clock might mean that a caster doesn't have the time to cast their spell as a Ritual (see above and no rests), a ticking clock might mean that a player feels forced to simply make decisions, any decisions, rather than hash out all the possible variables in order to make the best decision.

Players don't like making a decision that they feel they might regret later. Players don't like feeling that they made - or are making - the wrong decision. A time clock forces you into doing things, some things you might even regret. One of those decisions, might mean to take a long rest. But if a long rest means quest failure...What does that even mean? Why do players feel like they're forced into succeeding in every quest that they undertake?
(Because it's a power fantasy, and succeeding at things is the whole point - I know)


Or even to go so far as to say that it is railroading/bad form to include them?

If the time clock isn't punched, and the result of that is campaign over, game over, everyone roll new characters...That's bad form. You're going to torpedo the game because we took a long rest? **** off. Yes. Awful. Terrible idea unless the idea is that you're literally fighting for the literal end of the world...And I can count the number of times I've DM'd that with no fingers (I've never ran that plot, not once).

It's only railroading if the DM doesn't have an outcome for what happens if the time clock isn't punched in time.

If the time clock is that in three days, the Black Dragon will perform the ritual, turning the Princess into a Black Half-Dragon and irreversibly changing her alignment to Chaotic Evil and of course making her a Half-Dragon Princess Dragon-Servant/Slave off to do terrible things with her Black Dragon patron...
So?

Just...What happens if the Princess turns into a Half-Dragon and becomes Chaotic Evil? What happens if the party takes one long rest more than they need to, and that means they arrive to the Dragon's cave a day late; The Dragon is gone. The Princess is gone. Evidence of the Ritual being performed is found. It's done. It's over. You failed to rescue the Princess. For all intents and purposes, she's now a hostile. Whatever major NPC role the Princess had after you rescued her...That goes in the bin. She's Something Else now, and she's not here. Now what?

In my experience, a lot of DMs don't plan for quest failure, and - as above - a lot of players don't like the idea of quest failure. So either the DM will railroad the players into the outcome they want, or, even worse, the players will railroad themselves into making decisions that give them 'Quest Complete!' endorphins, and a job well done.

If your adventure plans for quest failure...That doesn't result in campaign over, game over, then it's not railroading.

[Zuras]

The only reason Ticking Clocks are controversial is that in 5e they provide a solution to the 5 minute workday problem, which means they are sometimes used when they don’t make narrative sense or the players would prefer a different style of game.

The reverse situation is rarely a problem, since player can easily set their own time limits or other goals in a free-form campaign without DM imposed time limits.

[Ionathus]

Just about every adventure I run has some form of ticking clock.

I can't remember watching an action movie that doesn't have a ticking clock.
The Terminator is a good example of this.

The 1st party 5e campaigns all have ticking clocks in their various adventures often with advice at the beginning of the chapter about what happens when the PCs rest.

I read through nearly your entire post trying to figure out what people have against actual mechanical ticking clocks -- was it a worldbuilding thing? Do we not have artificers? Is clockpunk too high-tech for Forgotten Realms?? Why do people have such strong opinions about this? And what scene in Terminator had a prominent ticking clock sound effect?

I am not a clever man.


So why do I hear on message boards that it is difficult to have them? Or even to go so far as to say that it is railroading/bad form to include them?

I've never played that way so I just don't get it.

In my experience, ticking clocks are most effective when they prompt choice. A time limit that requires you to make it to the prince's tower prison within 10 hours might give you time for a single 8-hour long rest...but then you'll only have 2 hours to work with, which means stealth is harder and reconnaissance is cut short. So that's a choice that you can make, one way or another: do we take the time to rest and rush the dungeon at full power, or take our time and finesse the exploration at our own pace but with fewer resources?

Ticking clocks are least effective when they remove choice, and I think that's the one that you're hearing about online more. "The prince's tower is 9 hours away and he'll be executed in 10 hours" is not a decision for the players: it's a command to go to the prince's tower right the **** now, because I said so. Many adventures don't do a good enough job making PCs care about those threats, so there's no reward for meeting the time constraints...the only motivation is avoiding a punishment, which is sufficient to make PCs do something but not enough to make them like it.

If you want to get your players to do a specific thing in a world of infinite possibilities, punishing them if they don't do it is not enough.

