This is the 5th entry in my design diary for the design of PREQUEL, a one-shot tactical tabletop roleplaying game of heroic sacrifices. You can find the first entry here.
In an effort to drum up interest in PREQUEL, a game James Quigley and I are developing, we’ve decided to put out monthly developer diaries/logs that document some of our design thoughts and goals. You can find James’ devlogs on his blog, the Lab.
If you’re interested in getting notified when the game goes live for crowdfunding, you can sign up here: https://bit.ly/prequel-rpg
Pacing Games
What is pacing, why is it important?
Pacing, as it pertains to narrative, is the “flow” or “rhythm” of the story. Pacing is the rising and falling of tension of scenes, and the perceived “speed” the scenes are experienced. Pacing needs to be varied. A story that’s a constant stream of high-action, high-stress scenes can be exhausting to experience. Pacing is a form of “set-up” and therefore, is also closely tied to the concept of “pay-off.” In other words, does the story as set up make the resolution satisfying? A murder mystery that has the slow rise and fall of collecting clues to build up tension may still fall flat if the final revelation occurs in one quick scene. Sure, the audience found out who the killer was, but if they didn’t get to revel in the reveal, then the pay-off is soured due to poor pacing.
I’m at a point in my life where I can no longer devote 4+ hours of playing TTRPGs a week. So when I do have the chance to play TTRPGs, often for periods of only 2-3 hours at a time, I want to make sure I have a “satisfying” experience. Everyone has a different definition of what satisfying is, but for me, it means that every session includes some narrative progression, I want to feel like each time I’m playing, the story we’re creating is moving as well. It also means that I prioritize condensed, and short-term campaigns and one-shots. I’m less interested in long-term campaigns where the end goal is not in sight, instead, I like playing 1-6 sessions of a game with a tight storyline. I describe a few benefits to this style of play and pacing in the next section.
All of this is to say, when I play a session, even a two hour session of a game, I expect there to be a narrative arc, a beginning-middle-end. And the best sessions are ones where the narrative arc is paced appropriately, and that at the end of the session, we don’t end while in the middle of a NPC discussion (this is different from ending on a cliffhanger, I love those), or we have to rush through the last combat because we’re out of time. I want my sessions to have accomplished something that clearly moves us towards our goal. This is all easier said than done, as TTRPGs are notorious for being unable to plan around. A GM can have a great plan for a narrative arc of a session, but if the players decide to spend an extra thirty minutes talking to that random shopkeeper they met in town, then the pacing completely goes out the window. But at the same time, if the players are having fun talking to that shopkeeper, the GM may be interrupting that experience by trying to move the game along.
In this design diary, I discuss the benefits of good pacing, and how a game can be designed with giving players the tools to support pacing. Specifically, I’ll talk about how we are designing PREQUEL with pacing in mind. How do we deliver a complete experience in a game that is touted as a one-shot?
Benefits of Pacing
Here are two haphazardly assembled benefits that arise from a well-paced game, or in some cases, a well-paced session. I say haphazardly assembled because I literally just came up with them now.
Communicate Expectations
A key to pacing is knowing the start and end. You can’t pace a game or a session without knowing where and when you are starting, and where and when (you hope to) end. Once you have those bookends, whether in narrative sense or real-time sense, then you can begin the pushing and pulling of events to create pacing.
Communicating those real-time bookends enables better play experiences. Players will be playing their characters much differently if they know the game will last 15 sessions as compared to a game that will last only 3 sessions. If all players understand how long they have with their characters, then that will drive players to make certain decisions, reveal character secrets, or take narrative risks at different times. I’m reminded of a time I ran a six-session Blades in the Dark campaign, where each session was one Score. During the penultimate Score, the players started taking more risks, putting their characters in reckless situations, because they knew they would be done in one more session, and they wanted their characters to go out with a bang. They could only do this because they knew the end was in sight.
“Satisfying Narrative Arc”
Good pacing helps ensure a “satisfying narrative arc” for a session. This can mean different things for different people, and I admit my own definition is up to a lot of interpretation. Delving a little deeper, I think elements of a satisfying narrative arc include:
- Noticeable change in the narrative situation
- That noticeable change was a direct result of actions the players took
- Every player’s character had a moment to shine
- Something new about the world was learned
Some readers may realize that some of these points are similar to experience achievements in Powered by the Apocalypse games, where each playbook has a list of questions you ask yourself at the end of a session. For each question you answer in the affirmative, you can mark XP. This is a neat mechanic to convey to all players at the table what kind of situations are supposed to happen during play. It does require (like so many things in PbtA games) that all the players remember these questions before and during play.
These elements of a satisfying narrative arc can happen in any amount of time. For me, I like to think of it in elements of sessions. Each session, I want these things to happen. Whether that session is 1 hour long or 4 hours long, all these things needs to be included for that session to be satisfying for me.
Designing for Pacing
So we know good pacing is key to a great play experience. But what tools do we have at our disposal to maintain good pacing?
There are a lot of tools and techniques one can use at the table. I admit that one of my strengths as a GM is pacing, it’s something that one of my players (who is an accomplished fantasy author) noted while being in my games. I think a lot of my pacing skills come from exposure to stories. It’s part instinct, but also watching movies and reading stories to understand what kind of narrative devices one can use to build tension and fast forward through parts that may not be as impactful. I think that most people have a good instinct for pacing, but they can only influence pacing if the limits (i.e., start and end times) and the goals (i.e., satisfying narrative arcs) have been communicated AND the players feel they are empowered to make changes. That’s the technique of communicating openly with your table. If something is slowing down to acrawl, communicate that with the other players, and see how you can resolve that feeling. It could be as simple as hand waving that part of the story and moving on. Montages are powerful tools.
