So, I'm a new GM. Played before, but I'm trying to balance story with initiative counters and round counters. Decided to run the one-shot dungeon in Rolled & Told #0 off of Comixology, just so I'm not creating too much for my first shot. Bear with me, please.
Biggest question: how effective is a round counter to keep track of timing? The dungeon crawl has a limit of 2 hours, and I don't want to screw that up. Also, is there a good round counter you'd suggest? I'm pretty sure I've got initiative counters covered with physical things.
Essentially, timing the encounter. I've got combat rounds figured, but it's all the in-between times, like crossing logs over a vat of acid, that I'm trying to avoid tripping me up time-wise. A friend suggested setting an actual timer, but I'm not sure that's the best method.
Without actually know what the content is, I can tell you what I have done for other runs where time was more important.
So with one of the pre-release ALG adventures that were released time was a driving force they used short rests. It was a very long and hard fought dungeon and it used the short rest mechanic as its count down. They had 4 hours to hunt down and stop a group of monsters from getting the McGruffin. A short rest, as I am sure you know, is at least an hour. There was also a story element in that they had a diamond that glowed brighter the close the monster group got to the adjective.
So if you want to make time a more real threat, give them something that will let them see that time is elapsing, and or use short rests as a time mark and make the dungeon harder to complete but not impossible for a mostly resource depleted group.
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So, I'm a new GM. Played before, but I'm trying to balance story with initiative counters and round counters. Decided to run the one-shot dungeon in Rolled & Told #0 off of Comixology, just so I'm not creating too much for my first shot. Bear with me, please.
Biggest question: how effective is a round counter to keep track of timing? The dungeon crawl has a limit of 2 hours, and I don't want to screw that up. Also, is there a good round counter you'd suggest? I'm pretty sure I've got initiative counters covered with physical things.
What exactly is it you're having trouble tracking?
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Essentially, timing the encounter. I've got combat rounds figured, but it's all the in-between times, like crossing logs over a vat of acid, that I'm trying to avoid tripping me up time-wise. A friend suggested setting an actual timer, but I'm not sure that's the best method.
Without actually know what the content is, I can tell you what I have done for other runs where time was more important.
So with one of the pre-release ALG adventures that were released time was a driving force they used short rests. It was a very long and hard fought dungeon and it used the short rest mechanic as its count down. They had 4 hours to hunt down and stop a group of monsters from getting the McGruffin. A short rest, as I am sure you know, is at least an hour. There was also a story element in that they had a diamond that glowed brighter the close the monster group got to the adjective.
So if you want to make time a more real threat, give them something that will let them see that time is elapsing, and or use short rests as a time mark and make the dungeon harder to complete but not impossible for a mostly resource depleted group.