Also, since published modules are inherently inflexible (or at least harder to make flexible), the time constraints can feel arbitrary...especially when the party is just starting out, has limited resources to work with, and wants to explore and get a feel for the world a bit within a more casual setting. "Be anyone! Do anything! The world is open and dynamic and reactive!" is the promise for a new D&D player, so if their first experience is "you have to do this boring thing, right now, or bad things will happen" then that can leave a sour taste in their mouths.

[Pex]

A ticking clock is telling the players they can't Rest. Given a fair rooting for the players DM not resting won't matter. The DM expects the party can Solve The Adventure with what they have accepting conserving a bit then nova at the obvious climax. Once in a while this is fine. When it's all the time every adventure then the DM is no longer being fair rooting for the players. Players are supposed to use their stuff and rest to get it back. It's perfectly fair for the DM to be annoyed of a party resting after every fight. The players have their own responsibility in this matter of not abusing the rest mechanic, but some DMs need to learn to let the PCs rest already.

[SharkForce]

time limits are good when used appropriately. some situations - potentially even *many* situations - call for them in some form. the world should not sit still for the PCs.

the problems is jamming a time limit into every single event ever. not every campaign is a grand epic journey to save the world.

I have no problem with the world being alive and things happening without the interaction of the PCs. it is only when people advocate that you should essentially force your players to limit resting by putting time limits on every single thing possible that I have problems. if the group has a map to a pirate treasure, and are logically the *only* group with a map to that treasure, there is practically speaking no time limit on that adventure. that shouldn't happen all the time, but it *should* be a possibility that isn't ruled out purely because they need to be forced into 6-8 encounters between long rests.

[Leon]

Having a time pressure over all is not bad, its when its down to the wire counting that makes people un happy because by and large people RP for fun not stress and narrow time constraints are not fun to be under.

Currently we have in our game a Clock that is at just under week before a horde of orcs happens, it has no overall leader now but its still going to happen so its a bit of concern to get to where we are going, clear it out and all before the town arrives to hide in it (kinda helmsdeepy) and that we found out about this whole situation while in the middle of a large forest means we lost some time getting back out and have had to skip going to warn a farm but we are still able to proceed with reasonable time. We could go warn the farm but that would mean the possibility of the townspeople arriving to a castle filled unknown horrors and we get paid to clear the keep vs warn the farm with a nice NPC because we like him. On the way we may have stopped another raid on a place in the forest but we don't know for sure and knew that one was going to happen in the next day or so so urged that NPC to pack up and leave and go to town and take charge because the mayor of the town is inept and they need a consistent leader right now. That was a choice we made despite it slowing the trip out of the forest down.

[prototype00]

From the player side of things it’s controversial when *most every adventure and every DM* has it as the motivating factor.

It’s about as tiring as say a campaign on rails, an artificial construct meant to raise the stakes.

In small amounts, it can be exciting, sure, but, too much salt will destroy any dish.

[Pex]

Easy. Because players are babies. But let's do a few reasons.

Do I a) forgo resting (anywhere between 1-8 hours) for the sake of narrative, or b) ignore narrative so I have all my stuff in combat?

Players don't like not resting a ticking clock because it ultimately means that their character is largely worse in the long run. Players don't want to be bad. Players want to play the class they're playing because they have a certain amount of abilities and spells, and when the DM says that they can't use those spells because of reasons, it basically ends up being 'Why am I playing this class if the DM wont let me use my stuff?'
No resting also leads to exhaustion mechanics. Which means that the characters actually do become worse over time, even if they don't even have any abilities to use.

A ticking clock leads to worse decisions.

For some reason, a lot of players - and yes, I have found this on this very forum - have a weird way of thinking that they simply can't make a decision or choice unless they know the outcomes and consequences of their choices beforehand. Or rather, it's unfair of the DM to force the players to make a choice without giving them some, most or all the information that they need to make an 'informed' choice, rather than simply a choice. A ticking clock might mean that a player can't spend a day talking to the locals, a ticking clock might mean that a caster doesn't have the time to cast their spell as a Ritual (see above and no rests), a ticking clock might mean that a player feels forced to simply make decisions, any decisions, rather than hash out all the possible variables in order to make the best decision.

Players don't like making a decision that they feel they might regret later. Players don't like feeling that they made - or are making - the wrong decision. A time clock forces you into doing things, some things you might even regret. One of those decisions, might mean to take a long rest. But if a long rest means quest failure...What does that even mean? Why do players feel like they're forced into succeeding in every quest that they undertake?
(Because it's a power fantasy, and succeeding at things is the whole point - I know)



If the time clock isn't punched, and the result of that is campaign over, game over, everyone roll new characters...That's bad form. You're going to torpedo the game because we took a long rest? **** off. Yes. Awful. Terrible idea unless the idea is that you're literally fighting for the literal end of the world...And I can count the number of times I've DM'd that with no fingers (I've never ran that plot, not once).

