I've seen a lot of talk about using timelines for campaign management. They help you organize the events in the world, and they're especially useful when you want a living world that has different things going on in different places at overlapping times.
I haven't seen anything about using timelines for session management or encounter management though. This led me to wonder whether other DMs think it's worth designing sessions/encounters to be complex in terms of multiple things going on at once.
Let me explain what I mean. Imagine the party is guarding a VIP, along with some soldiers. The enemies launch a frontal attack, but it's a rouse -- simultaneously an assassin is sneaking in through the back of the camp, with the goal of killing the VIP.
When action breaks out, the party might head to the VIP tent to protect him. Or the party might join the soldiers repelling the frontal attack. In either case, I might want to have further planned events. Maybe the frontal attackers set off a bomb on a certain round. The PCs would either hear it go off or they would feel it go off, depending on where they were. Maybe the VIP casts a fireball at the assassin, setting tents in fire. The PCs would either be there in the mix, or they would hear the fireball and see the fire from the front line.
Obviously no pre-planned timeline can hold up against the PCs' actions, and things will always go off the rails. But I feel like having some kind of tooling to help plan this kind of scenario would make for richer encounters.
How do other DMs feel about this? Do you think it's a bad idea to try to plan encounters like this? Have you had good or bad experiences trying this? Do you have any advice for a new DM thinking about planning things this way? Do you know of any good tooling for representing such timelines?
Micromanaging timelines with players is analogous to day trading stocks. A lot more work than it's worth, and you'll usually pay a price for the attempt.
What I prefer is to have a prologue and an epilogue in mind, then have a few random elements drawn up, just in case. In a fast paced setting, it is easier and more natural to react to the players' energy, than to try to dynamically control a scripted world in addition to running a number of NPCs and tracking player behavior.
If the players are getting stuck in a pattern, or getting bored, let something unexpected happen. If the players are enjoying themselves, then let them enjoy the moment by giving it a spotlight.
Create story elements to help improvize in the moment, and then tie it into the story between sessions.
I've seen a lot of talk about using timelines for campaign management. They help you organize the events in the world, and they're especially useful when you want a living world that has different things going on in different places at overlapping times.
I haven't seen anything about using timelines for session management or encounter management though. This led me to wonder whether other DMs think it's worth designing sessions/encounters to be complex in terms of multiple things going on at once.
Let me explain what I mean. Imagine the party is guarding a VIP, along with some soldiers. The enemies launch a frontal attack, but it's a rouse -- simultaneously an assassin is sneaking in through the back of the camp, with the goal of killing the VIP.
When action breaks out, the party might head to the VIP tent to protect him. Or the party might join the soldiers repelling the frontal attack. In either case, I might want to have further planned events. Maybe the frontal attackers set off a bomb on a certain round. The PCs would either hear it go off or they would feel it go off, depending on where they were. Maybe the VIP casts a fireball at the assassin, setting tents in fire. The PCs would either be there in the mix, or they would hear the fireball and see the fire from the front line.
Obviously no pre-planned timeline can hold up against the PCs' actions, and things will always go off the rails. But I feel like having some kind of tooling to help plan this kind of scenario would make for richer encounters.
How do other DMs feel about this? Do you think it's a bad idea to try to plan encounters like this? Have you had good or bad experiences trying this? Do you have any advice for a new DM thinking about planning things this way? Do you know of any good tooling for representing such timelines?
Micromanaging timelines with players is analogous to day trading stocks. A lot more work than it's worth, and you'll usually pay a price for the attempt.
What I prefer is to have a prologue and an epilogue in mind, then have a few random elements drawn up, just in case. In a fast paced setting, it is easier and more natural to react to the players' energy, than to try to dynamically control a scripted world in addition to running a number of NPCs and tracking player behavior.
If the players are getting stuck in a pattern, or getting bored, let something unexpected happen. If the players are enjoying themselves, then let them enjoy the moment by giving it a spotlight.
Create story elements to help improvize in the moment, and then tie it into the story between sessions.