Hi fellow DMs.  I have a long-standing group of three players.  We get along great; these are my friends in real life but there is a problem in our games.  My players, particularly one player, struggles with indecision.  Most recently, the players had tracked a band of ogres and giants back to their lair.  The monsters had taken several hundred NPCs by cart and brought them to their lair for a month-long feast.  The players realized they had found the prisoners and then literally debated how to free the prisoners and/or kill the monsters for 30-45 minutes. 

  To be fair, my dungeons have an absolute potential for lethality, but this is rare.  After discussing the topic for 5-10 minutes, the players are not developing a well refined plan but just rehashing minor, meaningless details or starting down the “what-if” brigade. 

  This is particularly painful to me as a DM and one of my players who is very decisive.  We both wait while the one indecisive player talks to the other player for a LONG time covering the endless options.  In combat, I flip an egg-timer and if this particular player cannot decide what to do before the sand drains out, he loses his turn (never happens, but it speeds up the process). 

  Does anyone have a suggestion of how to goad players towards making major decisions?  I thought about giving a few suggestions (“You think you might send the thief to sneak into the lair or pretend to be a merchant on the road to draw out a few of the ogres.”)  It is particularly problematic as we only play 2.5 hour sessions most nights.  If you spend 30+ minutes debating an encounter, that doesn’t leave time for much else.  I have talked to one of the other players and he agrees with me but does not want to rock the boat (again, we are all friends in everyday life as well). 

                 Would be grateful for your advice. 

Have you tried talking to them about it? All of them, not just one player?

The big thing to remember is the players who like to talk things through are not wrong to want to do that. It may be part of the fun of the game for them. But, neither are you wrong to want them to speed things up. It seems like what may be fun for them is bumping up against what is fun for you.

I’d say you need to have a Session 0 style conversation where you lay this all out and come to a mutual solution. Probably something where they speed it up a bit more than they might like, and you give them room to have these types of discussions more than you might like.

In my games where this is an issue, sometimes I have the group elect a "party leader". This player doesn't exactly have authority over the others, but during discussions/debates, it's their job to direct the discussion and ensure everyone is heard while keeping things from getting bogged down. Then, when it sounds like the party has covered as much as they were going to and have started spinning their wheels, I can go to the party leader and say "ok, it's time for a decision, what do you do?"

Even without the party leader, the phrase "ok, it's time for a decision; what do you do?" should absolutely be in your toolbox as a DM. It's a great way of signaling to your party when you think you've heard a plan that could plausibly work, and that maybe the minutae they're getting caught up on probably isn't something you've prepped. 

Players like to debate because debate is fun and shows that they're taking your world seriously. It shows they're taking the risks in your world especially seriously, so this behavior shouldn't be discouraged by any measure, but you can still find ways of subtly signaling to the party when the time to act is. 

And sometimes, at the table, it's perfectly OK to tell the players semi-sarcastically "you think I put this door here specifically to entice you into stepping on an invisible treadmill just to fling you onto a rack of blade walls or something just because the bell hop outside the door seemed a little rude? Folks, I am not that good a planner haha"

If they take way too long, like a good 30 minutes, say something like "You hear screaming sounds coming from inside. It sounds like the ogres are having an early snack." The reason that the players spend so long debating is because they have no reason not to. If you made it a bit more urgent, then they might make suggestions faster. But then again, debating is part of D&D after all, so you could just let them do it.

Sometimes this happens because the player is afraid if they don't go through all possible options and make the perfect decision the party will fail & a character will die. You might want to discuss with the indecisive player if they dislike the level of lethality in the game.

However, sometimes that's just how the player is and you need someone in the group to gently push the party forwards when it seems like they have made a decision. I do this in one of my games where I'm a player and we have 2 players who are mainly laid back, and one who wants to do cost-benefit analysis on every decision we make, whereas I'm much more decisive. This sounds most likely what is going on in your game since you said:

After discussing the topic for 5-10 minutes, the players are not developing a well refined plan but just rehashing minor, meaningless details or starting down the “what-if” brigade. 

It's ok to interrupt them / cut them off after those 5-10 minutes where they discuss their options in broad strokes to say something like "Sounds like you guys have considered all your options, can I get a decision?" You might even want to add something like: "You characters know that out of the options you discussed X or Y would be most plausible to succeed, what would you like to do?"