It's only railroading if the DM doesn't have an outcome for what happens if the time clock isn't punched in time.

If the time clock is that in three days, the Black Dragon will perform the ritual, turning the Princess into a Black Half-Dragon and irreversibly changing her alignment to Chaotic Evil and of course making her a Half-Dragon Princess Dragon-Servant/Slave off to do terrible things with her Black Dragon patron...
So?

Just...What happens if the Princess turns into a Half-Dragon and becomes Chaotic Evil? What happens if the party takes one long rest more than they need to, and that means they arrive to the Dragon's cave a day late; The Dragon is gone. The Princess is gone. Evidence of the Ritual being performed is found. It's done. It's over. You failed to rescue the Princess. For all intents and purposes, she's now a hostile. Whatever major NPC role the Princess had after you rescued her...That goes in the bin. She's Something Else now, and she's not here. Now what?

In my experience, a lot of DMs don't plan for quest failure, and - as above - a lot of players don't like the idea of quest failure. So either the DM will railroad the players into the outcome they want, or, even worse, the players will railroad themselves into making decisions that give them 'Quest Complete!' endorphins, and a job well done.

If your adventure plans for quest failure...That doesn't result in campaign over, game over, then it's not railroading.

What if the quest fails because the players didn't rest? They faced the dragon but didn't have the resources to defeat him and stop the ritual? It's not a question of can a quest fail. That's the game to try to succeed. However, players are not being babies when DMs "punish" them for resting by activating quest failure. It goes both ways. The Ticking Clock scenario is not an inherently bad thing, but it should never be used as a weapon against players. It is the players' responsibility to manage their resources and not go the extreme of resting after every fight, but it's also the DM's responsibility not to stack the deck against them because he's upset they use their stuff and get it back. Let the players rest already.

[Cheesegear]

What if the quest fails because the players didn't rest? They faced the dragon but didn't have the resources to defeat him and stop the ritual?
[...]
but it's also the DM's responsibility not to stack the deck against them because he's upset they use their stuff and get it back. Let the players rest already.

You simultaneously both got my point, and then missed it at the same time.

The DM says you have 7 hours and 59 minutes to acquire the McGuffin:
- On the one hand, that's the DM's adventure. If the DM has a pre-determined adventure, it's automatically a railroad, right?
- On the other hand, many players, treat D&D like a pre-scripted video game. If that's what the DM wants us to do, I guess we have to do it.
Both of those are wrong.

Nobody, ever, makes the players do anything. **** you, DM. We're taking three Short Rests in what may as well be 8 hours and we're getting to the destination in 10 hours, two hours after the deadline. Now what? It doesn't even have to be resting. Somebody says 'I want to double back and make sure we aren't followed. Let's move stealthily at half-pace.' Welp. That's done. Somebody quickly realises that they're out of rations. We can't continue without water. Let's spend an hour making Survival rolls trying to find water.

Now, granted. If the DM has told you that you have 8 hours, deliberately taking time out of the road could be seen as sandbagging the content. But also I couldn't fault any player for making those kinds of decisions. Sometimes, what should've been an easy fight, has the hostiles roll two crits, and another hit at max damage, all in a single turn, and there were two other rounds on top of that. Sometimes, players have to rest. However, that could very well mean the difference between success and failure...Yep. We tried our best and we failed. **** happens. Next quest. Next adventure. The DM performs a Quantum Ogre ritual and just moves setpieces and potential magical loot somewhere else the players can get it. But this adventure, is over.

The players. Don't have to do ****. If there's a ticking clock with 8 hours, and the players take nine? ...Yep. Now what, DM?
But what if just happens...All the time? Ticking clocks aren't the problem. Bad adventures are the problem. Players can disengage, sandbag or just fail your content at the drop of a hat.
The players have to do...Literally anything? **** you. No they don't. They do something else. They attempt the thing you want them to do, but then they just fail at it. What now, DM?

But you have an excellent analogy; Change travel time to 'Hit Points', and the journey into 'Hostile Encounter'.

The DM wants to make an interesting challenge, and has a hostile encounter with a ****-ton of Hit Points.
The players find themselves unable to deal damage equal to the hostiles' hit points, and they die or run away.
Some players find Deadly*2 or Deadly*3 encounters Bad Form and/or Railroading, and shouldn't be part of the game.

