OK - so I've been trying something the last session or two which has really helped keep the game on pace.

The Players are going to try and negotiate with The Duke of L'rae? Well - that's a complex situation, with the Grand Vizir arguing against them - let's say that should take 15 minutes of actual clock time.

The Players are going into combat with a Fire Elemental Myrmidon? OK - that's a Medium combat encounter .... 20 minutes.

We're doing a travel transition as they travel across the sea? OK - 2 minutes for flavor text, no more!

Now, if I was using a published module, I could look through all the encounters, ponder them, and assign a target block of time. Of course, I'm not a genius estimator - I'll make mistakes, things will go long, or short, but it gives me a rough idea of what to aim for, and how to pace that scene.

 But I do a lot of improvisation - so I can't predetermine my time estimates.

I think the best I could do, is break down the kinds of scenes there are, the levels of complexity, and try and marry the two together to come up with a very rough estimate: Wow, OK, I didn't expect them to charge down to the docks, and try and storm the Merchant Captain's ship! OK, this is a combat encounter, and it'll be a Hard level of difficulty, and after 5 turns of combat, the City Guard will show up, so this is going to be complex as well - so this is going to take at least an hour! And we have 35 minutes until 10 o''clock which is our cut-off time ... so... I'll let them charge across the gangplank, and deploy for combat, and we'll stop there for the night.

Has anyone done anything like that?

What's a good list of "types of scenes" that you can think of, and how long do you think they would take, on average?

What's a good list of "modifiers" that you can think of, and how do you think those would affect those estimates?

Or is the whole idea unworkable?

Thanks!

JUST USE 3 ENCOUNTERS! NO FATIGUE! If more is needed because the players are still energized and you have time, just have some pre-made encounters on hand.

I don't think that works for my table, or my style, to be honest.

I agree one should be monitoring the table, gauging Player energy levels, and their level of engagement, but I think that if I went 3 encounters, and wrapped up the game less than 90 minutes in, my Players would be unhappy with me.

But I appreciate the feedback :)

it's all really down to how you roll (pun intended)

ie if you roll bad you want to go home and eat Cheetos for 10 hours 

I attempt to timebox but that's mainly to help give me an additional check to make sure the pace is ok.  (for reference we run for 3.5 hrs)

When contemplating a gaming session, I allocate 45 mins per "decent" combat. (ie 5 players vs 5-8 mobs).  I try to limit "shopkeeping rp" to 15 mins, but that varies. I aim for a certain number of "scenes" per session, but I may only know one or two in advance.

I like the concept, but taking it to its logical conclusion you would have a list of scenes (ie tavern-talk, shopkeeping, combat, negotiation, sneaking into a place, forging items etc) and modifiers for each one, which then becomes a great big matrix you consult... Is that the bookkeeping you really want to do? I think you would lose some of the organic nature of the game.   

Again, just my opinion, and everyone has different styles, but I like thinking about what types of encounters I may have in a session and making sure there is at least one RP one and a combat one (or more, since my players like combat).  You know this already, but it's about player moments, not our moments.  IE a fighter went to a tailor to craft a battle standard -- as  DM this can be quickly resolved and we move on to the next problem,  but from the player's perspective, they now have this cool item that they take into combat and remember.  It's a minor detail to us (mostly) but important to them.

Not sure if I helped :)

Actually, that does help :)

And no - I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole of classifications. I think general categories would suffice.

And yeah - these are meant as guidelines to allow me to get a better feel on when the pace is starting to lag. I do pay attention to the "are the Players dragging all the time" which indicates that I'm pacing too fast, or "are the Players starting to get bored" which indicates I'm pacing too slow - but I'd like to be pro-active, not re-active, if I can.

There are always going to be exceptions, and these are not meant to be hard scene limits ( *bing* sorry, time is up for shopping - better luck next time!  :p )

but, cheetos

I don’t know—I kind of like the idea of telling the players, oops, your fifteen minutes RT of shopping are up. Obviously not all the time, but if they’re unprepared or not really engaged. Or other small penalties—kind of like the idea that if a player takes too long to figure out their turn in combat, they lose it.