Pacing and Player Decision Making

When you are beginning your journey as a GM you have a lot to juggle.  

You have to keep track of your NPCs, deliver descriptions of the world, drop hints and rumours, bookeep, keep one step ahead of the players... Frankly it can be exhausting at times and it is easy to forget about pacing.

Pacing and Prioritisation in Player Decision Making

In real life we have to make decisions in real time and often those decisions are made under time pressure with imperfect information.  Naturally we prioritise those decisions to select the most urgent tasks first and this should be no different for players in your RPG.

Ask yourself how many times your party has meticulously planned a combat encounter.  The planning (or more likely the arguing) can often take longer than the combat itself and this can suck the life out of the game.

Putting your players under time pressure when planning will result in them throwing out many of their wilder options and selecting between two or three based on what they know.  I've seen many parties get bogged down in analysis paralysis because they just have too many options on the table or too many voices.

How you pace a game also affects the engagement levels of players.  If there are too many long discussions it can sap the will to live from some players particularly if there character's share of the decision making is uneven.  You only have to look at the Avengers to see how disengaged Hulk can be when the others strategise about attack plans.  Hulk just wants to smash like your typical tank PC.

Pacing also raises the stakes for players.  Rushed decision making increases the risk of failure and the players feel that there are consequences to that failure.  The tension rises, the action becomes more visceral.  Success following a tense battle is always sweeter and mixed with relief.

I said make the action "Intense" - Image credit Diary of a Croation Larper