Your players find it hard to participate in your adventure because of arbitrary constraint made by the DM. Now what, DM?

[togapika]

Just about every adventure I run has some form of ticking clock.
So why do I hear on message boards that it is difficult to have them? .

It's bad because the GM usually doesn't include any sense of the specifics of the clock, so PC's can't tell how quickly they should be moving.

[clash]

My campaigns all have a ticking clock but never a deadline. Basically events happen and players can respond to them if they want but they can't just wait around and respond later. The event happens when it happens and they respond when it happens or not at all

[Frogreaver]

You simultaneously both got my point, and then missed it at the same time.

The DM says you have 7 hours and 59 minutes to acquire the McGuffin:
- On the one hand, that's the DM's adventure. If the DM has a pre-determined adventure, it's automatically a railroad, right?
- On the other hand, many players, treat D&D like a pre-scripted video game. If that's what the DM wants us to do, I guess we have to do it.
Both of those are wrong.

Nobody, ever, makes the players do anything. **** you, DM. We're taking three Short Rests in what may as well be 8 hours and we're getting to the destination in 10 hours, two hours after the deadline. Now what? It doesn't even have to be resting. Somebody says 'I want to double back and make sure we aren't followed. Let's move stealthily at half-pace.' Welp. That's done. Somebody quickly realises that they're out of rations. We can't continue without water. Let's spend an hour making Survival rolls trying to find water.

Now, granted. If the DM has told you that you have 8 hours, deliberately taking time out of the road could be seen as sandbagging the content. But also I couldn't fault any player for making those kinds of decisions. Sometimes, what should've been an easy fight, has the hostiles roll two crits, and another hit at max damage, all in a single turn, and there were two other rounds on top of that. Sometimes, players have to rest. However, that could very well mean the difference between success and failure...Yep. We tried our best and we failed. **** happens. Next quest. Next adventure. The DM performs a Quantum Ogre ritual and just moves setpieces and potential magical loot somewhere else the players can get it. But this adventure, is over.

The players. Don't have to do ****. If there's a ticking clock with 8 hours, and the players take nine? ...Yep. Now what, DM?
But what if just happens...All the time? Ticking clocks aren't the problem. Bad adventures are the problem. Players can disengage, sandbag or just fail your content at the drop of a hat.
The players have to do...Literally anything? **** you. No they don't. They do something else. They attempt the thing you want them to do, but then they just fail at it. What now, DM?

But you have an excellent analogy; Change travel time to 'Hit Points', and the journey into 'Hostile Encounter'.

The DM wants to make an interesting challenge, and has a hostile encounter with a ****-ton of Hit Points.
The players find themselves unable to deal damage equal to the hostiles' hit points, and they die or run away.
Some players find Deadly*2 or Deadly*3 encounters Bad Form and/or Railroading, and shouldn't be part of the game.

Your players find it hard to participate in your adventure because of arbitrary constraint made by the DM. Now what, DM?

I hate this 'player antagonizing the DM for no good reason' mindset you present here. This is a cooperative game. The game doesn't have to go fully the DM's way, but neither should the players be purposefully sandbagging him or purposefully antagonizing him either.

[TaiLiu]

If you want a bunch of 5e adventures with no "ticking clock" factors, you can look at, from the top of my head: Forge of Furry, Dungeon of the Mad Mage and The Wild beyond the Witchlight.
So that's where furries come from! :smalltongue:

[qube]

Ticking clocks aren't the problem. Bad adventures are the problem.


But you have an excellent analogy; Change travel time to 'Hit Points', and the journey into 'Hostile Encounter'.

The DM wants to make an interesting challenge, and has a hostile encounter with a ****-ton of Hit Points.
The players find themselves unable to deal damage equal to the hostiles' hit points, and they die or run away.
Some players find Deadly*2 or Deadly*3 encounters Bad Form and/or Railroading, and shouldn't be part of the game.

Your players find it hard to participate in your adventure because of arbitrary constraint made by the DM. Now what, DM?
I think that's a good analogy - and it also explains why ticking clock works in movies, but is harder to do for tabletop.

Typically, in movies, the ticking clock isn't the BBEG - it's not the final encounter - but a device to create tension.

While in DnD, the fact that resting takes a big gab out of the budget (1h or 8h, while combat itself typically lasts less then a minute, and corridors are typically also travelled in a few rounds), means this doesn't as much create tension, but increases the difficulty of encounters - players can no longer restock their resources at the moment they want.

