I'm new as a DM so I could use some advice on how to make this work in a fun and exciting way.
In the adventure I'm planning I want to put the players under pressure from a timed deadline in the game. Basically, the player characters will have X minutes in the game world to solve a problem and take action or bad things happen.
I don't just want to sit with a stopwatch clocking the players, making the in game time and RL time equal. I'm perfectly happy to let the players use some extra RL time to discuss the problem. Yet at the same time I want them to feel the pressure of the clock ticking down, especially since I know one of the players tends take his time to over-analyse every problem trying to account for every possibly outcome before making a decision. I want them to feel stressed and hurried by the situation but I don't want to just sound like a talking clock and go; "you have three minutes left, you have two minutes left."
Any advice on how to put them on the clock without actually putting them under a RL clock?
On a related note; I also want to put them on a hidden deadline that only I know of. Basically, put them in a race without them knowing they are in a race and if they are quick enough they win and if they take too long things get much harder for them. But again I don't just want time them with a clock nor decide arbitrarily if they succeeded or not. I'd like to have some sort of game mechanic that let's their actions in the game decide how quick they are thus taking the decision out of my hands and putting it completely in the players.
Any advice on how to put them on the clock without actually putting them under a RL clock?
This is a fun trick to learn, and it is a learned thing. You'll have to adjust your narrative to match the tone of the situations you put your players in to create that sense of urgency. Most of us are pretty good with our details, giving the important bits out and usually over-emphasizing the really important bits while being too subtle on the subtle bits. If you want to create a dramatic scene, speak dramatically and use every one of the 5 senses you can.
The room is burning around your party, you have little time to escape.
VS
The room is an inferno, the smoke, already thick, roiling around you. As you look for a way out of the blaze, you feel the heat bearing down on you, the flickering tongues of flame make the shadows dance as you survey the room. It's very apparent that you have little time to escape.
---
You try to kick down the door and it simply doesn't budge, you feel as though it may be barred from the other side. You also notice the fire has started to grow and is taking up more of the room.
VS
You drive your foot into the door expecting the splintering wood to grant you escape, your heart races and then drops as it is to no avail. It seems your captors have barred the door with something quite solid, you feel an ache in your leg from the impact. The fire has crept up on you as you've attempted to escape, consuming much of the west wall and the furniture is starting to ignite. The smoke is creating a haze making it harder to see and breath. (I need a constitution save, and you have disadvantage on perception checks.)
---
You've added descriptions that impart an urgency, plus the CON and Perception make it real in a mechanical sense. You're also taking the individual actions and making them seem urgent through your narrative as well. A player will usually state their action, as the DM you're imparting a prompt to the players by adding a bit of emotional context for them to play off of.
Question 2:
There's a couple ways I thought of for this. First is to create check points for the party to pass, if they don't then the triggered event happens sooner. Each room, or puzzle, they have X number of attempts to get through, if they go over then the timer ticks down. Then for every couple attempts after the timer drops again. This could be treated similarly to skill challenges. The other way is to have an actual timer, a sand timer, or something similar, that you can start/stop as needed and just work from that, not quite what you're looking for, but it may still be an applicable approach.
But how would you do it if it wasn't as a dramatic situation as a burning room. What if it was just guards making their way through a castle after an alarm was sounded for example? Where the PC's know that the guards are on the way but have not way to notice the guards until just before the guards are very close?
Same advice, only in this case you use the audible clues such as footsteps, voices calling out, the clanking of pike on stone getting closer.
Voices carry, especially in corridors and hallways, and hard surfaces like stone tend to help sound carry. So, you can have the guards move on a prescribed pattern or path. The players can roll a perception every so often to see if they hear the guards (you may choose to hide the purpose of the roll and simply ask for it). You then describe, every so often, the sound of weapons clanking as the guards move around, or suddenly there's voices on the other side of a door, then they move on.
There's a balance between using passive perception rolls, active perception rolls, and just having events happen. Figuring out that balance is definitely on a group by group basis.