You might want to talk with the decisive player about taking more of a leadership role - not necessarily making the decision for the party, but to pick up on the first plan the party come up with that nobody objects to and point that out to the group and push for the decision to be made. For example I often find myself saying things like "Ok it sounds like everyone is in agreement on this option, so should we go with that?" or "I think we have a consensus on option X, so I think we've made the decision, let's go with that." As long as they still let everyone contribute their thoughts to the decision first and in my case I try let everyone else suggest what to do first to make sure they don't feel like I'm taking over all the decisions, then only offer my opinion on what to do if I think I've got a much better solution they haven't considered, but once everyone else has spoken at least once I try to summarize the options and/or point out the consensus to push towards a decision. 

Thanks everyone.  These are good ideas.

I have often tried to summarize their ideas and move the game forward.  This sometimes works but often we get dragged back into a discussion of the details of the best sounding plan after I summarize it.  I also ask for a decision ("What do you do?") particularly if time would be limited (e.g. sinking ship).  

I have used their indecision as an opportunity for their enemies to strike first.  I think this is only fair as real time and game time must have a correlation.  If they are standing around talking that gives the monsters a chance to attack.  Putting a ticking clock in most of my dungeons has been used to mitigate the long debates with limited success.  On one whimsical dungeon I used rooms that collapsed when completed, forcing them into the next room, sparing us all a long debate of how to proceed.  

Talking to the plodding player is probably the best idea.  He is also very slow when we play other games like cards or dominos, trying to find the best move.  It often helps his hand, but again, at the cost of a prolonged wait for myself and our wives.  I hardly have ADHD, being very methodical myself, but this level of pondering is on another level. 

Electing a party leader may be helpful.  I haven't thought of that.  The other two guys are pretty passive, but it is not a bad idea.  

I appreciate everyone’s advice.  If you think of anything else, please let me know.

Quote from Agilemind >>

After discussing the topic for 5-10 minutes, the players are not developing a well refined plan but just rehashing minor, meaningless details or starting down the “what-if” brigade. 

It's ok to interrupt them / cut them off after those 5-10 minutes where they discuss their options in broad strokes to say something like "Sounds like you guys have considered all your options, can I get a decision?" You might even want to add something like: "You characters know that out of the options you discussed X or Y would be most plausible to succeed, what would you like to do?"

 This is such an important skill to develop as a GM, and it's one that took me a long time myself. I think there's an impulse as a facilitator to not "influence" the players at all, lest you be accused of railroading (even if only in your own mind). In reality, you've got to remember that the players must often work from incomplete information, and many will respond to that incompleteness by imagining a far worse scenario than could possibly await them. It's okay to gently push your players towards actually playing the game they showed up to play; they'll likely thank you for it in the long run.

The biggest thing is to make that intervention the moment you think the conversion has stated to go off the rails; it'll be easiest to get them out of the doom spiral before it's really taken hold. Plus, that way you intervene before you start to get annoyed, which helps keep the "gentle" part in the gentle push.

Talking to the plodding player is probably the best idea.  He is also very slow when we play other games like cards or dominos, trying to find the best move.  It often helps his hand, but again, at the cost of a prolonged wait for myself and our wives. 

This is a good idea, IME what kinda helps these types of players is:
(1) reinforcing that calamity won't happen if the party makes a mistake - highlighting situations where things went wrong but the party survived just fine. And reinforcing that D&D isn't a game where you "win" or "lose" even if a plan doesn't work out it will still be a good story that everyone at the table enjoys more than being stalled in endless debate / what-ifs. 
(2) reminding them that the party can adapt their plan if something unexpected happens and that you will give them a chance to do so if needed so they don't need to consider every possibility at the start, they can wait to see if one of those possibilities happens and then figure out a solution then rather than trying to plan for every eventuality before doing anything. 
(3) letting them know that you would allow their character to roll and INT check or WIS check or something like that to think about plausible complications involved in the plan and you as the DM will let them know what is reasonable in terms of risks/complications to avoid them going down the rabbit hole of incredibly unlikely circumstances.

This happens sometimes even when you don't have indecisive players.

My solution is pretty much in game: something starts happening.

• They have been having this discussion  for a while and then someone says "Well, i think just surrendering sounds smart".
• The feast below begins as the fires have reached their perfect spot, and someone is going to go on the spit.
• Another group of hardy adventurers rides up. It won't go well.

Stuff like that. For me, a big thing is that as time passes, things happen. 