Normally, for a device to create tension/danger/... , a DM can intervene (just like when an enemy goes too hard, the DM can fudge dice, let the enemy make sub-par decisions, ...) but you can't just do that for a timer (again, as resting takes so long).

[Ryton]

Also, as much as ticking clocks can be frustrating for parties that are nova-prone or just overtaxed from too few rests (i.e. if the party finds out that the princess must be rescued in six hours, but they just finished their 7th deadly encounter for the day), ticking clocks are also exceedingly annoying when they're backed by tissue paper.

To use another form of media as an example, I was wandering around an enemy base in a video game recently when they remotely activated a self-destruct sequence! Boom. Pressure's on. I blitz through three or four rooms of enemies, quickly try to get my bearings and... realize there's no timer on the self-destruct. In fact, there are hidden chests and collectables scattered all throughout the stage. Clearly the game expected me to hunt down all of the hidden goodies, but doing so with sirens going off and constant NPC exclamations about the self-destruct broke the emersion hard.

Which is mostly just to reinforce what others have said. A living world where things happen at certain points without the party's input is good. Being told that the warring whatsits to the south have sent a large raiding party that will be here in three days is fine. Being constantly pressured to go go go go go gogogogogo from one quest to the next to the next tothenexttothenexttothenext without pausing can be exhausting for players, not just characters.

It's about finding balance for the right scale and sense of urgency for the players and the game, and depending on what the DM's ideas are, it may be an important session zero conversation.

[Unoriginal]

I hate this 'player antagonizing the DM for no good reason' mindset you present here. This is a cooperative game. The game doesn't have to go fully the DM's way, but neither should the players be purposefully sandbagging him or purposefully antagonizing him either.

Players antagonizing the DM for no good reason is something that happens, though. Just as DMs thinking the players are unpaid actors here to playact their novel is something that exists.

Both should be avoided, of course, but many people keep playing with people even with those problems , and that only leads to worse things.

[Cheesegear]

I hate this 'player antagonizing the DM for no good reason' mindset you present here. This is a cooperative game. The game doesn't have to go fully the DM's way, but neither should the players be purposefully sandbagging him or purposefully antagonizing him either.

The point I think you've got stuck on is the following:

The DM creates an adventure.
1. The players engage. If the DM wrote it, they want us to do it. It's a good story, let's do it. We're interested in where this goes. Let's do it. We're invested!
2. The DM's adventure is needlessly complicated and/or difficult and/or simply just doesn't sound fun. The players will now either sandbag (especially if the DM doesn't have something else for them to do), or disengage (the DM had better have something else for them to do).

#2 happens. After a while the DM has used the vast majority of their good ideas and now they're onto the adventures that aren't quite so fully formed, aren't quite so fully dynamic, interesting or...Good. One of the reasons this can happen, is because the DM puts an arbitrary clock on the quest, and the players just aren't into that.

Pex also very reasonably pointed out that sometimes players just make bad choices, and the dice go awry. The players engaged in good faith, or sandbagged it as much as they could get away with and then proceeded. Sometimes players just...Fail.

Whether you fail in good faith or disengage in bad faith, the outcome is the same. The players aren't doing what the DM wants, and does the DM have a plan for that? and the DM had better know what to do when that happens. What is quest failure? What is a TPK? What is player disengagement (from the DM, not necessarily from the game)?

What now, DM?


To use another form of media as an example, I was wandering around an enemy base in a video game recently when they remotely activated a self-destruct sequence! Boom. Pressure's on. I blitz through three or four rooms of enemies, quickly try to get my bearings and... realize there's no timer on the self-destruct. In fact, there are hidden chests and collectables scattered all throughout the stage. Clearly the game expected me to hunt down all of the hidden goodies, but doing so with sirens going off and constant NPC exclamations about the self-destruct broke the emersion hard.

The problem is of course, that what if you did have that ticking clock in the background, and you did have the timer, and you did have constant NPC exclamations about the self-destruct?
How can you get the collectibles and hidden chests? How do you know which collectible to get is a powerful magic item, and not just +200gp?
Now imagine that you can't save or reload.
Now imagine that you only get to play that room once.

That's why people don't like timers.

Either
a) The timer isn't real, and the DM will make excuses about how what they said was totally gonna happen, doesn't happen, unless you're there to see it, in which case why say there was a timer at all?
b) The timer is real. You make bad or wrong choices - losing resources for every bad and wrong choice - and you rush through content and you don't really get to do what you want to do because the DM - or yourself - is forcing you to play the game in a particular way.