(As an aside: good pacing is not the GM’s sole responsibility. A GM may feel like they have the most control over the narrative so they can have the greatest influence in pacing. But it’s important to note that players have just as much of a responsibility, and also have just as much power to influence pacing, especially outside of the game world itself.)
What I’m interested in this post is more: what kind of tools exist to facilitate good pacing within the actual design of a game? The playbook XP questions is one example. Another example would be Clocks. Clocks clearly communicate to everyone at the table that something is going to happen and when that thing is one step closer to coming to fruition. Depending on how clocks are implemented though, that progression may come much quicker, or much slower than expected or desired. This is because progress on clocks relies on some element of randomness (i.e., the dice role result).
Some tools may rely on no randomness. For instance: time. If you know your session is going to be two hours, then just have your climactic event happen after 1 hour of real time, no matter what. Shadowdark does this to some degree with its torches rule, where each torch lasts only 1-hour of real time. At its best, this can create some tension filled events, where characters are fighting off a monster on their last torch, and just as the monster readies its next attack, the torch goes out. But at its worst, tying pacing directly to real time can create ludonarrative dissonance, where players are forced to make rushed decisions or GMs just make things happen deus ex machina style in service of moving things along. That isn’t good pacing.
Pacing in PREQUEL
In PREQUEL, we set out to deliver a very clear set of experiences in the span on a single session of play. In PREQUEL, players need to:
- Create a world
- Create a storyline of your Heros’ quest
- Identify the weaknesses of an Evil
- Preserve as many weaknesses as possible before dying
That’s a lot of things that need to happen in the span of 4 hours. And while you can always have the players meet again at some other date to complete the game if you don’t finish, we all know how much of a task it is to schedule each session of a group TTRPG.
In PREQUEL, we include some suggested guidance on how long the setup, fight/worldbuilding, and conclusion should take in a 4 hour session. This communicates the “bookends” of each experience. That’s the first layer of design.
During the fight/worldbuilding portion of the game, there are multiple phases, or Chapters, which create the supposed defeat of the Evil, the revelation of weaknesses, and the preserving of weaknesses. Each Chapter has specific end conditions to trigger moving onto the next Chapter, and these end conditions are tied to the Evil’s Health.
Tying narrative changes to a boss monster’s Health isn’t a new concept, it happens in essentially every JRPG. The interesting thing here is that all Powers that damage Evils are automatic hits and deal a set amount of damage. There are is no randomness in the damage dealt to an Evil each round. This means, we can design Powers and set the Health threshold such that we can target a number of turns (within +1 or 2 turns) before moving on to the next Chapter.
For instance, in Chapter 1: Rise, the Heroes are taking on the Evil for the first time. We want this to be a relatively quick experience, because the heart of the game is what happens after they think they beat the Evil. But we don’t want the experience to be too quick where some players don’t get a chance to act before the Evil is taken down for the first time. For instance if Basic Powers (i.e., Power that can be used at the beginning of the game) each deal 1 Harm, and the Evil to have a typical threshold of 5-6 Health before going down. This means a party of five will each get to have one turn before moving on to Chapter 2.
You may ask, “if your goal is to give each player one turn before moving to Chapter 2, why don’t you just make that the rule to transition to Chapter 2, rather than use Health?” The answer is: smoke and mirrors. We want players to feel like they are fighting an Evil, and part of that experience is the feeling of whittling down the Evil’s Health. It’s a much different experience saying, “ok, the Evil is going to die in five turns no matter what you do.” Also, building in some variance in the Harm and Health thresholds gives the players some agency in when things occur. Sure, it may just shift the number of turns to 4 turns instead of 5 turns, but it happens because the player did something.
In Chapter 3, heroes are now trying to identify and preserve weaknesses. Weaknesses are identified through Reveal Powers, and each Reveal Power requires an associated Approach Cost. Approaches are only given after satisfying certain narrative beats, which means that we’ve targeted Chapter 3 to be full of both narrative reveals and reveals of weaknesses. Limiting when and how Approaches can be earned and spent controls the pacing of the Chapter without introducing randomness. I played with when to give out Approaches during playtesting as a way to speed up the game to make sure we could finish within the allotted time.
Randomness does have a role to play in pacing. Preserving Weaknesses in PREQUEL requires the use of rolling a d6 under the amount of Harm the Evil has taken this round. This element of randomness makes the act of preserving weaknesses all the more precarious, it hammers home the idea that your Heroes may not be successful. Players still have agency by deciding whether to deal more Harm to increase their chance of success, or risk it with the chances they have.
Finally, the last tool for pacing built into PREQUEL is escalating damage. As the Chapters progress, the Evil gets stronger and deals more damage, thus hastening the end of the Heroes. This encourages Players to take those risks and use their Legacy Powers in those final Chapters to make sure that when they die, they go out on their own terms.
Barely Comprehensible Ramblings
I hope you got something out of this design diary. I didn’t have a lot of time to write this one, so in true Mark Twain fashion, I wrote a very long post full of my rambling thoughts. I have some strong feelings about pacing in TTRPGs and providing “complete and concise experiences.” I think given more time, I’ll be able to formulate more coherent thoughts and analysis on pacing tools and mechanics, but this post gives an idea of some of the thoughts I have when designing a game for pacing.
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