I find another way to achieve this is using an action countdown system. You have a private area where you can determine how many actions are taken before something dire happens. I tend to keep track with dice. So if you have a party of 5 and they don't something at the same time then each attempt subtracts from the total. Also, do what DMThac0 suggests and start involving more of their senses into the situation and then emphasize them as the countdown timer approaches closer to 0. Everyone has passive perception and eventually someone will be able to notice something is happening once it hits that point. I have just used this in my last campaign and had my PCs try to stop a demon summoning. They were attacking a camp and I had a large passive dice for when the ritual will be complete and since there was combat I only subtracted from that die when a full round was completed, since combat is only 6 seconds. Then out of combat I go back to the original format.
Also if they start taking a little to long to decide an action, roll a couple dice and just subtract one from the timer. Them hearing dice rolling behind the DM screen tends to make people focus a little more as they feel something is going to happen. It may take time to find a balance for it but I find it moves the campaign along with a little urgency when it's needed.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Self Righteous Paladin: "That much power corrupts a man."
Random Bard: "Power is just a tool. How you use it doesn't change that fact. It just shows the purest form of your desires."
In tense, non-initiative turns, I narrate the results of their activities and then prompt a roll, example below.
"Your attempt to climb the tapestry is successful. You are able to reach out to the gem-eyes of the giant statue. Roll d12, and on a 1, the guards you saw searching burst into the room."
"You were able to pry out the first gem-eye. Roll d10; you know what happens on a 1."
Etc.
This works really well when the player wants to take risky, time consuming action while the clock is ticking.
The wording is a little different when the players don't know what the clock is ticking for.
"You slide down the tapestry and tuck the two gem-eyes safely in your pack. That gurgling sound coming from behind the statue suddenly stops. Roll a d6; you don't want to roll a 1."
A friend DM of mine uses your system. Although he simply displays a giant D6. He ticks it down when he wants to ratchet up the tension. Sometimes we know what the D6 means (e.g., the evil ritual will be complete) and sometimes we don't.
You could try use action timers as well. Roll a d6, the result is how many rounds the players have left before the bad thing happens. Each player gets 1 action to try to do the thing.
What if you put a hidden trigger somewhere and once it's activated then they only have a limited amount of turns to do something, and at certain numbers of turns you can make it clearer that something is going to happen.
Ex: The party walks into a cave and that's where the trigger is. (Now let's say the puzzle is fairly simple so they have around 15 turns to complete it at max.) Every time they take a turn take notice, and at 10 turns left have the walls start to rumble, at 5 turns left the air starts to get stuffier, and at 0 the bad thing happens.
That was just the way I thought of it at least. It may not have been the best example.
I'm new as a DM so I could use some advice on how to make this work in a fun and exciting way.
In the adventure I'm planning I want to put the players under pressure from a timed deadline in the game. Basically, the player characters will have X minutes in the game world to solve a problem and take action or bad things happen.
I don't just want to sit with a stopwatch clocking the players, making the in game time and RL time equal. I'm perfectly happy to let the players use some extra RL time to discuss the problem. Yet at the same time I want them to feel the pressure of the clock ticking down, especially since I know one of the players tends take his time to over-analyse every problem trying to account for every possibly outcome before making a decision. I want them to feel stressed and hurried by the situation but I don't want to just sound like a talking clock and go; "you have three minutes left, you have two minutes left."
Any advice on how to put them on the clock without actually putting them under a RL clock?
On a related note; I also want to put them on a hidden deadline that only I know of. Basically, put them in a race without them knowing they are in a race and if they are quick enough they win and if they take too long things get much harder for them. But again I don't just want time them with a clock nor decide arbitrarily if they succeeded or not. I'd like to have some sort of game mechanic that let's their actions in the game decide how quick they are thus taking the decision out of my hands and putting it completely in the players.
Any ideas how I do that?
This is a fun trick to learn, and it is a learned thing. You'll have to adjust your narrative to match the tone of the situations you put your players in to create that sense of urgency. Most of us are pretty good with our details, giving the important bits out and usually over-emphasizing the really important bits while being too subtle on the subtle bits. If you want to create a dramatic scene, speak dramatically and use every one of the 5 senses you can.
The room is burning around your party, you have little time to escape.
VS
The room is an inferno, the smoke, already thick, roiling around you. As you look for a way out of the blaze, you feel the heat bearing down on you, the flickering tongues of flame make the shadows dance as you survey the room. It's very apparent that you have little time to escape.
---
You try to kick down the door and it simply doesn't budge, you feel as though it may be barred from the other side. You also notice the fire has started to grow and is taking up more of the room.