Timers have a place. Counting rations and weighing coins has a place. Encumbrance rules have a place. Low/No magic settings, have a place.

But each of those things alone, isn't bad.

What's good or bad, is the adventure itself, and whether or not players are willing to engage with the DM, even when they aren't interested in what the DM is even saying or presenting.

[Amnestic]

Now what, DM?[/B]

I mean it depends on the nature of the ticking clock doesn't it?

Could be as simple as "you gave the Lichlord more time to harvest bodies, now he's got a stronger dungeon guard than before" or "another adventuring party got there first and now the dungeon is empty of both monsters and money. The time and rations you spent getting here were for naught."

Could be as cataclysmic as "Tiamat has been summoned at her full strength with an army of dragons at her side and is beginning her conquest of the mortal realms. The gates of Hell are unchained. Gods will join the battle on both sides. A TWK (Total World Kill) is imminent, and you are now unable to stop it. Prepare your epilogues."

And there's a whole spectrum of consequences in between. There's no simple answer to "now what" unless you know what the ticking clock is in this hypothetical.

[Cheesegear]

I mean it depends on the nature of the ticking clock doesn't it?

Yes. That was my earlier point.

A ticking clock isn't bad, as long as there are narrative consequences for not punching that clock, that actually keep moving the game forward. The game progresses at the players' pace, not the arbitrary clock's. If the players engage the adventure in the best way that they know how, and succeed, good. If the players fail at arriving in time, what happens? And if something does happen, are the players aware that the reason the thing happened, was because they were late? If the players aren't aware that it was their inaction that caused something, how do they know that it wasn't something that just was going to happen regardless, and why should they care?

My earlier point was that 'Timers are Controversial' because either a) The DM actually doesn't have a plan for failure (including TPK or disengagement), and you are in fact, being railroaded, or b) The timer goes off, and quest failure means game over, and the game does not move forward (again, usually because the DM doesn't have a plan for the PCs not doing what they're 'meant' to do), and the DM is effectively punishing the players for something they really didn't any control over (e.g; RNGesus doesn't love you and players can't do what their character sheet says that they have a 95% chance of doing...Because dice.).

A ticking clock, like most things, is a story branch:
The players arrive in time, X happens, players proceed from here.
The players don't arrive in time, Y happens, players proceed from here.

Lots of DMs just assume the former, because it's "generally accepted" (in quotes for a reason) that players will engage, and if players engage, they will succeed.

The players will rescue the Princess, and Princess will become Major NPC who can become their patron for gold and magic items and then I can have this story/quest line with-
Wait.
What?
She's dead!? How did that happen!?

[KorvinStarmast]

The DM creates an adventure.
1. The players engage. If the DM wrote it, they want us to do it. It's a good story, let's do it. We're interested in where this goes. Let's do it. We're invested!
2. The DM's adventure is needlessly complicated and/or difficult and/or simply just doesn't sound fun. The players will now either sandbag (especially if the DM doesn't have something else for them to do), or disengage (the DM had better have something else for them to do).

#2 happens. After a while the DM has used the vast majority of their good ideas and now they're onto the adventures that aren't quite so fully formed, aren't quite so fully dynamic, interesting or...Good. {snip}
What now, DM? Take a break, and someone else DM for a while. Recharge the old DM batteries.

Timers have a place. Counting rations and weighing coins has a place. Encumbrance rules have a place. Low/No magic settings, have a place.

But each of those things alone, isn't bad.

What's good or bad, is the adventure itself, and whether or not players are willing to engage with the DM, even when they aren't interested in what the DM is even saying or presenting. If they don't want to engage, take a look at what hourly rate the DM is being paid. And that leads to: someone else DM for a while.

Or go and play Scrabble this week for game night. Recharge the batteries.

[J-H]

This is a really long thread.