Easiest thing I do after a few minutes is pick a player and ask them high or low, ill roll a die if they picked correctly I give them another min, incorrect then roll initiative. Now the group knows every minute there is a chance of a random encounter it usually moves things along nicely. Added bonus some marginal reality to the RP assuming you really are standing in a hostile forest, cave, dungeon whatever you really do not have all day to theorize the best possible answer to take the left fork or the right fork down the tunnel.

Thanks for these additional ideas.  I think they will help.

My style of DM-ing definitely has an element of danger.  The slowest player has lost two characters, albeit over the course of many sessions.  One was a TPK in which their indecision actually seriously hurt them (somewhat like what James Bard and AEDorsay were suggesting) and another was a boss battle where his character and several key NPCs died.  This may have encouraged his fastidious attention to detail, which has the unfortunate result of slowing the game and not actually improving their situation (again, focusing on irrelevant details). 

I do think it is a good idea to reemphasize that even though plans often do not work out the end result is not always catastrophic per Agilemind's suggestion.  As Mike Tyson says, "Everyone has a fight plan until they get punched in the face!"  Battle (and even life itself) requires flexibility and improvisation.  While a loose plan is very helpful, you can only plan so far since your information is incomplete. 

 Before we pick back up in 10 days I will talk to the guys about these ideas.  Many thanks.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

This happens sometimes even when you don't have indecisive players.

My solution is pretty much in game: something starts happening.

• They have been having this discussion  for a while and then someone says "Well, i think just surrendering sounds smart".
• The feast below begins as the fires have reached their perfect spot, and someone is going to go on the spit.
• Another group of hardy adventurers rides up. It won't go well.

Stuff like that. For me, a big thing is that as time passes, things happen. 

 Disagree. It is almost always a terrible idea to try to resolve out-of-game issues using in-game mechanics. Most of the time the players won't understand what you are trying to incentivize them to do, or they get resentful of being "punished" by the DM all the time. For instance having random encounters occur when the party is planning / hesitating may just make the party become even more cautious and slow as they try to plan around random ambushes/attacks happening all the time or obsess over every detail to try to figure out why they got randomly ambushed and thus avoid getting randomly ambushed in the future. If you're going to do something like this you need to make it super super obvious what is happening

e.g.: "As the party stands in the middle of the dungeon talking loudly about what to do next, a group of gnolls over hears them and comes to investigate, roll initiative."

If the problem is they are "focusing on irrelevant details" what they mainly means is that they don't know what is relevant or not. They don't know they are irrelevant details or they wouldn't be obsessing over them. The easiest solution there is just to clarify to them that they are irrelevant details or they are barking up the wrong tree, you can either have them roll an Intelligence/Wisdom check and them provide them information their character would know in-game to clarify that the details are irrelevant, or just interrupting them and asking them why they think that irrelevant detail is important.

As the GM, you sometimes need to be the facilitator/meeting chair/camp leader/whatever.

If the players have exhaused the conversation and aren't introducing any new ideas then you need to interrupt with something like, "All right, you've discussed the options and no-one has anything new to add, so I need you to make a decision." If they still waffle around or anyone tries to repeat things they've already said then you need to be firm. "You have all the clues and information you are ever going to get, and you've had time to discuss this. No-one has adding anything new to add to the discussion, so it's time to make a decision, so we can advance the game." 

You might also want to summarise their choices for them, and the risks and rewards of the choices. 

If they have actually missed a clue then just straight-up tell them. "You are talking about the captain of the guard. You remember that you found some inciminiating evidence against them in the barracks, right?"

Remind them that sitting there listening for them repeat the same points over and over is boring for you and that there's nothing more dangerous to the health of a PC than a bored GM…

If this still doesn't result in a decision, then make it for them. If the players are sitting around talking endlessly, then so are their characters. Have the world move on, have the plot resolve itself, for good or bad. Maybe have another adventuring party solve the issue and get the credit, like The Simpsons episode where Lester and Eliza solve the problem before Bart and Lisa do.

Quote from Greenstone_Walker >>

 

Remind them that sitting there listening for them repeat the same points over and over is boring for you and that there's nothing more dangerous to the health of a PC than a bored GM…

I may use that line when we talk about this issue before the next game.  5-10 minutes is a great break to stop talking, get a snack and a drink.  After 10 minutes, my mind starts to drift to nefarious schemes!!!!