Pacing

[TomTheRat]

So I'm in a fairly low-rp beer & pretzels TOEE game. We basically just play once every other week, kill stuff, take its treasure, etc.

But we've been at it for almost a year, and we're still not through the Crater Ridge Mines, and the time we do spend together is often bogged down by rules lookups or by general tomfoolery.

Anyone ever encounter this problem before? Have any quality tips for accelerating the pace of combat and dungeon exploration?

[RandomNPC]

if it helps any, i have a day and a half vacation time at work left, and i'm already talking about taking the second half of friday and all of the next monday to get my group further into the game.

if you don't have the kind of group that could do something like that i sugest getting atleast one of them REALLY into the story. one of my players kept saying "ok now do we kill things?" every time we got off track. and more recently (last tuesday) a different gamer said "ok, where ever your immagination is, be there right now."

i guess it either takes a lot of time set aside or a really good "something or other" they know is coming up. we played dragon mountain, i think that was the only time the group didnt get off topic for an entire game session.

[Damionte]

Only thing that helps our group is finding more time to play. We also recently lost a coupel players, bringing our numbers down from 7 players + Gm to 5. That's also helped.

we tried a million different things but really nothing helps our pacing compared to the amount of time we spend goofing off. We just learned to live with it. since essentially that's really what we're gettign together to do. Goof off. The game is our activity but the socialising is what we're really there for. That's the whole point of playing pen and paper compared to online.

[Diggorian]

Yeah I've played with this bunch and been a lollygagging type too depending on the group.

If you're a player in this session, you can counter this by being proactive and questioning the DM about the environment and generally moving the plot forward by taking action. It's easiest being a rogue cause you've got lots of skills to use and may likely be scouting ahead anyway. Just get the others to say, "I'm following Tom." Eventually you'll hit something like combat and interest will return. Dont be a kill-joy.

For Dming it's a bit more involved. If they dont engage the world make the world engage them. Call for Spot or Listen checks often and have them reveal weird stuff:

"There's a trail of poop going up the corridor."

"It's starting to rain." Fort saves versus The Sniffles if they dont take action.

"There's half a dozen Bluejays eyeing the party."

"A loud creaking sound comes from upstairs."

In short, shake'em up.

[Matthew]

Well, if you're having fun, don't worry about it.

If, however, you feel you would prefer the pace to be faster and the problem is a combination of 'rules complications' and 'goofing off', you need to address both problems.

Rules complications is perhaps the most straight forward - get familiar with the rules (preferably get your DM to get familiar with them). Alternately, get the DM to make on the spot rulings and look up the official rules after the game.

Goofing off is more difficult to deal with, as everybody else might actually prefer it to actual gameplay. Best thing to do is talk it over with your group and, as Diggorian says, take a proactive roll in propelling the story forwards.