I haven't seen much criticism (I haven't read this thread) of a Ticking Clock. I have had one in all of my games:
-in Castle Dracula (Castlevania), the party gets a long rest after clearing each boss/area and level up. Beyond that, they have to find a place for a long rest, and those are few and far between. No long rests except about once every 24 hours (or, really, once per area).
-in current (high-level) game, the enemy temples are making sacrifices and accruing power on a weekly basis. The party sort of knows whats going on, and they realized that the big beam of sunlight in the direction of the enemy's main city was probably bad. If too much time passes, all the enemies are going to start getting buffs, and the final battle becomes substantially more difficult. This is not hidden, just something they haven't really explored yet. It's a slow calendar because this is also a hexcrawl and I don't want to discourage them from finding cool things by exploring.
-in my other current (low-level dungeoncrawly) game, they are going to have Kython issues. I'm rolling a dice per week of in-game time, and when it reaches a certain cumulative value, they'll start finding larvae and juveniles. It'll take several more weeks in-game (and character levels) for the bigger kythons to become an issue. In this sense it's a method used to create foreshadowing.

[Azuresun]

if the group has a map to a pirate treasure, and are logically the *only* group with a map to that treasure, there is practically speaking no time limit on that adventure. that shouldn't happen all the time, but it *should* be a possibility that isn't ruled out purely because they need to be forced into 6-8 encounters between long rests.

Just dropping in to remind everyone that the DMG does not mandate 6-8 encounters, it only uses it as one example of how an adventuring day might go.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Just dropping in to remind everyone that the DMG does not mandate 6-8 encounters, it only uses it as one example of how an adventuring day might go.

More specifically, it says that in their testing (ie after the rules were designed), a baseline[1] party found that they were out of gas after about that amount. It's an empirically-determined warning threshold, not a system expectation. And certainly not a designed balance point. The adventuring day budget is, like most budgets, a cap, not a "spend exactly this much" dictum. And even if it were, you could get there in a bunch of different ways.

The only thing that matters is variation. Having adventuring days that vary between 1 encounter and many, so there isn't a predictable place to spend your things, plus some form of urgency (clock-based or not), which could involve simply "the dungeon resets/the enemy gets reinforcements", so retreating to rest up means you lose (at least some of) your progress. Or, simply having a sense among the players that that kind of thing is artificial and not how they want to play.

[1] ie very low optimization by forum standards. No multiclassing, no feats, basically "build based on the quick-build guidelines", no attempt at optimizing races, using PHB only material, so none of the power-creep since then, etc.

[Petelo4f]

I don't know if I'd say ticking clock is controversial, but for some people, time constraints are legitimately agony. A lot of people play DND to get away from the stress of time management and such normal world concerns, and though ticking clock is often more realistic, that very realism is off-putting to some.

Its one of those things, like a horror themed campaign, where there is nothing wrong with it, and lots of interesting creative space to work with, but you should make sure all your players are on board, and to what degree first.

[Tanarii]

Ticking clocks may not always be appropriate, but the Apocalypse World concept of Fronts often is. A situation, often but not always driven by an antagonist, that will continue to get worse unless the PCs do something about it.

Of course, AW also assumes that more fronts than the PCs can handle will pop up, and they'll always eventually proceed to disaster for the PCs. Those two assumptions don't have to hold true for D&D. But the idea that there might be more than one situation the PCs can handle at once, and they'll to some degree get worse until handled, is often useful.

This contrasts quite a lot with the more classic Adventure Path (and often CCRPG) idea of one "main quest" with enough time and lack of pressure on it to do minor "side quests" along the way. Ticking clocks work with those to drive the main quest and limit the number of side quests possible. Fronts toss that idea out the window, are far more appropriate to give a sandbox feel. Even if you're still only running a game for a single party.

[Azuresun]

More specifically, it says that in their testing (ie after the rules were designed), a baseline[1] party found that they were out of gas after about that amount. It's an empirically-determined warning threshold, not a system expectation. And certainly not a designed balance point. The adventuring day budget is, like most budgets, a cap, not a "spend exactly this much" dictum. And even if it were, you could get there in a bunch of different ways.

The only thing that matters is variation. Having adventuring days that vary between 1 encounter and many, so there isn't a predictable place to spend your things, plus some form of urgency (clock-based or not), which could involve simply "the dungeon resets/the enemy gets reinforcements", so retreating to rest up means you lose (at least some of) your progress. Or, simply having a sense among the players that that kind of thing is artificial and not how they want to play.

[1] ie very low optimization by forum standards. No multiclassing, no feats, basically "build based on the quick-build guidelines", no attempt at optimizing races, using PHB only material, so none of the power-creep since then, etc.

All of this as well. I'm fairly certain that a majority of people don't read the encounter guidelines for themselves, given how much complaining there is about having to do something the book does not say you have to do.

[Bardon]

Time pressure.

When the PCs long rest they fail the adventure for one reason or another (or have a significant set back).



I see you saying this but I don't understand why.