VS
You drive your foot into the door expecting the splintering wood to grant you escape, your heart races and then drops as it is to no avail. It seems your captors have barred the door with something quite solid, you feel an ache in your leg from the impact. The fire has crept up on you as you've attempted to escape, consuming much of the west wall and the furniture is starting to ignite. The smoke is creating a haze making it harder to see and breath. (I need a constitution save, and you have disadvantage on perception checks.)
---
You've added descriptions that impart an urgency, plus the CON and Perception make it real in a mechanical sense. You're also taking the individual actions and making them seem urgent through your narrative as well. A player will usually state their action, as the DM you're imparting a prompt to the players by adding a bit of emotional context for them to play off of.
Question 2:
There's a couple ways I thought of for this. First is to create check points for the party to pass, if they don't then the triggered event happens sooner. Each room, or puzzle, they have X number of attempts to get through, if they go over then the timer ticks down. Then for every couple attempts after the timer drops again. This could be treated similarly to skill challenges. The other way is to have an actual timer, a sand timer, or something similar, that you can start/stop as needed and just work from that, not quite what you're looking for, but it may still be an applicable approach.
Intresting advice.
But how would you do it if it wasn't as a dramatic situation as a burning room. What if it was just guards making their way through a castle after an alarm was sounded for example? Where the PC's know that the guards are on the way but have not way to notice the guards until just before the guards are very close?
Same advice, only in this case you use the audible clues such as footsteps, voices calling out, the clanking of pike on stone getting closer.
Voices carry, especially in corridors and hallways, and hard surfaces like stone tend to help sound carry. So, you can have the guards move on a prescribed pattern or path. The players can roll a perception every so often to see if they hear the guards (you may choose to hide the purpose of the roll and simply ask for it). You then describe, every so often, the sound of weapons clanking as the guards move around, or suddenly there's voices on the other side of a door, then they move on.
There's a balance between using passive perception rolls, active perception rolls, and just having events happen. Figuring out that balance is definitely on a group by group basis.
I find another way to achieve this is using an action countdown system. You have a private area where you can determine how many actions are taken before something dire happens. I tend to keep track with dice. So if you have a party of 5 and they don't something at the same time then each attempt subtracts from the total. Also, do what DMThac0 suggests and start involving more of their senses into the situation and then emphasize them as the countdown timer approaches closer to 0. Everyone has passive perception and eventually someone will be able to notice something is happening once it hits that point. I have just used this in my last campaign and had my PCs try to stop a demon summoning. They were attacking a camp and I had a large passive dice for when the ritual will be complete and since there was combat I only subtracted from that die when a full round was completed, since combat is only 6 seconds. Then out of combat I go back to the original format.
Also if they start taking a little to long to decide an action, roll a couple dice and just subtract one from the timer. Them hearing dice rolling behind the DM screen tends to make people focus a little more as they feel something is going to happen. It may take time to find a balance for it but I find it moves the campaign along with a little urgency when it's needed.
Self Righteous Paladin: "That much power corrupts a man."
Random Bard: "Power is just a tool. How you use it doesn't change that fact. It just shows the purest form of your desires."
In tense, non-initiative turns, I narrate the results of their activities and then prompt a roll, example below.
This works really well when the player wants to take risky, time consuming action while the clock is ticking.
The wording is a little different when the players don't know what the clock is ticking for.
A friend DM of mine uses your system. Although he simply displays a giant D6. He ticks it down when he wants to ratchet up the tension. Sometimes we know what the D6 means (e.g., the evil ritual will be complete) and sometimes we don't.
You could try use action timers as well. Roll a d6, the result is how many rounds the players have left before the bad thing happens. Each player gets 1 action to try to do the thing.
Build the tension as each round ends.
What if you put a hidden trigger somewhere and once it's activated then they only have a limited amount of turns to do something, and at certain numbers of turns you can make it clearer that something is going to happen.
Ex: The party walks into a cave and that's where the trigger is. (Now let's say the puzzle is fairly simple so they have around 15 turns to complete it at max.) Every time they take a turn take notice, and at 10 turns left have the walls start to rumble, at 5 turns left the air starts to get stuffier, and at 0 the bad thing happens.
That was just the way I thought of it at least. It may not have been the best example.