The question is why? I don't get why you think it's tedious. This is just every adventure for me. It's the game.

My real life is not an action movie and no one wants to watch it.

That particular example "fail if you take a long rest" penalises the party members differently. A short-rest character (warlock, monk etc) would feel the impact of that far less than a full caster, in particular say a sorcerer who doesn't get the Wizard ability to short-rest restore spell slots. Many Martials would hardly notice an inability to long rest, for example.

So that's a particularly troublesome Ticking Clock from my perspective.

[GeoffWatson]

That particular example "fail if you take a long rest" penalises the party members differently. A short-rest character (warlock, monk etc) would feel the impact of that far less than a full caster, in particular say a sorcerer who doesn't get the Wizard ability to short-rest restore spell slots. Many Martials would hardly notice an inability to long rest, for example.

So that's a particularly troublesome Ticking Clock from my perspective.

That's the point.
Too many adventures let the long-rest characters recover fully after every encounter, so they can freely use their highest level spells every encounter, with no need to save anything for later, so they overshadow the other characters.

[Cheesegear]

That's the point.
Too many adventures let the long-rest characters recover fully after every encounter, so they can freely use their highest level spells every encounter, with no need to save anything for later, so they overshadow the other characters.

1. Players want to long rest after every encounter. That way they're at max HPs and max spell slots and max abilities, all the time. You can only Long Rest once every 24 hours? ...Fine. We'll wait right here until for 23 hours and 55 minutes until we can go again, then we take an 8 hour rest. 32 hours after each fight, we're ready for the next fight.

- Goodberry is a Level 1 Druid spell.
- Create Water is a Level 1 Cleric spell...Once we hit Level 5, and the Cleric has Create Food and Water, we're good forever.
- Someone has the Outlander background.
We can do this all week, right?

2. DM says that's dumb, and has to make up reasons for why players can't just 'wait 6 hours, then rest 8 hours' whenever they feel like it. Narratively, what is actually stopping the players from 'doing nothing for 14 hours'? Nowhere in the rules does it say they can't. Nowhere in the rules does it say that players can only Short Rest after 2-3 encounters...Players can Short Rest whenever they feel like it, in fact a Warlock player might demand Short Rests all the time. **** it. Short Rests are going to be limited, and I'm going to prevent you from taking a Long Rest at all.

The players more or less have to act in good faith, and the DM has to overtly not punish the players when they do.
DMs are bad.
Players are bad.
Time Clocks aren't bad.

[Pex]

1. Players want to long rest after every encounter. That way they're at max HPs and max spell slots and max abilities, all the time. You can only Long Rest once every 24 hours? ...Fine. We'll wait right here until for 23 hours and 55 minutes until we can go again, then we take an 8 hour rest. 32 hours after each fight, we're ready for the next fight.

- Goodberry is a Level 1 Druid spell.
- Create Water is a Level 1 Cleric spell...Once we hit Level 5, and the Cleric has Create Food and Water, we're good forever.
- Someone has the Outlander background.
We can do this all week, right?

2. DM says that's dumb, and has to make up reasons for why players can't just 'wait 6 hours, then rest 8 hours' whenever they feel like it. Narratively, what is actually stopping the players from 'doing nothing for 14 hours'? Nowhere in the rules does it say they can't. Nowhere in the rules does it say that players can only Short Rest after 2-3 encounters...Players can Short Rest whenever they feel like it, in fact a Warlock player might demand Short Rests all the time. **** it. Short Rests are going to be limited, and I'm going to prevent you from taking a Long Rest at all.

The players more or less have to act in good faith, and the DM has to overtly not punish the players when they do.
DMs are bad.
Players are bad.
Time Clocks aren't bad.

And I agree with you on this. Well, that ends that debate.
:smallsmile::smallbiggrin:

[Hytheter]

Of course, AW also assumes that more fronts than the PCs can handle will pop up, and they'll always eventually proceed to disaster for the PCs. Those two assumptions don't have to hold true for D&D. But the idea that there might be more than one situation the PCs can handle at once, and they'll to some degree get worse until handled, is often useful.

With some clever finangling you could set things up such that by the time the players have resolved their chosen tier 1 front/s and levelled up to tier 2, the fronts they ignored have likewise 'levelled up' or otherwise escalated to be appropriate challenges for that tier. Likely not quite that directly - if they're ahead of the curve due to efficiency or lagging due to messing around they should feel the consequences of that - but you could definitely engineer the escalation of fronts to more or less map to the players' progression.